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From the Editor: Privilege, Reflection, and Solidarity Amy Lynch-Biniek
Four years ago, I was at a weeks-long academic writing seminar workshopping a research project on the effects of labor status on the curricular choices of composition faculty. I was very proud of this work, focused on an issue I'm passionate about. One of the leaders of the seminar offered me some productive feedback on my study, but then added this: "Be careful, Amy, or you'll make your whole career on the backs of adjuncts."
His words offered me an important moment of critical reflection, a reminder that my status as a tenured assistant professor could lead me to lose sight of the privilege embedded in my writing about contingency. My research into adjunct labor, including the work of editing this journal, allows me to apply for promotions and have positive post-tenure reviews. Even my activism can be exchanged as "service" to spend as academic capital. In a position of relative safety, I'm positioned to disproportionately benefit from such work.
Of course, in some sense, all tenure-track (TT) faculty have careers because of the work of adjuncts. For example, Seth Kahn points out, "All too often . . . colleagues bemoan the exploitation of contingent faculty while making professional choices that directly feed that exploitation" (A12-13). He outlines just a few such choices: "taking on research and administrative assignments that require part-time replacements; opting out of general education courses that are taught primarily by contingent faculty when taking those reassignments; failing to hire and evaluate contingent faculty rigorously, carefully, and supportively" (A13). Making contingency in higher education the focus of one's scholarship, our other academic collateral, adds another layer to the context that not only allows TT faculty careers to exist, but to advance. In this issue, Jes Philbrook and Michelle LaFrance interview Nancy Welch and Tony Scott regarding their 2016 collection Composition in the Age of Austerity. Welch and Scott note that growing attention to labor conditions has led to some significant improvements, but "also led to quite a few scholarly publications, so many that agitation for better working conditions can sometimes look like its own professional career path." I hear in this an echo of the warning I received at that writing seminar.
TT...