Inside Higher Ed
July 9th, 2014
I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: academic Twitter can be incredible. Natalie Dorfeld emailed me after the column featuring Jessica Lawless and Miranda Merklein ran and asked what she could do to help. Noting the “kick ass work” these columns have been doing — why thank you, Natalie — she volunteered to participate. After learning about some of her professional experiences and interests, I did what any academic connected to social media would do: I crowdsourced to find a partner for an adjunct interested in ESL pedagogy, creative writing, narrative theory, contemporary poetry, and contingent labor issues. Not long after I tweeted my request, Ishai Barnoy volunteered. He didn’t know Natalie, so they approached their interviews as strangers with common interests and experiences.
I’m thrilled with the work they’ve done here.
“Room for Creativity?” raises the question of how adjuncts try to balance their own creative and/or scholarly interests with teaching demands. I asked them to cover how they’ve both balanced (or tried to balance) their interests in poetry and other creative work with what they’ve been allowed as adjuncts to teach in the name of “course coverage.”