It Has Been Handled: Hoping for Transformation in the Neoliberal University Setting
Published in The Journal of Autoethnography, 2025
This article draws on an experience of online bullying in the university setting to make sense of the forces that act in the neoliberal university classroom to preclude transformative learning. This experience took place over two months in early 2023, when I was repeatedly bullied on Twitter by a classmate who claimed my research on J.K. Rowling’s amplification of TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) was a “misogynistic hate crime.” These events are analyzed with respect to the constraints imposed by TERFism, classroom civility, and the neoliberal university writ large. Through an autoethnography of these experiences, I unpack the ways that TERFism, hegemonic civility, and the neoliberal university worked in concert to enable my classmate’s actions and disempower me. I conclude by imagining a classroom setting in which my classmate could be deradicalized and transformed.
In press in the Journal of Autoethnography; will be published April 2025.
Recommended citation: Smith, Alyssa Hasegawa. 2025. “It Has Been Handled: Hoping for Transformation in the Neoliberal University Setting.“ Journal of Autoethnography, Volume 6 Issue 2.