DISCO 2022: Crip Mentoring, Access Advocacy & the Job Market

Against a blue sky with pink clouds, a purple microphone icon with a heart is in the upper left corner and the event title in white text is to the right: "Crip Mentoring, Access Advocacy, & the Job Market" with oval headshots of the panelists, the event description, and logos below.
On a blue sky pink cloud background, there is a purple microphone icon with a heart on it in the upper left corner and the event title in white text to the right: Crip Mentoring, Access Advocacy, & the Job Market. Underneath are oval headshots of the panelists (left to right): Sara M. Acevedo, Vyshali Manivannan, Crystal Lie, Rua M. Williams. Under the headshots is the event description in black text. The bottom of the event flyer is lined with a row of colorful little houses and buildings. It also features the DISCO logo on the left, a rainbow infinity sign in the center, and the Digital Accessible Futures Lab logo on the right.

I was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion, mostly aimed at doctoral students, about crip mentoring and navigating the academic job market while disabled.

Veronica Thomas and Jessica Hill Riggs wrote up an event reflection for DISCO. I didn’t use scripted remarks for this roundtable talk, but below are the primary questions that were asked, and the answers I jotted down in preparation.

Crip Mentoring, Access Advocacy, and the Job Market

Vyshali Manivannan, Pace University – Pleasantville
DISCO Network, University of Michigan
April 15, 2022

Main Questions

Can you share a little bit about your own work, and some of the challenges (and possibilities) of doing interdisciplinary scholarship, service, or teaching as a new faculty member?

  • I’ve been studying the experience of chronic pain and fatigue from the patient-scholar’s POV
  • Eurocentric biomedical discourses around pain, decolonizing discourses around chronic pain from an Eelam Tamil POV
  • Started out studying trolling cultures and digital transgression, and I did an MFA in Fiction prior to my PhD program
  • I work across media studies, digital humanities, medical rhetoric, and creative disciplines like fiction and performance art
  • Interdisciplinary scholarship is not well-understood and depending on the disciplinary boundaries being crossed it can be read as transgressive in a bad way
    • The “theoretical rigor” of such work is often questioned
    • Was informally told by a former employer that publishing creative work after scholarly work looks like a loss of rigor
    • Initially made me worried about CV lines

What advice might you have for current grad students interested in interdisciplinary projects?

  • Do it! But learn how to describe your work in terms of rigor and why disciplinary or genre boundaries should be crossed, and connect yourself with people who do similar work
  • Be able to invoke people who are established and do similar work, to set yourself in a lineage of interdisciplinary scholars
  • Use the buzzwords that describe your work and protect you: push boundaries, radical, unique, differentiated in XYZ ways

How does one “do” disability disclosure when academia is so hostile? Where might you guide graduate students who are new to disability studies and/or a disability identity? 

  • Carefully, without too many specifics at first. As a faculty, I got people in my corner before going to HR—my chair, colleagues, a dean
  • As a graduate student, I got my adviser behind me, then a few professors, and admitted information as needed—e.g., during a flare-up, or a medical crisis. This became useful when my work became about my disability

How might your advice shift depending on where folks are in their programs of study — e.g., first-year vs. exams vs. applying for jobs?

  • Disability doesn’t always permit secrecy, and if you can’t hide it, even in your first year, get out in front of the story. I hid it from a professor in my 2nd year and was penalized re: grades when I had to beg for extensions and absence forgiveness
  • I didn’t disclose disability in my job interviews until Cindy Selfe and Remi actually suggested I simply say so. In my current job I disclosed on my campus visit and could tell by the way it was simply accepted and accommodated that people would have my back
  • In previous interviews, w/o disclosing, I ended up in bizarre situations, the strangest of which was hiking around a lake in pumps

What suggestions might you have for those who are grappling with pandemic burnout, especially those who are marginalized within the academy and/or who are thinking about the job market? 

  • I masked less and strangely did better. I don’t know if that’s advice, but maybe losing the capacity to give a fuck helped me—I was more myself, or more direct, or more authentic in my talks with people
  • Balanced against the need for job security, ending up in a place that will have your back whether it’s about antiracism or disability is of the utmost importance

Can you share a little bit about your own thinking or experiences with forming crip mentoring networks or care networks? 

  • I formed the majority of my crip mentoring and care networks at Computers & Writing, cultivated/grew it on Twitter, took recommendations from friends about who to follow, etc. Not all conferences are as friendly but I think the smaller ones or ones with a good reputation for it are good places to begin
  • I’m awkward around people so having people introduce me was great, and taking part in mentoring events like GRN or pre-conference events also helped
  • My department—my story is not the most common one unfortunately, but I’ve ended up in a place that wants to improve its culture of access, where pain and fatigue are parts of me, and I’m supported without resentment

Questions from Individual Grad Students

How do you navigate a search when you’re locationally/geographically restricted?

  • It me! Additionally, I can’t drive and NYC isn’t a driving city anyway. I limited my search to the places I knew I could reasonably commute to via walking, trains, buses. I didn’t want to move even from my current apartment. This is also how I shopped for PhD programs. Took a few years, but staying where I am is more important to me than a TT job
  • Helps that NYC has a lot of adjunct positions at any given time so I had fallback options
  • Advisor also put in a good word for me at departments where he had connections

Some “common advice” I’ve heard is that you need to find an academic job asap after your PhD or you won’t be competitive for tenure-track jobs. Has this changed, especially during the pandemic? 

  • Idk, stayed in an academic job but didn’t go for TT and as I’m only now finishing my PhD, I’m only now able to even consider TT

Where does your labor go as a new professor? (We’re vaguely familiar re: you’re doing teaching, research, and service. But what does this mean day to day? How do you divide your time?)

  • I have trouble energy-switching (going from external to internal) and FMS and ME/CFS often make my days unpredictable
  • I divide my days and tasks between what I can do. Teaching days, I teach and accept that little else will get done (I organize as much of my classes on the same days as I can.) I tackle service bit by bit over the week and weekends, grading over the weekends. For research I set aside days where I have nothing else (right now, typically Thurs and Fri).

How does this look different at different institutions or in different positions? (e.g., What do teaching commitments look like?)

  • Commitments depend on the position (adjunct vs. lecturer). E.g., current position doesn’t require research so I position it as service to the field. 80% teaching and 20% service commitment. Teaching: contact hours, a few hours of office hours, grading, advising. Service: a lot of emails, meeting people, development of department initiatives