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Higher Education (HE) is spinning. The systematic erosion of our academic freedom, (Docherty, 2012) means that the authors of this chapter no longer know how to navigate what is on the horizon. The neoliberal agenda now driving HE is threatening how we work via, ‘a quiet ruination and decay of academic freedom’ (Docherty, 2012, p. 47). This chapter offers an autoethnography of a collaborative creative project that engaged the authors in dialogues about the effects of neoliberalism on how they teach, work, live and where they compare working in HE to hula-hooping as both demand relentless movement and activity to prevent everything from collapsing. Our story offers ideas for valuing time and space in our academic lives that are playful, creative, bonding, and suggest that by mastering hula-hooping, we have enjoyed a renewed sense of confidence with academic work and academic life.

We employ a range of styles of writing that seek to engage the reader with reflection on their own experiences. Guiding questions for any reader might be, but are by no means restricted to:

What are the effects of neoliberalism on how we work?

How much time do we give for creative play and risk-taking?

What creative methods can we adopt and develop in order to preserve our academic freedom?

How can we navigate the HE landscape effectively without succumbing to neoliberal pressures and shifts?

How can we value human experiences in academic work and in academic life?

More reverberant today than ever, given the current legal and political climate, artist David Wojnarowicz's victorious lawsuit in 1990 against evangelist Donald Wildmon's American Family Association tangled with still relevant contexts: plight of the NEA, disastrous AIDS pandemic, and continuous church/state involvement in public debate over social values, including individual rights to sexual representation and artistic expression. Yet strangely, the artist remains largely absent from both “culture wars” narratives and the general record. Increasing his visibility and arguing his significance, this essay re-inserts Wojnarowicz into history, his work profoundly challenging what he called “the illusion of the ONE TRIBE NATION.”

This chapter uncovers the destabilizing and transformative dimensions of a legal process commonly described as assimilation. Lawyers working on behalf of a marginalized group often argue that the group merits inclusion in dominant institutions, and they do so by casting the group as like the majority. Scholars have criticized claims of this kind for affirming the status quo and muting significant differences of the excluded group. Yet, this chapter shows how these claims may also disrupt the status quo, transform dominant institutions, and convert distinctive features of the excluded group into more widely shared legal norms. This dynamic is observed in the context of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, and specifically through attention to three phases of LGBT advocacy: (1) claims to parental recognition of unmarried same-sex parents, (2) claims to marriage, and (3) claims regarding the consequences of marriage for same-sex parents. The analysis shows how claims that appeared assimilationist – demanding inclusion in marriage and parenthood by arguing that same-sex couples are similarly situated to their different-sex counterparts – subtly challenged and reshaped legal norms governing parenthood, including marital parenthood. While this chapter focuses on LGBT claims, it uncovers a dynamic that may exist in other settings.

College support and career development are two significant challenges international students encountered during the pandemic, and these two factors have an enormous impact on the internationalization of higher education. The data for this study came from the 2020 to 2021 administrations of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) that includes over 500 international students enrolled at over 120 four-year colleges and universities in the United States. These students specifically responded to an open-ended item asking them what they think institutions should do better to assist their academic achievement and career goals. This study takes an in-depth look at international students’ qualitative responses about ways that institutions could better support their preparation for future careers. Using theories of cultural wealth and ecological systems to understand the unique experiences of international students during the pandemic offers an opportunity to help students not just in times of crisis but more holistically as they continue to pursue their higher education experiences in the United States. Ultimately, the authors provide recommendations for higher education professionals working with international students to better support their students’ career development and overall college experience.

In this chapter, the author, drawing on his extensive career as a researcher and teacher educator, examines variations in the work and lives of teachers and the educational backdrops with which they interact – what Ivor Goodson called the ‘genealogies of context’. His work develops Michael Huberman’s seminal research on the lives of secondary teachers and, in doing so, provides empirical evidence which challenges linear views of the development of teacher expertise and highlights the key roles of professional identity, commitment and school culture in career long effective and successful teaching.

This investigation/report/reflection was motivated largely by the occasion of the first Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) “Summer School” in North America.¹ But its roots reach down as well to other recent reflection/investigation pieces, in particular, Mathews (1997), Gray (2002, 2006), and Deegan and Soltys (2007). The last of these authors note (p. 82) that CSEAR Summer Schools were initiated in Australasia, at least partly as a means to spur interest and activity in social and environmental accounting (SEA) research. So, too, was the first North American CSEAR Summer School.² We believe, therefore, that it is worthwhile to attempt in some way to identify where SEA currently stands as a field of interest within the broader academic accounting domain in Canada and the United States.³ As well, however, we believe this is a meaningful time for integrating our views on the future of our chosen academic sub-discipline with those of Gray (2002), Deegan and Soltys (2007), and others. Thus, as the title suggests, we seek to identify (1) who the SEA researchers in North America are; (2) the degree to which North American–based accounting research journals publish SEA-related research; and (3) where we, the SEA sub-discipline within North America, might be headed. We begin with the who.