Julie Shayne’s Taking Risks: Feminist Activism and Research in the Americas Featured at Edmonds Bookshop Reception

The Edmonds Bookshop organized a book reception for Julie Shayne and her new book Taking Risks: Feminist Activism and Research in the Americas (SUNY, 2014 & 2015). Shayne discussed the book and read her essay titled “Mother’s Day”. “Mother’s Day” discusses Shayne’s decision to leave her tenure track job in the Southeast in order to live in the Seattle area and pursue a career that allowed her to prioritize quality of life and family over academic status. At the reception, Shayne explained that leaving the tenure track and finding herself in IAS at UW Bothell allowed her the intellectual and creative space to pursue the book she has come to call her passion project. The audience included UWB students, faculty, staff, and Shayne’s friends, neighbors, and family.

Taking Risks has already started receiving positive accolades, with reviewers drawing specific attention to the personal stories woven throughout the collection. Professor Elizabeth Borland writes in Gender & Society: “Overall, the volume’s interdisciplinary and diverse voices demonstrate that feminist ‘passion-driven’ projects can be found almost anywhere. … The authors’ personal reflections provide the reader with the sorts of details you might hear when you talk with another scholar, but seldom read about in an article or monograph. In this way, the editor and authors have also taken risks to tell these stories; as readers, we benefit from their candor.” Similarly, in CHOICE, K.Y. Perry writes “despite barriers to professional advancement in US academia that ‘taking risks’ may pose for some researchers, doing the hard work of politically engaged scholarship remains crucial for feminist theory and praxis.”