Critical Administration in Higher Education

Jay Brower is associate professor and chair of the Department of Communication and Media Arts at Western Connecticut State University.W. Benjamin Myers is associate professor chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Toledo.

The essays included in Critical Administration in Higher Education offer a valuable window into the challenges of faculty moving into academic leadership positions, particularly for women and minoritized individuals. Department chairs, deans, faculty, and administrators alike will find this book to be an invaluable resource in the ongoing, everyday project of transforming academic climates to be more welcoming, accessible, and equitable.

• Chapter 1 – Selling Out or Cashing In: Common Fears of and Advice for Critical/Cultural Scholar Administrators Chapter 2 – Black Male Authority as Oxymoron: Implications for Black Academic Middle Managers in Higher EducationChapter 3 – Chair Communication as Ethical Performance: Embodiment, Interruption, and TranslationChapter 4 – Failing to Communicate in a Communication Department: A Former Chair Calls her Spirit Back Chapter 5 – Minding the Gap: The Performativity of Administrative IdentitiesChapter 6 – It’s Not Me, It’s YouChapter 7 – An Anxious Administrator: Critical Administrative Practice and Public FailureChapter 8 – Diversity and Cultural LeadershipChapter 9 – Who’s Responsible for Salving the Wounds? On Ethics, Leadership, and Conflict in an Academic DepartmentChapter 10 – The Liminal Leader: Narrative Conscience and Critical Hermeneutic Leadership in the Neoliberal AcademyChapter 11 – Drawing the Boundary Between Faculty and Administration Through Concertive Control: Coming out of the Dark into the LightChapter 12 – Feeling Compromised: Notes on Chairing