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Special Issues of Workplace
Workplace is generally based on Special Issues and Calls for Papers focusing on a theme. About 12 months before a new issue, Guest Editors develop a plan forsoliciting (by open CFP or direct requests) about 5-6 articles, together with a concept for shorter essays. The Guest Editor/s and the Collective review the plan and sometimes make suggestions. The issue is then in the Guest Editors' hands until about six weeks prior to the launch date.
Call for Papers
- Academic Labor and the Law (Guest Editor Jennifer Wingard) (Call For Papers)
- Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions (Guest Editor Howard Stevenson) (Call for Papers)
- The Economics of Depressions in the Corporate University
- Gender Segmentation and the Racialization of Academic Work
- Place your Special Issue Theme Here...
CFP: Academic Labor and Law
Special Issue of Workplace 2009
Guest Editor: Jennifer Wingard
Syracuse University
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
- 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 APA or MLA style. If interested, please send an abstract via word attachment to Jennifer Wingard (jlwingar@syr.edu). Completed essays will be due via email by June 15, 2009.
CFP: Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions
Special Issue of Workplace 2010
Guest Editor: Howard Stevenson
Lincoln University
The neo-liberal restructuring of national education systems is a global phenomenon and represents a major threat to the possibility of a democratic, public education committed to meeting the needs of working class and oppressed groups. Teacher unions, across the world, despite all the attacks on them, represent perhaps the most formidable obstacle to neo-liberal restructuring. Teachers remain highly unionized and although they have suffered many setbacks in recent years, their collective organizations generally remain robust. Despite the significance and importance of teacher unions they remain largely under-researched. Mainstream academic literature on school sector education policy often ignores teacher unions, even in cases where scholars are critical of the market orientation of neo-liberal reforms. Two recent exceptions to this tradition are the contributions of Compton and Weiner (2008) and Stevenson et al (2007).
The strength of Compton and Weiner’s excellent volume is the breadth of international perspectives. However, individual chapters are largely short ‘vignettes’, and the aim is to offer fairly brief and readable accounts, rather than detailed and scholarly analysis. Stevenson et al offer a series of traditional scholarly articles, although the emphasis is largely on the Anglophone nations (UK, North America, Australasia), and the collection fails to capture the full breadth required of an international perspective. In both cases, and quite understandably, these contributions were not able to take account of the seismic developments in the world capitalist economy since Autumn 08 in particular. These developments have significant implications for the future of neo-liberalism, for the development of education policy in nation states and for the policies and practices of teacher unions. There is now a strong case for an analysis of teacher unionism that is detailed, scholarly, international and able to take account of current developments. This special section of Workplace will focus on the ways in which teacher unions in the K-12 sector are challenging the neo-liberal restructuring of school education systems in a range of global contexts. Neo-liberalism’s reach is global. Its impact on the restructuring of public education systems shares many common characteristics wherever it manifests itself. That said, it also plays out differently in different national and local contexts.
This collection of papers will seek to assess how teacher unions are challenging the trajectory of neo-liberal reform in a number of different national contexts. By drawing on contributors from all the major world continents it will seek to highlight the points of contact and departure in the apparently different ways in which teacher unions interface with the neo-liberal agenda. It will also ensure that analyses seek to reflect recent developments in the global capitalist economy, and the extent to which this represents threat or opportunity for organized teacher movements.
Contributions to Workplace should be 4000-6000 words in length and should conform to APA or MLA style. If you are interested, please submit an abstract via Word attachment to Howard Stevenson (hstevenson@lincoln.ac.uk) by 31 July 2009. Completed articles will be due on 28 December 2009. All papers will be blind peer-reviewed.
ISSN 1715-0094 Workplace