CFP: "Graduate Students and Academic Freedom," MLA 2011

CFP: "Graduate Students and Academic Freedom," MLA 2011


A Panel of the MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional
Rights and Responsibilities and the MLA Graduate Student Caucus


The Graduate Student Caucus, an allied organization of the MLA, seeks
current graduate students to participate in a roundtable discussion
on “Graduate Students and Academic Freedom” at the 2011 MLA
annual meeting from January 6 through January 9 in Los Angeles.


We are organizing and proposing this guaranteed session jointly with
the MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and
Responsibilities. It will include 3-4 experts on academic freedom and
3-4 graduate students with experience and/or interest in the ways
issues of academic freedom impact graduate students as learners and
as laborers.


In a period of economic turmoil and significant changes to graduate
and undergraduate education, issues of academic freedom can affect
graduate students in many forms. It is an issue as we look ahead, as
we face a collapsing job market, the erosion of tenure, and the
uncertain outlook of our profession, all of which might have
consequences for our futures as scholars and teachers. It is also,
however, an issue for our present: a concern with how we can confront
the difficulties of negotiating the corporate university as
proto-professionals and as a largely powerless labor force. At
present, the panel’s topic is broadly defined: graduate students
and academic freedom. We seek graduate students with fresh and varied
perspectives to express their interest and to help shape the
roundtable.


We invite graduate students with relevant experience or significant
interest to submit a CV, a brief narrative of your relationship to
the panel’s topic, and a 300-word proposal on how you might
approach graduate student academic freedom for this session.
Materials should be submitted by March 23 to dmcolson@illinois.edu
with “MLA Academic Freedom” in the subject heading.


For further information please contact:


Dan Colson
Department of English
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
dmcolson@illinois.edu




The Graduate Student Caucus (GSC) is an allied organization of the
Modern Language Association (MLA). We provide organized
representation for graduate students and other academic workers
within the MLA and act to facilitate communication between the MLA
and its graduate student membership. We are committed to garnering
broad-based support and participation from all graduate students in
the modern languages and literatures