Jeffrey Williams’ article on literary theory and scholarly publishing in this week’s Chronicle Review ends with a far-reaching remark:
“Departing from the wild speculation and heady pronouncements of the theory years, one of the few distinctive new strands in recent criticism focuses on academic labor.”
It’s true, and there is a good reason. It is that the modes of training, hiring, and promotion have reached the point of affecting just about every aspect of humanities thought and practice. Younger and older scholars always have to keep an eye on the institutional meaning of what they say and write, not just its scholarly import.
And so, many of the most interesting books today focus upon the actual conditions for graduate student, lecturer, adjunct, and assistant professor. (Nobody wants to hear about life after tenure.) And the best of them connect those conditions to the books, articles, talks, and teaching people do without giving a simple materialist explanation for them.
Here are some studies from recent times:
The Employment of English: Theory, Jobs, and the Future of Literary Study, by Michael Berube
Gypsy Scholars, Migrant Teachers and the Global Academic Proletariat: Adjunct Labor in Higher Education, edited by Rudolphus Teeuwen and Steffen Hantke
Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons from the First Year, by James Lang
The Questions of Tenure, by Philip G. Altbach, Roger Baldwin, Jay L. Chronister, and Charles Clotfelter
How the University Works: Higher Education and Low Wage Nation, by Marc Bousquet
And here at The Chronicle is a list of articles about tenure and labor relations.
If there are other recommendations, please add them.
