ACCUTE Webinar #2: Life and Work with a PhD

ACCUTE 2021-2022 Webinar #2

“LIFE AND WORK WITH A PHD: EXPECTATIONS AND REALITIES”
MONDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2021
3:00PM-4:00PM EST
Co-ordinated by Concetta Principe (Trent)

Please join ACCUTE on Monday, 22 November 2021 from 3:00 – 4:00 EST for our next webinar, “Life and Work with a PhD: Expectations and Realities.” Coordinated by Concetta Principe, this webinar features Gianluca Agostinelli (Niagara College/NCDSB), Krista Collier-Jarvis (Dalhousie), Jason Camlot (Concordia), Naava Smolash (Douglas), and Sailaja Krishnamurti (St. Mary’s).

All are welcome; free registration is required. Click here to register. 
Poster with information for ACCUTE Webinar #2: Please join ACCUTE on Monday, 22 November 2021 from 3:00 - 4:00 EST for our next webinar, "Life and Work with a PhD: Expectations and Realities." Coordinated by Concetta Principe, this webinar features Gianluca Agostinelli (Niagara College/NCDSB), Krista Collier-Jarvis (Dalhousie), Jason Camlot (Concordia), Naava Smolash (Douglas), and Sailaja Krishnamurti (St. Mary’s).

In Canada every year, several thousand doctors of philosophy are born. What future can they expect? Traditionally, a tenure position — somewhere — was the unspoken agreement. Over the last several decades, however, or maybe it’s been a long time coming, the academic landscape has changed. Capitalism’s bottom line and profit goals have led institutions to shrink funding for faculty in Humanities disciplines: there are fewer tenure-track/tenured faculty in many of these departments alongside a growing army of part-time teachers. Every year, with each new cohort of PhD graduates, the part-time sessional work force swells, exacerbating the tough competition for the few jobs there. Tenure dreams recede and scholarship sits unread, unpublished, for the PhD who can barely make a living wage.

What has happened to Humanities over the last thirty years? If the future of the academic life is teaching, what is the good of the scholarly focused demands of the PhD? In this light, what is the actual future of a newly hooded humanities scholar? Have the changing work demands of new PhDs changed the expectations by faculty, by students, or not? Is tenure a dying future?

The radical changes that have been happening in the academy have inspired a lot of research and many reports. It has even inspired a previous ACCUTE Webinar (The Future of English) as well as panels at the ACCUTE Conference. The aim of this webinar is to create an informal gathering where participants and viewers can offer us a snapshot of the academy ‘today’.