The author--drawing both on history and on his own experience as faculty member, WPA, department head, and dean--examines the set of practices we associate with the tenure and promotion process, finding that they differ across sites at the same time that they look very similar in their assumptions. His review then culminates in a set of questions…

Argues that educators need to acknowledge how the material interests of part-time and adjunct teachers, graduate assistants, tenure-stream faculty, and administrators can come into conflict in composition in order to negotiate fairly among them. Discusses how the culture of academic professionalism militates against such a consciousness, and…

Discusses the author's experience in finding her current teaching position and her denial of tenure. Offers advice for educators pursuing tenure. Suggests that the Conference on College Composition and Communication could provide a much-needed service by gathering and disseminating both survey data and individual stories in an effort to determine…

Challenges the common assumption that the rise of an instructorate unsupported to do traditional forms of research will necessarily result in an exploited academic labor force and inferior teaching. Explores the ways in which the "teaching substructure" existing now in composition and rhetoric has already begun to contribute substantially to the…