Long Road to the Dream Job in Academia: A Conversation with Liz W. Faber

Summary

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about:

  • Dr. Liz Faber’s long road from completed PhD to dream job
  • Why academia said she was a failure
  • The financial reasons she worked two academic jobs at once
  • The importance of speaking out about pay-scale and departmental inequities
  • Putting kindness in the classroom
  • Why you have to define your own success

Our guest is: Dr. Liz W Faber, an Assistant Professor of English & Communication at Dean College. Her teaching and research interests include multimodal communication, science communication, representations of AI in science fiction, computer history, and gender/sexuality studies. She is the author of The Computer's Voice: From Star Trek to Siri (U. Minnesota Press, 2020) and the guest editor for the Popular Culture Studies Journal special issue on robots and labor. She can be found on Twitter (@lizwfab) or at her website (lizwfaber.com).

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the co-producer of the Academic Life podcasts.

Listeners to this episode might be interested in:

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Your Host

Christina Gessler

Dr. Christina Gessler holds a Ph.D. in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. She is the creator and executive producer of the Academic Life podcast, and writes the show's newsletter ChristinaGessler.Substack.Com featuring curated playlists and writing advice. She is a writing coach and developmental editor for academics.
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