For me, I’ve set my limit at about 3 journal reviews a year (plus conference reviewing), with first priority going to the places where I’m on the editorial board (and generally just won’t say “no” to them at all unless there’s a very good, specific reason). Why 3 reviews? Aside from 3 being the magic number, I have no idea — seemed about right is all. But now I find myself in the uncomfortable position of saying “no” more than I say “yes” to reviewing. At the end of the day, however, I recognize that reviewing isn’t going to get me tenure. And it’s not going to help me maintain a work/non-work balance. As hard as it is for me to say “no” to people’s requests (I inevitably feel like I’m letting them down), I’ve come to see it as a necessary evil — key to preserving productivity and maintaining some king thin grasp on my sanity.

What about you? What is/was your limit as an assistant professor? Did/will that change post-tenure? Are there (or do you fear) negative consequences to saying “no” on a regular basis?

Please comment below and share your thoughts!

Now let’s see if I can’t start using this and Twitter a little more regularly….

1. The article is supposed to be dedicated to Nathaniel “Nacho” Córdova, may he rest in peace. Nacho was my friend and mentor — one of the few other Puerto Rican rhetorical scholars in my home discipline of communication studies. Nacho passed away this summer and this essay was to be dedicated in his honor, especially since he gave me some valuable feedback early on.

2. They also omitted the acknowledgements. Again, I don’t think this is something that was intentional and certainly wasn’t anything in the editor’s hands (Angharad Valdivia is, as anyone who knows her will tell you, awesome). Anyway, I wanted to post them here:

Acknowledgements

I want to extend special thanks to the many people who have commented on earlier versions of this essay, especially Nathaniel Córdova, Suzanne Enck-Wanzer and all of the wonderful participants from the 2010 UNT Summer Workshop on Critical Latina/o Communication Studies. I also wish to thank Angharad Valdivia and the reviewers for their guidance and suggestions.

I probably should also mention that this essay was originally presented at the 2009 American Studies Association convention. Its completion was made possible through a 2010 UNT Junior Faculty Summer Research Fellowship. The full citation, PDF, and link to the journal page are under the “Research” tab in the header of this site.

Abrazos,
~Darrel

I usually wait until after the first catastrophic failure of the semester to post something about this to the grad students in my program (and occasionally share it online), but I thought I’d try to get ahead of the curve this time around. Keeping good backups of your research, writing, and teaching materials is INCREDIBLY important — so important that it warrants all-caps and bold. What counts as a “good backups,” you might ask? Well, I think the best kind of backups keep your files “off-site,” meaning that your files are preserved on a networked drive that itself has good backups.

Thumb/flash drive = bad backup. Why? Because they’re easy to lose … or put through the wash … or melt … or flush … or crush. They’re great for transferring files from one machine to another and that’s about it, IMHO.

External hard drive = better, but still bad. Why? Because if your backup is sitting next to your computer and your place burns down or is burgled, you still lose everything. Don’t get me wrong — an external hard drive is a good thing on which to run regular and comprehensive backups; but at least consider keeping it somewhere other than where your computer is stored (e.g., keep it in your office on campus). Still, it’s too much for most people to do a comprehensive backup every day; so you need a way to easily and safely backup your current stuff.

Cloud storage = best. Why? It’s offsite, secure, and is itself backed up by the service provider. It’s not the most efficient way to do a comprehensive/complete backup of your hard drive (an external HD is best at that); but it is the best way to keep backups of your current/most used files. For example, all of my teaching and research materials from the last year or so are stored on my Dropbox account; so if anything goes wrong with my desktop *or* laptop computers, I’m still safe and have a current copy of everything that’s important to me.

I’ve tried a few different storage solutions and think that the best one (in terms of features and ease of use) is Dropbox. Dropbox is free (with 2GB of storage), has a program that installs on your computer to make the backups/syncs between multiple computers automatic, and is super easy to use. Also, you get a bump in storage space for referring friends (and they get some extra space for being referred). Right now, a number of us professors in my department are using Dropbox to distribute readings for grad classes; and as ProfHacker and others on the Chronicle demonstrate, there are many other ways to be using Dropbox effectively and efficiently. Beyond using it for class, though, be sure you’re backing up your important research and teaching files too!

If you don’t have a Dropbox account, read more about it and sign up here: http://db.tt/tYuPtIT (yeah … that’s my referral link)

http://nacho-cordova.blogspot.com/2011/07/memorial-contributions.html

Nacho Córdova

It is with a heavy heart that I write of the passing of my friend, colleague, and mentor, Nathaniel I. Córdova, who most of us knew as Nacho. A beloved teacher and gifted scholar, Nacho was an associate professor and chair of rhetoric and media studies at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. In addition to being an academic, Nacho was a skilled photographer (both iPhoneography and more conventional dSLR work), a devoted partner, and a loving father.  I’m still pretty shocked to hear this news and remain speechless, so I’ll keep this post fairly brief….

I first met Nacho in 2003, because he was one of the only Puerto Rican scholars in my research area. We started chatting over email in October, and soon met up in person at the National Communication Association convention in Miami that November. From that point on, we talked regularly on the phone (though not as often as either of us wished), met up at NCA, and conversed over the interwebs. Nacho was always so thoughtful (he considered himself a “Zen Humanist,” after all), giving, encouraging, contemplative, balanced, and kind. Just the other day, I was describing him to another friend/colleague and I commented that Nacho was one of the nicest people I have ever met. I think most who knew him would agree. His big smile, joyful laugh, and warming presence were always the highlight of my NCA.

In the past few years, Nacho dealt with a number of deaths, including family, colleagues, and close friends. Nacho, always self-reflexive about his attitudes, blogged about some of these experiences … and I feel his own reflections can offer us some guidance as we mourn his loss. In a November 2006 blog entry, titled “Impermanence Redux,” Nacho wrote about a conversation with a student coping with the loss of another student at the school:

One of my current students stopped by today, sad and crying over our mutual friend that died, and she said that every year she has been at the University somebody close to her has died. I told her that the older she gets the more people she knows will pass away. She said her dad told her the same thing. Yes. I did mention impermanence, interbeing, and grieving, and that no matter what, it just doesn’t seem fair, nor purposeful in-and-of-itself. But… what can she make of it? what can we make of it together? With all the pain, grief, and sadness rolled into it, how can we transform it, add meaning, and compost that suffering for the wellbeing of others? And so we are connected in death, in this endless cycle of being and becoming and hopefully transformation, always not knowing.

I think Nacho would want us to ask the same questions as we grieve his untimely departure — to be grateful for his life and our relationships with him, but also to rework these feelings of pain and loss into something more productive … something that can make ourselves and those around us better in some way.

I will miss you, friend. We will all miss you.

An online memorial for Nacho is up at http://nacho-cordova.blogspot.com/.

(I will update this post with information about services, etc., as I find it out.)

UPDATE #1 (7/17)
The memorial will be Wednesday afternoon (click for more info). The precise details aren’t in place yet, but they should be updated soonish. I think I’m going to try to go….

UPDATE #2 (7/18)
Another/revised article about Nacho in the Statesman Journal.

1.  The cover printing and design are beautiful. It’s a paperback book with a glossy finish/coating (perhaps someone else knows a more technical term). Both front and back covers have flaps that have been folded in — with a short overview of the book printed on the front flap and some blurbs printed on the back flap. The pages inside the book are semi-glossy and on a heavier stock of paper than you usually find in paperbacks, which should help it hold up to all the page-turning it’ll get in libraries, community resource centers, and homes.

2.  As I expected, the new introduction written by Iris Morales, entitled “Power to the People,” offers both an excellent overview of the Young Lords and their history of activism and a knowledgable assessment of their lasting impact and continued relevance. Morales does a great job of framing what was going on then (when the book was originally published) and why it should still matter to us now.

3.  After the introduction, the book is pretty faithful to the original. It is printed in the same font and has the same layout as the original, however the page numbers are different for two reasons. First, the introduction is paginated as body matter rather than front matter. Second, Pedro Pietri’s “Puerto Rican Obituary” (which was first published in the original Palante) is absent. Aside from those changes, the merger of two pages announcing the introduction into one page (page 9 in this edition), and the replacement of Abramson’s original afterword (click that link for a PDF) with an “About the Authors” page, the book is exactly the same.

4.  My only complaint about the book — and this is just me being picky — is that I wish the press would have taken the effort to do some better scans/prints of Abramson’s photographs. Having seen original copies of most of the photos when I was researching in the Liberation News Service Photographs collection at NYU’s Tamiment, I don’t feel like the prints in this book do Abramson’s skilled and artful photography justice. On the other hand, better scans and higher quality printing (a) could have raised the price of the book too much and (b) would have lessened the originality/authenticity of the volume.

All in all, this is most definitely a book worth buying for all of the reasons mentioned in my last post and this one. Palante incorporates moving personal narratives, savvy political analysis, and exemplary photojournalism to make it a critical resource for understanding the Young Lords. It is a must for scholars, activists, and others interested in the history of Latin@s and/or New York.

Palante can be purchased from Amazon.com for about $15 and from Haymarket Books for the retail $24.95.

I will be presenting in the third section of the precon (see below), a paper tentatively titled “Delinking Rhetoric: Theorizing Vernacular (Counter)Public Discourse Through the Colonial Difference.” As a whole, the precon will address the following themes and issues. Everything from here on is straight from the call/announcement.

Key Themes/Questions

• What are the definitional, conceptual, historical, epistemological or methodological distinctions and similarities between counterpublic and social movement study, in the discipline of Communication Studies?
• What are the politics of studying social movements versus counterpublics? What is the value added by choosing one theoretical path over the other and has the discipline tacitly chosen one preferred theory over another?
• Given the literature traditions, where do related terms (e.g., resistance, vernacular discourse), find a home in our discipline? How might scholars interested in social change from many different literature backgrounds come together to augment each others’ work?
•  What is the future of social movement and counterpublic scholarship in light of the economic, political, cultural climate of the 2000s and especially related to resistance within a technologized, post-industrial, global context?

Taking a more traditional conference format, “lead” scholars will frame each 90 minute thematic session with presentations or position statements, followed by discussion, dialogue and debate with the attending participants. Further information about our lead scholars and schedule is included below.  For more information or to express your interest in the pre-con, please contact Amy Pason (apason@unr.edu). To participate, you will need to remember to register for this preconference along with your general NCA convention registration.

Lead Scholars

Bernadette Marie Calafell (University of Denver) Kevin M. DeLuca (University of Utah) Darrel Enck-Wanzer (University of North Texas) Christina R. Foust (University of Denver, co-organizer) Josh Hanan (Temple University) Christina Harold (University of Washington) Raymie McKerrow (Ohio University) Kristie Maddux (University of Maryland) Amy Pason (University of Nevada – Reno, co-organizer) Catherine Palczewski (University of Northern Iowa) Kate Zittlow Rogness (Monmouth College, co-organizer)

Tentative Schedule:

1. Opening Session:  Why am I a Social Movement or Counterpublic scholar?
   The goal of this session is to lay out why one concept or literature is pursued over others, while gaining conceptual clarity about what it means to study the communication of “social movement(s)” and “counterpublics.”
2. “Disciplining” Scholarship on Movements and Counterpublics
   Building upon the distinctions in conceptual vocabulary identified in session one, this session will problematize disciplinary boundaries and debates that have guided research on dissident rhetoric and discourse. Particularly, this session considers how social movement scholarship had an affinity with social scientific (sociological approaches) in the 1970s, and how challenges to the functional approach have led to postmodern social movement scholarship. Likewise, the session follows a humanistic turn toward the study of counterpublics in the 1980s and 1990s. In the process, this session also considers the relationship of critical rhetoric to advancing the study of dissident rhetoric, whether in terms of social movements or counterpublics. Finally, this session invites consideration as to how scholarship on new social movements/identity-related movements, groups, or discourses (notably, feminist, Latino/a, Black, and queer politics and performances) relates to the disciplinary treatment of social movements or counterpublics.
3. Staking out a Research Agenda via Alliances
   Building upon the first two sessions, the post-lunch/break session will engage lines of research and theory which have their own traditions in Communication, and consider how they may augment the study of social movements and counterpublics: notably, vernacular rhetorics/discourses, and resistance. The goal for this session will be to outline important affiliated concepts, and demonstrate how counterpublics and social movements may contribute to studying them.
4. Staking out a Research Agenda in Context: Resistance in Empire/Information Economies
   The fourth session considers how emergent, interdisciplinary debates in the study of social change (e.g., debates over hegemonic and transgressive modes of resistance, as described by Foust, 2010) may factor into, and ultimately advance, the study of social change in communication. Particularly, this session is designed to address changing contextual conditions, which may give rise to resistance that relies upon networks, circulating of information, antagonisms outside of the classic “society versus the state” configuration, and the accession to material rhetoric. This session considers emergent lines of thinking (e.g., netwars, transgression, anarchistic politics, the “commons,” sabotage, and other situationist-inspired tactics) as they may advance the study of counterpublics and social movements.

For more information, contact: Amy Pason, PhD; Assistant Professor, Division of Communication Studies University of Nevada, Reno apason@unr.edu

Perhaps I order too many books, which Is probably an occupational hazard for folks in my line of work. As such, I often don’t pay close attention to emails with the subject line “Your Amazon.com order has shipped.” Today, I’m glad that I looked because my copy of Palante: Voices and Photographs of the Young Lords, 1969-1971 is on its way. This re-release and re-naming of the 1971 Palante: Young Lords Party, which has been out of print for a long time, adds an introduction by Iris Morales, filmmaker and Young Lord, and promises to be a great addition to the resources available on the organization. So why should you care? Here are a couple of reasons. 

Palante has always been one of the most comprehensive resources on the Young Lords. Released in 1971, it was a key means by which they spread word of the organization’s history, ideology, attitudes toward key issues (like women in the revolution), etc. The first half of the book was a collection of programmatic statements from/about the organization and first-person narratives, testimonios even, recounting how different members (cadre and leadership) “turned political.” It also included pieces speaking to issues such as colonialism, women’s equality, gay liberation, and racism. The second half of the book was an extended photo essay by Michael Abramson, which had some of the best photos documenting the Young Lords’ activism. Sadly, it has long been out of print. Worse yet, many libraries had their copies lost or stolen over the years, so it’s gotten hard to find this excellent primary text.

This new edition of Palante, published by Haymarket Press, promises to be everything that the original was and then some. The addition of a new introduction by Iris Morales adds a contemporary dimension to this forty year old text. Iris Morales and Denise Oliver wrote the preface to my Young Lords: A Reader, which really helped to bring into focus the significance of the organization for a contemporary audience. While I haven’t yet read the new introduction, I’m confident it will be fitting to the book, which was already great.

If you’re already interested in the Young Lords, you probably don’t need much additional reason to get the book (in fact, you’ve probably pre-ordered it). If you don’t know a lot about the Young Lords, why the heck not??? The Lords were one of the most significant radical Latin@ organizations of the post-McCarthy era. They were responsible for significant advances in Puerto Rican communities on issues of health, education, drug abuse, political empowerment, prisoner’s rights, police brutality, and more for a wide cross-section of working people of color. If you have any interest whatsoever in Latin@ social movements, black and brown power, the radical 1960s and 1970s, coalitional politics, the Left, Third World feminisms, etc., you should get this book (and mine too, of course).

Even if you don’t have a huge interest in these topics, the photos alone make Palante a great conversation piece for anyone who happens to flip through it. For $15 from Amazon.com, it’s hard to justify not getting this book.

I’ll be waiting (impatiently) for my copy to arrive tomorrow or Wednesday. Once it does, I’ll post a short review of the book quality and the intro for those of you still on the fence. If you get your copy before me, please weigh in here in the comments.

First, as far as I’m concerned, the more people who have access to the Reader the better. If I had my druthers, I’d love to see a free, high quality version of the book freely available to all. I love, for example, that communication scholar Ted Striphas has, through an insightful agreement with his publisher, made his book, The Late Age of Print, freely available through a Creative Commons license on his book blog and via Scribd. With a subject like the Young Lords, I think it’s important for as many people as possible to have access to the resources that I’ve assembled because it’s a critical, understudied aspect of Latin@ history and the history of the USA.

Second, I don’t feel like I have all that much of a right to complain given that the material in the book is mostly primary source material that the Young Lords produced long ago. Sure, the format is novel and many costs went into the production of the book; but I don’t think it would be in the spirit of the organization to fuss about a copy being shared online.

Third, I don’t know that it’s really that much different than a library having the book and loaning it out. Moreover, I’d hope that the poor-quality version being hosted on Scribd might compel a reader to find out if their local library has the book and request they order it if it’s not part of their collection.

That said, I do hope people will consider buying the book for two reasons.

First, a pragmatic and philosophical justification: University presses (like NYU Press, who published the Reader) are organizations that provide an incredibly valuable and non-lucrative service to the scholarly community and general public. They aren’t exactly money-makers; in fact, university presses are struggling to survive, especially in the recession. Given the centrality of books in the university tenure world, not to mention as an outlet of significant knowledge generation, I think it’s important for people (especially those of us in academia) to support university presses when we have the option to do so. If you’re a professor or a graduate student, it’s in your best interest to support university presses if you want to have an outlet for your own work down the road.

Second, an ethical justification: In honor of all the work the Young Lords accomplished with and for young people, sales of the Reader, help to support a long-standing Latin@ organization operating in New York: UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latin@ community-based organization. Working with youth for social and environmental justice, UPROSE embodies, in many ways, the spirit of the Young Lords and deserves wide support. As such, 50% of my cut from book sales will be sent directly to UPROSE for their important work.

In conclusion, I understand the many complicated reasons why people might choose to read my book without buying it. I’d rather libraries have copies or people buy their own for the reasons I stated above — not to mention the fact that it’s a beautiful book with an amazing glossy photo insert to which a rough scan can’t do justice. But that said, I can accept that people won’t buy it and would rather they have some kind of access to the important writings of the Young Lords than none at all.