Biography
Michael McLaughlin is a PhD candidate in the Religion Department at Florida State University. He researches and teaches about religion in the United States with an emphasis on the intersections of religion and race. His dissertation traces the interplay between religion, firearms, and Black resistance in twentieth-century America. Through his dissertation he seeks to create space for new, subversive histories of religion and firearms in America that center Black actors. McLaughlin earned a B.S. in Astrophysics from the University of Minnesota before switching gears and earning an M.A. in Religion from the Claremont School of Theology. Throughout his academic journey he has kept a focus on the ways in which religion impacts Americans’ lives beyond the boundaries of formal religious institutions. From 2019-2021 McLaughlin served as the Graduate Student Representative for the Southeastern region of the AAR. He also served as co-director of Florida State University’s Graduate Student Symposium in 2019 and 2020. Beyond the academy, he volunteers as a bike mechanic at a local non-profit that provides bikes to low-income people in need of transportation, and is also an activist with a local, grassroots, direct-action organization called the Tallahassee Community Action Committee.
Candidate Statement
I am honored to be nominated for the Student Director position on the AAR Board of Directors. Since attending my first annual meeting in 2017, I have come to appreciate, and grow more deeply involved with, the work of the AAR at both the national and regional levels. Through my previous work serving as the Graduate Student Representative for the Southeastern region of the AAR, I came to understand the challenges of running an academic organization, while also recognizing the ways in which I as a graduate student can affect change within the larger organization.
As a regional Graduate Student Representative, I served on the national AAR Graduate Student Council and helped run the GSC’s Annual Meeting programming, including co-coordinating the 2020 GSC’s Special Topics Forum on hospitality and the academy. If elected Student Representative I would work to ensure this programming continues to be relevant and accessible to students.
As graduate students who perform the majority of teaching hours at many universities, yet often rely on additional jobs to make ends meet, we know the need, but also the difficulty, of being fairly compensated for our labor. While serving as graduate student representative for the Southeastern region I learned our website manager was a graduate student working for free. I raised this issue with the board and helped secure our website manager both financial compensation for her work, as well as a place at our board meetings. If elected Student Representative I will maintain this commitment to ensuring students are recognized for our vital contributions to the academy.
As a queer, White cisman at a large public research university, my experience is not representative of the AAR’s student body as a whole. Therefore, I find it imperative to not merely listen, but to take direction from transwomen of color and other folks whose voices continue to be ignored and dismissed by people who look like me. As regional representative, I worked with my SBL counterpart to conduct a survey of our region’s graduate students’ visions for what the region’s annual meeting might be. If elected Student Director I will continue to find ways to ensure my voice on the board speaks the concerns of the most marginalized students in the AAR.
The ongoing pandemic is causing us to restructure how we conduct academic work. As students, we are the future of the academy, an academy which features a disconnect between academic training and the job market. As the AAR builds its post-pandemic future, we need an organization which supports all students including those who do not get, or want, a traditional faculty job. Crafting such a future will be hard work and will require us to rethink our basic assumptions as a guild. But by collaborating together and centering the needs and perspectives of those least compensated for their contributions, we can build a better AAR. I would be honored to do my part, with your help, to ensure marginalized students’ perspectives are central to AAR’s post-pandemic future.