CFP: Special Issue of Review of Communication Academic Labor and Communication Studies

CFP: Special Issue of Review of Communication

Academic Labor and Communication Studies

Deadline: January 15, 2017

By some metrics, such as the ratio of new graduates to tenure-track jobs, communication studies is doing better than many of its counterparts in the social sciences and humanities. Despite its relative health, the field faces the same trends—the decline of tenure, loss of state funding, dismantling of academic freedom, and pressure to streamline curriculum—that promise to re-shape higher education altogether.

New educational trends are upending academic traditions, but it is unclear whether those changes leave us in a more or less precarious position. This special issue invites reflection on the current state of higher education and what it means for communication studies, an interdisciplinary field known as a “skills-based” or practical knowledge major.
What are working conditions like in communication departments? Have those conditions compromised our commitments to civic engagement and social justice? How does the disillusionment with higher education (i.e., skepticism over its value and frustration with it cost) manifest in our classrooms? To what extent has it made those spaces uninhabitable or hostile environments? What are our priorities at this stage? How do we make choices when faced with funding cuts and fewer resources?

This special issue seeks submissions that look both inward, at our institutional arrangements, and outward, at the ways in which academic work articulates with what Ronald W. Greene (2009) calls the technological dimensions of communication, or the organization of communication into sites of material and immaterial labor and social control.

With these considerations in mind, we invite submissions on, but not limited to, the following topics:

-       Accounts of academic life: What kind of work are we doing? What challenges and changes do we face in our classrooms, campuses, and in our research? How well are we preparing future faculty for the future of academia?

-       Valuing communication: The study of communication intersects a wide range of disciplines, and communication departments represent multiple academic traditions. Do our institutions and colleagues recognize our contributions as distinct and significant? Does the general public? What value and meaning do we assign the work we do? How is communication studies positioned in various institutions? With whom do we align ourselves? In what ways is interdisciplinarity now an asset and a liability?

-       Ethics and labor politics: Do our professional practices reflect our academic commitments? How do we make decisions about where to invest our time and resources? How is our relationship to our work and to each other changing in response to, for instance, the decline of tenure and uneven access to academic freedom?

-       Globalization of US universities: What are labor conditions like at US universities abroad? Are those campuses impacting domestic practices? What does the study of communication look like as an export?

-       Advocacy and direct action: How can we better advocate for each other and ourselves? What changes to our professional lives, our departments, and to our campuses are we willing to make to ensure more equitable and just working conditions? What changes are we willing to make to ensure more equitable access to education and inquiry?

Priority will be given to submissions that 1) use alternative “metrics” to evaluate the quality of our work life and the health of our institutions, and 2) that look anew at an old concern: how to articulate and justify our work in order to secure degree programs and resources such as tenure lines, smaller class sizes, and research funding.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: HTTP://EXPLORE.TANDFONLINE.COM/CFP/AH/ROC/ACADEMIC-LABOR

GUEST EDITOR: KATHLEEN MCCONNELL: KATHLEEN.MCCONNELL@SJSU.EDU