Lore is a journal for adjunct and graduate student teachers of writing published three times a year and edited by TAs, adjuncts, and assistant professors.   welcome to a new forum for discussing pedagogy and professional matters. informal discussions of everyday teaching issues In this issue: Politicizing the Composition Classroom through Activism. Compositionists who work to establish an identity for the discipline have posed questions about what constitutes the discipline's proper work. Many of us would agree that part of that work involves drawing attention to the relationship between literacy and power, but where to draw that attention and for what purposes remains open to debate. Should the composition instructor concentrate on developing classroom practices that will empower students to write effectively for audiences within the academy? Do we better address the relationship between literacy and power by asking students to write for nonacademic audiences in projects that at least implicitly challenge the value of the academic essay? These are some of the questions addressed by the following authors, who see "politics," broadly conceived, as both an object of study and an organizing framework for devising classroom practices. Accordingly, each conceptualizes the writing classroom as a space in which to position writing as a form of social action, and their responses articulate how this framework informs their pedagogies. an archived listserv on professional issues In this issue: Adjuncts Respond-Putting an End to Exploitation. In the last issue of Lore, several writing program administrators (WPAs) described the concrete ways in which they try to stop the exploitation of adjunct labor in their particular departments. In this issue the adjuncts respond. Several of them comment directly on the WPAs' postings, with many of those comments expressing the wish to be working in these programs! All of these responses detail what adjunct faculty would like to see happen in their institutions. brief essays on various aspects of teaching and composition In this issue: The Struggle for Balance, Joy, and Work stories and practical advice on job seeking and balancing work and life In this issue: At What Price? Emotional and Financial Costs of the National Job Search