Mia L. McIver teaches literature and writing at UCLA. She received a Ph.D. in English literature with a specialization in critical theory from UC Irvine. Her research examines nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature’s engagement with legal and political philosophy. Her classes focus on Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, World War I literature and culture, the concept of voice, historical fiction, manifestos, US intellectual history, and the mythos of the California dream. As president of UC-AFT Local 1990, the UCLA affiliate of the labor union that represents UC lecturers and librarians, Dr. McIver organizes and advocates on behalf of 1200 UCLA faculty members and librarians.
I study how writers during and between the two World Wars used experimental narrative form to contemplate anti-democratic concentrations of executive power. My work weaves together twentieth-century history, jurisprudence, theology, and philosophy in order to appraise literary responses to political states of emergency. My other area of expertise is the role of the labor movement in California public higher education. As an elected union officer, I research how contingent faculty contribute to the UC system and how the University employs its workers. Incorporating CA state education history and policy, I analyze the effects of an increasingly casualized and precarious labor force on educational diversity and equity.
