[Usually around
this time I’d be sharing Fall Semester Preview posts. I’m on sabbatical, so no
teaching for me this Fall; instead I thought I’d connect Labor Day to issues of
academic labor this week. Leading up
to a special weekend tribute post!]
A handful of the
many texts and sites (in no particular order) that can help us continue
thinking about and advocating for issues of academic labor:
1)
Contingent magazine:
Well, I lied—I did make one choice about the order of these five items, and
that’s to start with one that doesn’t focus in its content on issues of academic
labor. Instead, what makes this new public history magazine so important is
that it is dedicated to publishing the voices and work of contingent faculty,
and similarly is largely edited and run by colleagues in contingent positions
(which makes becoming a donor
to help keep the magazine going that much more vital). Publishing as an
academic is difficult in all circumstances, but it can at times be nearly
impossible for adjunct faculty, and this wonderful new publication represents a
direct attempt to respond to and change those realities.
2)
New
Faculty Majority: As I wrote on Tuesday, adjunct unionization has begun to
become a genuine possibility in many places, and I am entirely here for it. But
up until recently it wasn’t really possible (and it’s still not in many other
places), and in the meantime NFM
has for more than a decade been offering examples of both solidarity and
labor activism for adjunct and contingent faculty around the country. I know I’m
asking for money a good bit in this post (not my general MO, at least), but
this is another organization that can really benefit from every donation,
and more exactly our most precarious colleagues can benefit from them.
3)
Adjunct
Nation: The Adjunct Nation website also features various forms of legal and
labor advocacy and activism, but it’s also more of a journalistic and community
site, one that features numerous voices engaging with topics as widespread as news
coverage, book reviews, job postings, pedagogical tips and strategies, and
more. To reiterate Wednesday’s post, these are the kinds of conversations and
issues that every scholarly organization (and every academic institution)
should be featuring and sharing as well, but it’s not either-or, and a site
like Adjunct Nation offers a great deal for all faculty members.
4)
James M.
Lang and Josh Eyler: Academic
labor isn’t just about adjunct and contingent issues, of course, and it would
be dangerous to pretend that these conversations don’t affect us all in
multiple key ways. One way to push back on those narratives is to read the
folks who are writing most thoughtfully about academic labor, teaching and
learning, and related questions, and Lang and Eyler are two of those current
voices for sure (as is my FSU colleague Kisha
Tracy). Voices that have a great deal to tell us about our current academy
as well as overarching and longstanding topics.
5)
Hua Hsu’s “The
Professor and the Adjunct”: Just one review essay in one magazine (albeit
one by one of our best public scholarly journalistic voices in Hsu), but a
great example of both the burgeoning body of writing on adjunct and contingent
labor and of the fundamental questions that can be asked and engaged through
reading those works. I hope in a small way this week’s series has added
something to those continued and crucial conversations.
Special tribute
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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