Abstract
While graduate workers have a long history of organizing and advocating on their own behalf, concerns specific to their unique identity as both laborers and students have not yet permeated the discourse surrounding worker rights in higher education. Using Edward Schiappa’s work on how definitions are created and circulated, I position that the work and labor of the graduate student is under-discoursed because of the mundane definition of the graduate worker as an apprentice first and foremost. Drawing on the public literature of the Committee on Rights and Compensation (CRC), a current effort to unionize graduate workers underway at the University of Colorado Boulder, I examine the ways in which the CRC is attempting to introduce previously hidden, novel definitions of the graduate worker as a professional first and foremost.
Recommended Citation
Marburger, Zachary B.
(2019)
"Away with the Apprentice: Graduate Worker Advocacy Groups and Rhetorical Representation,"
Academic Labor: Research and Artistry: Vol. 3, Article 9.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/alra/vol3/iss1/9
Publication-Ready Author Bio
Zachary B. Marburger is a current M.A. candidate in the Rhetoric, Writing, and Social Change program at Colorado State University. His academic interests lie at the intersection of digital rhetoric, circulation, and labor.