What purpose should the university serve? What are the true callings of academics? In Academic Callings, prominent Canadian scholars tackle these big questions and provide a timely survey of the state of the Canadian university. With so much current interest in the university's role in the economy, and so much emphasis on research tied to funding opportunities, this volume seeks to revive the idea of the university as it has been and could be again: a democratic institution committed to advancing critical thought and serving the public interest.

With contributions from diverse disciplines-classics to biology, nursing to sociology-Academic Callings aims to provoke a wide-ranging conversation, one that concerns everyone, whether as members of academic communities or as citizens.

Contributors include Joel Bakan, George Sefa Dei, Barbara Godard, Paul Hamel, Nasrin Rahimieh, Dorothy Smith, Andrew Wernick, and more than twenty others.

"Academic Callings is one of those rare books that both believes in the promise of the university as a democratic public sphere and renders an analysis of that promise through a wide ranging and brilliant set of narratives. At last, we have a book that captures the university in all of its complexities, contradictions, and struggles. Anyone who is interested in how the university works and believes that higher education is an invaluable public sphere must read this book."

- Henry Giroux, professor of English and Cultural Studies,
McMaster University, and author of THE UNIVERSITY IN CHAINS



JANICE NEWSON is Professor Emerita in the Department of Sociology, York University.
CLAIRE POLSTER is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology
and Social Studies, University of Regina.



Introduction
Front Cover
Contents 1
Contents 2
Excerpts Intro
Excerpts Part 1
Excerpts Part 2
Excerpts Part 3
Excerpts Part 4
Excerpts Part 5
Back Cover


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