Left to Our Own Devices: Gender and Higher Education in the Contemporary United States

Michelle Matisons will deliver a talk: “Left to Our Own Devices: Gender and Higher Education in the Contemporary United States.” After returning to Sacramento from a one-year sojourn to Miami, Florida where she tutored mostly immigrant children in the city's failing schools, Michelle Matisons now teaches general education courses at the Institute of Technology in Roseville. Her transitions from Sacramento State University professor to elementary/middle school tutor to vocational college instructor have kept education issues at the forefront of her thinking. This talk will compare and contrast discourses about gender and race/class standpoints in higher education. While women are graduating from college at higher rates than men, they still suffer widespread gender based income disparities. Meanwhile, we are faced with a crisis in higher education regarding admission and retention of men of color; this is largely due to the "New Jim Crow" racism of the prison industrial complex. Matisons will examine these social dynamics and discuss potential implications for social movement organizing today.