Andrea Smith, denied tenure from University of Michigan
I don’t know much about the case, but Smith’s book, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide was one of the most powerful books I read while in graduate school. I read it for my “sex, politics, and reproduction” class during my first semester. I later wrote a paper regarding the atrocious boarding school experience and presented it at a Women’s Studies symposium. Her book was my central inspiration for that paper.
Hugo Schwyzer, who teaches history and gender studies at Pasadena City College, recently blogged about Andrea Smith’s denial of tenure from the University of Michigan.
It’s a strange case. Smith had been given a joint appointment in American Studies and Women’s Studies at the Ann Arbor campus; ’twas the latter department that nixed her promotion while the former supported her tenure cause. She’s also the director of the campus Native American Studies Center. Few of us are privy to the details of her file, and the Women’s Studies department at Michigan has not commented on why it has denied Smith tenure. But to those of us familiar with Smith’s published work, the decision is inexplicable. Her book Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide is a master-work of both advocacy and feminist scholarship, and is used in women’s studies courses across the country. (It’s on the short list of books I’m considering rotating in to my women’s history syllabus).
At research universities, the proven ability to publish is a critical part of getting tenure. So many assistant professors struggle to get anything notable into print; Smith has already done so by producing a text that is not just interesting but fundamentally ground-breaking. She’s got another book coming up: Native Americans and the Christian Right which is available for pre-order.
Read the rest and then scoot on over to brownfemipower, here and here.
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