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Books

Smithers, L. E., Fischer, H., & Watrous, F. (2024). Impact/impasse: Revaluing university classroom life. SUNY Press. https://sunypress.edu/Books/I/Impact-Impasse

Journal Articles

Smithers, L. E., Eaton, P.W., & Flint, M. A. (2025). Administrative life in the time before crisis: Affect and the codependency of data and fear. Critical Studies in Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2025.2472003

Smithers, L. (2024). Better future outcomes now: How speculative reform rewrites the present in American higher education policy. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 56(6), 51-56. https://doi.org/10.1080/00091383.2024.2419348

Eaton, P. W., Smithers, L. E., & Flint, M. A. (2024). Critical inquiry in and against twenty-first century authoritarian times. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 24(5), 331-342. https://doi.org/10.1177/15327086241246025

Smithers, L. E., & Mazzei, L. A. (2024). Minor pedagogy: Education as continuous variation. Educational Philosophy and Theory 56(10), 978-987. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2024.2336021

Smithers, L. E., Fischer, H., & Watrous, F. (2023). Impasses of affective inquiry in pandemic times. International Review of Qualitative Research, 16(2), 128-145. https://doi.org/10.1177/19408447221097634

Smithers, L. E. (2023). The production of alter-competence: Wonder in Graduate Preparation Program coursework. Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, 60(4), 521-536. https://doi.org/10.1080/19496591.2022.2111520

Flint, M. A., Eaton, P. W., & Smithers, L. E. (2023). (Navigating-Circling-Un/Doing)~Post-Qualitative Inquiry: A Collective Biography. Qualitative Inquiry, 29(6), 686-697. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004221126699

Smithers, L. E. (2023). Fuck it: Profaning methodology. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, 12(1), 4-26. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2023.12.1.4

Smithers, L. E. (2023). Predictive analytics and the creation of the permanent present. Learning, Media and Technology, 48(1), 109-121. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2022.2036757

Smithers, L. E. (2022). The value of the useless: Erin Manning, impact, higher education research, progress. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 13(3), 102-118. https://doi.org/10.7577/rerm.5146

Smithers, L. E. & Eaton, P. W. (2021). Reordering student affairs: From minority absorption to a radical new. Critical Studies in Education, 62(5), 575-591. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2019.1657159

Smithers, L. E., Fischer, H., & Stafford, L. K. (2021). Ordinary engagements: The everyday creation of a high-impact practice. Journal of College Student Development, 62(4), 405-421. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2021.0044

Franklin-Phipps, A., & Smithers, L. E. (2021). Queer Black adolescence, the impasse, and the pedagogy of cinema. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 53(7), 728-739. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1811677

Smithers, L. E. (2020). Student success as preemption: Predictive constructions of futures-to-never-come. Futures, 124, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2020.102639

Smithers, L. E. (2020). Every optimization is a policy failure: The catch (and release) of student success. About Campus, 25(5), 11-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086482220961129

Smithers, L. E. (2020). Reconceptualizing college impact studies through a fractal assemblage theory. Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education, 2(2), 89-114. https://doi.org/10.3726/PTIHE022020.0005

Brooks, S. D., Dean, A. S., Franklin-Phipps, A., Mathis, E., Rath, C. L., Raza, N., Smithers, L. E., & Sundstrom, K. (2020). Becoming-academic in the neoliberal academy: A collective biography. Gender & Education, 32(3), 281-300. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2017.1332341

Eaton, P. W., & Smithers, L. E. (2020). This is not a checklist: Competencies as neoliberal protocol and poetics as experiments (in)tension. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(5), 560-574. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2019.1679624

Mazzei, L. A., Graham, M. G., and Smithers, L. E. (2020). Enactments of a minor inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(3-4), 306-316. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418809743

Mazzei, L. A. & Smithers, L. E. (2020). Qualitative inquiry in the making: A minor pedagogy. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(1), 99-108. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419869966

Smithers, L. E. (2019). Liberal education and the Capitalocene in American higher education. Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education, 1(1), 85-103. https://doi.org/10.3726/ptihe.2019.01.05

Critical Genealogies Collaboratory. (2018). Standard forms of power: Biopower and sovereign power in the technology of the U.S. birth certificate, 1903-1935. Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, 25(4), 641-656. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12372 [The Collaboratory: Colin Koopman, Bonnie Sheehey, Patrick Jones, Laura Smithers, Sarah Hamid, & Claire Pickard]

Smithers, L. E. & Eaton, P. W. (2017). Nomadic subjectivity: Movement in contemporary student development theory. Thresholds in Education, 40(1), 68-92.

Book Chapters

Flint, M. E., Eaton, P. W., & Smithers, L. E. (2026). Speculation as radical present: Tending hopeful futures in higher education pedagogy and practice. In S. Hrastinski (Ed.), Education fiction: Reimagining teaching and learning. Routledge.

Smithers, L. (2026). Desiring machines: The sociotechnical production of datafication in higher education. In F. Fernandez, N. Hutchens, R. Dean Divaker, V. Miller, & B. Hephner LaBanc (Eds.), The Digitized Campus: Artificial Intelligence and Big Data in Higher Education. State University of New York Press.

Smithers, L. E. (2019). How should institutions of higher education redefine and measure student success? Student success as liberal education escapes definition and measurement. In P. M. Magolda, M. B. Baxter-Magolda, and R. Carducci (Eds.), Contested Issues in Troubled Times: Student Affairs Dialogues About Equity, Civility, and Safety (pp. 127-137). Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Book Reviews

Smithers, L. E. (2018). Contemporary philosophical proposals for the university: Toward a philosophy of higher education by Aaron Stoller & Eli Kramer, editors [Book review]. Critical Questions in Education, 9(2), 156-161.