Negotiating the Paradox: Adjuncts & Writing

Part of what I've been doing in this blog is noodling around the questions of how adjunct writers' circumstances affect their writing (and writing teaching), and, by implication, to what extend adjuncts are working in special circumstances.…

Last week we shared the first portion of an interview with Dr. Kirk Astle, Director of College Writing at Baker College Online. This week we conclude that interview.   Adjunct Advocate: How much of the composition faculty at Baker is…

This week we're shifting focus a bit. Dana S. Dunn is Professor of Psychology at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Moravian is a small and selective liberal arts college with a long and distinguished history. Professor Dunn has…

I received a brief and surprising email today. The first surprise was that the email arrived at all. You see, I'd emailed Elizabeth Strout, whose complex and often lovely novel in stories Olive Kitteridge. (If you haven't read Olive…

Part of what I've been doing in this blog is noodling around the questions of how adjunct writers' circumstances affect their writing (and writing teaching), and, by implication, to what extend adjuncts are working in special circumstances.…

Scholars on the tenure-track have contextual support to write and publish. In the best positions, this takes the form of course release time and internal grants to fund sabbaticals, research trips, and reflective writing. On the other…

When I was in graduate school I was pulled towards two different realities. On one hand, the faculty encouraged scholarship. More than once I was essentially told that to be a real academic, I had to publish. In some cases, I was told…

I'm not sure how I feel about wordriver, but I'm glad it exists, and I'm wildly intrigued. You see, wordriver is a new (as of 2009) literary journal. Like many other little magazines, wordriver publishes short stories, poetry, and personal…

One of the things that struck me when I started working on this blog was how little research had been done into the great sea change of academic labor that is using adjuncts instead of tenure-track faculty. However, little research is not…

In his recent (2009) book Designing the Smart Organization author Roland Deiser primarily focuses on learning in the corporate environment. In fact, one of his starting points is the claim that traditional models of education (such as those…