Janus and the Future of Collective Bargaining: Rhetorically Predicting a First Amendment Right to Negotiation

The importance of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees has been widely recognized for its effect on reducing the power and influence of public unions. A close reading of the majority opinion provides a clue that compulsory collective bargaining itself may be settling into the court’s crosshairs. Collective bargaining is an important tool, by which labor can reduce the often-inherent power imbalance it has with ownership and management. Yet as this Article outlines, the interests of individual workers can often be at odds with those other workers workers, particularly those who do not feel the union represents their interests. This Article will explore the history of unions and collective bargaining, the variety of worker rights that are affected by compulsory collective bargaining, why the Supreme Court might choose to eliminate compulsory collective bargaining via the First Amendment, and what may ultimately replace it. or even the union itself. When the law designates a union as the exclusive bargaining agent for a group of workers, it prohibits individual workers from advocating for their own interests. As the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in Janus, this results in a substantial reduction of the rights o

INTD3990-AM0.Internship*.Sp15.McKain,Aaron

An internship is a student planned and faculty supervised experience integrating work and study. Internships allow students to integrate their academic, professional, and personal development. Students are expected to develop goals in each of these areas and to complete reflective and academic work in conjunction with work completed at the internship site. There are incredible opportunities available in the Twin Cities and throughout the United States. For more information, stop by the Career Development Center, Drew Science 113. The CDC staff can assist you with finding and registering an internship. Phone: 651-523-2302; e-mail: [email protected]. Available to College of Liberal Arts students only

ENG3020-02.Literary and Cultural Theory.Sp17.McKain,Aaron

Goals: To introduce students to theoretical approaches to texts and to the practical applications of literary theory. Students should take this gateway course in the sophomore year in conjunction with declaring a major/minor. This course builds on the learning experiences introduced in 1110, the surveys, and ENG 3010: Textual Studies and Criticism and prepares students for success in 3000-level writing and literature courses and the senior seminar. Required for many 3000-level courses. Content: Reading and discussing representative twentieth century critical approaches to the study and understanding of written texts and producing analytical essays that apply critical methods to selected texts. Taught: Annually. Prerequisites: One survey course (ENG 1210, 1220, 1230, 1240, 1250, or 1270) completed and strongly recommended that ENG 3010 be completed. Not recommended for first-year students. Nonmajors and nonminors need the permission of the instructor. Credits:

ENG3980-01.Spec Top: Digital Media Theory.F13.McKain,Aaron

Friendship, knowledge, love, sex, the private/public divide, the news, the idea of violence, the idea of copyright, what art looks and sounds like, what political activism and protest feels like: In a few scant years, the digital media era has fundamentally changed the nature of how we interact with each other, and engage with the world, politically, aesthetically, and ethically. All of which should be pretty obvious to anyone who stops to think about it. But the digital media era encourages us to neither stop nor think, which means the real question – and the question of this course – is this: Do we like the changes – some of which change the very nature of what it means to be human – that 21st century technology, and its current implementations, hath wrought? In search of answers, and using a methodology grounded in rhetorical theory, we’ll rummage through the political and cultural artifacts (from Facebook and Twitter to Skrillex and Anonymous) and critics and theorists (some brilliant, some real dumb) that have come to define the digital media age

ENG3980-01.Topics: Practicum in Media, Et.Sp16.McKain,Aaron

This practicum is open to students with developed skill sets in digital media, rhetoric, professional/creative writing, communications, critical theory, and marketing -- who are interested in working across disciplinary lines to try to get some actual public projects off the ground . (While also thinking -- a.k.a. theorizing -- about why -- aesthetically, ethically, and rhetorically -- some public projects succeed in the digital media era and others fail and where we get the authority to make, and teach, judgments like that in the first place.) Projects include: The production of educational materials in digital media ethics (for the purposes of partnering with a local school district and/or submitting them for publication), working with a professor-client on a civic art installation, and working with students-clients on an internal/external re-branding effort. Send brief inquires to [email protected], explaining your fields of expertise and interest. ***Note: There may also be consulting/internship opportunities for students in legal studies, business and non-profit management, environmental studies, and public health; send inquires for those as well

ENG3710-01.Critical Digital Media Theory.F15.McKain,Aaron

Goals: To have students intervene in current scholarly debates on how digital media has transformed, or should transform, our conceptions of politics, communication, art, law, and life. Content: Whatever 21st century technologies -- or human reactions to them -- are most scandalous or interesting when the class meets, which are studied via current scholarship in the digital humanities, drawing primarily from the traditions of rhetoric, media, and cultural theory. Taught: Once per year. Prerequisite: ENG 1110 or its equivalent. Credits:

ENG3010-01.Textual Studies and Criticism.Sp14.McKain,Aaron

Goals: To introduce readers to a critical relationship with literary form that is the foundation of the discipline of English. The course investigates literature and writing as a site of cultural production and consumption, leading to a self-reflexive development of critical thinking through the close reading of texts in different genres. Students acquire critical terminology and practice interpretive strategies. Content: Close reading of and writing about selected works from various genres, cultures, and periods. Taught: Annually. Prerequisite: Strongly recommended that one survey course (1210, 1220, 1230, 1240, 1250, 1270) be completed or taken concurrently

ENG5960-02.Senior Seminar.F13.McKain,Aaron

Goals: This course provides the capstone experience in the major. The goal of this course is to practice and polish previously learned skills and experiences to produce an analysis of literary texts of article length and quality. This essay marks the student\u27s entrance into the profession as a participant in an on-going and dynamic conversation about specific works and the discipline as a whole. Content: Varies from year to year. Recent examples: Twice-Told Tales; Salman Rushdie and Transnationalism; There is No Place Like Home: Literature of Exile; Slavery, Women and the Literary Imagination; Narratives of National Trauma; Propaganda and the Literature of Commitment; 20th Century Drama; Hard-Boiled Fiction; Hawthorne and a Mob of Scribbling Women ; Renaissance Self-Fashioning; American Melancholy; Readings of Race, Sexuality and Performance Culture. Taught: Three senior seminars are offered each year. Prerequisites: ENG 3020 and at least one 3000-level literature course and consent of instructor