Collegiality and the Department Mailbox: Subdivide and Conquer

Abstract

Who is that person standing next to you at the department mailbox? Sometimes the most mundane places and practices tell us as much about our profession as can any exhaustive survey. Social exchanges, or the lack thereof, in the departmental mail room are an apt metaphor for the state of collegiality in academia, and they acutely manifest challenges to col legiality that pervade the profession. The larger the department, the more likely that mailbox exchanges register in blank stares or brief, halting greetings rather than moments of genuine connection. In English depart ments, particularly those with graduate programs and those employing part-time faculty members, mailboxes are helpfully organized into subsec tions (full-time faculty members, part-timers, graduate students, and staff members). Here one can quickly ascertain who that person standing next to you is. The mailbox, more often than not, does not bring a department together; rather, it accentuates how stratified our departments have be come. If the person standing next to you is a graduate student or adjunct, will the person be here next year?is the person worth your valuable time? Cogently marking out the historical and institutional forces that impact faculty collegiality more generally, Philip Lewis's essay in this section of Profession also cautions that pressures on collegiality are situational. My own experiences as graduate student, adjunct faculty member, and then tenure-track faculty member provide one situational, on-the-ground view of broader institutional concerns as well as of more local problems and so lutions in English departments. I have seen how our profession sometimes