Geography and the Environment Colloquium Series

“The Politics of Caring in the Academy”

Lorraine Dowler, professor of geography and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at The Pennsylvania State University

The Politics of Caring in the Academy: Care theory is a
resource for mutual aid, a colonial ideology, a method of non-capitalist
resistance, and a collective survival strategy. Parvati Raghuram (2016)
advocates for a “multiplicity in care ethics” beyond the Global North, and
indigenous feminist scholars Melanie Yazzie and Cutcha Risling Baldy see care
as a form of radical relationality. Before COVID-19, the academy had already
intensified work demands under competitive neoliberal performance practices,
while the post-COVID academy culture welcomes a return to “normal.” The
wistfulness for normality entails a return to power relations that are
potentially uncaring, and violent in the academy. This talk focuses on the
relationship between feminist care theory and acts of everyday resistance in
the academy and will highlight two cases of care resistance. The first was the
pushback by faculty and students at Penn State, for hosting former proud boy
leader Gavin McInnes. The second case focuses on building a harassment-free
national AAG meeting. The talk is structured to allow ample time to discuss how
to integrate radical relationality into the academy.

Lorraine Dowler is a professor of geography and
women, gender, and sexuality studies at Penn State University. Her research
examines everyday violent processes which are at the heart of the life of any
nation. She explores the role of hypermasculine state practices in everyday
life, private spaces, and the lives of women and other non-privileged
individuals. For this reason, her research focuses on how individual
vulnerabilities to violence are rendered invisible through spatial processes
such as border making, cultural privilege, militarization, and nationalism. 

Learn more