A Light in the Tower

A New Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education

Katie Rose Guest Pryal (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

240 Seiten

2024
University Press of Kansas (Verlag)
978-0-7006-3633-4 (ISBN)

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With evocative storytelling and incisive research, Katie Rose Guest Pryal brings a new eye to the mental health crisis that higher education has faced for decades. Written from the perspective of a bipolar-autistic professor, A Light in the Tower is both a bracing account of the mental health crisis in higher education and a passionate and informed proposal for how to teach with mental health in mind.Pryal contends that higher education’s mental health crisis is the result of long-term systemic problems in education that demand nothing short of a revolution. She examines the anxiety that plagues campuses as a result of exploited and overworked contingent faculty and students, the shock events like COVID-19 and campus shootings that traumatize communities, the systemic and institutional burnout that affects higher education at every level, and the market-driven culture of toxic overwork. These are large-scale problems that need large-scale solutions. Addressing the stigma that haunts mental disability on campus, the ableism that hounds our teaching, and the cascade of mental health struggles that far too many faculty and students face, Pryal provides straightforward solutions to these complex challenges.

A Light in the Tower argues that excellent education and radical support for mental health struggles can coexist and provides detailed advice for how to do so. Meanwhile, Pryal debunks claims that supporting student mental health harms educational rigor (coining the term “rigor angst” to discuss the fear that rigor is declining). She outlines actionable steps professors and administrators can take to address the problem, including abandoning ableist and exclusionary campus culture; replacing “bad-hard” work that creates unnecessary logistical difficulties for students in favor of “good-hard” work that challenges them intellectually, providing an easy path to disability accommodations; and teaching accessibly for neurodivergent students.

Katie Rose Guest Pryal, is an author, neurodiversity expert, and adjunct professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education and the award-winning Even If You’re Broken: Bodies, Boundaries, and Mental Health.

Preface
Introduction: How to Talk about Mental Disability
Part I. The Mental Health Crisis in Higher Education
1. Anxiety in Academia
2. Population Shock Events
3. Systemic Burnout
4. Toxic Academic Overwork
5. Setting Boundaries
6. The Disabled Mind in Academia
7. Writing Publicly about Mental Disability
8. Writing Depression
Part II. Teaching with Mental Health in Mind
9. “The Darkness That Is Plaguing Our University”
10. Rigor Angst
11. Toxic Rigor Is Ableist
12. Teaching Mentally Disabled Students
13. Front-Line Faculty
14. Procrastination and Compassion
15. Teaching Accessibly/Inclusively
Acknowledgments
Bibliography

Erscheinungsdatum	15.02.2024
Reihe/Serie	Rethinking Careers, Rethinking Academia
Verlagsort	Kansas
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	272 g
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Lebenshilfe / Lebensführung
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Didaktik
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Sonder-, Heil- und Förderpädagogik
ISBN-10	0-7006-3633-1 / 0700636331
ISBN-13	978-0-7006-3633-4 / 9780700636334
Zustand	Neuware