Apparently the answer to the question "How many comments can a blogger post handle before it gets wonky?" is 1400.
Let's see if opening up a second comment thread solves this problem, because Blogger/Google has not responded to complaints from this blog (and from others).
Happy Commenting!
431 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 431 Newer› Newest»The question is relevant to what.
We don't need to change the identity of Classics to conform to dominant ideas of what matters and what doesn't, we need to change those ideas. Otherwise we might as well all go apply for the PhD program in Watching Netflix and Video Games at the Wikipedian Academy of Tweeting and Memes.
@5:09 and yet Derek Walcott wrote Omeros only twenty-two years ago, and Seamus Heaney has translated a number of Classical works. There are different definitions of relevant . . . let's not throw in the towel yet.
Just to add to this discussion, as a Classics-trained TT-junior faculty person, now based in a history department at a large, public university: in short, I don't think we should sell ourselves short. It seems to me that everyone is basically on the same page that the discipline is going to have to make some adjustments if it's going to maintain its salience. But, at least to me, it seems like the best way to deal with this is not by trying to restructure the discipline entirely (at least, not at first!), but, rather, by figuring out the basis upon which the powers-that-be at respective institutions are judging said salience. At my institution, for example, it's all about credit hours-- how many students are enrolling in the department's course offerings? In a history department like mine, we've typically had relatively high enrollments, but the broader economic crisis has resulted in fewer students enrolling full-time overall, and, when they do, they're looking to get the most bang for their buck--does their class fulfill a graduation requirement? does it stimulate their interests? does it provide some sort of life skill?
Seen from this perspective, I think that the field has to find a way to cater towards those interests to some degree, while also striking a balance between the so-called "traditional" aspects of our discipline-- rigorous training in ancient languages, careful study of material culture, take your pick-- with topics/skills that are going to have a more broad-based appeal. If my department is any basis for comparison, keeping offerings on the books that will cater to a very small audience (Akkadian, anyone??) is perfectly okay, as long as you're also providing offerings with really big pulls that help balance the numbers. The thing that is working in our favor is that, in general, students LOVE our stuff! The majority of them have never been exposed to any part of the ancient world and they're enthralled by it. So, that says to me that we have a pretty big advantage over other niche disciplines and that we should try to go with it, at least for the time being. I don't know how others feel about this, but to those of you on the market who feel like despair is the only option for the discipline as a whole, don't lose hope just yet.
This goes back to a previous point. Our "elite training" rarely helps us to shine in the areas that are considered salient by administrators and interesting by students (fully expecting to hear cheeky snark about stooping down to the level of the polloi). In essence, we're not playing up to the potential strengths of the discipline! To borrow a roommate's sports analogy about classics, we're Lebron James parked behind the 3-point line shooting jumpers all day.
I'm not suggesting that we abandon Latin and Greek, but you have to admit there's always been an underlying sentiment that classics faculty and students whose primary interests lie outside the languages are JV. This is empirically observable when you note that adjuncts and grad students are the ones often teaching these courses (before you scoff, I'm not making this about philologists vs. historians vs. archaeologists - we all need to rethink our positions).
We pull our hair out when our request for a new line is declined yet again while that department down the hall gets another one. It's not only about changing how we present ourselves and how we're perceived, but actually changing the content behind the message. Enough of the "we're doing everything right but the world is just stupid and tone deaf." We're really playing by our own rules. I'm not surprised that many deans have no love for us! Some universities let us get away with it due to tradition, but this paradigm is increasingly coming under attack.
How exactly do you suggest we play up to these strengths? If you think we should be *teaching* courses that have broad appeal and do not require the students to have any knowledge of Greek or Latin, well, that's happening everywhere and has been happening for a long time. If you're talking about leaving the languages behind in our research, you've lost me. If we do that we're killing Classics ourselves.
I think that I have to disagree. We are trying to promote classics, attract students, and persuade institutions to support our efforts.
From a marketing perspective, surely, the best way to do this is to say "Classics is special." I mean, you don't expect GM to say "We make cars, just like everyone else. But ours are really just the same as Ford's or Toyota's. But, if you want, you can buy one." We expect: "GM's cars are awesome."
To "sell" classis, shouldn't we say "Classics is awesome," rather than something less assertive?
Now, proclaiming moral superiority isn't helpful, but conceding our uniqueness isn't either.
Call me naive, but I think we sometimes miss opportunities staring at us in the face. We do not need to fundamentally change what we learn and teach, but we need to interface better with the greater academic world on a tangible level.
I'm not talking about random interviews for soundbites in our school paper or the History Channel whenever a movie about gladiators or Cleopatra come out. Why are we not interacting more with theater departments to put out plays? Physics departments to discuss ancient technology? Archimedes will grab just about any science geek's attention. Talking about cultural heritage when classes like the "Seven Wonders" are taught? Instead, these classes are almost always taught on our terms with a decidedly philological bent. I argue it's because we don't know better and have not been encouraged to interface at a level where others can join the discussion.
We recently had a visiting scholar give a talk about the Mausoleum and he could not answer any of the questions that veered in the direction of cultural heritage and was adequate at best when discussing Templar history. Instead, it was "we think we found more stones" and "this is what Philo says about it." WTF? How fucking lame and antiquated do we look? Just because we study old shit does not mean we have to look out of date ourselves.
"I argue it's because we don't know better and have not been encouraged to interface at a level where others can join the discussion."
Well, duh, it's why we're often considered elitist and insular. None (or very few, I hope) of us are WASPy critters channeling 19th century high society. Nevertheless, we are doing ourselves a disservice by having our research come off as unapproachable and only for the enlightened few. Heck, I can't sit through most APA talks and I know the cultural language and what's being argued!
"we need to interface better with the greater academic world on a tangible level."
Seriously, the ancient world fundamentally dealt with all the things that are "hot" academic topics today (war, science, drama, politics, law, art, multiculturalism, economics, trade, immigration, etc.) and it's preserved in fantastic detail! We all know is and have been making feeble attempts to package it for general academic consumption (with varying success). Why are we conceding or ignoring this potential for the most part? Why are we satisfied to let hacks and people with big hair talk about aliens and antiquity while we cower in our self-inflicted unpainted corner? I do not agree with the sentiment that we deal with old shit so we're irrelevant by definition. I think we could quickly rejoin the discussion if we allowed ourselves to break from tradition once in a while. We should honor the classical tradition and hold to it as our anchor, but we should not be beholden to it either. Let's not kid ourselves. It's apathy and laziness more than loyalty and principles.
It's apathy and laziness more than loyalty and principles.
At the risk of a lynching, I would say it's ignorance more than apathy and laziness. We're surprising ignorant about the cultural history of antiquity and are rarely up to date with the latest discussions in the social sciences and humanities.
What can we do about it? I don't know. The vast majority of us did not study Latin and Greek until college. Unless you're training in history or archaeology, it's pretty much an all or nothing approach to the classics curriculum. If we are to believe this forum, even our history and archaeology brethren are woefully underprepared to grapple with the latest issues in history and archaeology. Can we break out of this all or nothing approach when it comes to language preparation and reading lists?
A sincere thank-you to Chattanooga for being explicit in what they want in the application (teaching philosophy, sample syllabi, evaluations) instead of using the pointlessly ambiguous but ever popular "evidence of teaching excellence."
Has anyone heard anything about Amherst? I had assumed they would move somewhat quickly after their deadline . . .
I know of two people who have interviews there. So, they are moving...quickly.
Just to confirm, "there" means "on campus"? And the ellipsis modifies, as it were, "quickly"?
Um, yes. I know two people who have had/will have soon on campus meetings about this position. Things, to my knowledge, are moving quickly in terms of the search.
Thank you.
What does the asterisk signify on the wiki info about an Ohio Wesleyan e-mail rejection yesterday?
I've received neither a rejection nor anything positive for that position. Anyone have the scoop?
I do not know, but I am in the same position.
Ohio Wesleyan has been doing Skype interviews for the last two weeks. Yes, since before the application deadline.
speaking of O-H, has anybody heard back from Case?
A request: if you know that a VAP search has moved forward to the interview stage, could you indicate that on the wiki or here, if necessary qualifying it a rumor?
Some of us are still desperate for some means of supporting ourselves in the very short term.
Hmmm . . . so, where does that leave the people were not contacted for Skype interviews with Ohio Wesleyan and who also did not receive the rejection email? Is there a logical explanation? I don't have any hope of getting the job at this point, I'm just curious about how these things work.
I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that we're the alternates, and that the first string Classicists will all have to pass because they've been chosen as new agents of the Secret Elite Classics Squad (SECS).
In re: Case, search committee's planning to meet on Mon. the 16th, and hopefully start conducting phone interviews that week.
There has not been an update to the San Francisco State entry in quite some time. Does anyone have information (or rumors) about the status of the position?
Would someone please share the listing for the VAP jobs at the University of Arizona? Thanks.
Go here for the UA:
www.uacareertrack.com/applicants/Central?quickFind=204287
I have heard from several sources that SFSU has been offered and accepted. Since I have only heard rumors, however, I won't update the wiki.
What's the deal with Arizona not bothering to announce these two positions AND giving us so little time? The APA has clear guidelines stating that departments should have an application deadline be a month after the announcement -- which Arizona is obviously trying to get around here. (By saying review BEGINS on April 16 they technically are complying -- but does anyone believe they will give equal attention to an application coming in on May 2, as they would have to if this posting had gone through the APA?)
Does anyone know if U-AZ was trying to keep these openings secret because they have inside candidates? That at least would make some sense.
The fact that AZ is requiring PhD in hand *at the time of application* (Really? You can't wait like two weeks for me to graduate?) suggests that they either have inside candidates or just don't want to deal with a large stack of applications.
Honestly, though, nobody cares about the APA Placement Service's rules.
the Secret Elite Classics Squad (SECS)
The existence of this organization is an urban legend.
I can however assure you that the Secret Undercover Classics Squad is very real, and thriving.
But the one is a type of the other! Are you suggesting that Classicists are exclusively fellative? I knew there was a reason I wasn't getting a job.
"I knew there was a reason I wasn't getting a job."
No, the reason why you're struggling to get a job is because your advisor trained you to research the same boring shit some stiff-assed European was studying a century ago.
I was thinking about responding to your comment, but now all I can do is sit around and think about in what sense an ass can be stiff.
Later today when I'm out and about, looking at asses, I'll think of you and try to determine whether any of them might qualify.
Do not assume that the Arizona job is in any sense "reserved" for some one! I have enough knowledge of the situation to suspect -- although I'm not in any way associated with UA and so I can't be sure -- that the need is genuine. If you're really graduating in two weeks, then I think the PhD is close enough to your hand for you to apply to a job like this.
Someone got punk'd!
It's nice to see on the Wiki that at least some of the cushy T-T jobs are going not to shiny new PhDs, but to old hands who have toiled for years out here in the cold, cold world. Maybe there's some hope of getting off this temporary job carousel? Then I go and read this in the Chronicle.
Anonymous 12:48, if you truly know the situation at Arizona you wouldn't be encouraging anyone to apply there, as the classics department does have quite the history of mistreating both visiting and tenure-track faculty to the point of driving them away. I know for a fact that this happened to someone whom I'm proud to call a Facebook friend, and have heard some very interesting tales about what goes on there from other sources that show his/her experience was not unique.
(I myself could easily apply, but I'm not going to. And it has nothing to do with not defending until May.)
Anon. 4:29
You misunderstand. I did not claim that Arizona is a great place to work, but merely said that I don't think there is an "inside" candidate -- in fact, for precisely the reason you cite! I've definitely heard some grumbling about the department, which in general looks to be in total disarray -- but nonetheless, isn't a lousy one-year job better than leaving the profession?
You know it's bad when the clarchs bail and take their chances with the earthy anthropologists.
Anonymous 5:39,
You have a point, but only to a point. If one has no other offers, and does not have the option of remaining at one's grad institution, a year in Tucson (or Phoenix?) might be the only way of remaining in the field. This would still be far from ideal, especially for someone who just got the degree, since next fall when he/she goes on the market an unexpected problem will become manifest: there will be no one whose reference letter would mean anything. The department's chair was replaced by someone from another department, whose letter would be useless. And the tenured faculty, particularly the ones widely known to be behind the department's ongoing meltdown and archaeologists' exodus, hardly are the sorts of people whose letters one would want in one's dossier. So yes, it's a job... but would it led to another job?
Great analysis. It's telling that numerous senior faculty have left for "lesser" schools and junior faculty have left or are desperately trying to leave.
Original poster here (would have chosen a pseudonym if I had thought this would be so controversial), and once again I respectfully disagree. First of all, from my brief experience, Tucson (unlike Phoenix) is awesome. But your second point is just plain wrong. The fact that these positions are open demonstrates I think quite clearly that two incumbents have moved on successfully. So apparently a letter from a caretaker chair is not a poison pill for a quality candidate. Yes, I would rather a letter from, say, Shackleton Bailey (yes, I know he's dead) than from Joe the Plumber, but I don't think a strong letter from a non-classicist is worthless and a career killer.
I, like the other posters, have heard that Arizona is a dismal place to work. But the position is only for a year! I think if you're still looking for a job at this point, you've got to roll the dice.
Hate to state the obvious, but we can also choose a different profession, if we're sick of gambling our future away.
Hate to state the obvious, but Tuscon really is a lovely place to live. Having money to buy food, pay rent, etc. is also, so I have heard, a lovely thing.
It can't hurt to apply. If you get the job, that is the point at which you can decide that the department is populated by people with two heads, or discover that they are quite nice. Who knows. Were I staring down the blind alley of unemployment, I can think of many, many worse things than a one-year VAP at a flagship school in a very livable town. YMMV.
Yep. Apply to everything always; if you interview and everyone seems crazy, then you can decide to take another VAP or do something unrelated for a year.
But the official posting (on their website) says it's a Skype interview. And, as was pointed out above, they're doing a rush job, so an on-campus interview seems unlikely. Are YOU able to tell who's "crazy" from a 30- or 45-min Skype interview with a fraction of your potential colleagues?
Yes.
I can tell who is crazy based on anonymous blog comments. Serious.
Are there two jobs now at Santa Barbara, or was the first converted to the second?
Sad people are funny.
Don't come to the APA; you'll die of laughter.
Preening cockerels are not funny.
I couldn't think of a word as a propos as cockerel that was also gender inclusive.
Dude, not preserving gender when comparing humans to small feathered animals is a serious offense. I'm not sure if we can be friends anymore. I'm laying my eggs elsewhere.
I have been going through the recent series of posts on the Arizona positions, and feel the need to extend the discussion a bit. Unlike at least one other posting on the subject, I won’t try to insult your collective intelligence by pretending to be someone with no firsthand knowledge of the Arizona Classics program. What prompts me to continue this discussion is that one of the posts, almost certainly by one of the senior faculty, is dishonest, and potential applicants should be told this. I have no problem with him/her trying to issue a rebuttal, but there are plenty of approaches that could have been taken without willful deception.
The willful deception lies in this very carefully worded passage: “The fact that these positions are open demonstrates I think quite clearly that two incumbents have moved on successfully. So apparently a letter from a caretaker chair is not a poison pill for a quality candidate.” Famae Volent’s rules are clear that one should never discuss our colleagues by name or so that they can be easily identified, and unfortunately explaining the deception cannot be done in the abstract. Suffice it to say that this statement includes both a lie and at least one distortion, and the statement does not accurately explain why the department had to advertise two VAP positions. The full truth would make these two positions less appealing.
Having pointed this out, I do have one or two new points to make, but first might as well respond to some of the other comments I’ve read.
1) Both sides have a point regarding the reference letters issue. I am sure that the current caretaker chair can indeed write a letter that wouldn’t automatically hurt the candidate, but his letter certainly would not have the potential to help as much as one by a real classicist. And it is true that certain other senior faculty should not be asked for letters under any circumstances. That said, it is not impossible to get reference letters from people widely respected in the field. In addition to at least one person in Classics itself, there are some very good people among Arizona’s classical archaeologists. And even though, as everyone knows, the archaeologists left Classics because certain colleagues were so deeply unpleasant, they are still officially linked to their old department, and one or more of them may be able to write a letter. So this alone is not a reason to avoid applying.
2) Someone, possibly the same Arizona professor, wrote “It can't hurt to apply. If you get the job, that is the point at which you can decide that the department is populated by people with two heads, or discover that they are quite nice.” I will not go into specifics both because of FV’s rules and because this is not the place for discussing specific cases of malfeasance, so I will just note that over the past several years the pattern has been that one-year faculty have gone as long as three months before first being subjected to unprofessional treatment and/or being taken advantage of, while in the case of those with multi-year positions it has taken more than a year for the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out. Since you will face numerous unpleasant situations if you are hired for one of these positions my advice would be that if you are someone who is easily intimidated or does not handle conflict well you have absolutely no business applying. Even those with strong makeups have found it an intolerable place to work, and I cannot imagine how someone poorly equipped to handle the situation would feel.
(Continued in next post...)
(Continued from last post...)
This then leads to the main point I wished to make when I began this post. I recognize that despite my own warning and those of others in this thread, many will apply for these two jobs, and two people will even receive offers. It is those two people more than anyone who need advice. Over the past three years there have been seven junior faculty members (= lecturer, VAP, t-t), and of those seven at least four instantly come to mind as having been misled or given promises that were subsequently broken -- promises regarding such important matters as their contractual situation, whether a position would be converted into tenure-track, the number of TA’s to be made available for a lecture course (of crucial importance when one teaches up to 540 students), which courses one would be teaching, and so forth. Anyone receiving an offer needs to know this history of bad faith during negotiations, not after the job has begun. (And it wouldn’t hurt to know some of the other issues I’ve only alluded to.) So if you receive an offer I would urge you to use your own contacts or your advisor’s to get in touch with someone who can counsel you on what you need to know (or perhaps just use Google to figure out the best people to consult). Those who are or have been at Arizona in recent years have had to look out for each other repeatedly, and that sense of obligation would extend to future Arizona faculty. Of course, not everyone now or previously associated with Arizona Classics will be willing to give advice, but it should not be too difficult to find someone who has taught there within the past three years and would willingly help you. I very much doubt that you will regret contacting him/her.
On a non-southwestern note: what gives with the Brown U. info on the wiki?. Last week it reported one name accepting the job, this week another....
Spot on advice about Arizona, coming from someone who knows the situation too well (and wishes a neurolizer really existed).
Last year the wiki had two mistakes about Brown's search before it failed. I wouldn't rely on the wiki for them until it appears on the department webpage.
Give up now. All your base are belong to us;
What you say !!
Does anyone know what the heck is going on with the Concordia Roman Lit position? The back-and-forth is making me dizzy.
I'd guess the person to whom they originally offered it backed out.
You have no chance to survive: make your time.
The email implied that they'd never gone through the applications in the first place, though.
Yes, that was disconcerting for those of us who went through the bother of applying. Really, if you are going to do an inside search for the sake of your annoying HR department, could you at least hint on FV that candidates need not apply?
Really, if you are going to do an inside search for the sake of your annoying HR department, could you at least hint on FV that candidates need not apply?
People would not refrain from applying for a job just because someone had hinted on FV that other candidates need not apply. You'd want a named person saying relatively straightforwardly that they already had somebody they were hoping to be able to hire, and that's exactly what departments can't do.
Also, as is discussed every spring and forgotten every subsequent fall, it is not in anyone's interest that a department should have only one candidate for a job, because even the case of the most insidery of super double secret inside fix jobs sometimes falls the fuck apart and then a school needs to hire somebody else. I realize that it costs some postage and entails getting your hopes up once again, but so does applying for every other job, and when you think about it any given applicant has only a very small chance of getting any particular job s/he applies for (this is why everybody has to apply to a shitload of jobs in order to have any kind of realistic shot at getting one).
Hey, speaking of Canadian jobs, anybody know anything about the job at Wilfred Laurier?
Most Canadian VAPs are "renewable" for up to two years after the initial appointment. However, HR requires that these positions be re-advertised every year, despite the fact that the incumbent will be "renewed" unless he/she has turned out to be a disaster, or has taken a job elsewhere. Something to be aware of when applying for VAPs in Canada where there is already a VAP in your particular area - it's not to say you won't get lucky, but don't get your hopes up.
Actually, that isn't true of all Canadian institutions, although it might be true of many (I know of a handful for whom this does not apply, and a handful is a lot in Canada!). Unionized versus non-unionized environments, etc., plus, if the courses that are taught by the VAP change, this often opens the door to new applicants, on the grounds that specialization is desirable.
Aha! I was wondering why Canadian jobs seemed to constitute so much larger a percentage of the VAPS than they had of the TT jobs.
Since the "in" thing seems to be naming schools for which the wiki reveals little or nothing, this seems like a good time to see if anyone has heard any whispers about whether Princeton is contacting people for that one-year. Or am I the only one interested?
Yes, let us hear the Princetonian skinny.
What about McGill and Mount Allison? Neither is even on the wiki. I'm assuming they've already made decisions about interviews at least (alas!), since their application deadlines were in February.
Since we're asking about things that have gone/are silent on the Wiki:
Anyone know anything about campus visits at Centre yet?
I am quite impressed with the job ad at Temple, and I have heard in the past that it is a great place to be a VAP. I wish I were anything close to what they are looking for.
You can see the Temple ad? Whenever I click it, it takes me to the shopping cart.
Oh, I found it elsewhere. For others' convenience:
http://www.temple.edu/classics/jobs/
This is indeed a wonderfully written job ad. I wish I were a Roman historian!
Dear Search Committees,
Please hurry. I need to know how utterly I should despair.
Hugs and Kisses,
Applicant
Anybody at Case willing to share if all the finalists have been notified yet? The suspense is killing me.
any news on the Toronto VAPs??
the Toronto VAPs
That sounds like a minor league baseball team. A terrible minor league baseball team.
Ok how about this: has anyone gotten an interview with Case besides the person who posted it on the wiki?
In re: the Case VAP, all three interviews have now been scheduled for later this week. There were many good applicants who did not make it to the interview stage, but as often with VAP's the primary goal was to fill our department's immediate needs, and esp. to find a good match for our projected '12-'13 courses.
Anyone know if Earlham's still interviewing?
Re: Earlham, what I have heard suggests that they have probably offered the job to the first choice candidate already, unless that source was mistaken or they have deviated from the timetable as it was presented to me.
Well, shit.
Any word on the Illinois State position?
For the record, it would seem that - for a variety of reasons - Earlham did wind up deviating from their original timetable.
It's becoming less and less likely that I will get anything for next year. What have you guys done or what are you planning to do if this happens to you?
I'm ABD this year and therefore not ready just yet to find a wholly new career. I am interested, rather, in ways people have cobbled together a living for the year. Barista? Book store? Are there better options?
If you want to give it another try next year or the year after that, you've got to think seriously about teaching high school Latin. Quite a few people now teaching at the college level have had taught high school at some point, or at least respect the effort and character it takes to be a successful high school teacher. Thus your job can be a line on your CV and something that may even look attractive to certain search committees (though probably not at R-1 places); plus you can keep teaching Latin, which is no small thing. Working at a bookstore or a coffee shop? Not so much.
If you are not ready to find a new career, then I suggest that you make sure that finishing your dissertation is your first priority - whatever job(s) you take on, you need to reserve enough time to finish your dissertation. I have known people who have moved back in with their parents, or taken on loans or roommates, to help with the limited income - just make sure to have library access. Working at the library (circ desk if possible) won't pay much, but it will allow you to research while you are working. You can also try to see if you can pick up some teaching (a class or two) at your institution or neighboring ones - think outside of classics to history, english, philosophy, etc. English departments, in particular, often need drones to grade their freshman comp papers, and community colleges are also a great place to look. I know of one person who sent letters of introduction to every department around to see if there was any instructing/TAing available, and did, in fact, end up with enough teaching to stay afloat. YMMV.
Well if my dissertation weren't finished, I'd still be a grad student next year and wouldn't have this problem. That shit is done.
Re: high schools, I've been applying. Nada. I'll keep at it.
12:22 here. Sorry about that - I misunderstood what you meant by saying "ABD". If you are diss in hand, though, then beyond what I stated above I echo Libertus' words regarding Latin teaching (and be sure that you've checked with all of the private/charter schools in the area). There are also institutions that crop up around universities (university presses, centers for this and that). Needless to say, this late in the year there's a lot of hiring that happens by word of mouth, so it is important to get your diss committee to send out feelers within and without the university.
Anyone hear anything about Whitman, NAU, or Wright State that isnt on the wiki??
And, did anyone see the East Carolina job? Latin, Greek, and, "e.g.," *Japanese*?
What, you didn't pick up any teaching experience with Japanese while you were getting your Classics PhD? What exactly were you doing all that time, hmm?
How do other VAP-types deal with the thought of grinding out another year on the market while less-experienced/accomplished ABDs snag some (though admittedly not all, and maybe not even the majority) of the T-T jobs? I.e. the thought that some people still glide gently from a cushy dissertation year to teaching a 2-2 somewhere, likely with course reductions, "mentoring", research funds, not to mention the ability to settle down and forget about the market, is just sickening to me. Sure, I admit some extraordinarily accomplished grad students may have earned such a privilege, but how many of us actually win our positions purely on our merits, without any help from demographics, networking, adherence to the right trends, or the gloss of academic prestige (even I, pathetic though I am, am guilty of this last offense)? And history teaches us that some of these hires will fail, because they have not been tested in the crucible of this "temporary" world inhabited by the rest of us. The more time I spend on the market, the more disgusted I am at all the various lies and injustices. How can I make through another year?
Stephen, exactly how many ABDs do you think are getting these TT positions? Based on data? From my own discussions with people - both candidates and search members - this has been a particularly rough year to be ABD...
Yet you are not the first to grumble on FV about the "injustices" of ABDs snagging these precious jobs. Is there any basis to your complaints, or is this just speculation?
Steve, I find the following very helpful:
a) Whisky
b) Sticky labels with your address on them
c) The ability not to tie your self-worth to the opinions of an extremely harassed committee who rejected you not because of your actual or potential academic achievement, but because you have an annoying nasal tone to your voice and the sound of it drifting down the classics corridor day after day is something they believe would drive them slowly insane.
Agreed, this has been rough year for ABDs overall. I freely acknowledge this, and the fact that some long-suffering VAPs have clearly triumphed as well. Overall, experience wins out, as it should. But you can go on the Wiki, this year and last, and find a handful of ABDs who have struck gold, some impossibly fresh-faced and young (and some of whom I know personally, so I'm not just talking out of my ass). It is this minority that (irrationally) irritates me.
The injustices are not limited to ABDs (nor did I mean to imply this); recent comments on this board have shown how departments and so searches can fall into the hands of despicable or unprofessional people, who have no incentive to be fair or equitable. But even in the case of good and decent people (most cases), a whole variety of things can and do skew that process away from the best Latinist or Hellenist; again, go carefully through the names on the Wiki and in most cases you can find some prior connection or "unfair" advantage of the successful candidate. This is the way our world works. I have learned from my own experience not to expect an interview from those places where I don't have such an advantage. But I'm still depressed by it.
OK, I'll try whisky now.
Sorry - I got a T-T job straight out of my PhD and worked my ass off to deserve the chance I was given. For every me there is a new PhD who failed, a seasoned PhD who failed, and a seasoned PhD who succeeded. And the results aren't in yet as to whether or not I succeeded - i.e., got tenure. But I worked my ass off to try to get there, just as there are seasoned PhDs who work their asses off to get a T-T job and to keep it. Just judge people individually (in private, preferably in your head) rather than as a group. Go hate the fresh-faced people you know and think are undeserving. But don't hate me unless you know me.
Slow down, laboriose/a. This isn't about you at all. Why do you feel threatened by the irrational ranting of a raving derelict? Go back to planning your next sabbatical. Why even waste your time on this board when you've already reached the promised land? This is only addressed to those who, like me, dissipated their youth and wasted their talent and now have no one left to talk to except the empty void of Famae.
I read the board because I - gasp - care about the state of the field and the market. Believe it or not, I am not a heartless, self-centered bastard, and I would like to keep abreast of what is going on. FWIW, I did serve on a search committee this year and went for the seasoned VAP over the shiny new PhD, not because one was smarter or trendier than the other but because the VAP was the better fit for our departmental needs. I know this is small consolation, but there are little T-T folks out there who care and hope that we are able to help if we get tenure and move into positions of even minor influence. Best of luck to you all, and if you can look past my T-T status, please wish me luck in getting tenure.
Allow me to rephrase, or maybe just tone down my whisky-addled rant. I wish you, and everyone else, the best of luck getting tenure. I've been in this business for a while now and I know how hard tenure is to get. I don't doubt you are a good and decent person – nor did I ever have any reason to think otherwise. Most of the people I know in classics are generally decent and well-intentioned; if I think some of them are lucky as hell to have landed the job they did, it does not follow that I wish them ill or think they are callous monsters. I feel, as you do, that if, god forbid, I were ever running a search, I would apply what I have learned in my years on the market to make the process as fair and honest as possible. For instance, I would want to be entirely forthcoming in the job ad about what exactly we were looking for. I would try to define this as narrowly and reasonably as possible, and not concoct some impossible amalgam of contradictory desiderata, or mention one speciality only to hire another. I would set a timeline and stick to it. I would prepare thoroughly for interviews and work tirelessly to put the interviewees at ease. I would send courteous rejections letters in a timely fashion. And I would call personally anyone who made a campus visit, especially those who didn't get the job -- and I would tell them why. So why, in all this time on the market and all these interviews, have these basic tenets of professional conduct been so frequently violated? Because it is hard to be truly good, as Simonides said, and it takes integrity and strength of character beyond simple good intentions. And if, on the other hand, the search committee ignores everything I just mentioned, there are no real consequences except some grumbling on this board. Maybe I too would succumb to intra-committee squabbling, or be overwhelmed by my other duties, or bow to administrative edicts, or simply become lazy and complacent. Maybe it wouldn't be my fault. God knows every search has some hidden or unspoken dynamic that turns things in a way the unconnected applicant could hardly have anticipated. Face it, at best, it's an opaque and unpredictable process. And I just can't believe I have to roll the dice again next year.
Well I'm with you on the whiskey-inspired rants and the fact that the job market is a frustrating crap shoot. Frankly, and I'm going to anger the silverbacks, I think that we have the baby boomers to blame for this mess (thank you for civil rights, baby boomers, but damn you for everything from the Reagan administration onward), and hopefully the young'uns will be able to clean up their mess. How's that for blanket blame of an entire group?
Well, it doesn't just apply to classics but the entire country. Not only have the boomers generally sold out over the last thirty years, but it will be up to future generations to clean up what's left after they finally keel over and stop their final death matches to hell. The United States is a resilient country founded by a prescient generation intent on inventing a system that no one could screw up, but somehow we are. If the WWII folks are called the greatest generation, what will be call their children?
Personally, I blame the crossing guards. Always protecting the children with their silly stop signs.
I blame smug classicists, as redundant as the phrase might be.
I blame the Green Power Ranger.
I blame Joe.
I want a job! Give me a job, dammit!
Seriously, though. Gimme a job!
Terpsichore here.
Any news on the following?
McMaster (wiki dead)
Monmouth Postdoc (ditto)
U Toronto (wiki posting says rejection email received, but I never got one of those)
Anyone know anything re: Santa Barbara?
For anyone who reads Famae but is at an earlier stage of grad school, or even undergraduates considering grad school:
Get out now. There is no way you can possibly imagine how bad this job market is. Even if you are already despairing to the point of constant nausea, you are still not despairing enough.
Yeah, get out now.
Do something practical, like law, finance or insurance.
Oops, “In 2011, finance, insurance, and law were the three primarily white-collar professions that managed to shed workers, even as the rest of the economy trudged forward through a slow recovery.”
http://abovethelaw.com/2012/01/more-evidence-that-the-legal-job-market-is-in-terrible-shape/
Comparing the bad economy everywhere with the absolute bloodbath in Classics in particular is just silly.
The McMaster ancient history VAP has been offered and accepted, unless one of my fellow grad students has been the victim of a cruel hoax.
Anyone heard anything from Edinburgh, Warwick, or Radboud?
The news I heard is that Edinburgh has drawn up a short list.
Damn! Luckily there are still ninety billion temporary jobs there.
The Toronto VAPs are offered and accepted.
nAny word on Princeton, Wyoming, or Santa Clara?
Does a postdoc ever trump a tenure track job?
Nope. At least not unless the TT job is really shitty.
I would say that, yes, it can happen. If the PostDoc is with a really superior University/source, and the TT job is far less prestigious. Furthermore, if the TT job has a heavy load of teaching and you do not plan to stay -- you might actually hurt your prospects (via lack of scholarly production) for something in the future. Speaking from experience, TT jobs also involve lots of committee work and such, things that PostDocs are (at least usually) immune to.
It all comes down to your future plans -- if you want to leave anyway, consider what each position will do to your output and how it will impress future search committees.
On the postdoc/TT question: I actually made this decision last year, and it was pretty tough. Prestigious postdoc versus obscure tenure track job... I went the safe route and took the TT, partly because thinking about another year on the market made me want to hurl, and partly because as a non-citizen you only have a certain amount of time that you can spend in temporary positions in the U.S. after graduation. My adviser's advice really made the difference when I asked him if I was giving up the chance at ever being Mommsen [this wasn't the name I used, I was much more modest and modern, but I don't want to start a war about "great" classicists]. He said, "You don't have to be Mommsen immediately. You can be Mommsen in your forties or fifties or even later. There isn't a time limit for good scholarship, and you have plenty of time to do a teaching heavy job for a bit while enjoying being secure and salaried, and be Mommsen later." It made a difference to me; I offer it to you. FWIW.
Theodor wants to know what up?
http://whatuptheodor.tumblr.com/
Where is the Wyoming job advertised? It's not on the APA list, the Chronicle, the FV message boards, or UW's website.
I got it by e-mail. The deadline for receipt of applications was March 26.
Do please update the wiki re: these last few jobs as soon as you feel you can. Some of us are now waiting on this information to decide whether to commit to an apartment lease or not.
By e-mail from whom?
Re: Wyoming, I got it forwarded from my department chair, who in turn seems to have gotten the email from Wyoming's department head. I suspect they sent it around to people they knew/schools with graduate programs, on the assumption that it would garner plenty of applications that way.
A friendly reminder to those of us still looking for jobs, or just finishing our Ph.D., in Classics, don't forget to get those food-stamps applications in early!
http://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/
Is that carpool to go jump off the bridge still happening?
yes, it is but we have only scraped together enough nickels from the couch to buy a gallon or two of gasoline, so we may end up pushing the teal 1992 Pontiac to the edge.
Let's pour the gas on ourselves and light it. It's less work, and more what we deserve.
Thanks FV for proving that actual qualifications are trumped by personal connections and pedigree time and time again. At least alcohol washes away the taste of bitter despair.
Are you drinking some sort of magical alcohol? I can still taste my despair just fine.
The Wyoming ad was also posted to the Women's Classical Caucus listserv. Pro tip: before you're next on the market, join the Women's Classical Caucus. It's cheap, it gives you job listings you don't necessarily get otherwise, and besides, it's just the right thing to do.
I came across this list of "best classics grad programs in terms of job placement" today. While it doesn't seem the most reputable site in terms of data collection, I was curious what others thought of these results.
http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/classics/rank/_____________M__________________________________________________U
Those numbers should be much, much lower across the board.
That site uses the numbers from the new NRC survey that came out a couple of years ago, which was a total mess. If you were a prospective graduate student trying to figure out what grad school would maximize your chances of getting a job, you'd be better off picking names out of a hat than using that placement ranking posted above.
Those numbers should be much, much lower across the board.
To be fair, they were using data from 2000-2004.
Also, I spoke too soon about the NRC thing. The placement data is from something called the "Survey of Earned Doctorates" and shouldn't be blamed on the NRC survey.
Well, based on this I'm going to reject my Harvard acceptance and go to Iowa.
A good read:
"I know I'm Unlovable: Desperation, Dislocation, Despair and Discourse on the Academic Job Hunt."
http://etsu.academia.edu/AndrewHerrmann/Papers/951523/_I_Know_Im_Unlovable_Desperation_Dislocation_Despair_and_Discourse_on_the_Academic_Job_Hunt
Although we talk about how we, as individuals, are not what we do, as academics we are heavily invested in what we do (Herrmann, 2009, p. 19). We are encouraged to and do invest a lot of our self into our teaching, our research, our career. On the positive side, this helps us be reflexive about the work we do and imbues our work with passion. We all think, to some extent “I am my research,” since it is what we are writing, what we are studying, what we are doing in our doctoral programs. Our research is a creative act, and therefore, our identities are implicated in it. We are our research. We are our teaching. We are our careers. That is what the discourse tells us to do. That is what the discourse tells us we are. In actuality, we are not.
When we are this invested in what we do—when we believe this career is what we are—that we are called to do this—it is hard not take rejection personally. You begin to question your self worth, your value as a teacher, your estimate of yourself as a researcher and writer. You will question whether you wasted years preparing for a career that does not want you. You will hurt. You will get mad. You will get angry. You will get pissed off. Enraged. You will want to drink yourself into a stupor. You will want to sleep for days. You will want to burn your CV. You will be resentful that you’ve put all this effort into trying to find a position. You will suffer bouts of insomnia. You will question everything. You will want to murder someone. You will resent the people who found positions. Forget al-Qaeda. You will terrorize yourself.
Remember, it is not necessarily you, despite what the canonical academic discourses and narratives say. Whether you are looking for a job, or submitting to a journal or conference, or standing in front of a classroom of apathetic students, academe will reject you. Don’t let the process drive you to despair.
You will get mad. You will get angry. You will get pissed off. Enraged.
HULK SMASH!!!
Yes, that sounds about right.
Anyone have any good suggestions on how to look for jobs now, i.e. in May?
I am thoroughly committed to finding a job; I have not bought into the discourse that I am my research; but I am really sick of being on the job market. On the one hand, I don't think that academic jobs are the only jobs worth having; but I also don't see to many high school jobs that actually look promising, and I'm not sure how to get my foot in the door in a different field. If anyone has had success, I would be glad to hear their stories.
I'm sorry to say this, but you should know the reality. Outside of classics, there are very, very few opportunities available for someone with a classics Ph.D. A couple of years ago, I tried looking for a job outside of classics (including high school teaching)and, in fact, the academy. I looked for about 15 months, and found nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly. I interviewed here and there, had a couple of offers for temporary consulting work, and the like. But, really, not much. Now, the economy was very bad then. Perhaps it's better now, but I only had some success after deciding to follow a traditional career path.
This is to say, don't give up on classics. Work/try harder.
Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that things are good for classics job seekers. I know that they are not. All I'm saying is this: Opportunities are not better outside the academy.
Why: A Ph.D. (specifically, a humanities Ph.D.) makes a job seeker undesirable (trying to get a Ph.D. and quitting/failing may be worse).
Is this fair? No. Does this mean you should not try? No. But you cannot assume there is a "Plan B" out there somewhere. There isn't.
Let's all get together and live off the land in a Classics Commune.
Right, we'd all starve to death within a few weeks, given our total lack of "real life skills."
What do you mean? We have our Hesiod, our Varro, our Columella, and all that Hellenistic didactic that is useful to a rough, commune life. What humanists are better trained than Classicists in rural self-sufficiency?
Plus, when we get hungry we can always kill and eat the weakest among us, thereby slowly solving the problem of the current oversupply of qualified candidates.
I heard someone say once that there are people who can jump up and touch a basketball hoop with their hand. I've tried this repeatedly, for several years, and never been successful. I don't think it can be done.
It's because you're too fucking short.
Next question!
I can't tell if you're on board with 1:10's (kind of trollish)point, or missed it. Doesn't matter, next question! I have one. Anybody want to talk about salaries?
I am in support of them.
Yes. Let us all receive salaries!
Commence!
I'm receiving my salary right now. Oh yeah, that's it. Oh baby...
Anybody want to talk about salaries?
Sure! Salaries are fixed periodic payments made from employer to employee as remuneration for labor. They are distinct from wages, a form of compensation in which workers are paid for individual units of time or work performed. As you probably know, the word "salary" comes from the Latin "salarium," which was a soldier's stipend and which may or may not in origin have had something to do with soldiers wanting to buy delicious salt to eat, because who doesn't like salt? This seems like a pretty likely explanation to me, as even today some people who earn salaries will spend some portion of those salaries on salt for their personal use, although admittedly others will just cram a bunch of complimentary salt packets into their pockets whenever they go to a fast food restaurant and use those at home instead. By the way, here's a little-known fun fact: money earned as wages can also be used to buy salt, even though "wage" is not apparently etymologically related to "salt."
I hope that clears things up!
hoc salsum esse putas?
Ha ha! I enjoy your facetiae, but I'm still curious how much money people make in our field.
My understanding is that a new Assistant Professor's salary can be anywhere from the high 20s to the high 50s, depending on the institution.
I got a TT job this year. I was offered 56K but I negotiated up to 64K. Another friend took an initial offer this year at 68K (in a more expensive city). A friend from last year was offered 48K but managed to get 52K. I do not know how standard these amounts are.
Addendum to my post above, should more details matter:
Both my friend and I found jobs at SLACs and we both hold VAPs this year. My friend from last year was an ABD and found a TT at an R-1.
http://chronicle.com/article/faculty-salaries-data-2012/131431#id=144050
@12:22: That data is misleading, as it includes salaries for all disciplines. Professors in the humanities tend to make significantly less than professors of such fields as law or medicine.
I think this is closer to what you're looking for.
Obviously there are big differences from one institution to another; these are only averages. Also, beginning salaries for assistant profs will be lower than the average salaries for assistant profs.
There are HUGE salary differences from institution to institution and state to state. We hired a 1st year TT assistant prof this year who is making significantly more than all our other assistant profs and much more than all but 2 of the associate profs in our dept with whom the new person is about equal. It's called compression. After many years with little or no raises, people in "secure" jobs see their salaries get compressed, while we still have to pay "market" for the incoming new TT person, who also negotiated for a bit more than the first offer; as well s/he should, since s/he won't get a raise till s/he gets tenure, haha!
Interesting link 4:37--thanks for posting it.
Keep in mind that that figure is just the salary; it doesn't include what people make off of their lucrative product endorsement deals.
Anon. May 10, 2012 6:42 PM is right that compression is an issue that can make make earlier hires paid not much more or even less than new hires. But it changes over time. The last four years have been very tough on raises, so compression happens. In the years of comparative plenty before that, my school was sometimes giving the chair special funds to give raises to assistant and assoc. professors who were underpaid because of compression. At places where exact or average salaries are known, you can complain to a dean or a chair.
Did Bucknell really just complain about how "competitive" the job market was this year for hiring institutions?
Has anyone heard anything about the UGA lecturer position? It's been two weeks since the application deadline and the wiki and my email are silent.
@May 14, 2012 3:07 PM: Maybe I'm missing it, but where is the Bucknell comment?
The Bucknell comment was in the rejection letter. Personally, I appreciated it. The best kind of fiction is kind fiction.
I just got three rejection letters in less than thirty minutes. My butt hurts.
Any word on UCLA or Arkansas?
Time for another Placement Service gripe, just in case anyone from the APA's P.S. committee is out there...
The way this online system for posting ads works is just absurd. There is simply no easy way to find the latest postings. I just checked, and after doing the sort-by-date I see an even dozen posting dating to May 23. Among these are jobs with deadlines long past (e.g., UCLA) and even positions filled (e.g., Princeton). Why in the hell does the Princeton ad get updated on May 23, creating the illusion that it's something new?
Any one of Penn's CompSci undergrads could figure out a better system than this -- are the powers that be really so braindead that they'd permit this system to remain unchanged?
What about a market-based solution? If more jobs are posted here (or h-net or higheredjobs) perhaps the placement service would react by improving its services or (which, I admit, is more likely) becoming less relevant.
I love you guys. Let's do some hugs!
Anon said.
"Time for another Placement Service gripe, just in case anyone from the APA's P.S. committee is out there..."
No, nothing is going to change because someone on FV says something is "absurd" or "brain-dead". This is more important now because senior people like me, who sometimes write to the APA and complain about things, cannot see how the new system works.
What you need to do is find one or more senior names and explain to them, clearly and precisely, what exactly the problem is with the new system, and get them to write to someone.
I actually can't tell from these complaints whether you have serious comments and constructive criticism, or are just an immature person blowing off steam
How about, I'm a mature person blowing off steam while making serious and constructive comments?
Anyone who uses the APA website to look at listings of new jobs -- especially before the 1st/15th e-mails go out -- would know what my post was saying, but I guess those without access wouldn't. The point was: every job opening now gets listed online as its own entry on a sortable page (an improvement over past years!), but the implementation is anything but well thought out, as instead of letting one sort by the search's deadline or the date when the ad was first posted it is done by the "modified" date, and R.P. will sometimes/often modify posts long after they were made. (These modifications seem to be for internal information: I haven't noticed any changes to the postings themselves.) The result, as I was pointing out, is that one has to waste time looking at obsolete posts that give the illusion of potential freshness. May 23 was especially irksome, as a half-dozen or so jobs that had deadlines in the past were brought to the top. (E.g., the Princeton deadline was in March, so seeing a Princeton posting with May 23 as the date looks like a new job posting... until one reads the add and finds the deadline.)
Changing this setup must be mindnumbingly easy -- just add a new column for "deadline," and then we can all sort by that instead of being stuck with the "modified" date. This has been pointed out before, but ignored by the Placement Service and/or APA committee. There is absolutely no way that this can possibly be difficult to implement -- anyone with basic computer skills should be able to understand this.
Everyone should just start advertising positions through jobs.ac.uk instead.
Does anyone know the timetable for the UCLA search?
There is special place reserved in Hell for people who can't figure out how to add a comment describing their updates on the Wiki (which incidentally in my personal Hell). Idiots.
That must be the main section of hell, since it must contain all those who died prior to the invention of the internet.
I don't know you, 2:24, but I've decided that you're a pedantic twit.
You can hardly be sure you don't know me, unless you don't know anyone. This is the internet: I could be your mom!
Yes, I'm a horrible f*?!@ing pedant, but can you really blame me? I've been a "professional" classicist for too many years already. The worst part is that my fate for next year is already decided, so I have no real reason for checking the Wiki twice a day. Nonetheless, I resent that you m**therf*%#ers are too lazy or too excited to add one little note when you update a counter vel sim., and thus I find myself scrolling through whole Wiki trying to puzzle out the change. In a few years I'll probably be refereeing your articles and fixing the accents in your Greek because you're too cool to sweat the "details".
Oops. I see now that my rant was misdirected. I should have chosen a pseudonym, like Self-Loathing Pedant. Sorry, famosi. My bad.
Don't spend hours scrutinizing the wiki for minute changes. Instead, view the history and compare versions. Takes 10 seconds.
I can't believe you're helping yourself achieve your goals by bellyaching about people not inserting a revision description note in their revisions.
You're actually probably harming your cause, since when doing updates next job season I'll at least be sure not to take the extra time of doing such a description. Spite never came easier.
Yep. You were asking to be trolled with the tone of the original post.
Ha! Losers.
You're right; the tone was wrong. I thought posters were just being lazy or ignorant; it never occurred to me that they might spitefully refuse to offer this common courtesy.
So -- can we all please follow the instructions on Wiki and add a little note explaining our updates? Pretty please? Amabo vos. And if we are tempted to be d*&ks about it just because we can, let us remember, as Protagoras says, that we benefit from each other's virtue. That's the true spirit of the Wiki, after all.
"Ha! Losers."
We'll all be fucking dead in a century. There's no such thing as a winner.
I see that a VAP at Loyola University Chicago has popped up on the wiki, but could someone please point me to the job ad? I don't see it on FV or the placement service site.
Anyone completely desperate who's giving up and isn't seeing anything in high school teaching - consider Library Science - most University libraries require their classics librarian to have a Phd in Classics or a "related field".
Often there is a double portfolio, so you might end up with medieval history or religion as well, but its a good field for people who for various reasons are looking outside of teaching. There are still research requirements, but it is at least something to consider if you're really flailing.
An MLIS can be completed in a year and a half online.
Don't give up, but its something to consider.
As noted, I don't think that leaving classics is all that advisable. It's certainly not for the faint of heart.
I disagree somewhat with the library science/information science advice. If your plan is to leave, I'd suggest looking in to a degree/credential that would tend to expand the opportunities available more than one that would tend to make you more specialized. Consider a teaching license, a CPA, a law license.
Nothing against being a classics/humanities librarian, but if you are looking for opportunities of gainful employment, I can say that there are more positions for CPAs and attorneys than humanities librarians. That is, if you want to spend a year or two or more learning a new profession, think carefully about the costs and the opportunities available (or likely to be).
Of course, if you want to specialize as a classics librarian, that's another matter.
Want to be able to get a job anywhere and still be paid way more than a humanities professor? And be helping people, in theory?
Nursing.
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