From the Editor: Contingency in Context

I'm honored to begin my editorship of Forum. Much thanks to Brad Hammer and Vandana Gavaskar, two of the journal's former editors, for their guidance and confidence as I tackle this responsibility.The first time Forum appeared inside of CCC, editor Roberta Kirby-Werner stated its mission was "to prompt ongoing discussion of issues concerning non-tenuretrack faculty and to effect positive changes in our working conditions, salary and benefits, and overall integration in the professional life of the academy" (A1). Seventeen years later, this issue of Forum is published during an exciting time for contingent faculty and their allies, one in which the discussion of labor in higher education is getting more attention in the national media and in academic journals. Non-tenure-track faculty are now organizing in more and better ways to realize reform.As I write this, several significant events mark progress in and attention for contingent activism. On April 15, 2015, Adjunct Action (associated with Service Employees International Union) held a day of action in support of three goals: "$15,000 per course in total compensation," the identification of "bad actors in forprofit higher education," and making "higher education affordable and accessible for all students" ("Faculty Forward"). The Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor is planning its biennial Campus Equity Week, scheduled for fall 2015. This past March, Brianne Bolin, Joe Fruscione, and Kat Skills created PrecariCorps, a non- profit offering material support to adjuncts struggling to pay their bills. By April they had already provided funds to four such faculty and had plans for a fundraising push "to boost our funds for the summer, when adjuncts usually need money the most" (Fruscione).Perhaps garnering the most press was the first National Adjunct Walkout Day (NAWD) on February 25, 2015, drawing national attention to adjunct issues, while bringing opportunities for solidarity to more of our colleagues both on and off the tenure track. In her essay in this issue of Forum, "National Adjunct Walkout Day: Now What?," Natalie Dorfeld reviews the many ways adjuncts and their allies found to voice their concerns, from job actions to grade-ins. She further suggests that both tenure-track faculty and the general public should not ask, "Why do they teach in such conditions?" but rather, "Why haven't we helped them sooner?"Of course, this surge in activism has been organized in response to the continued, widespread abuse of non-tenure-track faculty, evidence that Forum still has much work to do in promoting discussion of the labor system in composition programs and in higher education writ large.With that in mind, I would like to position Forum as a place not only of scholarship, but also of advocacy, knowing that pairing these activities is not without controversy. Rather than falsely position myself as a dispassionate observer, I assert that we can and should use our scholarship to effect change, address injustice, and offer guidance for future action.In this way, in "Contact Zones and Contingent Faculty: An Argument for Conversion," contributor Patricia Pytleski encourages researchers to "examine the essential roles contingent faculty hold and how they factor into the power relations within the college and department community." Using Mary Louise Pratt's contact zone as a frame for her own professional experience, Pytleski positions conversion to the tenure track as a useful means of meeting a department's needs while also acknowledging the indispensable nature of contingent faculty's work. …