If you haven’t checked out InkWork, well, you should. Even if it’s only to understand the references I am about to make in this post. You see, Seth, Amy, and I have been writing about contingent faculty issues of late.

Over the past couple of days a conversation I had with my friends Pegeen and Doug a couple of years ago is coming back to me in pieces. My memory seems to work that way. I’ve never been good with quick recall. It seems many of my memories go into a kind of deep sleep and are slow to wake. They come back slowly, emerge–overlapping conversations; images places and contexts, fragments of words, feelings, and ideas. With focus I can call these spirits back–but they need to know they are welcome and are being called for a reason.

The conversation in question had to do with hospitality. To be honest, I can’t remember (yet) what got us on the topic. I think that Pegeen was writing on hospitality…or thinking about it as a critical category. I think that, but that part of the memory is not, yet, awake. I remember that we talked about the role of hospitality in our families. About how hospitality carries with it a whole web of reciprocal relationships…reminding me of anthropological and theoretical discussions of gift economies and the possibilities of giving.

Anyway, I think that conversation came back because of some of the InkWork discussion of contingent faculty. I don’t know how to think about this issue without thinking about the importance of the very terms of our discussion–the language we use to talk about “contingent” faculty. It seems there are no “good” words here. “Contingent,” “adjunct,” “temporary,” “part-time.” Each terms carries baggage–or, better, frames our ways of thinking about “contingent” faculty. Consider this discussion of “contingency” posted on Wikipedia:

In philosophy and logic, contingency is the status of facts that are not logically necessarily true or false. Contingency is opposed to necessity: a contingent act is an act which could have not been, an act which is not necessary (could not have not been). Contingency differs from possibility, in a formal sense, as the latter includes statements which are necessarily true as well as not necessarily false, while a statement cannot be said to be contingent if it is true necessarily.

In colloquial English, a contingency is something that can happen, but that generally is not anticipated. Planning for contingencies often requires a more imaginative approach, because contingencies are inherently not obvious. Large organizations, such as governments, are often criticized for not planning for contingencies because the construction of plans to deal with contingencies often involves thinking outside the box. Beforehand, contingencies are hard to predict; this failure to appreciate contingencies ahead of time has led to the formulation of Murphy’s law.

“Contingent” faculty…faculty that “could not have been” or may not be? Contingent upon…what? Necessity? My point here is not simply to play with words. Rather, it is to suggest, along with all those folks interested in “framing,” that language carries ideas without any work on our part (Lakoff 4). I wouldn’t say that language determines the practices…but I would say that without thinking through the work that language does, we reinforce and reinscribe the practices and ideas carried by the language we use.

For example, the contractual language to describe contingent faculty here is “temporary faculty.” Temporary. Not permanent. Fleeting. Here today, gone tomorrow. But “temporary” and the more often used term “temp” connects us to the likes of ManPower, Kelly Services, or even The Office. “Temporary” reinforces the contingent nature of the position and constantly underscores one’s lack of job security. It also undercuts the professional character of being a faculty member. Ryan understood this.

I think this is one of the main reasons why Janice, the chair of our department, insists upon using the term “visiting faculty” instead of “temps.” It’s that term “visiting” that got me thinking about hospitality and my conversation with Pegeen and Doug. What kind of hospitality does one show visitors? I think that the connection between our social codes on hospitality and visitors might be suggestive of how we might re-articulate how we interact with “temporary” faculty. Don’t get me wrong, hospitality does not and should not take the place of a struggle to end universities (and most neoliberal industries) reliance upon contingent labor and the accompanying de-professionalization of academic work. However, given the fact that hospitality makes demands upon the “hosts” as well as the visitors, it might be interesting to explore that frame.

For example, “good hosts” does not put up their visitors in dirty basements. You don’t invite people over for dinner and feed them yesterday’s left-overs while you eat a hot, freshly made meal.  There are problems with this concept, of course.  Visitors are not supposed to overstay their welcome.  Very often there is a premium placed on “nice” conversation–avoiding “hot” topics in order to keep the conversation pleasant.  But what is interesting to me is the fact that hospitality foregrounds people not positions.

Who knows…tomorrow I might find the concept too problematic…or deeply flawed…but I am chewing on it now, so I thought I’d share.

I’m back in my little concrete brick office.  I’ve returned from spring break with a worse sinus infection than when I left and now it seems like that nasty bug that my in-laws and nephew and nieces had is paying me a visit.  I’m always slow with transitions, but today I am dragging more than usual.

I did get quite a bit done over break despite not feeling so great.  All the final edits of the book (with Rachel Riedner) are done.  May pub date is on!  That’s good.  I also read a lot.  It’s weird to acknowledge that my job as an academic does not allow me a whole lot of time to read and/or write during the semester.  I’m changing that a bit though…trying to re-prioritize and make that space.

Anyway, not much to say…I just had a few minutes before class and wanted to reacquaint myself with Dionysus.  Turns out, he’s not around right now.  So, back to my concrete office I go.

That’s right…breaking news from the blogosphere: Seth Kahn’s got a blog!  So, do yourself a favor and check out Here Comes Trouble for a window into Seth’s world!

I just read Tony Scott’s, “The Cart, the Horse, and the Road They are Driving Down: Thinking Ecologically about a New Writing Major,” from the Spring 2007 issue of Composition Studies. On the forth page in, I actually wrote, “hmmm…you interest me, sir.” Whatever. I do that.

Anyway, my point of logging back on tonight and writing is because I found myself with Scott, then arguing with him (OK, with his article). Back and forth the whole way. Scott’s article takes issue with Kathleen Blake Yancey’s 2004 CCCCs chairs address–in particular the lack of a consideration of labor when thinking about developing new undergraduate writing majors. Scott recounts Yancey’s proposal for “new writing majors” as follows:

Yancey proposed a major that emphasizes the ability to adapt to new trends in technology, and rhetoric as situated action. Yancey’s proposal realizes that emerging digital technologies are dramatically changing literacy and that academic writing is increasingly disconnected from the shape that writing is taking virtually everywhere other than classrooms. Postmodern in content and form, the proposal blends visual rhetoric with a creative style of explication, and resists framing the major itself in terms of what one might call traditional disciplinary content (83).

Scott calls attention to Yancey’s focus on circulation–in particular, her desire to have a range of “approaches” to composition “all oriented to the circulation of texts, to genre, to media, and to ways that writing gets made, both individually and culturally” (Yancey, qtd in Scott, 83).

While Scott is sympathetic to Yancey’s interest in grounding a writing major around the concept of circulation (he raises questions–good ones–about how we should theorize circulation), he points out a serious gap in Yancey’s proposal: Labor.

While I certainly find aspects of Yancey’s proposal very engaging and reflective of current scholarly concerns, her avoidance of institutional factors–of the material terms of labor that frame everyday writing pedagogy and the production of students’ texts–is crucial. This avoidance becomes especially salient when Yancy asserts that “First-year composition is a place to begin carrying this [major] forward…” (315). The proposal doesn’t mention the circumstances under which first-year composition is typically taught: it doesn’t mention contingent teaching labor, or the fact that professional scholars with Ph.D.s in rhetoric and composition don’t actually teach the overwhelming majority of first-year composition classes. If professionals in rhetoric and composition who are in a position to do so “carry forward” from first-year composition, will it be as managers and theorizers of a project that further expands the de-professionalization of teaching in academia? (83).

Bread and roses, brother. Seriously. I got my union up. This is exactly the kind of critique that needs to be made of any proposal for a new writing major. As a matter of fact, that is the critique I made of the proposal for a new General Education curriculum not to long ago here. The idea of a new General Education curriculum like a new writing major is great in the abstract. But what happens when you consider issues of labor? The question I raised to then-provost Rinker was “how will we staff an additional 95 sections of a new General Education course?” No answer. In fact, as it turns out, several key articles in the General Education Restructuring Team’s toolbox argued that any attempts to reform General Education curriculum should avoid discussing any issues of resources. Why? Well, you know, that would lead to “turf wars.” My question was aimed at dealing with the question of content and resources as inextricably linked. But I digress (and will do so again later). [note: this is the importance of "having the fight." That is, not of "giving up" FYC, but staking a claim around issues of labor]

After a very useful discussion of activity theory and marxist theories of circulation, Scott returns to his focus on labor: composition programs–even those programs that have become well established, Ph.D. granting departments–still rely heavily upon contingent labor. Despite the fact that comp/rhet argues furiously for the importance of writing, we still staff the majority of our first-year courses with contingent faculty.

So, the $64,000 question: what is to be done?

And here is where I end up arguing out-loud with the pages in my hands. Here’s where Scott leads us:

Institutional transformation is necessarily local and varied, so eroding the numbers of courses taught by people who don’t hold full professional status will involve a number of measures, perhaps including abandoning the first-year requirement. The issues of “abolition” and situated administrative pragmatism are well-covered and beyond the scope of this essay, but with the development of a variety of classes staffed by fully-vested professional teachers, we might see letting go of first-year composition programs in their present incarnations as liberating. Rhetoric and composition might be able to move into a post-writing program era. Professionals in rhetoric and composition can then get out of the business of teacher management, and postsecondary writing pedagogy can be less constrained by technocratic mechanisms, such as mandatory syllabi and textbooks, and coercive assessments of teachers and student texts. More writing classes can be taught under conditions that enable professionally informed divergence and experimentation in pedagogy (90).

What’s my beef? Well, it’s what’s bypassed by giving up on first-year composition. First, there’s the issue about the purpose of the course and the reason why it is supposed to exist–”supposed to” in the pedagogically sound version, not as the “gatekeeper.” But, more to the point of Scott’s argument, the issue of labor does not go away. Instead of an organizing campaign to unionize contingent faculty, we get downsizing and lay-offs. And, I would argue, we get further de-professionalization insofar as the needs of our students do not go away with the “abolition” of the first-year course. More likely than not the work of tutoring–both through colleges and universities and new on-line writing labs–will be contracted out. When Nike rose as one of the “super brands” it hired the best and the brightest to “build the brand” and engage in “quasi-spiritual marketing,” to use Naomi Klein’s term. But those folks did not make the shoes. Production was contracted out. Out of sight, out of mind.

I get concerned about these kind of moves insofar as the alternative of organizing contingent faculty and/or organizing to take back higher education from the logic of the market fades away. Perhaps I will see this differently in the morning when I am not so tired and my fingers and wrists are not burning with carpal tunnel. I just didn’t want to lose these thoughts in my sleep.

I can’t put my finger on it, but it seems like it’s time to build.  Maybe it’s because I’m just worn out.  But I don’t think that’s it. All I know is that I continually find myself looking at other Comp/Rhet program and imagining the possibilities at Kutztown.  It is just coincidence that I stumble across an issue of Composition Studies from last spring dedicated to the emerging trend toward undergraduate majors in writing, writing studies, cultural rhetoric, and the like?  Is it happenstance that I’m reading Rebecca Moore Howard’s article in said journal and hear echoes of my own arguments? Signs.  Swing away, Merill.

As I’m reading about different programs I’m sketching visual representations of curricula.  Overlapping egg shapes circled by satellites of course clusters.  I need to see things visually if I have any hope of holding onto my thoughts.  A few months ago the possibility of building courses and curricula seemed like wishful thinking.  Or, at least, hardly worth the effort.  Something has shifted.

Best I can tell, it’s linked to the work I’ve done with the union these past several years.  I’m thinking that because of a comment I made to a colleague last week.  I said to her I wanted to bring what I learned over the past couple of years in the union back home.  I don’t know if it’s stranger that I called our little comp program “home” or that I made the link between my union work and my comp work.   Maybe it’s because our vote of no confidence discussions–which have occupied most of this semester–have begun to bear fruit.  Maybe in this little spring break pause has been enough for me to reflect a bit.

I mean I look back at how far we’ve come as a union over the past 4 years and I am amazed.   Most of our new leadership were untenured and/or temporary faculty when we were elected to our Executive Committee.  While some people warned us to “keep our heads down” until we got tenure, or reminded us that “things are not done that way at Kutztown,” we worked.  We worked for the kind of union we thought we should have.  We didn’t settle for “good enough” or “no other choice.”  I look back now and am pleasantly surprised to see the synergy between my writing and my union work.  I guess it’s time for that kind of work to come “home.”

I also said to that same colleague that my preferred approach to leading our program is to create spaces for discussion and conversation.  But now, I said, I think it’s time to begin to assert our program a little more.  Time to work for what we would like to see, not only what is “good enough” or safe.  I’m looking forward to that.

That’s a good question. I could make a very pragmatic case here: that this here WordPress blog is a heck of a lot easier to update and keep current than the old Composition web pages. It looks nicer too. While that is true, I think there is actually a programmatic reason for it as well.

You see, our little Composition-program-that-could consists of four tenured or tenure-track faculty. With only four tenured or tenure-track faculty, a perfectly reasonable question to ask would be: “who teaches all the classes?” That’s really the key question. Our little program, or area, or “interest group,” could not possibly cover the 140+ sections of ENG 021, 022, 023, and 025 our department teaches each year. That does not even include our Advanced Composition, upper-division, and graduate courses.

Most of our Composition courses are taught by faculty whose primary training is not in Composition. Some of those faculty may have had some course work and training in Composition, but Composition is not their primary area of study. In addition, depending upon the semester, many or most of our Composition courses are staffed by full-time, temporary faculty. Over the past several years, we have had at least two temporary faculty members who have degrees in Composition and Rhetoric. But overall the pattern holds: most of our Composition courses are not taught by people trained in Composition. What that means is that Kutztown is right up there with most other colleges and universities in this country. Sad, but true.

When I first came to Kutztown in 2002, one of the things that intrigued me was that Janice and Linda (then the two musketeers) were not interested in me “buying into” one version of Composition. Rather, they were interested in what I could bring to the program. When it comes down to it, we each have very different approaches to Composition. Yet, these differences do not cause tensions–rather, they form part of our local conversation about Composition. When we hired Amy in 2006, we extended that same principle–we are not interested in a cookie-cutter version of Composition. Amy has added another voice to a growing and dynamic conversation about writing, literacy, pedagogy, labor, program development, and everything else Comp.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I wind my way through my posts. I am neither any good at, nor have much desire to “get to the point.” Sure, I can do it when the situation requires. But I would much rather inhabit a different kind of space in my writing. And this is, after all, my writing. As you will certainly see, our other Compositionists will also add their voices, their writing here. And you, dear reader, will be privy to a slice of our conversations.

And that is the point of this blog (at least from my perspective). If I had to describe the character of our program, it would be as a conversation. Part of the reason for this is pragmatic: how could you “dictate” a particular approach to Composition to faculty who may not have training in Composition or who may or may not be here in a year or two? Furthermore, how do you maintain a program when some of the most dynamic and engaged Composition teachers are “temporary?” It is our differences that make for a dynamic conversation about Composition. In this light, all of our committees, weekly “Composition Conversations,” reading groups, and interest group meetings animate our program. So, instead of having one “statement” telling you “who we are,” I thought we could show you instead…

Welcome to the home of Composition and Rhetoric at Kutztown University. We hope that this site will provide a portal into our composition program, our course offerings, and the broader field of Composition and Rhetoric. And, yes, I do realize that this post is the same post as the one on the home page. Well, it’s not anymore since I wrote this. And this. Now it’s different. A revision of sorts.

While many people may associate Composition and Rhetoric with first-year writing courses, the five paragraph essay, or strategies for arguing, the scope of Composition and Rhetoric is both deeper and more vast than these narrow categories. In fact, these narrow categories for understanding Composition-even College Composition-can inhibit an inquiry into writing that is increasingly important and necessary in the complex world of the 21st Century.To be sure, developing both confidence and competence in the conventions of “academic writing” is crucial for one’s college and professional career. However, these conventions are not set in stone like a mathematic formula (indeed, we would argue that even mathematic formulas are not set in stone!). Rather, one’s ability to communicate effectively in today’s environment requires a deeper understanding the complex rhetorical situation in which we find ourselves and the “available means” we have at our disposal to be heard above the clutter.

To make the case more concretely, today’s careers place a premium on being able to communicate effectively through writing. A recent report by the National Commission on Writing found that top business leaders around the country see effective writing directly connected to being successful in today’s workplace. While writing has always been an important in the workplace, today’s business leaders note that today’s high-tech, globalized workplace makes writing all that more important.

But the importance of writing is not limited to job prospects. We would argue that writing is instrumental to the health of our democracy. Active citizens need to be able to analyze arguments and make arguments in the public sphere. In addition to more traditional “town halls” today’s public sphere is a literate one-one that takes place on the Internet, on social networking sites, and in the blogosphere. These emerging modes of communication represent the “new writing” in a globalized, interconnected world. Today’s democracy needs citizens who can critically navigate and engage in these public spheres.

In short, one may encounter the field of Composition and Rhetoric for the first time in their College Composition course during their first semester at Kutztown. However, inquiry into writing should carry on all throughout one’s college career and professional life. This is one space for that on-going conversation.