Over Ten Million Served , livre ebook

SUNY series in Feminist Criticism and Theory

Michelle A. Massé, editor

Over Ten Million Served
Gendered Service in Language and Literature Workplaces
Edited by
Michelle A. Massé
and
Katie J. Hogan

Cover image of the diploma © Felix Möckel / iStockphoto Cover image of the platter © Anne-Louise Quarfoth / Bigstockphoto
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2010 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Over ten million served : gendered service in language and literature workplaces /     edited by Michelle A. Massé and Katie J. Hogan.
          p. cm. — (SUNY series in feminist criticism and theory)
    Includes bibliographical references and index.
    ISBN 978-1-4384-3203-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
    ISBN 978-1-4384-3202-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
    1. Women college teachers—Professional relationships—United States. 2. Women college teachers—Workload—United States. 3. Feminism and higher education—United States. 4. Sex discrimination in higher education—United States. I. Massé, Michelle A. (Michelle Annette), 1951– II. Hogan, Katie, 1960–
    LB2332.32.O94 2010
    378.1'2082—dc22                                                                                                      2009054120
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For James Catano and Paula Martinac
Acknowledgments
We have been so well served by our friends and colleagues that it's difficult to know where to begin our thanks and how to delimit our gratitude. This project carries not only the traces of every committee, task force, or commission on which we've served but also the memories of those with whom we've served. At the same time, as we have all taught one another about our projects, our institutions, and ourselves through service, we have changed, sometimes as slowly but certainly as surely. as the schools for which we work.
We cannot acknowledge the hundreds of colleagues and friends with whom we've started initiatives, written reports, and proposed curricula over the years. The patina of this particular project, however, was burnished by all of them as well as by those who read materials, encouraged us at every stage, and enthusiastically added their own accounts of service, sometimes with a smile, and sometimes with a curse.
Some of our acknowledgments are individual. Katie J. Hogan thanks Michelle A. Massé for saying “yes,” for her support and friendship during difficult times, and for her unwavering commitment to gender justice. Katie also thanks Kathryn Flannery and Sharon O'Dair for graciously inviting her to present her research at their institutions. Rachel Stein, Phyllis van Slyck, Jan Beatty, and Kathryn and Jim Flannery have consistently offered their love and friendship as well as their stories about service, and Katie thanks them with the deepest appreciation. She also thanks her online brief daily sessions writing group—Lisa Brush, Kirsten Christensen, Linh Hua, Anita McChesney, Sara S. Poor, Maggie Rehm, and Donna Strickland—for always being there. To the Carlow feminist writing group—Sigrid King, Jennifer Snyder-Duch, Irene Lietz, Melissa Swauger, Linda Burns, Sylvia Rhor, and Anne Rashid—Katie expresses her heartfelt gratitude for their challenging and thoughtful feedback and warm company. She also expresses her appreciation to the Carlow University Office of Academic Affairs for a course release at a critical stage in this project and to Dr. Karen Kiely and Sara Azarius for their expertise, guidance, and compassion. Andy Hogan, Katie's brother, offered excellent insight on methodological issues related to service, and Debi Carey, Katie's sister, expressed enthusiasm for Katie's latest project. Katie owes the deepest gratitude to her life partner, Paula Martinac, for more than sixteen years of love, fun, struggle, loyalty, and friendship. Her loving support, patience, and expertise contributed to the completion of this project.
Michelle A. Massé's first debt of gratitude for this project is to Katie J. Hogan, whose enthusiasm, fierce commitment, and critical sense were crucial in moving this project from theory to praxis. A fellowship from Rutgers University's Center for Historical Analysis provided the space and time that made undertaking the project possible. Michelle also thanks Devon Hodges and Doris Massé for their unstinting encouragement, laughter, love, and good sense, and the members of her writing group, Kate Jensen, Anna Nardo, and Irene di Maio. Her students have been an insistent reminder that what often passes for learning “professionalism” can be a covert transmission of learning to be silent, work hard, and never complain. And Michelle's final and greatest thanks, always, is to James Catano, as colleague, partner, beloved friend, and endless supplier of commiseration, celebration, and indignation, while sharing service narratives over the years.
Some of our acknowledgments are joint. We especially want to thank not only the contributors to this volume, but Kirsten Christensen, Kate Conley, Linh Hua, Karen Lawrence, Tricia Lin, and Magdalena Maiz-Pena, with whom we served on the Modern Language Association's Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession. Their collegial support in shaping a major project there, along with our collective musings about service for national organizations, helped us articulate and think through some of the issues that led to our developing Over Ten Million Served . We would both like to thank Jeffrey Williams for his editorial acumen as well as his unflagging scholarly and personal generosity, a joint gratitude to which Katie adds an individual footnote because of Jeff's friendship and willingness to consider ideas in rough form. We'd also like to thank Jeff for his permission, on behalf of the minnesota review , to reprint Katie's essay, “Superserviceable Feminism” (63/64 [2005]: 95–111). In addition, the panels and presentations that the Women's Caucus of the Modern Language Association, the National Women's Studies Association, the Working-Class Studies Association, and Marc Bousquet invited us to give on Over Ten Million Served gave us new communities in which we could discuss our ideas, and new ideas with which to refine our original formulations.
Gary Dunham, executive director of State University of New York (SUNY) Press, and Larin McLaughlin, SUNY Press acquisition editor for the Feminist Theory and Criticism series, have welcomed this project from the start and have been quick to speed it on its way. We also extend our gratitude to our two SUNY Press readers for their attentive and thoughtful critical engagement with this project, to Diane Ganeles, senior production editor at SUNY, for shepherding the manuscript through production, and to Michele Lansing for her scrupulous copyediting. Rachel Spear, a doctoral student in comparative literature at Louisiana State University (LSU), has meticulously edited and critiqued this manuscript, which has been improved by every suggestion she made.
As this book goes into the world, we hope that it helps another generation of feminist scholars as they struggle to ensure that their service embodies their own values, their own commitments, and their own activism as they re-form the workplaces of the future.
Introduction
Katie J. Hogan and Michelle A. Massé

Service as Calling
All tenured and tenure-track faculty know the trinity of promotion and tenure criteria: research, teaching, and service. 1 But service, like the Paraclete or Holy Spirit, hovering over everything but never seen, often remains a point of blind faith. Feudal, quasi-monastic understandings of dutiful service animate contemporary higher education workplaces, fueling our unstinting dedication to our orders and our vocations. 2 Almost all faculty do this mysterious “service” work, even though the actual labor of service is rarely tabulated or analyzed as a key aspect of higher education's political economy. The potentially endless list of tasks on campus, ranging from writing recommendations, advising students, and mentoring junior colleagues, through serving on committees and organizing events, to serving on institutional committees and task forces and writing reports, fills our days, weeks, weekends, and years. A good deal of this labor falls through the cracks, rarely finding its way onto a CV or i