Call for Papers for COCAL VI, Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor

On Strategies for the Contingent Faculty Movement

For the first time in the history of the COCAL conferences, we are experimenting with having some workshop sessions based upon papers previously circulated via website and email. The goal is to maximize efficient discussion at the actual conference, with everyone in a particular session having read the papers (or at least the abstracts, which we hope to translate into all three languages). Therefore, after only brief introductory summaries by the authors, the sessions can be devoted to discussion. We hope that a summary of the discussions can then be published and distributed along with the papers.  Since our main purpose is to stimulate the broadest and fullest possible discussion, we will accept papers that have been previously published, though we would encourage writers to update and revise them for this conference.

We are planning to use this format for a sequence of three workshops (one in each workshop session) on Strategies for the Contingent Faculty Movement. We solicit papers dealing with strategy for one of the following workshop areas:

              I.        Metro, local area or regional strategies for organizing contingent faculty

             II.        National and international strategies for our movement

            III.       Our ultimate vision: the place of our contingent faculty struggle in the broader                             society

.  All papers should be:

The committee and workshop moderators will review the papers and assign them to the most appropriate workshops. Our goal for these sessions is more about the promotion of a democratic discussion than academic competition. Therefore, all papers will be posted to our website even if we cannot accommodate them all in the conference program. If more papers are received than can be discussed productively, we will choose those that can best contribute to the planned discussion.

Strategic thinking is primarily characterized by a course of action to plot the transition between what is and what ought to be. Comfortable with ambiguity, actors are experimental, stalwart risk takers who can adjust their strategies to achieve their objects expediently and compassionately. An effective strategy marshals consciousness, resources, and capacities to achieve a range of political ends. For COCAL, an effective strategy would offer an action plan that weaves together a movement dedicated to democracy through the education of members, administrators, and students by demanding equity and inspiring educators to lift their voices at the bargaining table, in the classroom, in the streets, and in the publication of their original research.

—adapted from Richard Moser, Ph.D.     

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Last modified: 08/19/2008