Deadline: December 20, 2020
A Critical Discussion Forum proposal for the Slavic Review [SEE REVISED DEADLINES]
The Working Group for Solidarity in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, an ASEEES affiliate group, and the Slavic Review are soliciting submissions for a Critical Discussion Forum on the state of the field and the specific challenges of contingency. Slavic Review will host the forum tentatively titled Crisis, Contingency, and the Future of REEES: Perspectives on the Present and Future of the Field, to be published approximately in the Fall 2021. Contributions to this forum will focus on challenges our field faces, both in confronting the current COVID-19 crisis and grappling with long-lasting structural problems in our field, such as racism, xenophobia, sexism, classism, homo- and transphobia; discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, and religious affiliation; as well as the lack of employment, housing, and healthcare security.
Our primary goal is to present the stories and perspectives of colleagues in contingent positions: graduate students, international students, postdoctoral fellows, visiting and adjunct instructors, lecturers, academic hourly employees, independent scholars, as well as tenure track scholars.
Potential contributions can take a number of forms:
Investigations of the intersection between contingent labor, structural inequalities, and the current COVID-19 crisis.
Testimonies or observations showing engagement with larger structural problems in the field and based on your experiences at this time as well as problems that you have encountered.
Ideas for how our field can confront these questions, as well as solutions which might help find a better future for the field and the people who wish to work in it.
Examples of structural issues we seek to address:
Scarcity of resources available to scholars in contingent positions: having limited to no access to libraries; the lack of guaranteed access to healthcare, childcare, working spaces; limited or no funds for travel, accommodation, etc. required for conference participation.
Intersection of professional contingency and immigration issues: hiring preferences for U.S. citizens; scarcity of funding resources (research, travel, dissertation completion grants) available to non U.S. citizens; psychological pressure and anxiety caused by constantly changing rules and regulations.
Intersection of professional contingency and racism: lack of resources and support available to people of color in historically predominantly white institutions, departments, associations.
The relation of the disciplinary precarity of REEES in many of our institutions of higher education to the professional precarity of scholars and educators in our field; proactive strategies of solidarity and resistance to austerity.
We are inviting scholars in any phase of the profession and from all REEES disciplines to submit abstracts of up to 250 words for polemical statements, personal essays, research articles or anything in between. Please send abstracts to wgsolidarity@gmail.com by December 20, 2020. The organizing committee of this Forum will ask up to 5 authors to develop their abstracts into 3000 word articles to be submitted by February 15, 2021.
Crisis, Contingency, and the Future of REEES Organizing Committee:
Jason Cieply, Hamilton College
Rossen Djagalov, New York University
Natalia Plagmann, Princeton University
John Randolph, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign