Women Supervising and Writing Doctoral Theses

Walking on the Grass

Edited by Lia Bryant and Katrina Jaworski - Contributions by Valerie Adams; Christine Beasley; Lia Bryant; Judith Gill; Katrina Jaworski; Margaret Rowntree and Mary-Helen Ward

Walking on the Grass brings to life women’s experiences during their doctoral study and the experiences of women who supervise doctoral students. Sensations, reflections, and imaginations emerge through memories, histories, and different ways of narrating academic journeys. This book examines in depth, the emotional and embodied nature of writing, supervising, and inter-subjective learning. It makes visible ethics of care required in that liminal space in which supervisors and doctoral scholars work to shape and give confidence to the becoming academic. The book works through the politics of gender, sexuality, age, class, and ethnicity to understand meanings inherent in doctoral and supervisory relationships, reasons for entering academe, and how academic writing obtains form and content.

The significance of the book is its contribution to understanding academic thesis writing as complex emotional and embodied gendered labor rather than an instrumental activity in which to earn the title of Doctor of Philosophy.

Lexington Books

Pages: 158 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-0-7391-8215-4 • Hardback • April 2015 • $107.00 • (£82.00)

978-0-7391-8216-1 • eBook • April 2015 • $101.50 • (£78.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Women's Studies, Education / Student Life & Student Affairs, Education / Leadership / Women, Education / Gender and Sexuality, Education / Doctoral Studies, Social Science / Sociology of Education, Social Science / Sociology / General

Women Supervising and Writing Doctoral Theses

Walking on the Grass

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Walking on the Grass brings to life women’s experiences during their doctoral study and the experiences of women who supervise doctoral students. Sensations, reflections, and imaginations emerge through memories, histories, and different ways of narrating academic journeys. This book examines in depth, the emotional and embodied nature of writing, supervising, and inter-subjective learning. It makes visible ethics of care required in that liminal space in which supervisors and doctoral scholars work to shape and give confidence to the becoming academic. The book works through the politics of gender, sexuality, age, class, and ethnicity to understand meanings inherent in doctoral and supervisory relationships, reasons for entering academe, and how academic writing obtains form and content.

The significance of the book is its contribution to understanding academic thesis writing as complex emotional and embodied gendered labor rather than an instrumental activity in which to earn the title of Doctor of Philosophy.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 158 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-0-7391-8215-4 • Hardback • April 2015 • $107.00 • (£82.00)

978-0-7391-8216-1 • eBook • April 2015 • $101.50 • (£78.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Women's Studies, Education / Student Life & Student Affairs, Education / Leadership / Women, Education / Gender and Sexuality, Education / Doctoral Studies, Social Science / Sociology of Education, Social Science / Sociology / General

Author

Lia Bryant is associate professor in sociology and social work and director for the Centre for Social Change in the School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy, University of South Australia.

Katrina Jaworski is lecturer in the School of Communication and International Studies, University of South Australia. She is also a visiting research fellow at the School of History and Politics, University of Adelaide.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Daring to Walk on the Grass
Lia Bryant and Katrina Jaworski

2. Honor Bound
Lia Bryant

3. Passionate Activism as Academic Labour: The Emotional Body of Pedagogical Politics
Christine Beasley and Katrina Jaworski

4. ‘Cutting the Mustard’: Standing your Ground in the Process of Producing Doctoral Dissertations
Judith Gill

5. Stuck Between Two Languages: The Ethics of Writing a Doctoral Dissertation in the English Language
Katrina Jaworski

6. Caring Labor and Caringscapes at the Margins of Academic Work
Valerie Adams

7. Safe to Feel Vulnerable: The Emotional Space of the Doctoral Supervisory Relationship
Marg Rowntree

8. The Liminal Space of PhD Candidature: Becoming Doctor
Mary-Helen Ward

9. Conclusion: Walking on the Grass 84 Years Later
Katrina Jaworski and Lia Bryant

Reviews

[T]his book may be of interest to those who want to learn more about women’s ‘journeys of transition or transgression into academe’, particularly in the Australian context, and to those interested in gender and comparative education studies.
— Association for Feminist Anthropology

Through a series of methodologically innovative and theoretically insightful chapters, authors take the typically overlooked or muted emotional and affective dimensions of doctoral training and place them at the fore. In doing so they produce a rich and unique collection which challenges, complicates and enlivens our understanding of what it means to be a doctoral student or doctoral supervisor in the contemporary neoliberal university.
— Barbara Pini, Griffith University

Students, researchers and teachers will be inspired by this book and by its lively attention to some of the less recognised issues and inequalities faced by women academics at every stage of their career. The book helps to challenge taken for granted and invisible assumptions about the gendering of the academy, opening up spaces for doing things differently and encouraging us to follow Virginia Woolf in ‘walking on the grass’.

— Jo Little, University of Exeter