http://allordinary2.blogspot.com/2009/05/teaching-only-positions.html

Further to the more general situation (over which I think there may be some fundamental points of disagreement between the casualised teaching force and those in full-time positions), the question of teaching-only positions obviously resonates with other debates over cultural studies institution building, induction and questions of canonicity.

As for the NTEU position itself (“A teaching-only academic is an oxymoron”): for those of us in that sort of disavowed situation (where ‘teaching-only’ means ‘paid-for-teaching-only’, in most cases) who are also, to differing degrees, invested in cultural studies, it does seem to illuminate the fraught terrain upon which even something as reflective as the State of the Industry Conference will be played out.

personally, i think more diy is a good thing; and this is not art is an interesting model of how people experiencing precarity due to their positioning in generational hierarchies can get together and make their own opportunities.

There is great work being done by individuals, but I read enough in current CS journals to know that serious methodological (i.e. how we do what we do) discussions are rarely surfaced. I’d love to be proved wrong, please provide some examples of the critical debates I’m missing before calling me out on my lack of reading. My experience is that most CS-trained scholars do the obvious thing and identify more firmly around the contexts they study rather than the (appropriately diffuse) methods they use to study it. For this reason, a CSAA conference is much less interesting than a conference about “labour”, or “television”, for example.

Yeah!

Mass withdrawal of labour is the only solution to strategically changing the structural conditions when the ‘surplus’ labour pool is being exploited.

This will only happen once the enthusiasm is completely exhausted (or accelerated to the point of absolute mobilisation). I am not sure how this will happen. The belief in any possible positive outcome needs to be quashed. Perhaps from an external source like the closing down of or cross-departmental integration of a cultstud-ish department/s at one or more universities.

The other problem, and this I feel is quite a big problem, is that the structural conditions of the university means that Heads of Dept and other senior academics are perceived to be doing the postgrad students and casualised post-PhD non-ECRs academics a favour by giving them casual work. I use the word ‘favour’ on purpose because it has the limiting affective conditions (‘conditions’ in the Kantian sense) for possible action that are felt when you ‘owe’ somebody. Young academics are not going to become militant in situations where they oppose those doing them favours or at least feel as if they are doing them favours. Let alone if they are actually mates…

On a positive note, perhaps it is better to focus on the pursuit of ‘ideas’ rather than the employment context in which it happens. The reality nowadays is that academia is not a calling (except as a centrifugal social force for the socially inept), but an industry like any other, or perhaps even worse than many others.

“I don’t even think that pgs with CS specialisation are finding it that hard to get jobs, compared to other Hum&SocSci areas. ”
Really? It contributes to why the csaa is struggling. A casualised and contract-based workforce plays a big role in the ebb of enthusiasm. At the moment many recent graduates and ECRs simply need a job and some certainty first … think “priorities”. Some have left the field due to a lack of opportunities. A bit rich under such circumstances/conditions of possibility to ask for continuing unaffected enthusiasm and more unpaid labor to roll out a conference, isn’t it? The reason is structural and grounded, not ideological or because of shifting loyalties.

Frankly, I feel that not running a conference is a good thing, in that it might suggest that a bunch of pgrads aren’t going to get screwed over. Sure, there is the argument that running a conference is ‘good for your CV’, but I’m not actually buying that any more. It’s used as justification for exploiting pgrads as tutors, as research assistants, as casual lecturers, as markers, as content-producers for subjects, as … hells, I could go on and on.
As an ECR who _is_ finding it difficult to find full time work, I’m not crying about the lack of a CSAA conf this year. Mostly because I really do think that Catherine’s first comment:

“I don’t even think that pgs with CS specialisation are finding it that hard to get jobs, compared to other Hum&SocSci areas”

is actually misinformed.
Though there may be fewer jobs in other HSS areas, I don’t think I can walk past the first part – the implication that there are actually jobs in CS for ECR. I’m beginning to think the term ECR does _not_ include those of us who have completed (fabulous) PhDs, (mad) research skills and (fully sick) teaching skills, not to mention a whole host of other wonderful bits and pieces on our CV and _no_ full time work. ECRs are those who have actually managed to squeeze into a full time position.
Ironic, much? Particularly when you consider the fact that the vast bulk of teaching – the actual face-to-face engagement with students and communication of ideas and fascilitating of learning – is actually conducted by the faceless, nameless and transient ‘not-quite-in-a-career’ researcher-teachers.
I think it’s perhaps a little more accurate to think of us as ‘stooges’ or perhaps ‘scarily exploited’. There’s no shortage of sessional teaching around the place, but in almost every instance (of the five universities I’ve taught with) the working conditions have been heinous. I have been justifying my taking on this sort of work as ‘something for the CV’ or ‘good networking’ or ‘developing good skills’, but I think, if I were to be honest, it’s really ‘getting screwed, and not in a happy way’. Perhaps pgrad work is really a process of institutionalising us to accept these sorts of conditions, readying us for work in the sausage factory, rather than preparing us for a wonderful and creative, stimulating future in research or teaching.

So, honestly, I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the CSAA conference this year. I’m busy looking for full time work in other places, and one more paper at another mass conference will not help me with that.

I have previously been a big fan of conferences, of any size, mostly because I like going along to listen to papers, to give papers and gain interesting feedback, to meet people at the pub, catch up with old friends, etc etc etc. But a lack of funding has made attendance utterly impossible. And one more mass conference (as with yet another semester of sessional teaching) really won’t make a speck of difference to my CV. I’m also finding myself wanting to call bullshit (loudly and aggressively) every time I hear someone discussing postgraduate career options or the value of a PhD.

If cultural studies were to be relevant to… well, to me, then there’d be better working conditions for sessional tutors and jobs for new kids. Not just ECRs who’re already in the system or the older kids, who’ve been there for ages. Because I’m finding it damn hard to justify continuing to teach undergrads ‘the values of cultural studies’ when that teaching is by far the most exploitative work I’ve ever done. It’s seems more than a little contradictory.

In my opinion, CSAA 2007 on sustainability was a good example of an event that struggled to address the set topic. Why run a conference on such a crucial issue and then use the theme to discuss the sustainability of the discipline?

Achieving relevance, and generating innovative modes of thinking and collaborating, might mean making some hard decisions about how an event is structured from the beginning – are panels always the best format, for instance? How will the speakers/participants be chosen? In this respect, a general CFP for any papers that define themselves as cultural studies is not always be a good idea.

Moreover, if CSAA is supposed to be broadly inclusive, this should be seriously debated. Beyond the limited range of humanities-based disciplines present at the events I attended, activists, artists and other creative workers (for instance) were almost completely absent. These are groups that the association should clearly be in conversation with in my opinion if it wants to innovate.

The association should let the success of the discipline be defined by the tangible outcomes of these events. It seriously needs to drop the heroic narrative about CS as a political interventionist movement and just get pragmatic.

Finally, CSAA should not be concerned with throwing parties for postgraduates. As one of these students, trust me, we can take care of this ourselves.

(As a side note, why was nothing was said on the quality of the conferences in this meeting Mel? That would seem to be a fairly important factor!)

In the meantime, one of the few departments left in Australia which was actually called Cultural Studies (up until the beginning of this year) was almost entirely excluded. I’m talking about Macquarie Uni. I’ve been to most of the CSAAs of recent years (not Kalgoorlie, as it was almost entirely out of my reach as a brand new ECR, and besides I was feeling pretty disillusioned about the usefulness of CSAA anyway) and not once has an academic from my department been included in the program except where they have submitted abstracts (now pretty rare). Yet numerous scholars from other Sydney universities are continually given keynotes or invited into plenary panels, even when they are primarily media studies people rather than cultural studies. CSAA seems to be quite clear about what ‘kind’ of cultural studies it values.

I find this interesting less because I’m protective of ‘my’ university (because I’m actually unimpressed with it on a number of levels), but because there’s a particular ‘style’ of cultural studies that seems to be at work at CSAA, and it’s very specific. I’ve spoken to a number of the academics from my uni as to why they don’t attend (given that I’m not expecting all the work to be done by the conference committee!) and the answer is pretty clear: they feel CSAA tends to be apolitical, tending to be anti-theory, a bit scared of real engagement, and so don’t get very much out of presenting there. ‘Inclusive’ a bit of a mis-nomer (as it usually is, though I think Mel is right that the *intention* is to be inclusive). In general, I have had very little feedback on papers I’ve given at CSAA; like Kiley says above, presenting to people you already know doesn’t actually do wonders for anything. At the last one I attended in Adelaide, I deliberately simplified my presentation, stripping out almost all of the theory, and still I had very little engagement with it. This would seem to be a problem. Others have had similar experiences, and in Adelaide at least, I spent a lot of time hanging out with others who felt pretty much the same as I: that this conference, which was supposed to be our disciplinary home, felt very far away from our interests, and very far away from being interested in us. By comparison, other conferences I have attended have allowed for interesting cross-disciplinary discussion, have engaged theoretically and politically, and felt more engaging as a result, than CSAA ever has.

All of that said, I know why I have put my PG research money towards attending CSAA, and that is because I think it could be otherwise, and would prefer to be part of making that kind of reworking possible than simply throwing my hands up and opting out like the academics at my university have tended to do. Nonetheless, I remain torn over whether it’s a worthwhile thing to throw my energy into.

I too think the killer is for post-phd pre-job speakers who are self-funding and really feeling the precarity of academic life. I’ve been lucky enough to get an ongoing position before I’ve even completed but I was increasingly concerned about the outcomes of putting so much time and effort into my phd while struggling with children and a part-time job. I’m lucky to have the support and mentorship of a great group of early career and more senior academics to get me through.

On that note, the pre-conference postgrad/early career workshops I found to be really important, if only for their focus on forging a national community and readying postgrads/post-phds for the academic job market. I’d love to see that tradition continue.

“My personal experience highlights this. I was overseas during last year’s CSAA conference but the previous year’s in Adelaide was made salient by the sheer number of simultaneous panels that, although offering more postgrads the opportunity to speak, did so at the expense of actual engagement by listeners. My supervisor didn’t even attend my panel although also at the conference (don’t even get me started on mentorship!). The lure of the international speaker or the research similar colleague is far more enticing than engaging with the work of early career and postgraduate researchers it seems. I think they function more for postgrads as a networking opportunity and a three day masterclass.”

I feel your pain; that’s a lousy experience. I could put a bit of a spin on it and add that in some significant way this is probably not an unhelpful (though of course demoralising) taste of life as an academic. Unless you are especially blessed (as I know some contributors here are) you will face a lot of uncollegial indifference to your work at all stages of your career, from your colleagues and peers, as well as brisk summary judgements from your students, who will always be the toughest audience. I’ve given a few papers to rooms full of empty chairs, which may say something about me, but I prefer to notice that it happens to a lot of academics, not just postgrads. At the CSAA in Canberra I think there were more of us on my panel than in the audience, and this was for various reasons, including some unfortunate timetabling, etc. Actually I think it’s worst of all for people stuck post-PhD pre-job, for whom there is scant or no support, financial or otherwise, at all — they have it tough indeed. It was still a terrific conference.

The mentoring issue is important, but I can’t comment on what may have been going on for your supervisor (for example, another commitment or whatever that I’d hope had been explained to you). I’ve been in the situation of having multiple supervisions timetabled against each other, for instance, a real bind. It can go the other way as well, of course; at the CSAA at UTS my panel had a terrific audience and something real happened then, I think. But that’s rare in my experience, especially at the mass gatherings. You might want to save yourself for smaller events.

That aside, let me say I think the opportunity to hear the work of others is what best drives conference attendance, and the requirement to present is often attached to funding (slim as it might be, or non-existent) or else an impetus to get work done. It’s not just postgrads who benefit from the three-day master class!

The scale problem will always be there for a conference like the CSAA; your experience is a valuable reminder of the negative effect of the pernicious structure of parallel sessions. I just recently gave a paper at Harvard where my session was located, I kid you not, in a corridor seating area. Bizarre.