ABSTRACT. This epistolary article presents a slow reading of Raewyn Connell’s The Good University by two feminist scholars. Our conversation brings a unique perspective to Connell’s book, capturing our lived experience of plagues, or persistent afflictions causing worry and distress, within and beyond the university. We started reading and writing together in late 2019, a time when work-life for one of us was marred by radical university restructuring and out-of-control bushfires. Our intermittent conversation continued through the new plague that arrived in early 2020 to complicate our civic, work and home lives and dramatically (further) reduce our capacity for scholarly work. Over those months that became years, we found that living with these plagues cast the possibility of the good university into profound uncertainty. The Good University became a point of return – a companion text – for two feminist academics during plague times. What follows is an edited version of the conversation that proceeded in its own time and that shows, on the ground, ‘what [some] universities actually do and why it’s time for radical change,’ as Connell’s subtitle has it.

Keywords: universities; feminism; slow reading; lived experience

How to cite: Bosanquet, A., Grant, B. M., & Sturm, S. (2023). Surviving the years of plague: Two feminist academics’ interrupted reading of Raewyn Connell’s The Good University. Knowledge Cultures, 11(2), 22–39. https://doi.org/10.22381/kc11220232

Received 2 February 2022 • Received in revised form 12 September 2022
Accepted 13 September 2022 • Available online 1 August 2023