Satisfaction Not Guaranteed: COVID-19, Higher Ed and the Politics of "Experience"
Fabricating Authenticity - Jason W.M. Ellsworth
Sierra L. Lawson [+]
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Sierra L. Lawson is a doctoral student in the Religion and Culture track in the department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Sierra’s current work examines competing transatlantic discourses on maternal health within visual and textual archives. She is specifically interested in the devotional labor of “Morisca” women in the Ebro region and women in early Andean colonies as mutually influenced by and influencing imperial grammars for classifying ‘religion.’ In studying rhetorics of devotion she has previously focused on communities who describe themselves as Marian—and, specifically, Guadalupan—devotees.
Description
Following Baldrick-Morrone’s argument, Lawson examines the use of the category “experience” in higher education discourse, specifically in response to challenges posed by COVID-19. Lawson contends that institutions employ terms such as “experience” in public statements to highlight positive aspects while omitting problematic and complex dimensions of the college environment which works to frame what counts as an authentic “experience” and reifies the “college experience” as a self-evident, desirable commodity.