Author:
Veronika Muchitsch
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I am haunted by a particular kind of ghosts.

At times, they materialize in the subtle sting of mistrust upon new encounters. At others, they form a knot in my gut, heavy with anger and disenchantment. They embody the specific kind of pain caused by the ruptures between feminist theory and proclamations, and lived feminist practice in academia.

I have struggled with following this perspective in this contribution. Many of these specters echo encounters with scholars, who are self-proclaimed feminists and feminist theorists, whose work I had admired, and still admire. Others formed within institutional contexts that off-handedly declare commitment to feminist politics, and, most excruciatingly, within scholarly networks, whose pronounced purpose it is to scrutinize and fight intersecting forms of subjugation including those along lines of gender, sexuality, class, race and ethnicity.

I have struggled, as well, because giving voice to my experiences would risk diverting attention from other, more explicitly misogynist, displays of abuse of power. And because pointing to these problems threatened to cancel out the experiences of feminist companionship and support that have carried me through my early career in academia.

But my ghosts would not dissolve. They expanded and multiplied with time, with reflection.

So, I knew I needed to paint their shadows on these pages.

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Chapter 1 The Same Old Story?
Chapter 2 The Polyphony of Academia
Chapter 3 What My CV Doesn’t Tell You
Chapter 4 Notes from the Margins of Academic Life
Chapter 5 A Decisive Meeting in Department X
Chapter 6 Phantom Libraries
Chapter 7 On the Occasion of My Retirement
Chapter 8 How to Be a Professor in the Twenty-First Century
Chapter 9 Bad Days
Chapter 10 On Diversity Workshops
Chapter 11 Still a World to Win
Chapter 12 Fragments of Missed Opportunities
Chapter 13 Flexing Muscles
Chapter 14 Lessons I Learned at University
Chapter 15 Benevolence or Bitterness
Chapter 16 Observations from a Non-Academic on Academic Life
Chapter 17 Harassment and Abuse of Power from a Global Perspective
Chapter 18 What My Younger Self Would Have Said, Had She Spoken up, and How My Present Self Would Have Replied
Chapter 19 The Ghosts of Academia
Chapter 20 The Unbearable Shame of Crying at Work
Chapter 21 Panic Button
Chapter 23 Diving Deeper
Epilogue The Privilege of Writing One’s Story and Reading Those of Others
Epilogue Gathering Voices for a Better Academic Workplace

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