Slow Professor Research Articles

Meritocracy, governmental intervention, and academic nepotism: a South Korean academic publishing landscape [The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea

Abstract While engaging with Klein’s (1989. Schreiben oder Lesen, aber nicht beides, oder: Vorschlag zur Wiedereinführung der Keilschrift mittels Hammer und Meißel. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 74. 116–119) suggestions to control the quantity of publications, this brief paper explores the reasons behind the intense publishing pressure on South Korean scholars and examines the consequences for the development of an academic public sphere. We underscore that the evaluation systems of neoliberal universities, which prioritize quantity and speed, together with a social concern with “fairness,” compel researchers to embrace a meritocratic ethos. This is further intensified by the multiple excellence benchmarks set by government research agencies. Moreover, the prevalence of insular academic networks, often formed by individuals from elite backgrounds, restricts the circulation of scholarly work within exclusive groups. Consequently, the academic environment in South Korea struggles to cultivate an academic public sphere that tackles critical issues and encourages productive debates. In response to these challenges, we propose to adopt the principles of the “slow professor” movement, foster collaboration with practitioners, and diversify scholarly genres.

Rewilding on slow sabbatical: Revisiting Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic”

The human rewilding movement seeks to regain balance between humans and the more-than-human world through particular ways of knowing and doing. During a sabbatical, I engaged in rewilding practices and employed Terrapsychological Inquiry to understand my relationship with the more-than-human world. I sought to learn how this might support my work as a scholar, educator, and change maker in the face of managerialist neoliberal strains in higher education. While the problems of institutions require structural transformations, the professoriate itself must also access its own power. The authors of The Slow Professor suggest the possibilites of mindfulness, pleasure, and relationality. Audre Lorde’s ideas are supportive as she connects agency to the epistemic ground of erotic knowing. Through conversation between my field notes and literature, from the perspective of a white settler, I explore themes of the holding environment, reciprocity/relationality, sensorial attention, and wildness as decolonial pathways to re-existence.

Corrupted temporalities, ‘cultures of speed’, and the possibility of collegiality

This paper describes a neglected aspect of the critique of academic ‘cultures of speed’ offered by Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeler in The Slow Professor. I argue internalisation of the values and imperatives of cultures of speed can encourage the erosion of a range of academic virtues while also facilitating the development of a range of academic vices. I focus on the ways that an internalised ‘psychology of speed’ erodes our capacity to exercise the virtues of intellectual beneficence – excellences of character which advance the intellectual needs of others – by radically distorting our experience of time.

The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy

The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy

The Value of Time in Early Modern English Literature. Tina Skouen. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. Pp. x+234.

The Value of Time in Early Modern English Literature. Tina Skouen. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. Pp. x+234.

Donning the ‘Slow Professor’: A Feminist Action Research Project

Corporatization of Higher Education has introduced new performance measurements as well as an acceleration of academic tasks creating working environments characterised by speed, pressure and stress. This paper discusses findings from a qualitative, feminist participatory action research (PAR) study undertaken by an interdisciplinary team of women academics at a modern, corporate university in England. The study illuminates how corporatized HE erodes faculty autonomy, degrades learning environments, damages professional satisfaction and health. Strategies for resistance and liberation developed through the PAR process are discussed.Key words: slow professor, corporatized academy, Higher Education.

Towards a higher education: Contemplation, compassion, and the ethics of slowing down

The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy was published in 2016 to critical acclaim. Rejecting outright the marketisation of the modern university, the book proposed a countercultural approach which denounced the seductive imperatives to overwork and competition and called on academics to make a more deliberate moral choice. In this paper, I critically engage with The Slow Professor's ethical vision. I draw on the work of writers Sally Rooney, John Williams and David Foster Wallace in careful exploration of ‘slowness’ and its cognate terms. I am interested not only in the importance of slowness for university academics but for students in the 21st century university. These students, as pointed out recently by Bruce Macfarlane, are made to carry a plethora of conflicting identities and yet it is perhaps more important that we begin to demand less of our students and not more. Thus, in an era of audit and accountability, this paper explores the possibilities for a less frenetic approach to university teaching and learning.

The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy, by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. 115 pages, paperback

<i>The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy</i>, by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. 115 pages, paperback

Book Review Symposium: Maggie Berg and Barbara K Seeber, The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy by June Edmunds

Book Review Symposium: Maggie Berg and Barbara K Seeber, <i>The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy</i> by June Edmunds

Book Review Symposium: Maggie Berg and Barbara K Seeber, The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy by Susie Scott

Book Review Symposium: Maggie Berg and Barbara K Seeber, <i>The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy</i> by Susie Scott

Book Review Symposium: Maggie Berg and Barbara K Seeber, The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy by Jamie Barnes

Book Review Symposium: Maggie Berg and Barbara K Seeber, <i>The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy</i> by Jamie Barnes

Book Review Symposium: Maggie Berg and Barbara K Seeber, The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy by Kathryn Telling

Book Review Symposium: Maggie Berg and Barbara K Seeber, <i>The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy</i> by Kathryn Telling

The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber

<i>The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy</i> by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber

Review of The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy

Rory J. Conces reviews The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy. Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber, with a new Foreword by Stefan Collini. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017, ISBN: 978-1-4875-2185-1.

Jamie Brownlee, Academia, Inc., and Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeder, The Slow Professor

Jamie Brownlee, Academia, Inc., and Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeder, The Slow Professor

A Review of The Slow Professor

A Review of The Slow Professor

Review of The Slow Professor

The “slow movement” continues with the publication of this book as Berg and Seeber argue that academia is demanding more from faculty regardless of the consequences on education and scholarship. Th...

Review: The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber

Review: The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber

The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy, by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. SeeberThe Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy, by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber. 2016. 115 pages, paperback. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

This paper explores the principles of the Slow Movement to counter work-stress among university and college teachers. We believe that a Slow approach to teaching and learning may be the most effective way to counter the erosion of humanistic education by the corporate ethos of consumerism, efficiency, accountability, and standardisation We explore the principles of Slow not only to counter the consumer model of education but also to foster better teachers and learners. It is well-documented that changes in academic work have created significant stress among academic teachers (Catano, Francis, Haines, Kirpalani, Shannon, Stringer, & Lozanksi, 2007; Miller, Buckholdt & Shaw, 2008), and students (Dabney, 1995; Brown & Ralph 1999; Rowbotham and Julian 2006), but what requires further attention is the link between the corporate reliance on efficiency and the problem of lack of time in learning and teaching. Corporatisation has sped up the clock. The Slow Movement—originating in the Slow Food Movement—has gained recognition as a way to resist both globalization and the frantic pace of contemporary life. While slowness has been lauded in architecture, business, urban life and interpersonal relations, among others, it has yet to be applied to academia. Yet, if there is one sector of society that should be cultivating deep thought in themselves and others it is academic teachers. The consumerism that has taken hold in higher education propels the belief that time is money, resulting in superficial learning (Cote & Allahar, 2011b; Readings, 1996). Perhaps the most damaging effect of corporatisation in the universities is that individual educators feel paralysed in the face of overwhelming odds. Our focus on individuals and their own professional practice is conceived as political resistance to corporatisation.

Book Review: The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy

Book Review: The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy