Date of Award

Winter 1-21-2026

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Education

First Advisor

Eilene Edejer

Second Advisor

Pamela Fenning

Abstract

In the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, the idea of alienation took hold across the United States as a way of explaining feelings of disconnection, powerlessness, and meaninglessness that seemed to be pervading American society. This was no less true on college and university campuses, where students engaged in protest over both government action and inaction and a new youth counterculture took root. What led to alienation’s prominence as a social phenomenon is a matter of some debate, as are the causes of its precipitous decline in the early 70s. However, after an extended silence more recent decades have seen something of a shift, with renewed attention to alienation as a lens for thinking through students’ experience on campus. This, in particular, given accumulating attention to the commodification of higher education and its related degree(s), the portrayal of students as consumers, challenges to the liberal arts as an approach to learning, and what is often described as a transactional approach to education. In the wake of these changes, and facing growing pressures to produce, perform, and attain, many students describe encountering an educational experience that has left them feeling powerless, overwhelmed, and questioning the value of the degree that they seek. This dissertation seeks to address their experience. While it is understood that colleges and universities as institutions have a significant role to play in responding to students who are feeling alienated on campus, equally critical is providing students with a resource of their own towards restoring their sense of agency in relation to learning. Thus, turning to Rahel Jaeggi’s work revitalizing alienation theory, I argue that for students to engage more effectively and meaningfully in education, they need both time and space to slow down and to ask themselves what they seek as concerns the degree that they are pursuing and its related outcomes. In doing so, I engage Jaeggi with critical pedagogues—including, and predominantly, Maxine Greene—asserting that through its attention to transformation and self-realization, as well as its contention that one is formed through one’s engagement with the world as praxis, Jaeggi’s concept of appropriation offers ‘pedagogical possibilities’ for supporting students in their educational journey and in their capacities as agents, learners, and critical thinkers.

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