Sorry for taking so long in my French New Wave series between entries. It’s the end of my semester, and I’m a bit bogged down in grading, as well as needing to adjust my mental health care to be still able to function under the crises and threats from the authoritarian Trump administration hitting both DC and higher education. I’m making good progress there, and I find myself very happy that I gave up drinking almost 6 months ago, as that keeps me more balanced overall.

I do have a lot to celebrate, and I’m trying to focus on that. I turned 40 in good health. My 5-year-old is such a funny and curious little guy, I love spending time with him. He will be starting kindergarten in the fall. My partner and I are getting married in just over two months at her family farm, followed by a party to celebrate with friends a couple of weeks later in DC. We had been debating whether we could afford a serious honeymoon with how tight money has been (and we are paying for our wedding celebrations), but we decided that we should travel together when we have the opportunity. Who knows what international travel will look like shortly after Trump has destroyed the economy and U.S. standing with the rest of the world?? So, we booked a trip to Paris and the Loire Valley in July. I’ve spent some time in Paris (six weeks for study abroad as an undergraduate), but my partner has never been. It’s exciting to head back with her, particularly after watching so many films set in Paris this year. We will be there on July 14th (Bastille Day). I have no idea if that is a good idea or not, but it’s sure to be an experience. I’ve never really travelled around France beyond a weekend in Avignon for the theater festival during that undergrad trip, so I’m excited to see the Loire and all the castles and chateaus. Hit me up with literature recommendations set in the area so I can start imagining it. Eugenie Grandet by Balzac is all I know.

At work, even though I am still non-Tenure-Track, I’ve been invited to join the graduate faculty. This is not a promotion, but it does change my teaching load and responsibilities somewhat. Next semester, I am scheduled to teach a course for Ph.D. students (which gets me a course release), and I will be helping out with a dissertation defense for the first time soon.

My union also just completed bargaining on our new three-year contract and voted to ratify the new document. A lot of positive growth in work stability has been achieved through collective bargaining for NTT faculty here. Although there’s been a lot of conflict, dealing with awful lawyers, and gnashing of teeth over it, it is worth it for university workers. The situation is just so much better for NTT faculty overall on this second contract than it was before we unionized. There are still a lot of problems, largely around wages still being way behind the cost of living, but job security is much improved, and we can fight and win against workload increases without additional pay.

The new contract does a few things, and it’s complicated to explain all the details. The headlines are that the much-hated “seven-year cap” on employment for Lecturers is finally gone. This is a huge win, it’s why we unionized in the first place, and we could not get them to budge on it on the first contract. In addition, it has been clarified that workers of my rank are, in fact, allowed to be moved into tenure-track jobs (the administration denied me a promotion into an Assistant Professor position 3 years ago on the basis of this after I had been selected by a job search committee).

I do not know what this means for me, I imagine I would have to go through another full application process in a national search to be promoted into the tenure-track still. And I’m unsure I would be competitive this time against the potential applicant pool, since I more or less decided to shift away from research production and focus on spending time with my family, finding other income sources, and exploring leaving academia after what happened 3 years ago. I still attend conferences here and there and am on a committee for a national scholarly organization in my field, so I would be able to pick research back up if needed, but I would need a good reason at this point, as I am quite disillusioned. I am in a wait-and-see mood. Despite my hopes of leaving academia this year, the mass firing of federal workers has flooded an already difficult job market for the types of transitions I would make with highly skilled workers with experiences that translate more clearly than academia. So, making that shift is looking unlikely. On the other hand, higher education is going to significantly shrink in the U.S. over the next year or two, and things like the Humanities are probably going to be first on the chopping block at many schools. It’s all very uncertain, and I’m trying to just be thankful for having steady work and health insurance at the moment, but I’m struggling with the worry and dread of the situation.

That’s it. I will have an entry on Robert Bresson and early Cinema Verite soon in my French New Wave series. That will be my last “before New Wave” entry, and then I will start year-by-year write-ups of the key films in the movement. My Letterboxd is full of notes on these films, so I’m hoping putting these essays together over the summer will move slightly faster than it has so far.