New Books in Higher Education

By: New Books Network
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  • Summary

  • Discussions with thought-leaders about the future of higher education
    New Books Network
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Social Sciences
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Episodes
  • Anne Greenwood Mackinney, "Nature on Paper: Documenting Science in Prussia, 1770-1850" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2024)

    Anne Greenwood Mackinney, "Nature on Paper: Documenting Science in Prussia, 1770-1850" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2024)
    Mar 15 2025
    Over the past two decades, natural things—especially those collected, exchanged, studied, and displayed in museums, such as animals, plants, minerals, and rocks—have emerged as fascinating protagonists for historical research. Nature on Paper: Documenting Science in Prussia, 1770-1850 (U Pittsburgh Press, 2024) follows a different, humbler set of objects that make it possible to trace the global routes and shifting meanings of those natural things: the catalogs, inventories, and other paper tools of information management that form the backbone of collection institutions. Anne Greenwood MacKinney focuses on Prussia from the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century, a place and time that witnessed the dramatic restructuring of research, government, and public collections toward a closer integration of science, state, and a proto-civil society. The documents at the heart of her study are mediators actively shaping the historical trajectories, values, and meanings of the objects they record, and with pasts and paths of their own. MacKinney also reveals how various stakeholders—in the research community, museum sector, government, and general public—can interact with these documents and thereby shape the world of natural science. By centering the history of natural historical collection paperwork and the agents involved in its production, circulation, and safekeeping, Nature on Paper tells a largely neglected story of a form of scientific labor that transformed the infrastructure of modern research at the turn of the nineteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    43 mins
  • Teaching With Positive Psychology Skills

    Teaching With Positive Psychology Skills
    Mar 6 2025
    Studies show that students who have a positive outlook on their lives outperform students who don’t. Is positive thinking a skill? Can it be taught? Our article is: “Teaching Positive Psychology Skills at school may be one way to help student mental health and happiness,” by Dr. Kai Zhuang Shum, published in The Conversation, which explores how the components of happiness and connection can be applied to classroom settings around the world. Amid the reduced access to mental health services for many students, and the rising rates of student stress and depression, researchers are finding that positive psychology interventions make a real difference. “Students who’ve been introduced to science-based ideas about happiness,” Dr. Shum writes, “feel more satisfied with life.” She joins us for this episode to explain more. Our guest is: Dr. Kai Zhuang Shum, who is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP) and a Licensed Psychologist. She serves as an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville School Psychology Program. She specializes in positive psychology, motivation, anxiety (including OCD), attention, time management, and well-being (happiness). Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Listeners may enjoy this playlist: Mindfulness The Well-Gardened Mind Inside Look at Campus Mental Wellness Services You Will Get Through This Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection Managing Your Mental Health During Your PhD Make a Meaningful Life Meditation Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 240+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    55 mins
  • Chris Higgins, "Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education" (MIT Press, 2024)

    Chris Higgins, "Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education" (MIT Press, 2024)
    Mar 4 2025
    Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education (MIT Press, 2024) is an imaginative tour of the contemporary university as it could be: a place to discover self-knowledge, meaning, and purpose. What if college were not just a means of acquiring credentials, but a place to pursue our formation as whole persons striving to lead lives of meaning and purpose? In Undeclared, Chris Higgins confronts the contemporary university in a bid to reclaim a formative mission for higher education. In a series of searching essays and pointed interludes, Higgins challenges us to acknowledge how far our practices have drifted from our ideals, asking: What would it look like to build a college from the ground up to support self-discovery and personal integration? What does it mean to be a public university, and are there any left? How can the humanities help the job-ified university begin to take vocation seriously? Cutting through the underbrush of received ideas, Higgins follows the insight where it leads, clearing a path from the corporate multiversity to the renaissance in higher education that was Black Mountain College and back again. Along the way, we tour a campus bent on becoming a shopping mall, accompany John Dewey through a midlife crisis, and witness the first "happening.” Through diverse and grounded philosophical engagements, Undeclared assembles the resources to expand the contemporary educational imagination. Chris Higgins is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Formative Education in Boston College's Lynch School of Education and Human Development, where he directs the Transformative Educational Studies program. He is the author of The Good Life of Teaching. The book is available Open Access here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 6 mins

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