Virtually a historian: Blogs and the recent history of dispossessed academic labor

Historical Reflections

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 83-97

  Potter, Claire Bond ^a  

^a NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH   (United States)

Author keywords

Adjunct; Archive; Blogging; Internet; Labor; Neoliberal

Indexed keywords

EID: 84863703435     PISSN: 03157997     EISSN: 19392419     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3167/hrrh.2012.380207     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. Use of a blogger's online identity indicates that she or he is pseudonymous.
2. "At Least I No Longer Have to Worry about Whether I Look Professional in This Space," New Kid on the Hallway, 3 April 2007, http://newkidonthehallway.typepad.com/new_kid_on_the_hallway/2007/04/pag e/2/.
3. Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004).
4. Joyce E. Canaan and Wesley Shumar, eds., Structure and Agency in the Neoliberal University (New York: Routledge, 2008).
5. In fact, New Kid went to law school. As of the spring of 2012, she is clerking for a federal judge, but has no idea where she will have a permanent home with her partner: "Life Continues To Be Exciting," 8 March 2012, http://newkidonthehallway.typepad.com/new_kid_on_the_hallway/2012/03/lif e-continues-tobe-exciting.html.
6. Oso Raro, "The Invisible Adjunct: An Appreciation," Slaves of Academe, 17 May 2006, http://slavesofacademe.blogspot.com/2006/05/invisible-adjunct-appreciati on.html.
7. "History and the Politics of Scholarly Collaboration, Part I: Or, Why Anthony Grafton Is a Rock Star," Tenured Radical, 19 December 2011, http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/2011/12/history-and-the- politics-of-scholarly-collaboration-part-i-or-why-anthony-grafton-is-a-r ock-star/.
8. See, for example, Tedra Osell's description of why she left her tenure-track post, "Introduction," Mama PhD, 4 August 2008, http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/mama_phd/an_introduction__1.
9. For the history of piece work, and domestic concerns that have caused women in particular to choose it, see Eileen Boris, Home to Work: Motherhood and the Politics of Industrial Homework in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
10. "A Little Self Absorption," New Kid on the Hallway, 18 May 2007, http://newki donthehallway.typepad.com/new_kid_on_the_hallway/2007/05/index.html.
11. Professor X, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic (New York: Viking Press, 2011), 210-215.
12. Anthony T. Grafton and Jim Grossman, "No More Plan B: A Very Modest Proposal for Graduate Programs in History," Perspectives on History 49, no. 7 (October 2011). http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2011/1110/1110pre1.cfm (25 April 2012).
13. moria at moria in excelsis, http://moriainexcelsis.blogspot.com.
14. http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/.
15. http://www.historiann.com.
16. http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/.
17. http://reassignedtime.wordpress.com.
18. "Advice for Adjuncts," Anastasia: She Who Rises, 18 April 2011, http://insaec ulasaeculorum.blogspot.com/2011/04/advice-for-adjuncts.html.
19. The post to which Anastasia was responding was "Are You Getting Your Adjunct On? A Few Do's and Don'ts for New Members of the Adjunct Army," Tenured Radical, 18 April 2011.
20. "I really hope.," Clarissa's Blog, 20 April 2011, http://clarissasblog.com/2011/04/20/i-really-hope/.
21. Marc Bousquet, How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation (New York: New York University Press, 2008).
22. Carey Nelson, Will Teach for Food: Academic Labor in Crisis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).
23. For The New Faculty Majority, visit http://www.newfacultymajority.info/national/the-seven-goals-of-nfm.
24. NFM is a non-profit organization that provides limited health insurance to adjuncts in thirteen states, is funded by donations and a sliding-scale dues structure, and works to alleviate abuses and create better working conditions for contingent academic laborers. A similar organization is the Coalition for Contingent Academic Labor, http://cocalinternational.org.
25. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, [1852] 1994), 1.
26. Bitch, Ph.D. (Tedra Osell) stopped blogging on 28 December 2010 but her archives can still be found at http://bitchphd.blogspot.com.
27. from 2004 to 2006, profgrrrrl blogged at http://playingschool.blogspot.com and can now be found at http://profgrrrrl.com.
28. Dr. Crazy blogged at http://crazyphd.blogspot.comuntil January 2006 and is now the author of Reassigned Time 2.0 at http://reassignedtime.wordpress.com.
29. New Kid on the Hallway, "Welcome to the Funhouse," 1 August 2004, http://newkidonthehallway.typepad.com/new_kid_on_the_hallway/2004/08/wel come_to_the_.html.
30. Aaron Barlow, The Rise of the Blogosphere (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007), xviii-xxiv.
31. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967).
32. William L. Andrews, "An Introduction to the Slave Narrative," finding aid to the North American Slave Narratives digital archive, Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina, http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/intro.html (accessed 25 October 2011).
33. Barlow, The Rise of the Blogosphere, 103-130, 142-145, 151-152, 155.
34. Ibid., 158.
35. Ibid., 160.
36. David Perlmutter, Blogwars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), xiv, 6-8.
37. Marc Bousquet, "Adjunct Whore Is No More," 24 January [no year], http://howtheuniversityworks.com/wordpress/archives/61.
38. Adjunct Whore, http://adjunctwhore.blogspot.com/2010/06/from-news-adjunct-whore-who-has made-it.html.
39. Bitch, Ph.D., "Hasta La Vista, Bitches," 13 October 2011, http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2010/10/hasta-la-vista-bitches.html.
40. Mark C. Taylor, Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 112-113.
41. Marc Bousquet, "More Drivel from 'The New York Times'" (Brainstorm, 27 April 2009), Chronicle of Higher Education Blogs, http://chronicle.com/blogPost/moredrivel-from-the-new-york-times/6807.
42. David A. Bell, "Does This Man Deserve Tenure?" The Book: An Online Review at the New Republic, 6 September 2010, http://www.tnr.com/book/review/mark-taylor-crisis-campus-colleges-univer sities.
43. Taylor, Crisis on Campus, 126-130.
44. Grafton, "Clio and the Blogs," Perspectives on History (May 2007), http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2007/0705/0705vic1.cfm.
45. Grafton and Grossman, "No More Plan B," 5-6.
46. Anthony Grafton and Robert B. Townsend, "The Parlous Paths of the Profession," Perspectives on History (October 2008), http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2008/0810/0810pro1.cfm.
47. Robert B. Townsend, "New Study Highlights Prominence of Elite Programs in History," Perspectives on History (October 2005), http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2005/0510/0510new2.cfm.
48. Quoted in Slaves of Academe see n. 5.
49. William Deresiewicz, "Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education," Nation, 4 May 2011.
50. Nelson, Will Teach for Food.
51. "Foundation Launches $35 million Program to Help Boost Community College Graduation Rates," press release, 4 October 2010, http://www.gatesfoundation.org/press-releases/Pages/increasing-community -college-graduation-rates-101004.aspx.
52. "Melinda Gates Urges Better Job Training as Community Colleges Innovate, Adapt," PBS News Hour, 5 October 2010, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/july-dec10/commcolleges_10-05.h tml.
53. Jordan Blum, Outcry Raised Over Tenured Faculty Layoffs, Advocate, Baton Rouge, LA, 20 July 2011.
54. http://theadvocate.com/news/395019-65/outcryraised-over-tenured-faculty. html.
55. Anya Kamenitz, DIYU: Edupunks, Entrepeneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education (New York: Chelsea Green, 2010), 31.
56. Mark C. Taylor, Crisis on Campus, 205-206.
57. Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids-and What We Can Do About It (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2011), 254.
58. See, for example, a committee report from the American Association of University Professors, "Tenure and Teaching-Intensive Appointments" (2010) that addresses an increasingly complex employment terrain: laborers employed per course, renewable-contract faculty, teaching-intensive tenure lines, and traditional teacher-scholar positions on the tenure track: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/comm/rep/teachertenure.htm.
59. Piss Poor Prof, "Rio Salado and Centralized Content," Burnt Out Adjunct, 4 October 2006, http://burntoutadjunct.blogspot.com/2006/10/rio-salado-andcentralizedcon tent.html#links.
60. Academic Jobs Wiki, U.S. History 2011-2012, http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/US_History_2011-12.
61. Academic Jobs Wiki, U.S. History 2011-2012, http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/US_History_2011-12.
62. Ironically, Invisible Adjunct's web address is now owned by a service offeringon-line instruction. Quote archived at Slaves of Academe.
63. In Massachusetts in 2011, 60 percent of all undergraduates were taught by contingentlabor.
64. See Nick Parker, "The Adjunct Economy," 17 April 2011, http://articles.boston.com/2011-04-17/yourtown/29428378_1_adjunct-facult y-memberstenure-track-professors-tenured-professors.