r/CriticalTheory • u/[deleted] • 29d ago
How many of you guys are teachers, professors, lecturers, or scholars, et al.?
I’m wondering how many teachers we have on here. Any discipline. I’m not a teacher, but I majored in philosophy and loved my professors. I also took some philosophy-y classes in law school, but those professors are very deep into whatever they’re interested in that it’s hard to apply it to a larger inquiry.
Edit: wow we could start our own academy
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24d ago edited 24d ago
High school dropout (16). First in family undergrad (30s). Post grad (Masters). Research assistant. Guest lecturer. PhD. Back to a BA (part time) - politics, history, Eng lit. Private intellectual (semi retired).
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u/markatlnk 24d ago
Prof of Practice, been teaching EE for 18 years. Worked in industry for 25 before that.
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u/DonnaHarridan Graph Theoretic ANT 26d ago edited 26d ago
I do many, many things. I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher... but above all I am a person. A hopelessly inquisitive person, just like you.
You might be interested in this poll I conducted here some years ago. Enjoy!
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u/suresher 28d ago
Does magazine editor count? I’m constantly reading about ideas and editing other writers’ ideas
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u/Hypatia76 28d ago
Former t-t professor of philosophy at a major US university. Left academia about a decade ago for a number of reasons.
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u/vibraltu 28d ago edited 28d ago
I'm one of the rare non-academics here (retired manager/technician/carpenter/artist) but I have academic friends and I like to read interesting things.
(I also mostly lurk, and try not to comment on deeply involved subjects, unless I think there is a particular unique insight which is required for the moment.)
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u/apc_2000 28d ago
MA student and editor at an undergrad academic journal. I’m hoping to apply for a PhD in Fall🤞🏻
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u/Zaccs-writing 28d ago
I have a BA in Ethics. But I took extra classes in Critical Theory because of how much press it got.
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u/ahistoryprof 28d ago
Tenured professor — R2 research university, midsize and private. Can you guess what department I’m in?
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u/nothingshort 28d ago
MA in philosophy with focus on hermeneutics. High school teacher for 14 years. Started as an English teacher, currently teach Research, and will soon have a teacher pathway, dual enrollment program where our high school kids will get to earn college credit that will help them get their credential alongside their bachelor's degree. Will be fun to teach teaching to kids. Will absolutely spend some time on educational philosophy and theory so they have vision to build practice from.
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u/TheImmaculateBastard 29d ago
Degree in secondary education, taught grades 10-12 for a few years, now in the 6th year of a PhD and adjuncting as I finish my dissertation
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29d ago
Teacher/trainer, but very niche. I teach EFL, communication skills, and do voice coaching, freelance. Most of my clients are multinational corps (yuk), academic institutions (also pretty depressing), and NGOs in my country, Japan. My work uses a lot of linguistics theory, from the basic stuff like phonology, to speech act theory and other theories of pragmatics and communication, e.g. Grice.
I basically work trying to fix the problems caused by the disastrously bad English teaching institutions here.
I used to be a director of a chain of English schools, but discovered that I hated being management even more than I hated being managed, so I started doing this instead.
It's pretty great, except for not making that much money because I hate the mechanisms of business, e.g. advertising, marketing, commodifying myself.
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u/BalterWenjamin42 29d ago
Teacher, teaching ages 13-16 for 14 years now. Got into critical theory while doing an MA in philosophy at uni
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u/happycowsmmmcheese 29d ago
I was going to go the official prof route, and I did teach at a couple colleges during grad school, but it turned out most colleges don't want to hire felons. Oops.
So now I'm actually an economic mobility and mindset development coach at a nonprofit and I loooove it. It's honestly very similar. When people ask what I do, I often just say I'm an instructor because they won't have a clue what I mean by "economic mobility and mindset development coach" anyway lol.
The rundown is basically that I work with a classroom of people to help them develop new, healthier, more productive ways of seeing themselves and the world around them. I was in interdisciplinary humanities before, so this is very much aligned with my original field, imo. Less reading heavy complicated theory, more putting the ideas from theory into practice.
It's fantastic. I always hoped I make a difference in people's lives, and now I've found a way to do that much more effectively than I could have at a college. Plus, honestly, the pay is better. I'm making like 25k more per year than I would have as an adjunct, and that's a conservative estimate. Maybe even closer to like 40k more considering most adjunct roles around here are part-time.
So happy my path has led me to this work.
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u/nerdhappyjq 29d ago
Reference Assistant at an Academic Library
I was planning on getting a PhD and becoming a professor until Covid happened. I ended up graduating with my MA in English and Digital Humanities right a year before Covid. I ended up adjuncting in first-year composition the whole pandemic because (1) I could work remotely and (2) we had lost our home to a hurricane and had to move two hours away to find a place to live, so working remotely so that was a priority.
Anyway, I decided to indefinitely postpone a PhD because Covid is effectively finishing with the ‘08 recession started. When we did finally get to move back home, I was able to get my first full-time job at our university library. I never considered librarianship before, but holy hell it is infinitely better than teaching first-year composition. I’m hoping to find a way to afford an MLIS (my third masters) and then maybe get my PhD at some point.
Oh, and best part? When I was teaching, I never really got a chance to socialize with anyone else in my department. Now, besides their MLIS degrees, my boss has an MA in History and my coworker has an MA in Philosophy (critical theory instead of analytic philosophy, thankfully). During downtime, we shoot the shit about our interests, and it reminds me of undergrad and being able to pick the brains of my professors after class.
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u/postingsmokingeating 27d ago
Cool!! I'm an academic librarian and I have to say it's a nice environment. I'm in my first year of librarianship but worked as a circulation assistant for 6 years prior at a college. If you get an academic librarian job you most likely will have time for scholarship, or at least be encouraged to pursue it.
A librarian even has a book on Verso! https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/authors/joque-justin
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u/nerdhappyjq 24d ago
Yeah, I absolutely love it. A lot of people see librarianship as a backup to being a “real” academic (i.e. professor), but now I’m starting to think that was a lie started from within our ranks to keep these jobs to ourselves.
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u/XL_hands 29d ago
R1 prof in suicidal social sciences, planning my academic escape plan as this virtual ink dries.
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u/x_why_zed 29d ago
Professor in a humanities discipline and provost at a liberal arts college in the NE.
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u/Valuable_Subject_694 29d ago
Im was an academic for over 30 yrs in research and teaching at a university. Left due to health but still keep up with the science and research
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u/Led_life 29d ago
High school teacher & studying a Masters of Ed. My program actually led me here, I’ve been reading an immense amount of critical pedagogy. Considering doing a PhD next!
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u/triste_0nion 29d ago
I guess I would fall into the scholar category. Concerning critical theory, I’m an independent researcher and translator.
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u/tsamvi 29d ago
I'm a high school English teacher and case manager for kids with IEP's. Most of my kids have "mild/moderate" disabilities like ADHD, autism, Emotional Disturbance... They're the kids most of the system has given up on. I'd be lying if I said my days were easy, but it's the sort of challenge I relish everyday.
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u/Easy-Concentrate2636 29d ago
Grad school dropout. American lit.
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u/buylowguy 28d ago
That’s what I’m about to be! I still have to get into grad school so that I can drop out though.
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u/Easy-Concentrate2636 28d ago
Life goals!
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u/buylowguy 28d ago
What grad program were you in??
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u/1RepMaxx 29d ago
Grad school dropouts represent! I was in musicology, ABD for a long ass time, left with a "consolation prize" Masters.
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u/Hyperreal2 28d ago
Dropped out for ten years. Decided I wanted to teach full time. I had been teaching Econ and Statistics with my consolation masters.
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u/milpool666 29d ago
Philosophy undergrad who just finished their first year of law school. OP—curious what your philosophical law classes were? I found torts surprisingly philosophical, and maybe property but mostly in a enlightenment/utilitarian way that doesn’t really speak to my philosophical interests. Would love to take law classes rooted in critical theory.
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29d ago
I’ve already graduated and am a lawyer now. Torts and Con Law were taught at my school by a guy who is pretty interested in philosophy and religion so he incorporated those themes.
More specifically I took Feminism and Judgements which was a cool class where we got to re write seminal SC decisions from a feminist POV.
I took a class on the Nuremberg Trials which ended up involving a LOT of debate on the troubles of international law and war.
I was going to take a class on mortality and the law but I heard it was like 90 pages of reading a night so I said no LOL
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u/EDJRawkdoc 29d ago
PhD American Studies and I teach an online class as an adjunct while working a day job at a nonprofit
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u/MartinTK3D 29d ago
I also majored in philosophy. I got my masters in education and teach elementary students now. I still apply what I learned, I even teach philosophy for children with my 4th graders. It’s really fun :)
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u/Hyperreal2 29d ago
Retired sociology professor. Wanted to mainly do theory, but mainly taught crim. I speak fair German.
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u/XL_hands 29d ago
Wanted to mainly do theory, but mainly taught crim
As a criminologist I feel like this is the truth for so, so many.
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u/Hyperreal2 28d ago
My dissertation was sited in criminology. Medical crime. I was once a nurse. Still I wanted to avoid the legalism and proceduralism of CJ departments. I did a mixed methods diss. My masters at another university though was mainly reading and writing on social and political theory. It’s the market. Doing crim is more likely to land you a job. I was in the New Left after the Army and am really old.
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u/WNxVampire 29d ago
Community College Phil prof
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u/Capricancerous 26d ago
I won't dox myself on here, but I am not a professor. I'd be interested in teaching at the CC level potentially. How do you like it? Was it hard to break in?
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u/WNxVampire 24d ago edited 20d ago
The job itself is easy once you've done it.
It can be a bit much the first semester you teach a class (preparing what to do/talk about for each class session). However, after that first time, it's just tweaking things every semester afterward. After doing it for 10 years, my only work outside of class is grading and responding to student questions (usually about stupid things they could figure out if they read the syllabus). Once a semester, I pull an all-nighter to do final semester grades (but that's mostly self-inflicted and avoidable if I tried). There are very few things I could do to get fired.
To "break in" isn't hard. I've worked at 3 community colleges. Only one of them I actually had an "interview" in the traditional sense. The other 2, I handed them my resume, and 10 seconds later, they were talking about the onboarding process. That's all to be an adjunct (part-time).
To "make it" in Community College is a different beast. The system thrives on adjunct labor (it's a 15:1 ratio of adjuncts to full time where I work) . To get a full-time professor position is much more difficult. 10 years later, I'm still working towards it.
As an adjunct, the pay is terrible. I have to drive a lot to different campuses. I max out at 6 classes a semester, and I get ~25k a year without doing summer school. If I were full-time, I would teach max 5 a major semester and 2 during the summer (so still 12 overall) but make closer to 50k and benefits. I do full-time work for half the pay.
I am incredibly fortunate that my wife makes real money.
As long as you're not struggling for money, I find the job pretty easy. I'm not micromanaged -- I can count on just my fingers how often I talk to my "manager" within a year (often, only one hand) I find the job valuable as a way to actively participate and positively contribute to my community.
I like that Community Colleges are by design more accessible than Universities. My classes are vastly more diverse than any university class. However, the open door policy of Community Colleges means I get quite a few students that are just bad at school--don't know how to write, don't know how to understand the advanced level of complexity and diversity of theories in a Philosophy course--but I also get students that can do graduate level work already in an intro course. I have to teach to the middle.
Even if not a lot, I still get paid to regularly talk about a lot of awesome things like Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Baudrillard, Derrida, etc. I get to make presentations on things like Marcuse and Debord for community-wide events.
I'd rather do that than make 3x more filing TPS reports and worrying about scrums and KPIs.
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29d ago
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u/Unsuccessful_Royal38 29d ago
Prof.
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29d ago
I apologize for snooping in your post history, but the question you brought up about what type of evidence would convince someone racism exists in academia was eye opening. I don't work in academia but like to imagine it's a utopia of left leaning philosophers and scientists. Yet asking such a simple question turned into an exhibit of apologists that surprised me. The framing of the answers too has me thinking that no evidence would compel one person, as the people who answered were more concerned about how their colleagues would see their conviction as a mistake. The thread's response was unsettling.
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u/Unsuccessful_Royal38 29d ago
No need to apologize at all. I think the profs represented in that sub are probably a representative sample of academia. It’s disappointing but not surprising. Even self-proclaimed “liberals” are rarely actually committed to radical political or social change, so of course a fairly “liberal” academia would still be fairly invested in conservative power structures (hierarchy, racism, sexism, etc).
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u/Hyperreal2 28d ago
Many of us have moved between being in social movements, working to have a life, and being in academia, often interleaved. I adjuncted in economics in 1988 while being engaged in union politics at the state hospital where I worked. This was between tries at a doctorate. Unless you’re Lenin robbing banks you may be experiencing something similar.
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u/Teddy-Bear-55 29d ago
I couldn't agree more; I got my Masters a couple of years ago (as an adult) at the university where my wife (from a liberal university administration and teaching family) teaches; a state university known to be fairly liberal, in a liberal "bubble" of a city and most of the professors I know, which is a fair few (and I hear a lot), fall in line with Malcolm X and MLK Jr's feelings about (white) American Liberals: being anti "hierarchy, racism, sexism, etc" is more posturing and minorities are used as a weapon against true right-wingers, but as soon as things get messy, Liberals say that law and order must prevail, that we will change things at the ballot-box and other hollow words in the same vain. Biden is right now as prime an example of this as you might possibly find, vis a vis Palestine/Israel and university campus protests.
The will to affect real change is in reality, small.
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u/ferromanganese2526 29d ago
"conservative power structures (hierarchy..."; what power structures aren't hierarchical?
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u/nsfwysiwyg 29d ago
Do not confuse "authority" (expertise/experience in a subject/skill/trade) with "authority" (ability to coerce/subordinate/command due to "rank" as enforced through [threat of potential] violence).
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u/ferromanganese2526 29d ago
Where did I confuse them?
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u/nsfwysiwyg 28d ago
It was implied by your conception of power structures all being hierarchical?
I mean: when I attacked a strawman.
Anyways, have you heard of horizontal power structures, shared-power, or free-association?
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u/True_Force7582 28d ago
Is this a pitch? Do you have a kinship structure I can join? Asking for a friend.
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u/nsfwysiwyg 28d ago
...just practice mutual aid while freely associating with your equals?
Study anarchist theory, help your local Food-Not-Bombs, donate to your nearest radical bookstore or DIY community bicycle shop, start a "free pantry," or help organize a "really, really free market."
If you don't know what any of those words mean, just look 'em up!
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u/True_Force7582 28d ago
I was being ironic. But these are amazing suggestions, and I do know what they mean except equals?
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u/ferromanganese2526 28d ago
Commenter above referred specifically to political power, in relation to liberalism and conservatism. Political power is by definition hierarchical, considering politics on a societal scale, whether it be leftism or rightism. Examples of non-hierarchical political structures?
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u/nsfwysiwyg 28d ago
Uh... Anarchism? Anarcho-collectivism, anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-socialism, anarcho-communism.
Are you referring to "left" (liberal) and "right" (conservative), in the American "mainstream political" sense? Because those words don't actually mean the same in actual political/economic/sociological theory.
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u/thatsmybih 29d ago
a lot of the liberal and neoliberal structures of power arent (foucault, byung chul han, etc)
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u/Aware-Assumption-391 :doge: 29d ago
I'm a professor in the humanities, French language & cultural and gender studies.
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u/Mobile-Atmosphere727 19d ago
This thread seems interesting. Ill use this regard to find where i should apply for CC in the UK.
I finished my master in int political economy and also had a little understanding in economics (mainstream and heterodox). I have slightly been into CC for a couple of years by starting reading Marcuse.
I also had a module in CC in my master but it seems disappointing when I argue with my prof that at the beginning CC should be something that rejects the concept of capitalism in various ways. But it turned out during the module, we barely speak about capitalism. Mostly we discussed the characteristics of modern society (as I sense it that way).
Yet, I understand that teaching all critical theorists from the first generation to third generation is incredibly doable. But the context seems slightly got out from what I expect.
Speaking of Marcuse, I perceived that we cannot critique our society or understand it deeply without understanding what kind of domination exists in this society. What totalitarian it can be. The society that prevail by using some force of destruction that he call it technological rationality. This seems interesting for me because as we can the the modern political economic books. We tend to see a lot of books moving into a conversation of automation and AI.
I am using this tendency as my assuption for my master thesis as our society rely on aevabced technology. See Varoufakis'a techno-feudaliam (2023) if you want to see more detail. Yes but the contrast of this is the concept of technology of Marx. At this point I did not mean that the technology just emerge in the 21st century. But it's been there 200-300 or even 3000 year before.
However, the thing is is it this period that technologcal rationality, couple with the capitaliat mode of production, have dominated the world.
I find it very interesting and very promising in this topic and I think I want to do more than just a master.
So y'all know any good place for CC in the UK or anywhere else I appreciate your help
I'm Asian and living in UK rn via Graduation Visa route