Logging On

Cheryl Ball, Editor

During the on-going COVID pandemic, we are grateful to have had so many staff who are able to help us distribute the workload as evenly as we can. But it’s always the case that folks reach a point in their editorial life when their other professional and personal obligations need to be prioritized. Thus, we are sad to say goodbye to three staff members who have graciously filled important roles for the last two years, including assistant editor Joanna Kohlhepp, associate editor Elena Kalodner-Martin, and Reviews Co-Editor Lucy Johnson. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors! In exciting news, there have been several affiliation changes within our staff, as they have graduated and gotten jobs or just changed/upgraded jobs. Check out our staff page for more info!

What do these Comings and Goings mean for you? Position openings at Kairos! We are now seeking a Reviews Co-Editor, who will work with Ashanka Kumari, and a Social Media Manager (renamed from Communications Co-Editor), who will work with Vy Manivannan. Please see the job ads linked from the titles above for more information. We will be taking applications for these two positions, critical to our ongoing success, for people interested in working within a highly collaborative, distributed team environment.

Other news, updates, and reminders:

  • We hosted several mentoring events this past spring, including some open houses, and are very proud to have been able to offer the Computers and Writing digital publishing workshop for first time in three years, thanks to a lovely and safe onsite conference in Greenville, NC, hosted by East Carolina University!
  • We presented on Kairos’s Inclusivity Action Plan at C&W and got some great feedback from participants about how we can continue our anti-racist publishing work.
  • I hosted a new iteration of KairosCamp in early August and hope to repeat it next year and add more offerings for scholars interested in a hands-on, intensive time creating their digital publishing projects, including webtexts.
  • If you’ve always wanted to publish in Kairos but aren’t sure where to start, we editors recommend submitting a query to the Disputatio or Praxiswiki section editors—these are great sections that offer low-barrier entry to publishing with the journal! We also always are looking for reviews and interviews, as well as larger webtexts for Topoi and Praxis! Editors are standing by!
  • We will be hosting two Kairos Open Houses this fall—to help authors, or those interested in becoming Kairos authors, figure out whether their ideas are a good fit for the journal, what we’re looking for, what tips you can keep in mind as you’re developing a piece, how our peer-review process works, and answering any other questions you might have about the publication process! The next one will be on Zoom, Friday, September 9, 3pm EDT. Check our Twitter account (@kairosRTP) for the most up-to-date information about when and where mentoring events will be held and how to register for these free events.
  • Our relatively new Submission form is ready for you, when you are ready to submit! If you have questions about it, contact us!
  • Don't forget we have a lovely, low-cost Patreon account where you can donate to us monthly as well as a PayPal account for one-time donations. While Kairos donations are NOT tax-deductible (hey, it costs time and money and people to become a non-profit, so we haven't done it yet), they are pay-backable in the form of goodwill and beverages at your favorite in-person conference.

CFP: Outside the Academy

TBH, we aren't really sure what to call this CFP. It's an idea we concocted when we saw yet another scholar in digital writing studies announce they were leaving academia to pursue a job in the private sector. Good on em. I mean, we LOVE academia—it's why we're here in the first place—but if you notice our staff masthead, several of our editorial team members have moved from academic positions, including alt-ac positions (those still housed within an academic institution) to jobs/careers/life-callings outside of the "ivory tower", myself included. We are still connected in various ways, including through the amazingness that is Kairos.

But the staff also recognizes that we have a LOT to learn from folks who've not followed the expected academic paths: those who never wanted to get on the tenure-track, those who transitioned back into industry after starting their post-PhD academic path, and even those who stop their graduate work before it's done to "jump ship." Sometimes, when you jump ship, the water is warm and wonderful, like on a beautiful summer day in Michigan. We want to give space to folks in writing studies who call this discipline their home for whatever reasons but who are pursuing opportunities outside of academia. And we want to learn from them: what is work like in industry? What genres are you writing in? What tips do you have for the rest of us? How can we approach academic work more like industry work? What does industry have to learn from academia? You name it, we'll consider it.

We are still hashing out whether we need peer review for these pieces, or whether the staff will just editorially review things. We will also consider reviews and interviews done by folks still in the academy who are reviewing books or other resources or interviewing folks outside these areas. Basically, we're open to ideas, and they do not have to be citation-intensive. We're *not* interested in rage-filled quit-lit—that's not really our ethos. Manifestos, sure. If there's one thing we have learned during the pandemic, it's to be flexible and open space for alternate ways of doing things. So, we are going to ask for short queries/pitches that may be as haphazard as this CFP. It's good; we know it'll work however it is meant to. After all, this is more thought than Drew Loewe and I put into the CFP for Bad Ideas About Writing. So consider this a Bad Ideas About Academia CFP and let's give it a go: What do you have to say about working in non-academic spaces? Tell us in this realllly short and simply form. Our goal would be to publish pieces next August (2023).

Patreon Thank Yous!

Thank you for those who have signed up for our Patreon, which supports our technology costs, including server space and, more recently, a necessary upgrade to Slack, which we use as our production communication space. Slack now costs $80 annually for our needs, which include keeping slack messages older than 90 days (our production cycle lasts longer than that). $80 doesn't sound like much—and it isn't, spread across two or three patrons donating $2 a month! So please consider donating to your favorite open-access journal that will never charge you a subscription or publication fee! We want to be here for you for the long run.

Thanks to the following people, we have raised $519.96 so far this year through Patreon. Your generosity means the world to us, and has helped us pay for 1/3 of our server costs this year! THANK YOU! We also have a PayPal account available if folks would rather make a one-time donation.

  • Troy Hicks
  • John Sherrill
  • John Walter
  • Cindy Tekkobe
  • Kristi Prins
  • Ashanka Kumari
  • Jason Palmeri
  • Madeleine Sorapure
  • Michael Faris
  • Cheryl Ball