Feelings of Change: Alternative Feminist Professional Trajectories

Book chapter in "Feeling Academic in the Neoliberal University: Feminist Flights, Fights and Failures" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, eds. Y Taylor, K. Lahad) ABSTRACT By 2008 concepts of precariousness, insecurity, temporary or episodic labor in the new political economy started describing the work and life situations of young academics in the United States (Armano and Murgia, 2013; Brophy and Peuter, 2007; Gerard and Murgia, 2012; Ylijoki, 2010). At the same time the terms 'all-administrative,' 'commercialization,' 'corporatization,' 'academic capitalism,' and ' neoliberalization' were signaling further changes in higher education institutions in the US (Derek 2003; Chomsky, 2014; Gill, 2010; Ginsberg, 2011; Mills, 2012; Soley 1995). This chapter addresses the trajectories of Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) PhDs who left academia in search for professional lives that combine feminist scholarship with activism, service, and policy making