Contingent Talk is a series of four podcasts about precarious academic labor that is part of the College Art Association's ongoing CAA Conversations podcast initiative. The producer is Sarah M. Dreller, PhD, a historian of modern art and architecture with over 20 years of experience as a part-time professor/mentor. The project can be found on social media with #CAAConversations and #ContingentTalk.

Following the CAA Conversations model, each episode of Contingent Talk features a wide-ranging discussion between two colleagues about a specific aspect of contingent teaching and postsecondary arts education in the United States today. Everyone who participated in this series has an active, first-hand, and long-term connection to the contingency system either as faculty themselves or as the chair of a department that relies on adjunct teaching staff.

Sarah prefaces each Contingent Talk episode by introducing the participants and briefly highlighting some of their conversation's key themes or concepts. 

Contingent Talk Episodes:

The Realities of Adjuncting Today
Ashley Gardini and Cheyanne Cortez have a candid discussion about participating in today's precarious academic labor market.

How Arts Professionals Contribute as Contingent Faculty
Maggie Guggenheimer and Ellen Oh describe how their rich careers in arts administration also eventually led to teaching and how what they’ve done in their non-academic professional work informs their pedagogy.

Contingent Faculty Unions Behind the Scenes
Sarita K. Heer, PhD and Jason Grunebaum discuss the myriad whys and hows of contingent faculty union organizing.

Ethical Approaches to Managing Contingent Faculty
David Rifkind, PhD and Carmenita Higginbotham, PhD talk about the mission-critical contributions their contingent faculty make and reflect on options they have, as department chairs, to support part-time teaching staff.

Sarah Dreller, a member of SAH since 1996, is SAH’s new Postdoctoral Researcher in the Humanities who is conducting the Mellon-funded study on the status of architectural history education. 

David Rifkind has been a member of SAH since 2002. He has served as a member of the SAH Board of Directors (2016-2019) and on several fellowship and award committees throughout the years.