New Books in Education

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at cgessler@gmail.com or dr.danamalone@gmail.com. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @...

There is no doubt that teaching is a meaningful profession, but teachers often find themselves in stressful, emotionally challenging situations. How do they cope? How do they tackle commonly experienced emotions like anger and shame? In this podcast episode, Roger Patulny, Associate Professor at University of Wollongong, Australia, and Alberto Bellocchi, Associate Professor and Principal Research...

Some of America's most pressing civil rights issues--desegregation, equal educational and employment opportunities, housing discrimination, and free speech--have been closely intertwined with higher education institutions. Although it is commonly known that college students and other activists, as well as politicians, actively participated in the fight for and against civil rights in the middle de...

In this episode, I speak with Matt Rafalow, about his book, Digital Divisions: How Schools Create Inequality in the Tech Era (University of Chicago Press, 2020). This book provides an ethnographic study of students and teachers at three Los Angeles schools utilizing instructional technology. We discuss the role of play in learning, how disciplinary dispositions are influenced by race and class, an...

New York City's Lower East Side has witnessed a severe decline in its Jewish population in recent decades, yet every morning in the big room of the city's oldest yeshiva, students still gather to study the Talmud beneath the great arched windows facing out onto East Broadway. In Yeshiva Days: Learning on the Lower East Side (Princeton University Press, 2020), Jonathan Boyarin presents a uniquely p...

Listen to this interview of Shyam Sharma, author of Writing Support for International Graduate Students: Enhancing Transition and Success (Routledge, 2020). We talk about international students and rhetoric, international students and confidence, international students and community-based programming, and vision. Interviewer : "Could you give an example for how teachers can foster agency among int...

Listen to this interview of Helen Sword, author of Stylish Academic Writing (Harvard UP, 2012). We talk about bad writing, but a lot more about how to make it good. There's even a dog. Interviewer : "What is it that keeps most students and then, too, many early-career academics away from making the effort to write well?" Helen Sword : "Writing is seen as this utilitarian thing. You've got to learn...

Listen to this interview of Jo Mackiewicz, author of Writing Center Talk over Time: A Mixed-Method Study (Routledge 2018). We talk about talk, tutor talk, student talk, spoken written-language, and Wisconsin. interviewer : "Now, this is pretty much something that a writing center is aiming for, isn't it? I mean, you don't want that––just as in the classroom with the teacher––you don't want that th...

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our own mentor networks to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at cgessler@gmail.com or dr.danamalone@gmail.com. Find us on Twitter : The Academic...

The pelvic exam is considered a fundamental procedure for medical students to learn; it is also often the one of the first times where medical students are required to touch a real human being in a professional manner. In Feeling Medicine: How the Pelvic Exam Shapes Medical Training (NYU Press, 2020), Kelly Underman gives us a look inside these gynecological teaching programs, showing how they emb...

What do university presses do? And how do they contributed to public discourse? November 9 is the beginning of University Press Week, and today I had the honor of talking to Niko Pfund, the president of the Association of University Presses and the head of Oxford University Press. In the interview, we discuss the work of university presses and their value to the production of knowledge and a vibra...

Are robots going to be our overlords? In Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines (RosettaBooks, 2020), Jamie Merisotis says they don't have to be. We can make them our friends. Jamie Merisotis is a globally recognized leader in philanthropy, education, and public policy. Since 2008, he’s served as president and CEO of Lumina Foundation, an independent, private foundation committed to making opport...

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you’re not an island, and neither are we. So, we are reaching across our own contacts – and beyond - to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Want to hear a particular expert or topic? Email your ideas to cgessler@gmail.com or dr.danamalone@gmail.com or DM us on Twitt...

A number of curious communities sprang up across the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: simulated cities, states, and nations in which children played the roles of legislators, police officers, bankers, journalists, shopkeepers, and other adults. They performed real work—passing laws, growing food, and constructing buildings, among other tasks—inside virtual worlds....

Listen to this interview of Kit Nicholls, Director of Cooper Union Center for Writing. We talk about writing, thinking, the university, and what everyone cares about. Interviewer : "That's the key, and the sense that I get from many students, and even also from faculty, when it comes to the point that they're writing up their results––well, it's basically, this is just a necessity, a thing that's...

Some of America’s most pressing civil rights issues—desegregation, equal educational and employment opportunities, housing discrimination, and free speech—have been closely intertwined with higher education institutions. Although it is commonly known that college students and other activists, as well as politicians, actively participated in the fight for and against civil rights in the middle deca...

Transforming Ethos: Place and the Material in Rhetoric and Writing (Utah State UP, 2020) approaches writing studies from the rhetorical flank, the flank which, for many, is the only flank the discipline has. However, at a time when universities are optimizing structurally and streamlining pedagogically, the book must plead the case for a university where character is formed. Now that writing studi...

Do you teach, or do you care about education? Then you have to read this book. At turns radical in the interventions it proposes in educational practice, at turns perspicacious in the views it opens on the act of teaching, at turns inspirational in the words it drops in the teacher's ear, Syllabus: The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document that Changes Everything (Princeton UP, 2020) belongs in every...

Dr. Christopher Harris (@chrisharris) is a neuroscientist, engineer and educator at the EdTech company Backyard Brains. He is principal investigator on an NIH-funded project to develop brain-based robots for neuroscience education. In their recent open-access research paper, Dr. Harris and his team describe, and present results from, their classroom-based pilots of this new and highly innovative a...

Every fall on move-in day, parents tearfully bid farewell to their beloved sons and daughters at college dormitories: it is an age-old ritual. The residence hall has come to mark the threshold between childhood and adulthood, housing young people during a transformational time in their lives. Whether a Gothic stone pile, a quaint Colonial box, or a concrete slab, the dormitory is decidedly unhomel...

Kathryne M. Young, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has written a combination of a sociological study and self-help book about and for American law school students. In How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School (Stanford UP, 2018), Dr. Young surveyed over 1,100 then-current law students, 250 alumni, and conducted detailed interviews with law students abou...

The updated paperback edition of Hate: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press) dispels misunderstandings plaguing our perennial debates about "hate speech vs. free speech," showing that the First Amendment approach promotes free speech and democracy, equality, and societal harmony. As "hate speech" has no generally accepted definition, we hear many incorr...

“Consider the works of the renowned Nobel-prize-winning African American writer, literary and social critic, and activist Toni Morrison (b. 1931),” writes Majid Daneshgar. “Hers—like Said’s—are popular in the West and cover most of the principal themes covered by Orientalism, including otherness, outsider-ship, exploitation and cultural colonialism and imperialism. Yet … one would be hard-pressed...

In this episode, I speak with fellow New Books in Education host, Jonathan Haber, about his book, Critical Thinking (The MIT Press, 2020). This book explains the widely-discussed but often ill-defined concept of critical thinking, including its history and role in a democratic society. We discuss the important role critical thinking plays in making decisions and communicating our ideas to others a...

In this episode, I speak with Federico R. Waitoller about his book, Excluded by Choice: Urban Students with Disabilities in the Education Marketplace (Teachers College Press). This book highlights the challenges faced by students of color who have special needs and their parents who evaluate their educational options. We discuss the services to which students with disabilities are entitled, how th...