Giving account of our (mobile) selves: embodied and relational notions of academic privilege in the international classroom

Abstract

ABSTRACTContemporary models of academic work reflect a process of compression given that busy (time compression), jet setting (space compression) scholars constitute the norm of academic success. Valuable reflections from mobile academics are available, and yet, such narratives are often confined to individual voices and perspectives. In this paper, we endeavor to present a collaborative analysis of our shared experience as short-term foreign experts at a Chinese Normal University, simultaneously embracing and being troubled by our institutional and individual desires to become global. Throughout our analysis, we focus on the contrasts of our national, racial and class identities of origin and those we enacted while teaching in China. In doing so, we pay attention to the literal and metaphorical meaning of mobility. Our project explores ways in which mobility is(n’t) always privileged, as well as whether and how we experience time – space compression contrasting our class, race, nationality and sexual orientation differences.