With the help of Twitter user, @real_peerreview, I’ve put together a list of the craziest academic works, straight from the minds of the PhD candidates and faculty members who helped architect the coddling culture that is currently taking hold of American college campuses.
In an effort to be objective, the author’s own language is directly used as much as possible in this analysis.
The List:
1. “Sexy warriors: the politics and pleasures of submission to the state”
https://twitter.com/real_peerreview/status/727223666585534465
Jesse Paul Crane-Seeber, who received a Ph.D in International Relations at North Carolina State University, wrote his dissertation on why “war is sexy in contemporary US culture.” The paper, which was titled “Sexy warriors: the politics and pleasures of submission to the state” allowed Crane-Seeber to become an Assistant Professor in Public and International Affairs at NC State.
2. “Pornographic Animals”
https://twitter.com/real_peerreview/status/727159925542117378
“Pornographic Animals” is a text written by R. Malamud to explore the intersection of visual sociology and human sexuality. In this groundbreaking work, published by Palgrave Macmillan, Malamud writes about human-Animal intercourse and why humans are sexually attracted to animals.
3. “The Nuances and Complexities of Teaching Mathematics for Cultural Relevance and Social Justice”
https://twitter.com/real_peerreview/status/716630842223755264
A team of faculty members, primarily based at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, produced this eye-opening work about the intersection of mathematics and racism in America. According to the paper’s author, “Mathematics is not a race-neutral subject.”
4. “Smart Cookies: The Gendered Spaces of Labor, Citizenship, and Nationalism in the Girl Scout Cookie Sale”
https://twitter.com/real_peerreview/status/716966310526197760
This 2013 PhD dissertation points out the danger of selling of girl scout cookies and argues that the practice “prepares girls for their roles as American women in a neoliberal and capitalist society.” According to the author, the girl scout cookie selling tradition is responsible for aiding in unconscious female support of “market capitalism, neoliberalism, and American nationalism.” The dissertation argues that the annual girl scout cookie sale manipulates young girls into blindly accepting American society’s expected role for women.
5. “Whiteness and Farmers Markets: Performances, Perpetuations … Contestations?”
https://twitter.com/real_peerreview/status/718155838460968960
This paper argues that “whiteness” plagues the American agriculture industry and concludes that farmers must adopt “anti-racist politics of food” if the industry is to survive.
6. “The Moving Body and Social Change”
https://twitter.com/real_peerreview/status/722016681854431233
Pirkko Markula of the University of Alberta argues that one of the best ways to fight capitalism is through personal exercise routines. According to Markula, through her “experiences as a fitness instructor”, the work “explore[s] if it is possible to practice movement differently beyond the biopolitics of neo-liberalism.”
Markula’s online profile on Psychology Today, claims that she is not only “a professor of socio-cultural studies of physical activity at the University of Alberta, Canada,” but also “a Pilates instructor and contemporary dancer.” Her research interests include “exploring the intersection of culture, gender, and exercise.
7. “The Pilates Pelvis: Racial Implications of the Immobile Hips”
https://twitter.com/real_peerreview/status/726153355505061888
According to Sarah W. Holmes of the Dance Research Journal, pilates is racist because “the teaching practices of the hips, as commonly explained in Pilates educational manuals, reinforce behaviors of a noble-class and racially “white” aesthetic.
Holmes makes this argument “by examining the intersections between dance and Pilates history.” Holmes suggests that this work explains why “embodied discourses in Pilates are “white” in nature,” and why Pilates is “a product of historically constructed social behaviors of dominant Anglo-European culture.”
8. “Transgressive and negotiated White racial knowledge”
https://twitter.com/real_peerreview/status/726909940770725888
This work, by Ryan M. Crowley, an Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education at the University of Kentucky, studies the experiences of six white teachers placed in “an urban-focused teacher preparation program.” He claims that all white teachers have a tendency towards racist behavior in the classroom by suggesting that white teachers “often deploy…subtle distancing strategies…to release themselves from complicity in racism.”
9. “The Parallel Lives of Women and Cows: Meat Markets”
https://twitter.com/real_peerreview/status/727154778023796737
Jean O’Malley Halley is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Departments of Sociology and Anthropology at Wagner College, where she produced the book, “The Parallel Lives of Women and Cows.” According to its description on Amazon, the book suggests that in America, women and cows are treated similarly:
“When we say that a woman is treated like a ‘piece of meat,’ what do we really mean? Jean Halley explores the intersection between violence against women and violence against animals. First, Halley ruminates on the myriad ways that cruelty and trauma permeate the lives of women and girls, using her own story as a living example.”
The Kindle version of this textbook is available on Amazon for the bargain price of $72.
10. “Education for Whom?”
https://twitter.com/real_peerreview/status/727140503679029250
This 2016 paper by Anita Bright of The Journal of Culture & Education argues that most math textbooks contain examples that are problematic. According to Bright, some practice problems “reify hegemony, the exploitation of people, and a marked disregard for the environment.” The paper argues that practice problems that reinforce concepts of oppression and disregard for the environment subconsciously manipulate young minds into blindly accepting the evils of American society.
Bright suggests searching for ways that math educators can “disrupt the current narratives of inequity, waste, exploitation, and the privilege of particularly narrow perspectives,” by writing math textbooks containing example problems with “more equitable inclusive, sustainable, and critical perspectives.”
11. “Hobosexual”- Resisting capitalism by having not-for-profit sex with homeless people.
https://twitter.com/real_peerreview/status/726715311962132480
In The Journal of Lesbian Studies, Heather Tapley introduces the term “hobosexual” which is “a concept representative of anti-capitalist practices in both sex and labor.” In this essay, Tapley suggests that LGBT individuals having sex in urban areas is an act of protest against the American capitalistic society.
12. “Wearing a Gay Slogan T-Shirt in the Higher Education Classroom: A Cautionary Tale”
https://twitter.com/real_peerreview/status/726551697082974208
Victoria Clarke of the University of the West of England, published this essay detailing an experiment she conducted where she analyzed her student’s reactions to various shirts she wore with pro-LGBT slogans.
13. “Glory Holes and the Men Who Use Them”
https://twitter.com/real_peerreview/status/726491495285579777
“Testimonies, drawn from interviews with ten openly homosexual men in San Francisco who have used glory holes for sexual encounters with varying frequency, form the bulk of the paper, testifying to the diverse motivations, experiences and perceptions that make the glory hole appealing to its users.”
Tom Ciccotta writes about Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity for Breitbart. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or on Facebook. You can email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com
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