… just a short, preliminary post with suggestions for following from afar, mostly to get one out before the academic boycott sessions #s119 ("Boycotting Israeli Academic Institutions") and #s148 ("The Academic Boycott: Taking Sides") start. Here's an online reading list to fill in any academic boycott informarion gaps you may have. If you think academia, the MLA and professional associations should be actively support social justice and be involved in movements, then you should follow and speak up in this discussion.
…tag sounds like a candidate for extreme oxymoron. This won't be as elaborate as the #MLA14 post ~ just the naked program search results. There's more on #MLA15's MLA Convention and MLA Commons pages.
Elsewhere: #subcon2015is on, with its strongest (imo) offerings today (program); #Ferguson2MLA protest is Friday; and Marc Bousquet dba #mlademocracy started an MLA $23.01 Campaign protesting. I'm especially looking forward to watching Keith Hoeller's MLA Subconferencepresentation with Jack Longmate and Frank Cosco on contingent faculty organizing ~ hope MLA Subcon livestream sound is better today. Just remember though, it's the free one that feeds you too (if you can afford to get to Vancouver). The MLA, which could afford high quality livestreaming for sessions, does not. Ever wonder why?
Anyway, back to the #MLA4Adjuncts version of the MLA 2015 Program:
…of #adjunct issue sessions. Numbers are bold red and in #hashtag format to facilitate following by Twitter. Just search #mla14 + session hashtag to see tweets from/about a particular session. Anyone can follow, no account/login required. Check the Program on MLA Convention page and lists by topic for more sessions; more links at the bottom of the page. I'll be following on Twitter from @precariousfac and @vcvaile, RT'g and posting on Facebook at A new faculty majority ~ and if you feel bad about being limited to virtual attendance and missing the meat world version, just check the Chicago weather or Google up images for Chicago + "Polar Vortex"
…it was by all accounts, a glorious convention & weekend across the #adjunct/iverse. William Pannapacker's "dispatches from the MLA" captures the glow and puts events into a broader context…a welcome antidote to a "bad fairy at the christening" rash of "least stressful job" clones that sprung up on the intertubes like cyber toadstools, stressing out proffies & adjuncts alike…but that's another story. This one belongs to us, from all the relevant sessions, a knockout Presidential Forum, MLA President Michel Bérubé’s address, the Adjunct Project/ Chronicle collaboration, site makeover and relaunch,and finally, icing on the cake, the Delegate Assembly passing the Adjunct Motion (against de-professionalization and exploitation) 115-1. Michael Bérubé’s address at this year’s Modern Language Association convention was one of a handful of times that I felt some real solidarity in the profession against the exploitation of the majority of our students and colleagues.
…a significant event & busy day for #adjunct/ency today, and not just MLA & AHA...As for the other stories, you'll just have to wait for them. Tomorrow has another major, don't miss adjunct relevant session too. Meanwhile, catch up with general higher ed news with the Inside HigherEd Daily Newsletter.
This session will discuss and review recent efforts to address the working conditions of faculty members off the tenure track and will ask what those working conditions mean for the future of American higher education. If, as the New Faculty Majority slogan has it, faculty working conditions are student learning conditions, then how should we seek to improve those conditions without devaluing the work that non-tenure-track faculty members do?
Here's an #S112 Storify (long but could have been longer). Special thanks to virtuoso tweeps, Brian Croxall, Roger Whitsun and Lee Bessette for making this Storify possible and packed with tweetalicious goodness.
I followed the event at a distance through friends on FB and the occasional text message or phone chat. I know a few people who are on the job market, and a delegation of GW English faculty were conducting interviews for our Romanticist position. And maybe that says it: the MLA convention is easy shorthand for the US academic hiring process in literature, since in hotel rooms at that conference most of the interviewing is undertaken. This year, though, I also experienced the unfolding of the meeting via Twitter.
Same here and we're not alone. Lee Skallerup tweeted and Storified MLA12 and AHA2012 without attending either. Brian Croxall tweeted both but attending just MLA12. Haystackers in Seattle and Chicago kept the back channels busy. Later, John A Casey Jr, who presented at AHA, posted thoughts on the current conference system, its frustrations, high costs and possible changes:
Yet another way that non-elite faculty are prevented from full participation in the discipline they help sustain.
Among the many changes that I hope will take place as the discipline of English is forced to evolve or disappear is a reexamination of the annual convention model....changes are all desperately needed. Maybe regional conferences affiliated with national ones could pick up the slack. Or perhaps a lot of the work needed could be done online.
In any event, if we want all the members of the profession to have a say in its future, we need something better than the traditional annual convention. The premium for attendance is too steep.
Succinct MLA 2012 overview from another not-mainstream-academic-press perspective, neither long winded blogger nor minimalist tweeter. I would have said for the broke and otherwise motivated to stay at home but now suspect these may also be necessary to fill in inevitable gaps experienced by those present IRL without benefit of T.A.R.D.I.S. Don't complain about the genre being hard to suss out.
Still no personally crafted MLA Convention-from-afar round-up, instead I spent the day community blogging, researching a story on, would you believe, the local Chamber of Commerce (which displays the same stunning disregard for transparency as highered admin), setting up for and settling into a couple of open online classes/workshops, one an experimental online super-mega-class, a MOOC.
Both delivery and subject for this last course, Learning and Knowledge Analytics, have major implications for the future of highered and academic labor. Why am I doing it? Curiosity, it's free, definitely a change of pace and, unless you are into ostrich, relevant.
Anyway, back to Post-academic's excellent MLA Convention roundup...
I would have made this a Twitter roundup, but the #mla11 feed is admirably polite and professional, aside from concerns about cliquishness among a certain group. To which I say, this is a convention, not high school, so make your own group if you don’t like the dominant group. It can be done. It’s a large convention, not a cafeteria. Watch “Police Academy” or “Stripes” or any other inspiring misfit comedy, take some notes and call me in the morning.
The message of the digression (yes, intended or not, there's a message, or subtext if you prefer): nice to hear about the convention, but we all still have lives. Haven't checked recently, but not much about #mla1 on the adj-l list, not even about the "Academy in Hard Times" opening day initiative. A different quantum universe.
Not there, LA or Boston? No problem. Subscribe to twitter feeds for #hashtag searches or a "daily" paper.li for the feed (or create one if none available). The main page of the MLA site is running a live feed. Many presenters and some panels are tagged. Every hashtag generates an RSS feed. As I type, presenters and attendees are diligently blogging and tweeting both MLA and AHA conventions. Tweets can and often do include links, some to blog posts.
This model holds for just about every conference, regardless of acronym but depending on prevalent communication technology habits and saturation.
About initiative: With the academy facing one of the most difficult periods in its history, the MLA Program Committee has designated 6 January 2011, the first day of the Los Angeles convention, as a focal point for a series of panels and workshops on the theme The Academy in Hard Times. Program and schedule for initiative sessions.
This panel, number 133, will be presenting on Thursday, January 6, at 5:15 in 406A of the LA Convention Center. Photograph from monkeyfister.blogspot.com.
I've been thinking about conferences, even though NOT thinking about conferences may be the best part of being OUT of the game. So why was I? They are professional forums. Many conferences offer sessions relevant to adjunct/ contingent faculty issues ~ employment, workplace conditions, pedagogy, professional development, etc. It's a different medium than mainstream media, local and college press or even academic press. It's where we connect with like minded and present our case to tenured colleagues. Continuing presence is an expensive strategy so track and coordinat for maximum effectiveness.
MLA 2009, past
AHA 2010, past
CCCC 2010 - recently past
AAC&U, "Faculty Roles in High-Impact Practices" - this weekend, Philadelphia
AFT-NEA - this weekend, San Jose
CEA 2010: Voices - this weekend, San Antonio
TESOL 2010 - ongoing, Boston
Working Class Studies, "How Class Works" - upcoming, Stony Brook
