Grounded in the authors’ dissatisfaction with academic leadership after the 2016 presidential election, this article complicates the idea of the WPA-as-manager by introducing the framework of feminist, transformational, and intersectional writing program leadership. As writing program administrators, the authors identify the problems with calls for civility and neutrality post-election, particularly as these calls came down to the many nontenure-track faculty and graduate students teaching first-year writing. The authors introduce two methods of moving beyond writing program management to include greater attention to community engagement and leadership post-Trump: through revising curricula and course materials and by diversifying professional development opportunities. WPAs may find themselves in a rare moment where the pedagogical approaches for which we have long advocated—attention to marginalized voices, representation of complex arguments grounded in material realities, validation of the rhetorical import of nonacademic texts—are immediately practicable as a condition of civic engagement. Curricula and course materials may convey these commitments beyond the classroom. Further, the authors address the need for greater attention to professional development for faculty, particularly focusing on addressing the needs of vulnerable populations. They discuss two professional development resources beyond individual campus resources: the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI) and the University of Michigan’s Program on Intergroup Relations (IGR). By grounding this renovated image of the writing program administrator as a writing program leader, situated theoretically in leadership studies, the authors extend the work of scholars who see the WPA as a site of radical advocacy.

While many colleges and universities have earned a “military friendly” designation, too few offer opportunities for faculty to learn about military culture and the specific issues facing student veterans as they transition from active duty to student status. This article chronicles the authors’ experiences with and approaches to a workshop series, “Working with Post-9/11 Student-Veterans: A Faculty Primer,” which we have facilitated over the last several years at Colorado State University. Stressing the importance of a strength-based (versus deficit) model for the workshops and the integral role of student-veterans’ participation in the workshops, the essay offers an overview of strategies, common themes, materials and outcomes for faculty development workshops about this important issue.

Article for LiCS special issue The New Activism: Composition, Literacy Studies, and Politics.

Despite widespread interest in the reintegration of Post-9/11 military veterans into civilian life, the literacies of Post-9/11 veterans, both academic and professional, remain largely untheorized. This paper addresses this dearth of information by examining the induction processes and resulting workplace literacies of soldiers, airmen/women, sailors, and Marines. Examining two recent war memoirs, one by an enlisted soldier and another by an officer, we examine uses of language, particularly in terms of the way military values are inscribed during the period of induction yet also are subject to interaction with the service member’s history and scripts prior to military service. We posit “residence time” as a theoretical approach for understanding veterans’ transition challenges. We hope that this model may be useful to higher education, civilian sector employers, and veterans themselves as the US draws down from the Post-9/11 wars and service members transition back into civilian sectors of society.

Drawing on work logs kept by participants, the authors report and analyze a project at their university in which contingent faculty recorded the amount of work they actually performed during a week. The authors also recommend ways to enhance the working conditions of such faculty.

The guest editors preview the contents of this special issue on contingent faculty and identify key concerns that have been raised by English studies’ (and the overall academy’s) reliance on such instructors