A Reflexive Interrogation: Talking Out Loud and Finding Spaces for Works of Public Good

Over  a  year,  we  engaged  in  an  ongoing  dialogue  about  what  it  means  to  be  a  professor  and  how  we  might  do  a  better  job  of  making  the  public  contributions  of  our  work  more  explicit.  Throughout our dialogue, we continually discussed how we, as faculty members, must always work within the institutional constraints that allow the professoriate to exist in the first place. This conceptual essay, which is anchored by a critical theoretical perspective, is poised to make a contribution to the scholarship on faculty careers, professorial understandings of the public good, as well as the practice of faculty evaluation.