“I’D RATHER BE TEACHING!”- Transforming Injustice into Action in a Graduate Labor Movement
Project Description
This work examines the 2017/2018 graduate student labor movement at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Although scholars have identified the unequal structural arrangement between graduate students and university administrations, this power configuration alone cannot account for sustained and successful labor action. The images I made during this project, as well as the accompanying article analyzes how the use of emotions, injustice framing, and interaction rituals helped translate structural inequities into actionable grievances within the UIUC movement, part of a broader history of graduate labor struggles in America.
My collaborators and I also aimed to understand the specificities of the UIUC case in light of the Janus v. AFSCME decision. In our writing, we discuss how the threat to tuition waivers may be a growing challenge graduate student unions will face alongside the classical questions of wages and health benefits. Most importantly, the project unpacks how a group of students who “would rather be teaching,” came to organize, sustain, and finally emerge as victors in a campus-wide movement.
Project Outcomes
O’Neill, Brian F. Hany Zayed, and Heba Khalil. 2019. “‘I’d Rather be Teaching’-Transforming Injustice into Action in a Graduate Labor Movement.” Berkeley Journal of Sociology. March 2019: Vol. 63. http://berkeleyjournal.org
Archive of 439 black and white, 35mm film negatives was acquired by the Urbana Free Library Archives and Special Collections Department in Urbana, Illinois - https://urbanafreelibrary.org/local-history-genealogy/archives-special-collections
Accession No. 2021-0013
