Precarity & Contingency
Series Editors: Seth Kahn, West Chester University, and Sue Doe, Colorado State University
The Precarity & Contingency book series publishes scholarship—broadly construed to include empirical (both quantitative and qualitative), historical, and critical/theoretical projects—that addresses precarious academic labor. While its focus is primarily on academic labor in higher education, it encourages projects that include other labor issues on campuses (including K-12) and/or precarity in labor sectors outside education. The series embraces new visions of and innovations in leadership in the academic environment that might more effectively address current labor crises. It also encourages projects that explore intersections of academic labor activism with other forms of activism, such as LGBTQ+, gender, race equality, ability/disability activism, and environmentalism, among others.
Books in the Series
Rank-and-File Rebels: Theories of Power and Change in the 2018 Education Strikes
By Erin Dyke and Brendan Muckian-Bates
In spring 2018, a wave of rank-and-file rebellion swept schools across the south and southwest United States, among other places. Educators in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arizona pushed their trade unions, school boards, and school administrations to shut schools down to increase wages, halt rising healthcare costs, and restore public education funding. Despite stringent anti-union labor laws, rank-and-file educators organized on the periphery and sometimes beyond their reticent state unions to take direct action, contributing to a resurgence in educator uprisings across the US and the globe. ... More
A Working Model for Contingent Faculty
By Robert Samuels
In A Working Model for Contingent Faculty, Robert Samuels offers an outline of fair and effective practices for improving the working conditions of faculty in precarious positions. Drawing on more than twenty years of union activism and university teaching, Samuels examines programs, policies, and practices that work for non-tenure-track faculty in the University of California system. ... More
About the Publishers
The WAC Clearinghouse supports teachers of writing across the disciplines. An open-access publisher founded in 1997 and established in 2024 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, it is supported by donations from more than 300 charitable contributors and contributions of time and expertise from more than 200 volunteer editors, editorial staff members, reviewers, and editorial board members. For more information about the Clearinghouse, please see our site information page. The University Press of Colorado is a nonprofit cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Colorado, University of Denver, University of Northern Colorado, University of Wyoming, Utah State University, and Western Colorado University. For more information, visit upcolorado.com.
About Our Publication Process
The Precarity & Contingency series offers books in free digital editions and low-cost print editions. Books are offered through a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License. Copyright is held by the author(s) or editor(s) of the books. The publishers cover the costs of reviewing, designing, producing, and distributing the books. Any proceeds from sales of print books in the series are used to support the publication of subsequent books. Our goal is to make work available to the widest possible audience while maintaining the highest standards in scholarly publishing. We welcome contributions to the series and to the larger goal of supporting open-access scholarly publishing. If you have questions about the goals of the larger WAC Clearinghouse project, please contact Mike Palmquist at Mike.Palmquist@ColoState.edu.