Being and Becoming Professionally Other - by Erich N Pitcher

About the Book

Being and Becoming Professionally Other: Identities, Voices, and Experiences of U.S. Trans* Academics is a path clearing book that provides a rich, in-depth account of the lived experiences of 39 transgender or trans* academics.

Book Synopsis

Being and Becoming Professionally Other: Identities, Voices, and Experiences of U.S. Trans* Academics is a path clearing book that provides a rich, in-depth account of the lived experiences of 39 transgender or trans* academics.

Review Quotes

"Academe has long been a place where Otherizing practices disadvantage those who identify outside of proscribed binaries in particularly insidious ways. Pitcher's book seeks to remedy this unacceptable state of affairs by revealing the ways in which organizational cultures, norms, and 'taken for granteds' in the regime of academic life foreclose U.S. trans* academics from opportunities for recognition and advancement, and in turn, their quality of life. Before we can begin dismantling the systems that regulate and promote these disadvantages, we must first name them. Then, the work of dismantling cissexism and transphobia in the academy can begin. Pitcher's work, amplifying the voices of those who have endured these challenges, provides a deeply detailed roadmap, replete with clues to the structural change that will need to happen individually and collectively. His is an urgent and strategic call to transforming the academy that all scholar-activists can-and must-heed." -Susan B. Marine, Associate Professor, Higher Education, Merrimack College, and author of Stonewall's Legacy: Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Students in Higher Education

"In this moving and scholarly account, Erich N. Pitcher invites the reader to listen to our trans* colleagues' accounts of their professional challenges, but, more importantly, asks us to extrapolate from our trans* colleagues' daily challenges of hegemonic norms in the academy and to imagine a university true to its essential organizing principle-higher learning as freedom, enlightened, liberal and radical. Being and Becoming Professionally Other: Identities, Voices, and Experiences of U.S. Trans* Academics gives us a view of our institutions and the academic profession that we should take in with eyes wide open." -Ana M. Martínez Alemán, Boston College

About the Author

Erich N. Pitcher, PhD, is Associate Director of Research and Communication for Diversity and Cultural Engagement at Oregon State University, and completed their doctoral work in Higher Education at Michigan State University. Erich received the 2017 American Education Research Association--Division J Outstanding Dissertation Award.