Changing Paths of Academic Lives

New from the Practices & Possibilities book series, Changing Paths of Academic Lives: Revising How We Understand Higher Education, 1960s to 2020s and Beyond, edited by Harvey J. Graff, examines the misunderstandings surrounding “academic paths,” or the variety of careers that constitute in full or in part higher education.

Most often, misunderstandings about academic paths are rooted in conceptions of careers into and out of different kinds of teaching positions. Those conceptions are shaped, in part, by the disappearance of tenure-track and full-time professorships and the related increase in contingent and sessional appointments, by time-limited perspectives based on experiences in a single discipline or sub-discipline, and by challenges faced by women and two-career households.

Changing Paths of Academic Lives offers, through a series of personal accounts of those who developed alternative or non-traditional academic careers over the past six decades, a compelling and historically-based perspective on what it means to pursue an academic career.

This book, like other books published by the Clearinghouse, will be available in a print edition from University Press of Colorado in the coming months. Thanks to Harvey and his contributors for their work on the book and for their decision to share it with us as an open-access publication. Thanks as well to the anonymous peer reviewers who contributed to its development. The Practices & Possibilities book series is edited by Michael Palmquist, Aimee McClure, Aleashia Walton, and Jagadish Paudel.