Virtually hired: Why I can’t wait to meet my colleagues after working with them for six months

I interviewed for my dream academic librarian position in July 2020. I was thrilled beyond words to be hired as the nursing librarian for the University of San Diego in August 2020. Yes, August 2020. Yes, during the COVID-19 pandemic. I interviewed, was hired, and began working entirely on Zoom. It has been, and continues to be, a unique and strange experience.I have joined my new colleagues for committee meetings and faculty meetings. I have collaborated with them on our library’s newsletter and on our annual report. I have consulted with some of them on my LibGuides, my instructional videos, and my faculty’s database usage and interlibrary loan statistics. I have done all this sitting at my kitchen table, which, like many of our kitchen tables, has quickly morphed into my work area. I have yet to be in the physical presence of my new co-workers. I engage exclusively with their heads and torsos on my laptop screen. I do not know what kind of shoes any of them wear.

I’m sorry (to interrupt): The use of explicit apology in turn-taking

Contributing to research on workplace interactions and turn-taking practices, this conversation analytic study examines how people take turns during multi-party workplace meetings. In particular, we analyze 12 hours of video-recordings of faculty meetings at a U.S. school district, and show how meeting participants use explicit apology (e.g. I’m sorry; I’m sorry to interrupt) for turn-taking. The apology carries out interactional work in two ways: 1) it acknowledges that a (possible) offense (i.e. interruption) has occurred, and 2) it indicates that the current speaker will self-select to take and keep the turn. The self-selector produces the apology mid-turn after the turn-initial overlap is resolved and before continuing with her turn. We first analyze cases in which the self-selector uses explicit apology after having begun her turn during the current speaker’s ongoing turn. In most of these cases, the self-selected turn is sequentially disjunctive in that it is not directly responsive to the immediately preceding turn. We then show how the self-selector uses explicit apology when she needs to compete with another self-selector to take the turn. The study findings have implications for the turn-taking organization in meeting interactions.

The multimodal enactment of deontic and epistemic authority in Indian meetings

Authority is a much discussed topic in organizational literature, but its in situ enactment is little investigated. Using the notions of deontic and epistemic authority and using multimodal conversation analysis as a research methodology, the purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical study of authority-in-action. We particularly focus on both sequences of talk and the multimodal resources that are mobilised to ‘do’ authority. Furthermore, as research from non-Western contexts remains rare, we complement insights into authority enactment based on ‘Western’ data by using data that is drawn from a corpus of naturally-occurring video-recorded faculty meetings at an Indian University. Findings indicate that the doing of authority can be made visible by explicating participants’ orientation to their respective deontic and epistemic rights and their invocation of particular identities, which are accomplished by means of a complex intertwining of verbal and non-verbal resources.

Action in the Space Between

Boundaries have gained analytical prominence in sociology of science. Notably, there have been studies on how academics differentiate themselves from outsiders in order to secure their legitimacy. In university departments, scholars engage in boundary work to defend their intellectual communities and institutional resources. While boundary struggles are characteristic of academia, they rarely result in departmental restructuring. This article examines a case where a theoretical divide between social and cultural anthropologists and biological anthropologists led to a departmental split. The study reveals a shift from peaceful coexistence to a full-blown conflict between two intellectual communities and asks, what circumstances gave rise to the activation of a latent intellectual boundary? Drawing on interview data, I demonstrate how changes in the distribution of faculty and the alignment of intellectual, seniority, and gender differences activated the latent boundary. After its activation, scholars engaged in boundary work and expressed their intellectual differences in faculty meetings and interactions with colleagues, which led to arguments about the department’s identity that hampered the unit’s operation. The study shows how boundary work among scholars can pull apart the fabric of a department, causing intellectual identities to diverge and the organization to split.

Endings

It’s spring in the academic village, with blossoming fruit trees all over campus, the ground smelling of fresh mud, and once again my thoughts turn to summer. I think of those long, delicious months when, without the telephone ringing and student papers sitting on my desk ungraded, without faculty meetings and office hours, without classes to prepare, I’m free again to work exclusively on my own writing. My e-mails will dwindle to communications with a few good friends. Some mornings, I might even sleep in. But spring also brings with it a small feeling of dread. “April is the crudest month,” wrote T. S. Eliot—a memorable line. I think of it again as lawn mowers drone outside the open windows of my classroom, a sweet wind blows papers off my desk, and I begin to anticipate the end of another school year, with the many losses that inevitably attend that moment, marked so vividly by the graduation ceremony, when half a dozen kids I had really come to like, even love, wave to me from the platform as they proceed into their adult life, diplomas in hand. I’m aware that one or two from each class will remain friends forever, but I know as well that there will be many— the majority of those whom I genuinely considered friends—who won’t. It’s not their fault, I tell myself. They will get busy. Soon spouses and children will lay claim to their attention. I’m just a passing figure in their lives; they know this, and I know it. It’s not as bad as it sounds, given the demands I feel myself toward spouse and family, toward a circle of friends that has widened decade by decade. There is only so much attention to go around. I begin to feel this little dread coming on in late March, when the spring snows in Vermont begin to thaw. Huge piles of the stuff grow wet at the edges, melting slowly, so that by the middle of April there are puddles everywhere, and I have for the first time to wear my waders to school.