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KEYWORDS IN CREATIVE WRITING

UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Introduction...............................................xiAdjunct and Temporary Faculty..............................1Composition................................................36Creative Dissertation......................................55Identity Politics..........................................102MFA (Master of Fine Arts)..................................115Pedagogy...................................................119Reading....................................................134Teaching Jobs..............................................162Theory.....................................................170Two-Year Colleges..........................................190Workshop...................................................197Agents.....................................................5Chapbooks..................................................25Contests...................................................44Contributor's Copy.........................................48Copyright and Intellectual Property........................49Editors and Publishers.....................................76Rejection..................................................139Royalties and Permission Fees..............................141Submissions................................................155Vanity Press...............................................194Writers' Resources.........................................200Anthology..................................................11Author.....................................................15Creative Nonfiction........................................62Fiction....................................................89Electronic Literature......................................84Genre......................................................95Image and Metaphor.........................................112Poetry.....................................................125Postmodernism..............................................131Scriptwriting..............................................146Style and Voice............................................152Block and Procrastination..................................19Collaboration..............................................29Creativity.................................................70Therapy (and Therapeutic)..................................178Translation................................................186Writing Groups.............................................202Associated Writing Programs................................14Conferences, Colonies, and Residencies.....................41Grants.....................................................99Shmoozing..................................................144References.................................................207

Chapter One

The plight of adjunct (part-time) and temporary (nontenured) faculty has been well documented, particularly by contingent faculty themselves. The experience of Ben Satterfield, a former adjunct, is typical. While teaching at the University of Texas, Satterfield recalls that though they "were not shunned like pariahs, the temporary faculty were distinctly second-class citizens, tolerated but not encouraged" (1994, 130). When he moved from UT to Austin Community College, Satterfield's situation became even worse. He received even less respect from administrators and colleagues and was paid 60 percent less than full-time faculty for teaching the same courses: "Dozens of us shared one small office, occupying desks like shift workers; we were hired on a semester-to-semester basis and denied medical insurance coverage or any benefits that were standard for the regular faculty; we were disdained by the administration and treated like field workers with no rights whatever" (132).

The comparison of adjuncts with field workers-dislocated seasonal laborers who can be easily replaced-has been especially prevalent in English studies. As Cary Nelson and Michael Berube (1994) point out: "Tenure-track jobs in English regularly receive 800 to 1,000 applications. Even the most accomplished young scholars and teachers often remain unemployed. For in the 1990's, many colleges are finding that they lack the money even to replace retiring faculty members, and graduate programs that had expected boom times suddenly find that they are drastically overproducing Ph.D.'s."

Linda Ray Pratt, chair of an Association of University Professors committee on the status of nontenure-track faculty, predicted in 1997 that "if things continue unchecked, about 90 percent of the English Ph.D.'s on the market in the next few years will not find a tenure-track job" (265).

She was right. There are simply too many workers and not enough work to go around, with the result that aspiring academics who want to teach in a college or university nearly always settle for less than ideal jobs. Elizabeth Wallace notes: "Those who choose to settle [in a particular area] are often at disadvantage in their search for academic jobs, simply because they are already here: academia much prefers to interview exotic strangers from across the country." And potential teachers are at an even greater disadvantage if they are "following a spouse to a full-time job or coming to care for a sick relative or following children in the custody of a divorced partner ... [these people] have automatically removed themselves from the national academic job market and have entered the local market with no choice in the matter" (1994, 29).

In Gypsy Academics and Mother Teachers (1997), Eileen Schell, one of the most prolific writers on the subject of contingent academic labor, examines the ways that the "feminization" of composition has turned it into an underrespected discipline, with no benefits or job security. Schell traces this situation in higher education back to the initial entry of women into the workforce, when many of them became elementary and secondary school teachers. Ironically, this "liberation" resulted in an entrenchment of women in the teaching force and led to lower pay and less respect for teaching in general. And it is not just those outside education who denigrate the work done by teachers of composition and other less-than-glamorous subjects. Both the authors of this book have heard tenured male professors refer to temporary writing faculty as "the little old ladies in the basement"; unfortunately, such noisome appellations coming from those in the upper echelons of academia are not uncommon.

Given the disregard and low wages adjunct faculty can expect to receive, one might wonder why anyone would take on the job of teaching writing part-time. Many adjuncts would answer that they love to teach, even if they are slighted by just about everyone. Some adjuncts take part-time work to gain enough experience to make themselves attractive as candidates for full-time jobs. Moreover, even if they are at the bottom of the pecking order within the college or university, some faculty receive outside validation, taking pride in being associated with an institution of higher learning. "I teach at the university," they can tell family and friends-without mentioning that their assignment is one course a semester for a few thousand dollars, or less. And since so few people can afford to live on a part-time instructor's salary, those who manage to do so have-de facto-solved the issue of working for low pay....