Challenging Academic Precarity
October 2-4, 2015 Artspace, Peterborough ON
Academia has long been heralded as the ivory tower to which we all should aspire and those that are admitted are thought to be well compensated. With the prevailing winds of neoliberalism blowing at the doors, the corporatization of the university has witnessed the reduction of tenured faculty positions. At the same time, increasing resources have been assigned to professional administration. The result is that more and more full-time academics are paid part-time wages and forced to endure precarity when alternatives abound.
This interdisciplinary symposium seeks to situate and understand how these trends emerged and continue to develop. The first two days will feature a keynote address, roundtables and panel discussions. The final day will be an exploration of avenues for future intervention and activism.
We seek proposals for the following possible subject matter:
* Political economy of ‘just in time’ academic labour
* Forms of resistance and protest
* Engaging tenured & tenure-track faculty
* Student academic workers’ plight
* Mobilization strategies
* Challenging precarity with art
* Movement to zero tuition
We welcome diverse proposals and formats including, but not limited to, full panel proposals, multimedia presentations, artistic interventions, and, of course, more conventional academic papers.Please send all abstracts and/or presentation proposals in either .rtf, .docx, or .pdf formats to office@cupe3908.org by August 25th, 2015. Please limit your proposal to no more than 250 words. Notifications will be sent out by September 1, 2015. Please send all other inquiries to: James Onusko at vp1@cupe3908.org