Writing Lives

'This is a wonderful book, full of insights about academic life, written with energy, wit, and passion. Intensely readable, entertaining and sharp, it will make you laugh and make you cry. Janice Rushing's original take on women in the academy, higher education, and the predominantly male world it enshrines unfolds like a post-modern novel. Her use of classical myth is brilliant and alluring, and the real-world stories she tells will strike a chord in every academic woman's heart.' Jane Tompkins, University of Illinois, Chicago, author of A Life in School 'In her final book, Janice Rushing labors lovingly to free academic women from the bondage of erotic encounters with mentors who shaped them. By giving voice to the stories of disappointment and defeat that silence so many academic women, Rushing clears a path that opens new possibilities for healing, transformation, and self-renewal. Rushing imagines a university in which being exists on an equal plane with doing, where heart and head go hand in hand. Weaving myth, keen observation, and incisive analysis into a tapestry of women's stories, including her own, Rushing reveals the many ways in which the mentoring process has strangled the dreams and desires of women. But this is not an angry or resentful book. Rushing wants to shape a better world for academic women, one in which a woman can move on, feel complete in herself without separating from men. She wants to make the university a more nourishing, fulfilling, and soulful place to work and grow for women as well as for men. Rushing makes it clear that this can only happen if we are able or encouraged to stay in touch with our own vitality and not become slaves to the desires and dreams of others. In her characteristic style of wit, grace, and critique, Rushing strips away the academic armor that protects yet diminishes academic women, nudging all of us toward brave new ways of seeing, being, and feeling. Erotic Mentoring is a unique and compelling book that should make all of us more aware of the importance of living a life one can truly call her own. Janice Rushing saved the best for last.' Arthur P. Bochner, University of South Florida 'The book tells of how young women in the academic world are often mentored by older, more established men. Rushing uses pre-patriarchal mythology to untangle the meanings of these mentoring relationships for the women who shared them, for herself, and for any reader who might still struggle with similar experiences. Hers is a loving, compassionate account of the challenges, and the breakthroughs and transformations, of women as they reflect upon the shifting meanings of these mentoring episodes in their later lives.' International Association of Jungian Studies