(Adjunct) Teaching under COVID-19: A Year Later

Maria Plochocki Announcement
Location
Pennsylvania, United States
Subject Fields
Composition & Rhetoric, Humanities, Literature, Teaching and Learning, Cultural History / Studies

The NorthEastern Modern Language Association (NeMLA) will be holding its next convention 11 - 14 Mar., 2021, in Philadelphia, PA; check out the full CFP here: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/CFP.

As part of the above, I'm convening the above roundtable, whose description appears below:

Teaching as an adjunct has long been precarious, for reasons as obvious as budgets and enrollment trends and as obscure as differences in personality and teaching philosophies; the COVID-19 crisis has only, as the consensus seems to have it, made this precarity more apparent and widely felt, as institutions responded by slashing budgets and salaries, cancelling courses, and the like. As crises do, this one has also brought out the best and worst among individual instructors, their employers, and even on higher levels, with stories of ingenious pedagogical adaptation, even innovation, as well as support and generosity, countered by ones of suddenly-disappearing collegiality (and, sometimes, instructors and courses). Higher education itself is in peril, even more than before, seeking to redefine itself if it survives at all.

So how (much) has everything fallen into place a year after drastic measures such as moving entire programs online, retooling academic calendars and marking schemes, locating and sharing resources on an unprecedented scale? Who’s in, and out? What remains to be resolved? Who/what has been forgotten, left behind? Can we, as the most optimistic commentators have had it, emerge from this crisis stronger, wiser, more centred in our mission and philosophy?

In hopes that the intervening time has provided some insights, talks are sought for this roundtable, esp. representing adjunct and graduate-student voices and experiences.

Contact Information

Maria Plochocki

bastet801@att.net

Contact Email
bastet801@att.net