Tag Archives: CFP

Call for Papers: The Labour of COVID section of Workplace (Deadline Extended)

As instructors and students brace for a fall semester taught on-line, the effects of COVID on the labour of post-secondary learning continue to set in. Course outlines and assessment criteria are being reworked. Students wrestle with rising tuition and the prospects of prolonged periods of unemployment. As recent Canadian Association of University Teachers survey results suggest, the pandemic is making higher education even less tenable for current and prospective students. International students stuck in their home countries will be forced to participate in classes across time zones. Research programs are being put on hold. Making matters worse, the gutting of teaching and learning resources at some universities have forced administrators to piece together support for instructors and staff ill-equipped to make the transition on-line. Workloads have increased.  But in the midst of this crisis, some post-secondary institutions seek opportunity to advance particular agendas. It was only after significant backlash from students and lecturers that the UK’s Durham University halted its attempt at providing online-only degrees in its effort to significantly cut in-person teaching. In Alberta, the government has merely delayed a performance-based funding model as a result of COVID, signaling that austerity, not improving the quality of education, is driving policy decisions. Meaningful interventions by faculty associations have been limited as the collegial governance process is sidelined for the sake of emergency pandemic measures. And what of academic and support staff who face increase workloads and the prospects of limited child care when the fall semester resumes? To this concern, what are the gendered effects of COVID? What do these circumstances mean for precariously employed sessional and term instructors? This special edition of Workplace invites all academic workers to make sense of COVID through a work and employment lens. Possible themes include:

  • Faculty association responses to a shift towards on-line education
  • “Mission creep” and the lure of distant learning for post-secondary institutions: opportunities and threats
  • The gendered and racialized implications of COVID in the classroom and on campus
  • Implications for sessionals, adjuncts and the precariously employed
  • COVID and workplace accommodations: from child care to work refusals
  • Student experiences and responses
  • COVID and performance-based funding policies
  • COVID and the collective bargaining process
  • Internationalization and the COVID campus

Aim and Scope: Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor is a refereed, electronic, open access journal published by a collective of scholars in critical higher education promoting a new dignity in academic work. Contributions are aimed primarily at higher education workplace activism and dialogue on all issues of academic labour.

Invitations: Contributions from all ranks of academic workers – from tenured and tenure stream to graduate students, sessional instructors, contract faculty, and administrative support staff – are encouraged to submit.

Deadlines: Submissions will be considered for peer review and publications on a rolling basis. The deadline has been extended to May 15, 2021. A complete volume of The Labour of COVID will be complete and made available in the spring of 2021. Formatting and submission guidelines can be found here

https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace/information/authors

Please direct questions about the special issue to Dr. Andrew Stevens at Andrew.stevens@uregina.ca

 

CFP: Critical Theories for the 21st Century

Critical Education is proud to be the sponsor journal for Critical Theories in the 21st Century

4th annual:
critical theories in the twenty first century:
a conference of transformative pedagogies
november 6th & 7th

location:


West Chester University
700 South High St, West Chester, PA 19383

2015 THEME:
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY VS. CAPITAL:
REIGNITING THE CONVERSATION

Sponsored by:
Educational Foundations
The Department of Professional and Secondary Education
West Chester University of Pennsylvania

Closing Conference Keynote (November 7th):
Dave Hill

Call For Papers
The 4th Annual Conference on Critical Theories in the 21st Century aims to reinvigorate the field of critical pedagogy. The primary question driving this conference is: What is to be done to make critical pedagogy an effective educational weapon in the current struggle against capitalism and imperialism?

There is no doubt that we are at a critical juncture in history in terms of the limits of nature’s vital ecosystems, the physical limits of the progressive accumulation of capital, and the deepening reactionary ideology and scapegoating that exacerbates the oppression of youth of color. If critical pedagogy is to play a significant role in intervening in the current context, then a sharpened sense of purpose and direction is needed.

Some examples of possible topics include:

  • Marxism
  • Post-structuralism/post-modernism
  • Anarchism
  • Challenging the unholy trinity of state, capital, and religion
  • Class and the capital-labor dialectic
  • Identity and economics
  • Hierarchical and vertical forms of organization (i.e., vanguards versus networks)
  • Reform versus revolution
  • Socialism, communism, & democracy
  • Affect theory and the new materialisms
  • The knowledge economy, post-Fordism, and “cognitive capitalism”
  • Critical geography

While this conference will include important presentations and debates in critical pedagogy, it will not be limited to this focus. In other words, as critical theory becomes more inclusive, global, and all encompassing, this conference welcomes more than just academics as important contributors. That is, we recognize students and youth groups as possessing authentic voices based on their unique relationship to capitalism and will therefore be open to them as presenters and discussion leaders.

While this conference will include important presentations and challenging discussions based in critical pedagogy, it will not be limited to this focus. In other words, as critical theory becomes more inclusive, global, and all encompassing, this conference welcomes more than just academics as important contributors.

Please submit abstract proposals (500-1000 words) to:
Curry Malott (cmalott@wcupa.edu)

Proposal due date: September 27th, 2015

Call for Submissions: Teaching Poor: Voices of the Academic Precariat

Via the CoCal distribution list:

*Call for Submissions*: *Teaching Poor: Voices of the Academic Precariat*

The career of college professor, giving back to the society that provided for them through education, was once a respectable path to the middle class. That class position is now slipping through the hands of the very people who helped create it, thanks to the erosion of tenured and tenure-track positions in favor of short-term contract positions without security. What should be rags to riches stories about the power of education to lift people out of poverty by providing a pathway to better jobs have become, for many academics, stories of stagnation, downward mobility, and outright impoverishment under the burden of massive debt uncompensated for by the very academy that helped contract faculty incur it.

*Teaching Poor: Voices of the Academic Precariat* will be a collection of voices from the world of so-called adjunct or contract college instructors who now teach 60-75% of all college courses in the United States and are paid wages equivalent to Walmart workers. In the tradition of Studs Terkel’s *Working*, *Teaching Poor* will honor both the difficulties and the triumphs of this new class of impoverished white collar laborers in the academic trenches, detailing personal struggles with the resultant poverty produced by low wages, crushing student loan debt, lack of healthcare and retirement provisions, and the professional and cultural costs this system levies on individuals and the students they teach.

I welcome creative non-fiction, biographical essay, short stories, poems, comics and, in the spirit of hacking the academy through digital humanities, may eventually expand to multimedia and a permanent archive of work similar to Story Corps. Length can vary wildly, but around 7500 words for prose is the average we’re looking for. Longer pieces will probably be reserved for the online archive.

This project is in its very early stages and I’m looking to see what kind of interest there is both in contributors and publishers before defining it or looking into other funding/publishing sources. I have publishers in mind (AK, Haymarket, Soft Skull, Atropos, Verso, ILR), but also welcome suggestions. I do want this to be more than a self-published ebook though, and perhaps something truly groundbreaking if we can make a collaboration work. Send your queries and submissions to Lee Kottner at teachingpoor@gmail.com by Jan. 1, 2015. That, too, is a very soft deadline, but please at least query by then.

CFP: Marxian Analysis of Society, School and Education SIG #157

Marxian Analysis of Society, School and Education SIG #157
CALL FOR PAPERS

American Educational Research Association 2013

The global financial crisis detonated in the West in 2007 has highlighted long-standing structural faults within capitalism, especially in its financialization of the economy – something that Marx and his predecessors already predicted. The current economic genocidal policies in nations such as Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Cyprus, along with the bailouts to specific US corporations, and the slow down of China’s ‘new economy’, present a credibility check in the recognition of the predatory policies and practices of capitalism’s third hegemonic momentum. In fact such financialization of the economy, with its the recurrent and increasingly devastating financial debacles assailing the world’s capitalist economies, has been incapable of producing sustainable growth in any sector while creating economic genocide, and has resulted in driving societies towards social foreclosures strong-armed through painful strangulation of austerity policies that are asphyxiating public institutions and transforming the very notion of public good and democracy itself!

The 2013 Marxian Analysis of Society, School and Education SIG program asks scholars, educators and graduate students around the globe who are profoundly committed to the struggle for social and cognitive justice to help us examine the transformative role of education and schools in addressing the contemporary crises, as well as, addressing the role of educators in helping to resolve the contradictions of the present and to contribute to a better future for schools, education and society.

Therefore, we ask scholars, educators and graduate students to contribute papers, posters or symposium that utilize a Marxist/Class analysis that will critically address the impact of the late capitalism’s financialization of the economy on questions of schools, education and society and how to move from pre-history to history proper to create a more and just democratic society and education.

Note: All submissions will be reviewed without author identification. Please submit them without author names on the abstracts or summaries. Proposals that bear the names of the authors and/or participants will not be considered for review and, consequently, will not be considered for the SIG #157 program for the 2013 AERA Annual Meeting.

Thank You, Dr. Sheila Macrine,
2013 Program Chair

Sheila L. Macrine, Ph.D.
Chair of the Teaching & Learning Department
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
285 Old Westport Road
North Dartmouth, Ma 02747
Phone: 508-999-8262
Fax: 508-910-6916

CFP Journal of Research Practice: Special issue on research assistantships.

Proposals are now being accepted for a special issue about research assistantships for the international, transdisciplinary Journal of Research Practice (JRP).

Graduate students, academics, professionals, community members, and other research partners are invited to share their experiences, insights, and concerns around research assistantships. This special issue is intended to showcase the multilayered complexities of research assistantships from different perspectives and across different disciplines. We encourage themes related to research learning, mentoring, working dynamics, power issues, researcher identity, communication between research assistants and researchers (and other team members), as well as the varied legal, ethical, and moral issues associated with the employment and education of research assistants.

Proposals of about 500 words will be accepted until July 15, 2012. Authors of selected proposals will be requested to develop their proposals into manuscripts by February 1, 2013, to be considered for the special issue.

For more information, please consult
http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/announcement/view/9

We look forward to your engagement.

Michelle K. McGinn & Ewelina K. Niemczyk, Guest editors
Faculty of Education, Brock University, Canada
ewelina.niemczyk@brocku.ca

CFP: Academic Labor and Law (Special Section of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor)

CFP: Academic Labor and Law
Special Section of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Guest Editor: Jennifer Wingard, University of Houston

The historical connections between legislation, the courts, and the academy have been complex and multi-layered. This has been evident from early federal economic policies, such as the Morell Act and the GI Bill, through national and state legislation that protected student and faculty rights, such as the First Amendment and affirmative action clauses. These connections continue into our current moment of state and national efforts to define the work of the university, such as The Academic Bill of Rights and court cases regarding distance learning. The question, then, becomes whether and to what extent the impact of legislation and litigation reveals or masks the shifting mission of the academy. Have these shifts been primarily economic, with scarcities of funding leading many to want to legislate what is considered a university education, how it should be financed, and who should benefit from it? Are the shifts primarily ideological, with political interests working to change access, funding, and the intellectual project of higher education? Or are the shifts a combination of both political and economic influences? One thing does become clear from these discussions: at their core, the legal battles surrounding higher education are about the changing nature of the university –the use of managerial/corporate language; the desire to professionalize students rather than liberally educate them; the need to create transparent structures of evaluation for both students and faculty; and the attempt to define the types of knowledge produced and disseminated in the classroom. These are changes for which faculty, students, administrators, as well as citizens who feel they have a stake in higher education, seek legal redress. This special section of Workplace aims to explore the ways in which legislation and court cases impact the work of students, professors, contingent faculty, and graduate students in the university. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

  • Academic Freedom for students and/or faculty
    • Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights
    • Missouri’s Emily Booker Intellectual Diversity Act
    • First Amendment court cases concerning faculty and student’s rights to freely express themselves in the classroom and on campuses
    • Facebook/Myspace/Blog court cases
    • Current legislative and budgetary “attacks” on area studies (i.e. Queer Studies in Georgia, Women’s Studies in Florida)
  • Affirmative Action
    • The implementation of state and university diversity initiatives in the 1970s
    • The current repeal of affirmative action law across the country
  • Benefits, including Health Benefits, Domestic Partner Benefits
    • How universities in states with same-sex marriage bans deal with domestic partner benefits
  • Collective Bargaining
    • The recent rulings at NYU and Brown about the status of graduate students as employees
    • State anti-unionization measures and how they impact contingent faculty
  • Copyright/Intellectual Property
    • In Distance Learning
    • In corporate sponsored science research
    • In government sponsored research
  • Disability Rights and Higher Education
    • How the ADA impacts the university
  • Sexual Harassment and Consensual Relationships
    • How diversity laws and sexual harassment policies impact the university
  • Tenure
    • The Bennington Case
    • Post 9/11 court cases

Contributions for Workplace should be 4000-6000 words in length and should conform to MLA style. If interested, please send an abstract via word attachment to Jennifer Wingard (jwingard@central.uh.edu) by Friday, May 22, 2009. Completed essays will be due via email by Monday, August 24, 2009.