OSUN Presents

Feminization But Make It Cool: Academic Labor Activism

Within labor studies, ‘feminization’ is a contested term with multiple connotations – rarely with positive ones. In this talk, Aslı Vatansever will reflect upon whether the experiences of adjunct advocacy groups and precarious researchers’ networks can change the way we conceptualize feminization and help us reclaim the positive traits associated with the historical construct of the feminine. Following a broad overview on the qualitative and quantitative conceptions of the term in the general labor discourse, Vatansever will proceed to introduce its particular framings within the context of academic employment. Drawing on two contemporary cases of academic labor activism, namely the adjunct advocacy group New Faculty Majority in the United States and the precarious researchers’ Network for Decent Work in Academia in Germany, she will illustrate the turn away from performative activism in favor of movements based on relational groundwork. Based on these case examples, Vatansever will propose to reframe ‘feminization’ affirmatively as a type of affective and relational mode of organizing and argue that this ‘affective turn’ in academic labor activism heralds a ‘feminization of resistance’ – a new era for both academic labor activisms and in the conceptual trajectory of the term ‘feminization’.

Meeting Link

Meeting ID: 961 3050 8341
Passcode: 128330

This event is part of OSUN's Transnational Feminism, Solidarity, and Social Justice project.
 

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Aslı Vatansever is a sociologist of work and social stratification with a focus on precarious labor and labor activism in academia. Currently, she is a research fellow at Bard College Berlin. Her work on academic labor activism has appeared in prominent outlets in the field of labor studies such as Work, Employment and Society. She has recently published a monograph At the Margins of Academia: Exile, Precariousness, and Subjectivity (Brill, 2020) and an edited volume Academic Freedom and Precarity in the Global North: Free as a Bird (co-edited with Aysuda Kölemen, Routledge, 2022).
 

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Time: 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm CET/GMT+1

Location: Online

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