Performativity & Reproduction of Gendered Identities in Academia

Through intensive interviews of professors at teaching intensive institutions this project investigates the relationship between the undervalued nature of teaching in academia by analyzing individual experience, agency, and power relations present at the institutional level in order to develop a theory capable of linking structures in academia to privileging of research over teaching, tracing this privilege to the devaluation of feminized labor. Utilizing interviews of faculty members whose primary responsibility is teaching, I explore the pathways, choices, influences and obstacles they have encountered throughout their educational careers. This chapter of my dissertation project focuses on the gendered performativity of professors at teaching-intensive institutions in the United States, and how these performances reify & reproduce the privileging of research over teaching in academia. Such performances are examined as gendered through the lens of hegemonic masculinity via the feminized nature of teaching and service, responsibilities which are devalued in connection to their classification as emotional labor and labor of care. Also prevalent are themes of institutional barriers in regards to initial job application procedures as well as in tenure and promotion, especially as related to more privileged research focused institutions. Additionally, these academics lament the lack of preparation for their teaching intensive positions while in graduate school, which underscores the institutional nature of this devaluation of teaching and service.