7. There Are Advantages to Knowing Your Limits: On Making a Difference for Non-Tenure Track Colleagues
Religion in Theory and Practice - Demystifying the Field for Burgeoning Scholars - Russell T. McCutcheon
Russell T. McCutcheon [+ ]
University of Alabama
Russell T. McCutcheon is University Research Professor and, for 18 years, was the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. He has written on problems in the academic labor market throughout his 30-year career and helped to design and run Alabama’s skills-based M.A. in religion in culture. Among his recent work is the edited resource for instructors, Teaching in Religious Studies and Beyond (Bloomsbury 2024).
Description
Unpublished and originally delivered at a session of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) devoted to issues surrounding the challenges facing contingent faculty members, this chapter purposefully shifts the focus to tenure-track and tenured faculty—people who sometimes feel powerless to change the direction of the modern university. It argues that, while many influential structural factors are certainly well beyond their control, there are a number of practical and consequential things that a united group of faculty members can themselves do to help improve the situation of the non-tenure track colleagues whose labor more than just helps to create the conditions in which we all do our own work.