Very Special Episode: The Sentimental Education of Hannah McGregor

In which pod inspiration, icon, and aspirational bestie Dr. Hannah McGregor (that's Associate Professor Dr. Hannah McGregor to you, nerds) chats with us about her just published meditations on care, community, and learning: A Sentimental Education

As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more! 

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Megan Goodwin: 0:17

This is keeping it one a one a killjoys introduction to religion podcast for 2020 to 2023. Our work is made possible both for UVM reach grant and a loose AAR advancing public scholarship grant. We are grateful to live teach and record on the current ancestral and unseeded lands of the Abenaki Wabanaki and aka Cisco peoples. As always, you can find material ways to support indigenous communities on our website without an arts. Hi, hello, I'm Megan Goodwin, scholar of American religions race, gender and politics. I am not Elise morgenstein First, who as you damn well know is a historian of religion, Islam race and racialization and South Asia. We are coming at you today with a very special bonus episode a very special bonus conversation with POD goals, pod goddess and aspirational pod bestie. Dr. Hannah McGregor, who is Associate Professor of publishing at Simon Fraser University, Dr. McGregor's new book, a sentimental education is now available wherever you get your books, we would love it if it were an independent bookstore, but you know, do the best you can. And with that, we are here with Dr. Hannah McGregor, who is now associate professor of publishing Yes, yeah. Well, Laura University congratulations and thanks so much Simon Fraser University yet I knew that Wilfrid Laurier, publisher and

Hannah McGregor: 1:35

publisher and my collaborator and my co applicant on every award, yeah, like I find face

Megan Goodwin: 1:41

is where you work though. It is, she had a saying that very professional. Hi, Hannah. Thanks for being Hi.

Unknown: 1:49

Hi. Listen, they're both just universities named after dead white men. So why we don't owe Simon Fraser or Wilfrid Laurier. any memory of who they are.

Megan Goodwin: 2:02

So you work at some school, and you wrote a book I hear.

Unknown: 2:05

I wrote a book. I wrote a book I am. I have to say it is this is my second book, technically, because I edited a book four years ago, and everything about that book was a nightmare. I'm not super

Megan Goodwin: 2:21

chill. No.

Unknown: 2:24

Did not land. Yeah. Yeah, refuse can lay in ruins the most stressful book in the world. Like, you know, one of the people we were one of our contributor authors got sued for content in the book, like a week before the book came out, like everything about it was the least chill. It's possible for a book to be and it's so nice. Having a book coming out that nobody's mad at me.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 2:57

Isn't that amazing?

Megan Goodwin: 3:00

Congratulations. Yeah, mazel tov.

Unknown: 3:03

Thank you. Thank you. Incredible. I mean, it's that Which isn't to say that this book isn't also, you know, full a feminist opinions. It's just I don't know, it's, it's feminist opinions. People are less surprised to find I hold or would just want to disaster. But I hope that laugh really echoed through the game that I'm setting. Yeah.

Megan Goodwin: 3:38

So your book is called a sentimental education. And I was really professional, I would actually have the subtitle,

Unknown: 3:45

no subtitle. Oh, yeah, it's all

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 3:48

does not need a subtitle

Unknown: 3:50

subtitle. When I first submitted before I'd I'd submitted the final manuscript, I was filling out a, an author questionnaire for the marketing and promotion person. And there was a field for subtitle because academic books have subtitles. And so I wrote a subtitle, I called it essays on care. And my editor wrote back to me and she was like, Absolutely not no subtitle and deleted.

Megan Goodwin: 4:16

Love that. That's all.

Unknown: 4:18

Yeah, so she's a she's a great editor. And an academic books actually don't have to have subtitles turns out.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 4:28

No, it's just trendy. It's just a genre. Yes.

Unknown: 4:31

Just the genre, just the genre. No. So instead, I just stole a title from another dead white man is like, oh, man,

Megan Goodwin: 4:39

I love that. I will ask the first question like a goddamn professional. Hey, Dr. McGregor. What's most important for readers to know about a sentimental education? No subtitle.

Unknown: 4:53

I mean, okay, so the most important thing is to know that it doesn't have a subtitle but the second most Important thing to know is that it is, huh. I mean, you sent me these questions last night. Did I spend any time thinking about them? No, I spent any time saying I never lost podcasting equipment.

Megan Goodwin: 5:12

I never looked at options that I shouldn't I never do anyway. Yeah, yeah,

Unknown: 5:15

no, absolutely. I love to I love to wing it. That's why

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 5:18

they weren't they weren't mandatory, they were there as an option. So we're fine.

Unknown: 5:24

I love them. Myself, you know, for me, what part of what makes me pause over a question like this is that I am trying to imagine a more expansive readership for this work than academic work conventionally receives, which has been part of the larger project of my scholarship over the past six years is to really, really, really reimagine who scholarship is for in the first place. So if I was talking to readers who didn't think of themselves as academic readers, who were, you know, maybe in a very different discipline for me, or people who are not working in an academic capacity right now, the first thing I would say is, this is not a conventional academic book. And I wrote it to invite a wider readership. And so the first thing I would say is like, actually, this book might be for you. Like, maybe there's something in here that that you will find. And in that sense, both to academic that I would say something similar to sort of more conventional academic readers, which is, I wrote this to be as little like a conventional academic book as I could. And I say as I could, because I think I could have pushed it further. But writing the book was a process of unlearning my own academic voice. And so there the whole process of writing, it was a real push pull between how I am used to writing and the kinds of rhythms of, of academic, academic use, I fall back into, as I write, and then and then the moments of pushing away. But I would really say to readers that I tried to write the book as an invitation into a conversation, and particularly a conversation about how it is that we learn and how it is that particularly the texts we engage with shape, the way that we move through the world and the kinds of communities that we form. And so in that sense, I really hope that the book serves as, as an invitation into conversation rather than a sort of proclamation of a various authoritative opinions.

Megan Goodwin: 7:46

I love that. And I'm hoping we can also maybe talk a little bit more about what that process was like for you. Given that Elisa and I are in the midst of a similar process. Yeah, it's great. Everything's fine. Books gonna be great.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 8:01

That with your chest, I really do think I actually do think the flex kind of,

Unknown: 8:06

I believe you, I believe, I believe you and I feel and I feel the the vulnerability of it. I think conventional academic writing is like a discursive suit of plate armor, like it is bulky and unwieldy and impractical. But the one thing that is very good at doing is protecting you. Yeah, yeah. It's really hard for people to get through, you're like, Oh, me, I'm not a person. I'm just a set of ideas contained in a mesh of citations. So some more when I made up, and some words that I made up. And so, you know, when you when you are hit by the cruelty of academia, which you will be because there's a lot of cruelty in this in this culture. It is easier to withstand it because it doesn't feel like those attacks are coming at you. They're coming at a bunch of ideas, and I you can't hurt the opinions of ideas. And so it's scary to do it differently. Because it it makes you vulnerable, and then you have to figure out like, Okay, what will I do? Now? If somebody's like, I think your book is terrible. And you're like, the part about my dead mom. single tear. Yeah. Oh, that's good. That's

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 9:27

a lot. That's a lot. But you're not wrong. You're not wrong, that the armor of academia and the weaponry of academia because I often think of citations as like a really great swiss army knife. Like because I do a lot of translation work because my work is situated in South Asia and global empire. And so there's a lot of like, you might come at me random white dude. Usually because my field, but like, I found this random manuscript and I did it in three languages and you don't have access to the translation except for what I'm giving you so like, right like it's like a Bring it on, man. cuz. Yeah, and like, oh, like I've got, like corkscrew thing. Yeah, go ahead. That's my head. Don't make fun of my accent that I'm not I'm celebrating your accent I'd love it. Yeah, no, it really is like a Go ahead motherfucker, like, come on. You didn't read this. So you can't attack me. But what I hear you saying about a sentimental education, which gets delivered to my Kindle in a few days is that it's not just an exercise in unlearning. But it's an exercise in deciding how to be vulnerable and connect with an imagined audience that is inherently a different audience than maybe who you're used to writing for, though, we would like to ask you questions about your expansive public scholarship, because that's obviously a thing that you do and are committed to.

Unknown: 10:42

Yeah, yeah. So it is it is your right, a deliberate decision. And a deliberate decision to speak to the audience that I kind of found out existed via my podcast. Maybe a combination of found out existed and also, you know, when you publish, you create publics, so, you know, also sort of called into being by virtue of doing this work differently as hell, right? Yeah. Xena Charmin, who is this wonderful queer writer and organizer has her her area of research is queer and trans access to health care. And she has a book out called the care we dream of that is just an absolutely incredible sort of set of essays by her and by a variety of other writers about radically reimagining the world as one in which we are all fundamentally deserving of care. And she talks about that book as being a spell that she is, you know, right that by daring to dream these things we can dream them into being there's a fire alarm going off.

Megan Goodwin: 12:02

Awesome, awesome.

Unknown: 12:06

And I think about the way, you know, I stumbled into podcasting as public scholarship. It was kind of an accidental sidestep. Like, I didn't know that was the direction I was going in. But at some point, I made the decision to say like, this is going to be the kind of scholar I am, this is going to be the kind of work that I do, I'm going to be vulnerable, I'm going to take risks, I'm going to do things that feel to me, like they matter, instead of things that feel like they are smart career choices. And they, you know, they weren't they worked out for me. But they, they really could have not.

Megan Goodwin: 12:52

Oh, yeah, yeah. That actually feeds into one of one of my next questions, what's at stake in doing this kind of vulnerable, and I hate the word authentic, but it does, it feels raw and true. And like manifesting of the kind of academy that I think we would all like to continue to build. But you point out that there are real risks there, too. So yeah, what's at stake in a project like a sentimental education coming soon, to Kindles and actual bookstores near you. Um,

Unknown: 13:31

so So there's two ways of talking about the stakes, right? So there's, there's what we risk and then there's what we get by virtue of taking those risks, what, what becomes possible when we when we take those risks and make ourselves vulnerable. And what we lose is, again, that sort of suit of armor of authority. And I definitely came up in the kind of academic culture that said, you know, people will take you less seriously, you are a young woman. And so you must be ruthlessly professional, you must be ruthlessly authoritative. You must always be the best read person in the room, you must never admit to a weakness, you must constantly be on you have to constantly be doing more than everybody else. You know, this is how you become an academic is by never ever stopping working and never ever letting your guard down. And that is one version of success in this field. And it's one version of sort of how you garner respect. And I remember the moment where Marcel and I sat down had a conversation about making a podcast about Harry Potter, which is which please and read cake and icing, that it could be a vulnerability on the job market, because people can hear this podcast and they can hear us getting drunk and laughing and making crude jokes and crying and all of this, all of this stuff. And making the decision like saying out loud, I would be unhappy. Having the kind of job that required me to pretend to be somebody, I'm not for the rest of my life. Like, that is not worth it for me. And so and so I'm going to be the person I want to be out loud. And if I can't do this job, being that person and living in alignment with my values that I want, I'll do something else, it's not worth it. And what came out of that is this amazing ability to make real genuine connections and communities with people that I never knew was possible. Like I didn't know academia could be a kind place, I didn't know that it could be a place where we like, hold each other up and care for each other and see each other in all of our, you know, vulnerability and our failings. I didn't know, you know, I really believed, for example, that in order to be a successful academic, you had to be a ruthlessly hard working neurotypical person. And if you were disabled, or you, you were neurodiverse, or you, you know, had anything happening in your life that took you away from constant work and productivity, well, you just couldn't do it, like, sorry, them's the breaks, you just can't do it. It's too hard. And then just reaching a moment where I was like, Oh, you actually, I don't have to believe that I can just act as though that's not the case. Refuse to work in that way refuse to treat my students that way, refuse to treat my colleagues that way. Model all the time, a different way of doing things. And then, at least in the little tiny pocket that I that I occupied, it can actually be different.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 17:21

Your heart's subscribers to that universe. I mean, that's, that's not that's not dissimilar from where Megan and I come in, as academics or in grad school, when we decided that we needed different sets of supports, and each other really, so like, one of the things I really appreciate about your work, both in podcasting, and from, like, the bits I've read, are, are the ways that it's clear that you do this in community, and that I think you're taking the ideal, or the ideology maybe of academia that says like, we'll beside each other because we're in conversation with each other, and instead say, like, right, we are in conversation with each other. So let's actually be collaborative thought partners. Instead of competitive, like, assassins were the only way I can dunk or the only way I can succeed is to dunk on others and to, like, tear apart, you know, like that piece of the deconstruction doesn't make sense. And I know Goodwin, your your thing is that we always need like the the deconstruction argument of like deconstruction is really construction. And it's

Megan Goodwin: 18:29

it's not my argument, it's Terios.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 18:30

I know, but I can't you, because I cannot, that's fine,

Megan Goodwin: 18:37

I accept that. But I do really appreciate what what y'all are saying about imagining into being an academic space that is genuinely collaborative, and supportive and kind, as opposed to using citations as weapons, right, or as armor, and just waiting for your turn to talk, right? Allowing ourselves to actually be changed by the people we're in conversation with, rather than just getting in why we are different and better and working harder and a realer scholar than everybody else, because that's gross, and I hate it.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 19:10

But I think one of the other things I hear you saying in stakes, if I can, like steal your language and flip it around, is that it also helps us reimagine expertise. Because if we're not just talking with academics, and we're not just using citations that only five of us have access to, then what we're doing is also reimagining who gets to be an expert, and who gets to speak with authority. And I think that's also, again, not new. That's not new information, or that's not a new political realignment of how we think. But it's 100% like a radical perspective on expertise and mastery, as we all exist in this, like, sis hat, white settler, space of institution, and authority. So I quite like that and I think that feels like a real thing. I'm hoping to get out of a sentimental education coming soon to bookstores and It was

Unknown: 20:09

a very sort of powerful thing happened to me. When I moved to Vancouver and started my tenure track job, which is that I moved into a very small department that was outside of my conventional discipline. And I was trained as an English scholar, I moved into a publishing program. The publishing program is at SFU Vancouver, which is a downtown campus quite far away from SF us main campus, which means that I didn't move close to the university, I just moved into the city. And we're a professional program. So most of our alumni work in the publishing industry. And as a result of all of these various, you know, events, I didn't make friends with any other academics when I moved here. It's a blind. Yeah, so my Vancouver community is artists and publishers and organizers. And like, people who are in community doing work in community, and they might have, you know, various affiliations, you know, a number of the writers I know, also teach in the creative writing program, but they do not understand themselves as academics, first and foremost, they understand themselves as writers and community members. And the difference between being somebody who like, theoretically believed that expertise came from multiple spaces, and then somebody who just literally my community, it's just, it's just not academics. Like, it's not who I'm in literal conversation with, when I'm working through a tricky idea. The people I go to, to talk about it are people who are thinking through that idea from many, many different perspectives, professional perspectives, personal perspectives, who, you know, are in different family formations than I am of different backgrounds than I do. And so I literally come to understand things differently, because I have literally a conversation with different people. And it's so it's so different as a as an actual lift experience. But as a theoretical one, to just be like, a very practical way. I understand how publishing works better now. Because I used to talk about publishing with a bunch of other academics. And now we're talking about publishing with publishers.

Megan Goodwin: 22:38

Radical, I love it.

Unknown: 22:41

Let's talk about how it actually works. Because I actually do it

Megan Goodwin: 22:46

as a different thing. Yeah. Wild love it.

Unknown: 22:49

Yeah. No, huge if true.

Megan Goodwin: 22:53

All right, having just dunked on the academy across the board?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 23:00

We can do? Yeah, that's our jobs. In fact,

Megan Goodwin: 23:03

it's fine. What I'm going to do not hire me

Unknown: 23:05

some good way.

Megan Goodwin: 23:09

Having done all of the donkey, I'm going to ask an obnoxious academic question. And maybe it doesn't actually fit with sentimental education. But if you were gonna sum up your argument for us of a sentimental education, what are you arguing in this book?

Unknown: 23:25

I mean, I'm barely arguing at all. But I would say what I am trying to articulate is the conundrum that those of us who love literature and other cultural texts have experienced the way that they change us. The way that when we read something, or watch a really powerful film, or listen to an amazing podcast, we feel changed. And yet any external evidence suggesting that reading makes people better is specious. Hmm. Right. highly literate cultures are not more moral. No. Education, and literacy and publishing have been used as tools of colonialism and imperialism and violence.

Megan Goodwin: 24:25

Here all of 98% literate, I'm just saying just

Unknown: 24:28

Yeah, right. Like, there's a fix that first the first press in Canada was created by one of the architects of the residential school system. You know, we can't these these systems are deeply entangled with one another education is deeply entangled in genocide. We can't like we just can't divide them. And so what do we do with that? What do we do with this desire to say, art matters and art has changed me. And art has shifted the way I live in the world. And at the same time, in the middle of, you know, the Black Lives Matter, uprising, saying here are 10 books by black authors that you should read is such a useless gesture. Yeah. And so what do we do with that? How do we reconcile this belief that like, education exists, and as possible, we learn, we change, we grow? I mean, we're teachers, we have to believe that's true. And we have been students our whole lives. So we also have experience the truth of that, how do we reconcile that with a knowledge that like, a reading list does not change the world, a university is not an inherently good space, the experience of being educated is not inherently liberatory experience. But it was just me kind of trying to, to work at that, at that impasse, that impasse that I have continually come back to as a thinker, that I'm like, okay. The person who wrote the Harry Potter books, is actively using her position and her cultural authority to attempt to strip away rights from a whole category of human beings, like just one of the most insidious things you could possibly do with that level of cultural power. And also, when I gather together with other people who have read and cared about her books, we have really transformative experiences together. Yeah, of reading and community. Yeah. What do we do with these with these two simultaneous truths, neither of which writes the other out of existence? Like we gotta we gotta hold both of them.

Megan Goodwin: 27:02

Right. Cool. What do we do?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 27:08

I think that's, you're asking fix the academy. That's like a fixed the universe question. Right? Because she wrote the book. It's good.

Unknown: 27:16

Yeah, I wrote, I wrote the book. In the end, the, the, the closest I came to a conclusion, is that what we do is we work slowly and in conversation with each other. And we and we stay ready to be wrong. Not in the mode of like, you know, sort of touchy white lady. Like, I'm probably saying that wrong, I'm probably saying that wrong. You just stay. You stay. I mean, the same way. You know, like, when you're in a relationship with any other human being, you have to be ready to have been the person who was wrong. Like, in a particular interaction, like you got to be you just have to be ready to be like, Oh, yeah. Wow, I, I messed up, and I apologize, and I will try to do better. Yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 28:06

the person who's wrong like 7080 times a day with at least it's great.

Unknown: 28:11

I am, I am, like a human wrecking ball. I am wrong, constantly. Love that. For us. It's just, I'm a lot, often wrong. So I've gotten good at that just do it. Just do it in all of your relationships, right? Which is, which is both simple and incredibly, incredibly complex? Of course, because that's what human relationships are. But, you know, like, what do you do you do what the two of you are doing? Right? You build collaborations that are genuine, genuine and, and rooted in friendship, and you experiment and you keep trying to do things differently. And you push yourself to the edge of your comfort zone again and again, to try to make the work that you're doing more meaningful. And you just, and you just keep doing that. Started.

Megan Goodwin: 29:06

Great. Thank you. No further question.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 29:12

I have a couple more questions. All right.

Megan Goodwin: 29:15

I was wrong. I'm sorry.

Unknown: 29:21

Beautiful, beautifully modeled.

Megan Goodwin: 29:24

checker Catholic. I'm very comfortable. apologizing for thing.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 29:31

Yeah. Also, I feel like it is our pattern for you to just sorry, we ran you over again, my bad.

Megan Goodwin: 29:40

argument about whether I've actually learned anything from that or will not do it. But, but I am sorry. No comment. No.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 29:51

You've learned very well. You no longer come at me straight with all your fields you like, evade so that I'm not uncomfortable or skittish like sweat your cat.

Megan Goodwin: 30:01

There's just there's the briefing before the feels revealed. So

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 30:04

do you know what kind of response you have learned that like bursting out into tears right at me is a good way for me to be like, I'm, I'm done, I don't know what to do. And I need a five minute walk. And then I can come back and be cool, but you are usually like, I need to cry now. And then I'm like, great on it. I'm ready,

Unknown: 30:20

like, ready to receive. That's a beautiful, that's a beautiful practice of asking for consent.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 30:28

Of course, sure, I'm working on it. I appreciate that both of you seem able to do like crying as pedagogy. And I'm just like, Ah, I'm frozen. I'm gonna freeze my way out of that. But

Unknown: 30:43

I am more likely to do accidentally making other people cry as pedagogy because I do have quite a, quite a sort of thick skin inherently. And so, uh, like, you know, encounter something horrifying, and be like, I really need to like mull this over. I really need to like, just spend time and then I'll like, present it to other people and be like, Look at this horrifying thing. I'm really thinking over and then they're sobbing like, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Megan Goodwin: 31:14

I'm sad keep trucking.

Unknown: 31:15

I I read Yeah, like it's horrifying. Of course, we live in a horrifying world. Why are you? How could this possibly have put you off your lunch? All right, you? Aren't you kind of low key thinking about the horrors of the world all the

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 31:30

time? All the time? Pass the bait? Oh,

Unknown: 31:33

yeah. I've been there. Like, you know, we've been and like, I can't maybe could you give us more of a warning next time? And I'm like, yes. That is important. You're right, you're right. But it's hard because I don't know what other people are gonna find. Totally.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 31:49

I don't know what's gonna make Megan cry. My assumption is most everything.

Megan Goodwin: 31:54

That's a accurate and be I'm like, super menstrual right now.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 31:59

But Goodwin I've like told stories on the podcast, and then you've just like, wept. And I'm like, I didn't. It was just a story about nothing. We were talking about dinner and you're like, I can't anticipate your team. No, you can't.

Megan Goodwin: 32:11

I can't either. Just like, I would love to be able to give people a heads up that I'm going to weep. But it surprises me too many things that my body does surprise me.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 32:19

Sure. Well, if crying is both feminist pedagogy and consent practices, or just good feminist activity, Hannah, what do you think is next for feminist public scholarship? It's quite the left turn, but I'm trying to keep us on time. I saw what time it was.

Unknown: 32:39

Yeah. Yeah. You know, what I have been thinking about a lot lately is so my work on podcasting. And the kind of writing I'm doing right now, is about both about sort of trying to create possibility models for doing feminist scholarship otherwise, as well as particularly with the podcasting Mark trying very hard to also build the infrastructure, so that it's not just me who gets to do it. But other people also can do this work. Because, for me, a big part of building out the possibilities for doing unconventional and community based scholarship, is recognizing that the people who are most likely to be engaged in that scholarship are the people who are the most precariously situated within the institution. And so it is really important to say like community engaged work accessible work, public work, matters, because for the most part, it is black indigenous people of color, queer, disabled, trans scholars who are doing this work. I think the next thing that is interesting to me is to think about, is there a way that we can begin to articulate our work that divorces it entirely from the logics of productivity? Hmm, because podcasting and book writing, I might be doing it differently. But I'm still producing a lot of stuff. And it's stuff you can point at, and you can count and you can say, look, she might not be writing journal articles. But she made all of these podcasts episodes, and this many people listen to them. And this many people did, you know. So look, it still counts, because it still falls within, you know, a certain logic of productivity. But a lot of this work particularly deeply community engaged work is is unproductive on the surface for enormous periods of time, right? If you're going to build actual community relationships, you're not necessarily building them in public, a lot of the time you're building them in community. So via conversations via showing up via you know, actually being there and doing that. And so, how can we make space For an expansive sense of what our work is, that doesn't just come back to being counting again and again.

Megan Goodwin: 35:10

Yeah, this is very close to my heart. I had a number of these conversations in a previous position.

Unknown: 35:17

It's hard, right? Because you, because I know so many scholars who are doing incredibly important work, that the university is, you know, delighted universities are like, oh, yeah, look at all your community engaged work. Oh, look at your, your connection to all of these communities, it's going to look so good for us, that you have all of these meaningful community connections,

Megan Goodwin: 35:40

until they ask you some stuff that addresses systemic inequalities that universities are complicit in. And then it's

Unknown: 35:48

not. Yeah, I mean, like until you say something to the university that they don't like. Yeah. And until you get to your tenure review process, and they're like, where are all your single authored double blind, peer reviewed journal articles? Yeah. And what's the QC? You're like, like that matters? Yeah. And you're like, well, but I was doing all the things that you said you wanted me like for all of this other stuff that you said was the whole thing you hired me for? Oh, sorry. I was supposed to be doing that whole job. And also secretly this second job. I was just supposed to do two jobs. The answer is yes. You were just supposed to do two jobs. And a

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 36:25

third job, right? Like my university is really content to have us exploit our community partnerships for other purposes, right? Like, the number of times folks are like, Oh, you do this activism work, which I will not name here. Could you get our students internships with that organization? And it's like, Nah, bro. That's not how this works. And also like, these people are not here for your consumption and your exploitation, but that somehow is then uncounted, unquantifiable, unimportant or more rendered unimportant. Yeah, yep.

Unknown: 37:01

Yep. Because it can't be translated into the kind of things that the university cares about, which is research money, intuition.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 37:08

And donors.

Unknown: 37:10

Yeah. We don't have those here. But yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 37:14

well, in America, that's all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I like this idea of non productivity. But

Megan Goodwin: 37:21

oh, I also like the idea of non productivity, I was going to wait to the Canadian government just give schools to universities that are give money.

Unknown: 37:29

So we have a 100%, public post secondary education system, we don't have a private system. And so yeah, and so all of our universities are partially publicly funded. But that public funding has been systematically stripped away over the past, you know, three decades. And so increasingly, universities are financially reliant on tuition. You know, our tuition rates are still much lower than they are at private universities in the States. But they are, you know, creeping up year over year, and particularly, our universities are reliant on international students whose tuition is not kept right by government policies. And so we can charge international students, you know, three to five times as much. And so we do a lot of sort of actively trying to attract international students, because they pay for the university. Yeah.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 38:30

Yeah. That's the same in the states, including public schools. So I work at a public university, but we are still beholden to those kinds of capitalist problems.

Megan Goodwin: 38:40

Cool. University System everywhere. It's super good. 10 out of 10 No notes.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 38:46

It's an imperial system. It's not going to be good. Yeah,

Unknown: 38:48

yeah. Yeah, it's not it's not going to and I think, you know, at the end of the day, they're always for me, is this question of? Is the institution you know, is it redeemable? Is there hope within this institution? Or is it something that we need to burn down and find and find other ways? And I don't know the answer to that but that's fine because I am not single handedly responsible for it.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 39:18

You are not like me not

Megan Goodwin: 39:22

burning it down yet. Like I feel like we tried a bunch of other stuff. Me I like burning it down.

Unknown: 39:27

Some bring it down. Some people have burnt have tried burning it down. And like you know in little fires Yeah. What if we set what if we set more fires is a really good question like that should also go on a sampler What if we set more fires? You know, so what's, what's the fire you're gonna set tomorrow? Like what is the piece of, of sort of the piece of the institution that you have uncritically received as just the way things are? That tomorrow you and be like, I wonder if this is flammable?

Megan Goodwin: 40:04

I love it. Yeah, love. This is an intention setting like exercise in the morning like, Okay, well, what can I clear today? And what am I setting on fire?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 40:15

Yes. Love this love this good when can I ask the last question that's not on your list? Surprise questions,

Megan Goodwin: 40:27

surprise question.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 40:28

The secret question is just to channel Judith, Weidenfeld final question to all of our guests last year, due to the whys and filled who asked us? Because of course she did because we had her on, because we were fan girling. And she was like, what if I mentor you? And we were like, great. Yes, please, please always mentor me adopt me. readopt me and love being adopted. That's like my whole thing. So Judas was felled asked all of our guests or she asked us and we asked all of our guests, what is the work you're most proud of?

Megan Goodwin: 40:58

Hmm,

Unknown: 40:59

that was sweet question. Yeah, that's a really sweet question. Um, I mean, right now, I'm really proud of this book. Because as it has begun to move through the world, and I have seen people begin to respond to it. I think that it has said the thing that I wanted it to say. And I am and I am proud of, of having articulated what I was trying to articulate in a way that is getting through to other people. And you know, at any successful moment of communication, it's really something to celebrate.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 41:38

Yes. and far between. So that's awesome. I'm glad to hear that you feel really proud of this book, it seems like both in like reviews and digging around. And I had stupidly thought my copy would come I had of this conversation. So that's my fault. But um, oh, it seems like a thing to be proud of

Unknown: 41:56

send that to you. Too late. It's too late. It's too late.

Megan Goodwin: 41:59

Did you haven't didn't send it to me. You were on that email.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 42:03

I love you so much, Megan. And that feels so typical of us. You're just gonna say I'll try. I'm gonna wait until full book is a beautiful

Megan Goodwin: 42:12

book. I'm gonna buy it anyway. Well, I was gonna ask in the spirit of collaboration, who else's work you're really excited about right now? Who else should our nerds be checking out?

Unknown: 42:21

I have such a big stack of books that I am so excited to read now that it is like sabbatical time, and I get to actually, and I get to actually like, read something. The person who I am feeling particularly inspired by right now is Catherine McKittrick, whose most recent book dear science and other stories I have begun and is one of the most excitingly experimental academic texts I have read. I cite that book in this book based on having just read the first first essay. And it's one in which she says that in academia, we spend too little time talking, we spend too much time talking about what we know, and not enough time talking about how we know what we know and where we know from and that has been really sticking with me and dear science and other stories as sort of her extended project of like, really thinking through where we know from and so that's that's whose work I'm feeling really excited about.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 43:40

That sounds awesome.

Megan Goodwin: 43:43

Thank you so much for being here. I can't wait to read your book that you already sent me but I didn't read it yet.

Unknown: 43:48

You know what, I It's very short. So whenever you have whenever you find the time, reading should be a pleasure, not a not a slog. So whenever you find the time I hope you like it.