CAUGHT BETWEEN THE KITCHEN AND THE NEOLIBERAL ACADEMY: AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHY OF CHEF PRACADEMICS

In the era of neoliberalism in higher education, chef pracademics—defined in this study as culinary professionals who have made the transition into tenure-track faculty role—navigate a difficult intersection between vocational authenticity and academic legitimacy. Grounded by neoliberal critiques, role theory, and narrative identity, this dissertation explored how chef pracademics experience, resist, and adapt to the corporatized structures of research-intensive universities. The research methodology was an autoethnography centering the lived experiences of five tenured chef pracademics alongside the author’s own transition from executive chef to academic. The data generation methods included multi-session interactive interviews with each participant, material artifact documentation, and a series of autoethnographic introspection. For the analysis, I followed the Sort and Sift, Think and Shift process, which led me to four narrative threads: (1) Fracturing and Rupturing of One’s Identity, which discussed a severance from culinary identity upon entering academia; (2) The Meritocracy Myth, which exposed the gendered and structural inequities masquerading as fair systems; (3) Hazed into Behavioral Lock-In, which illustrated socialized chef pracademics to accept academic norms through implicit pressures and outdated rituals; and (4) Hospitality Academy’s Awkward Founding and Continued Frailty, which unpacked the academy’s historical origins and its continued struggles in the neoliberal system. Findings show that chef pracademics, despite their abilities to not only survive but thrive in the tenure-track system, still fall prey to the hospitality academy’s frailty in the neoliberal system. While they are able to assert themselves as both scholar and practitioner, the frailty of the academy looms large. This dissertation contributes to critical conversations in hospitality academy and higher education, calling for better support structures for those who live between practical and theoretical worlds.