Fully two-thirds or more of contingent (part-time and nontenure-track) writing faculty are women, many with no permanent faculty standing, no benefits, no job security, and little or no chance for promotion - a fact that defies the academy's most liberatory rhetorics of affirmative action, equal opportunity, and gender inclusiveness. Eileen Schell investigates, from a feminist perspective, the complex reasons why women are disproportionately represented in the ranks of contingent writing faculty.

Drawing on feminist theory, institutional histories of writing and English, sociological and statistical studies of part-time and nontenure-track academic employment, and interviews with women writing faculty, she examines the historical and contemporary forces that have assisted the rise of a class of women writing faculty.

Schell also frames the problem of gender and contingent writing instruction against the larger backdrop of recent debates over graduate education, the academic job market, the tenure system, and the corporatization of higher education.

Both a theoretical and practical study, Gypsy Academics and Mother-Teachers not only theorizes the relationship between gender and contingent labor in writing programs; it also offers administrators, theorists, and practitioners strategies for improving the working conditions and professional status of contingent writing faculty, the majority of whom are women.