Unjust precarity: contingent faculty and the introductory communication course

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay focuses on the communication studies’ introductory course – classes dominated by contingent labor – to explore contingency within our disciplinary “front porch” (Beebe, S. A. (2013). Message from the president: Our ‘front porch’. Spectra, 49(2), 3. Retrieved from https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1501&context=bcca). Because contingent labor emerges through multiple institutional power dynamics, I extend Yep’s [(2016). Demystifying normatives in communication education. Communication Education, 65(2), 232–235. doi:10.1080/03634523.2015.1098711] call for a pedagogy of transformation that focuses on awareness, insight, and action to intervene in structures that relegate faculty in precarious positions to undervalued teaching roles. To create actionable solutions through a pedagogy of transformation requires a constant interrogation of structural practices that devalue contingent labor, including hierarchical norms around merit that place precarious scholars in already precarious positions.