Jaime Madden

Jaime Madden studies the cultural politics of education-related debt and works at the intersection of WGSS and disability studies. She is a 2017 graduate of the doctoral program in WGSS and she returns to the university after teaching at Georgetown and Minnesota State.

Madden is working on her first book project, which argues that ideas about “the future”—and specifically a “better future”—are crucial to how we talk about and justify student debt. And yet, she finds that for some disabled students, the decision to take on debt is more about the present they want to create and less about the imagined good life to come. This focus on the present disrupts normative narratives of time and progress. Madden’s project therefore approaches the study of key categories—debt, time, the future, and work—from the perspective that the present (not just the future) is worth investing in, and it does not position education as a conduit for job-getting or as a good deserved only by those who can and will be employed and independent.

As a scholar of pedagogy, Madden’s peer-reviewed work includes an article about online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, published by Feminist Studies, and an article about her experiences teaching at a for-profit college, published by Radical Teacher.

During the current semester, Madden teaches “Introduction to LGBT Studies,” “Feminist Pedagogy,” and the senior seminar called “Debt Threats: The Cultural Politics of US Capitalism.”

Courses

LGBT 200: Introduction to LGBT Studies

WGSS 618: Feminist Pedagogies

WGSS 428 and 488: Debt Threats: The Cultural Politics of US Capitalism

WGSS 319: Introduction to Critical University Studies