Bard College Berlin's video: Asl Vatansever Feminization But Make It Cool: Academic Labor Activism

This online lecture was delivered on May 2, 2023 and was made possible by OSUN and the Transnational Feminism, Solidarity, and Social Justice initiative. Within labor studies, ‘feminization’ is a contested term with multiple connotations – rarely with positive ones. In this talk, Aslı Vatansever reflects upon whether the experiences of adjunct advocacy groups and precarious researchers’ networks can change the way we conceptualize feminization and help us reclaim the positive traits associated with the historical construct of the feminine. Following a broad overview on the qualitative and quantitative conceptions of the term in the general labor discourse, Vatansever proceeds to introduce its particular framings within the context of academic employment. Drawing on two contemporary cases of academic labor activism, namely the adjunct advocacy group New Faculty Majority in the United States and the precarious researchers’ Network for Decent Work in Academia in Germany, she illustrates the turn away from performative activism in favor of movements based on relational groundwork. Based on these case examples, Vatansever proposes to reframe ‘feminization’ affirmatively as a type of affective and relational mode of organizing and argue that this ‘affective turn’ in academic labor activism heralds a ‘feminization of resistance’ – a new era for both academic labor activisms and in the conceptual trajectory of the term ‘feminization’. Aslı Vatansever is a sociologist of work and social stratification with a focus on precarious labor and labor activism in academia. Currently, she is a research fellow at Bard College Berlin. Her work on academic labor activism has appeared in prominent outlets in the field of labor studies such as Work, Employment and Society. She has recently published a monograph At the Margins of Academia: Exile, Precariousness, and Subjectivity (Brill, 2020) and an edited volume Academic Freedom and Precarity in the Global North: Free as a Bird (co-edited with Aysuda Kölemen, Routledge, 2022).