Digital Culture Studies

Alia Sabur is the world’s youngest college professor, beating a record set 300+ years ago by Colin Maclaurin. She was hired for her first professorship 3 days shy of her 19th birthday. In the time leading up to the start of her new position, she taught in New Orleans, at Southern University, an HBCU that is still struggling after hurricane Katrina. So, she’s smart and generous!

The wiki page on Colin Macluarin, the previous record-holder is pretty funny - after defending a master’s thesis entitled The Power of Gravity, he went on to study divinity, which naturally lead to a professorship in mathematics when he was 19.

Of course, he had an edge on Alia - he had 300 years less knowledge to learn! On the other hand, what does studying gravity look like when you personally know Isaac Newton?

Its the first day of summer vacation, and I just finished a seminar paper so fun that I cannot let it go. To that end, I am seeking out sociology/anthropology/gender studies academics who study child beauty pageants. I know these people must exist, but I have no idea who they are. Do you? Let me know, please!

On a HigherEd specific online forum, a post that was meant to exhibit how odd academic life looks to non-academics told the story of a recent proposal defense. I am a consummate lurker there, although I don’t have a login, which is probably for the best, because the post that took my breath away describes how the Chair of the student’s committee decided to invite the defender’s husband to her proposal defense. And I cannot quite wrap my head around that. Does he also invite the wives of male students who are defending their proposals? If he does, well, consider my feminist ire placated. But I suspect that he does not, and I cannot understand why the responses to this post don’t start out questioning why a woman’s Chair would invite her husband to what is, essentially, her workplace and her professional life.

If the student herself had invited her spouse, well, her choice. But that her Chair decided to do it without her knowledge makes the action very different, and not a little patronizing. This notion of spousal deference always hits a sour note for me, probably because I live it every time I make a major purchase, or generally try to conduct business with a man when my own partner is in the same room.What is next, really - should women bring notes from their Dad in to school, giving them permission to attend, which was often the case as little as 40 years ago at some schools?

Dear R1 Institution,

Please accept this note as permission from me that my daughter be allowed to READ BOOKS and WRITE STUFF. Call me if she gets uppity, or starts thinking on her own - we try not to encourage independence in her, in the vain hope that she will come to her senses, drop out of school, and marry a nice doctor.