The Professor Is Ill

This chapter examines unwellness in the university through the experiences of faculty in academia. It identifies the construction of the “Good Professor” and that construction’s investment in ableist meritocracy. The violence of meritocracy is most evident in the experiences of contingent faculty. The chapter shares a story about the author’s experiences of exploitation and disposability as an adjunct and argues that adjunctification and its related structures of feeling function as a central form of unwellness in the contemporary academy. The chapter examines the field of Asian American studies in particular for its relationship to adjunctification, sharing testimonies from adjuncts as archive and evidence. The chapter provides suggestions for ways Asian American studies, and the academy at large, might start being accountable toward its most vulnerable members.