Yes. I work on drama. There are still fuckers out there who will literally deny, to your face, the relevance of the fact that these things were *performed*. In any other discipline, people like that would have been fucking crucified long since.
The problem is not just conservatism. The problem is that Classics, as a field, doesn't embrace controversy as a good thing. In other fields, a book is considered a success if it stirs up debate and is embraced by some and rejected by others. My impression is, that this does not apply to Classics.
Yes, yes, yes to the drama stuff! My favorite is when classicists insist that the plays are just poetry and that's it. It's just sad that in classics suggesting that plays should be read as play scripts is rejected out of hand by some scholars. I can't imagine (but I can't speak from experience) that this happens with Shakespeare or Spanish Golden Age drama.
Unfortunately it DOES happen with Shakespeare. English departments often still teach Shakespeare as "just poetry" and I have known many English profs who are openly hostile to discussions of staging, stagecraft, performance conditions, etc. This is an ongoing bone of contention between theatre professors (who often are aggressively hostile towards considering the poetic aspects) and English professors (who are often equally hostile towards considering the dramatic aspects). I would guess it's exactly the same with Spanish Golden Age drama, Racine and Moliere, etc. It's inexplicable to me, but there does seem to be a strong bias on the part of many scholars of literature to admit that the works they study were in fact performance scripts.
I don't think that I'm hostile or in denial about the fact that they written to be staged, and I think work on stagecraft is interesting, but I don't think that recovering the conditions of production is going to reveal the meaning of the play, or at least not in any more effective way than literary analysis.
The fact that a play is written for performance does not mean that there is one definitive performance which captures the true meaning of the play - as if the aim of every Shakespearean production was to capture the spirit of the first night, in which Will himself had a hand in the staging.
Intentionally or not, good plays are open to multiple interpretations (onstage and in analysis) and it's totally legitimate to think about this range.
To clarify, I was objecting to hostility to considering issues of stagecraft at all, NOT claiming that there is nothing useful to do apart from such considerations.
Does anybody not see the irony in moving from a conversation about how irrelevant Classics is due to hyperspecialization, pedantic Ivory Tower conservatism, and how nobody cares, to a pedantic Ivory Tower conservative discussion about staging ancient plays that nobody cares about?
"Staging ancient plays that nobody cares about"? Uh huh. To test that statement's validity, you could start with browsing through Mee and Foley's Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage. In fact, a great many people care a great deal about ancient plays and how to stage them.
" In fact, a great many people care a great deal about ancient plays and how to stage them."
Either you're an adjunct who still has big puppy eyes and dreams for the field, or you're a bitter tenured prof whose self-worth is based on people recognizing your work on ancient drama is totally super important and a big deal.
I have been properly rebuked. Ancient plays and how they were staged are vitally important subjects for our society to survive.
Come on. If your test for whether something is worth thinking about is "is it necessary for the survival of society?" then clearly no humanities subject is for you. What on earth are you doing in Classics in the first place?
"Come on. If your test for whether something is worth thinking about is "is it necessary for the survival of society?" then clearly no humanities subject is for you. What on earth are you doing in Classics in the first place?"
Hyperbole: An extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally.
But really, if the staging of ancient drama is not a valid issue *in Classics* - what is? My point is, once we're talking about conversations within a discipline concerned with the study of the ancient world, how can contemporary relevance be a meaningful criterion of importance? Honestly, I just can't imagine what issues within Classics you think meet this standard.
Quoth Anon 1.32: (quoting me) " 'In fact, a great many people care a great deal about ancient plays and how to stage them.'
Either you're an adjunct who still has big puppy eyes and dreams for the field, or you're a bitter tenured prof whose self-worth is based on people recognizing your work on ancient drama is totally super important and a big deal."
Nope, I'm neither. I'm a tenured professor, not particularly embittered, who has never published on drama.
The "great many people who care a great deal" about ancient theatre whom I mentioned are not, for the most part, classicists. I was thinking of people who actually work in theatre and stage ancient plays; prisoners who read and/or stage plays in prison (e.g., Nelson Mandela, who played Creon in a prison production of *Antigone*); playwrights who respond to ancient plays in their own works; etc.
1:32 again: "I have been properly rebuked. Ancient plays and how they were staged are vitally important subjects for our society to survive."
This is just silly, even for hyperbole. Important for society to survive? Well, obviously, no, and we didn't need the heavy-handed sarcasm to know that. Important? Yes.
Well, now you've switched from "innovative" to truly paradigm-shifting, and suggested Wilamowitz and Finley as models that today's lit PhDs are falling short of. Ok, then, guilty: most dissertations on literary subjects (or in engineering or music or anthro or poll sci) are not as revolutionary as work done by giants in the field. But your claim that people are writing books about literature that everyone believes because they are not innovative is just 100% wrong. You literally cannot name a book on Vergil written in the last 100 years that even 75% of its readers think is "right." Manuscript referees and tenure referees and reviewers and people in hiring meetings always describe boring non-original work as boring and unoriginal--trust me, I've done it. I hope the depth of your ignorance about this is not showing up in your job interviews.
On a related (to this discussion) note, I'll share the final paragraph from Brent Shaw's review of Keith Bradley's Apuleius book in the new JRA, which ends wonderfully (p. 713):
On the one hand, working historians will find a gold mine of information and argument on precise persons, places, and practices that were part of the Antonine world of Apuleius. On the other, literary scholars looking at these same forays might perhaps remain phlegmatically sceptical about what is actually being discovered, and what, if anything, the historian's efforts contribute to a finer literary or ideological understanding of Apuleius' writings.... Here lies some of the gulf in a divided world of scholarly interest and endeavor. Not too long ago, at a conference on Apuleian studies I was challenged by a very eminent Latinist to name something other than Plato that was centrally important to Apuleius. "The Roman Empire?," I timidly ventured.
As someone who works mainly with historical sources and material culture but routinely checks literary commentaries and studies about works and passages important to my scholarship, I can say that I continue to be shocked by how insular scholars of literature can be, far too often revealing themselves to be ignorant of important sources and scholarship found outside the normal bounds of literary studies. And it's actually quite pathetic, that these people go through their lives apparently unaware of how incomplete their scholarship is, as if they are still stuck in Plato's Cave, not even suspecting what else is out there. While I am curious to whom Shaw was referring, it does not really matter, as there are a good number of people that anonymous Latinist represents.
(Note to Servius: I know we're not supposed to name names, but cannot believe that a favorable quotation from a scholarly book review violates that rule. It's not like I'm accusing Shaw of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby or being the one who leaked Quentin Tarantino's new script, or some other form of malfeasance.)
"When the system you work under devalues your labor in the manner it does, for as long as it has, you can’t help but begin to believe you are worth less. I am a fraud, a fake, I have felt, have told myself countless times. When people ask me what I do, I tell them, accurately, “I am a college professor,” and then hope, depending on the person, that they ask me nothing further. All of the pride that I take in the job that I do, and do, I have no problem freely stating, very well, is sucked from me when I have to find a way to describe the situation of the adjunct, the bizarre logic that my mind bats about like a cat with string."
Personally, if I were setting out to defend the discipline of the charge that it makes it hard for younger scholars to be controversial, I wouldn't do it by pulling rank on someone you assume is less advanced in their career.
In my experience with hiring and tenure cases, it is quite easy to defend someone against the charge of being boring, if there is no general consensus that the candidate's work is tedious: the candidate clearly didn't write the dissertation/book her critics wanted her to write and that's a good thing.
Neutralizing a bad tenure letter or a negative review is much harder. That is not to say, that I have never shot down candidates if I found their work boring (one Vergil scholar comes to mind). But I have seen more than once how a brilliant candidate was turned down for a job or tenure, because her work had offended someone or because it was badly reviewed somewhere important. I'm aware that this is anecdotal evidence, but it's just as valuable as yours.
thanks to the poster above. Does the work that offends so-and-so qualify as 'bad' work? Or does this apply only to those cases where the offended person sits on the hiring/tenure committee? I would he happy to know.
yes, it does count as "bad" and "not persuasive" to the offended party. If you offend a senior scholar enough to write a highly critical but seemingly fair-minded review, you are in trouble (hatchet jobs are, typically, ignored). This is because not everyone on a hiring committee will have spent a lot of time with your work, which is why expert outside opinion matters.
That's also true of tenure cases. Technically, deans and those serving on university-wide tenure committees should have read all of a tenure candidate's work, but also that doesn't always happen.
If a department wants to get you tenure, they will have selected letter writers who they believe to be supportive, but there are sometimes errors of judgement. If your work annoys one of your departmental colleagues enough to vote against your tenure case, you are in trouble too.
That's not to say that a young scholar has to spend six or seven years brown nosing. But ass. professors have to be careful with what they write. Naturally, not everyone can be a Wilamowitz or a Finley. That's not my point. My point was that a Wilamowitz would never have been tenured in the US, just like Finley was denied tenure at Rutgers and could never again find employment in the US.
Of course, some brave young brilliant scholars sail through the tenure system. But in my time, I have seen a lot of great young scholars get in trouble, and I find that very frustrating.
I've seen a tenure case where one famous referee said "This person's interesting work is completely wrong for the following reasons" and then went on for three detailed pages. The department was able to contextualize the criticism, the deans believed us, and everything was fine. Bad things happen lots of places in lots of fields, but these casual claims that the whole system is incompetent and that you won't get tenure if you say some old guy is wrong are based on very little solid evidence.
On the other hand, boring work that offers nothing new will generally make you finish well behind the interesting people.
Of course, by "boring" I mean boring to people who like the field. If you find something boring because you don't like literature or history or archaeology or philosophy or poetry, that's different.
I've also seen cases like that. And I've seen others. In my view, it's just irresponsible to tell young scholars to write whatever they want (and can get published), never mind the consequences. In the US, junior colleagues have to be politically savvy. In my experience, there is plenty of solid evidence for that.
I'm not, on principle, opposed to Vergil scholarship or any other branch of the Classics. And I'm also aware that my standards and views are not shared by everyone (one man's "boring" is another man's "innovative"). That's why I would like the field to be a little broader and more tolerant of controversy than it actually is. In my view, other disciplines do a much better job in fostering debate.
Now, on this blog, we can't name names and talk about individual cases, which I think is a good thing. But I think that the field is not doing well. It's not entirely incompetent and corrupt, but not all is well, and Classics is, I think, in crisis.
Folks, if there are no reports on the wiki that candidates have been contacted post-APA, and the search committees did not give any sort of timeline for contact at the interviews, is it at all appropriate to send an SC a short e-mail asking for an update on the progress of the search? I don't want to be rude; on the other hand, my liver can't take much more "oh God will they call me" drinking, and I want to be sure it's still in working order for the "oh God I will have no job" drinking stage of the festivities.
Anon. 6:15 asked if it's appropriate to contact a SC and ask about the progress of the search.
I would *strongly* advise against doing so. It is not to your advantage to do anything that makes you seem hyper, or "high maintenance", or in any other way singles you out in the SC's mind as someone who asks for extra attention (not in a good way). Difficult as it is, wait for them to contact you.
I know it is incredibly nerve-wracking--I remember--and that from the candidate's point of view it seems as though the APA was aeons ago. But the timeline is very different from the administration's point of view, and it's not time to despair of hearing back yet.
Some places start after MLK Day and have only just completed their first week of the semester. In those instance, the SCs may not even have finalized their short lists yet. In more cases, the short list may be waiting for approval by the Dean or other administrator -- if there are numerous searches going on in numerous depts. the Dean may take a while to approve all the short lists and Classics is probably not first in line/pecking order.
And speaking of late -- I was the fourth candidate brought to campus for the job I now have. I've heard that the first three all blew it one way or another, though of course I don't know any details. I did not get the call asking me for an on-campus interview until late February, and my campus visit was in early March. I assume that's unusual but it's not impossible.
"I would *strongly* advise against doing so. It is not to your advantage to do anything that makes you seem hyper, or "high maintenance", or in any other way singles you out in the SC's mind as someone who asks for extra attention (not in a good way)."
Exactly what I was worried about. Thank you for the advice!
Frankly, I don't think that it makes much of a difference to ask about timelines. I've done so with many searches and did get campus visits in the end.
The question is *how* you ask. Sure, you can come across as particularly eager and maybe sometimes that may blow your chances. On the other hand, if a department is genuinely interested in you, small things like that won't make much of difference.
What makes a difference is your campus visit. Here is how, in the past, candidates blew their chances in my department:
1) by giving a bad job talk. Practice your talk, and, if at all possible, schedule a mock job talk with your colleagues/mentors. If you are not a seasoned public speaker, you should definitely seek some advice on your paper.
2) by blowing the Q&A session after the job talk. Never come across as defensive. Always frame disagreements in terms of legitimate intellectual debates. Don't come across as petty and mean spirited. Be gracious and professional.
3) by talking badly about others. Even if everyone else at dinner is bitching about so-and-so and his or her work, don't join in. Your prospective colleagues don't know you yet and if you speak badly of others, they will assume that you are a gossip, who will speak badly about them on another occasion. Always be generous and diplomatic.
4) by sharing inappropriate details of their lives.
5) by mentioning that their spouse may want a spousal hire. You won't be asked about your spouse, because it's illegal in most places, so you don't bring it up yourself.
I understand that posts like the previous one come from a good place, but wish to suggest that experienced faculty not give the kind of advice that can help a potentially disastrous hire conceal that potential. If someone is too stupid to know that he/she shouldn't drink too much, shouldn't gossip, should put some effort into preparation, etc., that person should not be hired. (Certainly not in this job market!) And if that person is hired, it may be ahead of someone more deserving, someone who didn't need to be told such things. So let the potentially terrible colleagues out themselves now, not after they've been hired -- it's best for the departments, and best for the other candidates, and best for the field.
I write this as one with no on-campus interviews, but who has certainly encountered a few tenure-stream faculty who should never have been hired, and I don't like seeing those with obviously good intentions contributing to the problem.
So maybe we should all give really *bad* advice, and only those too stupid to figure out that it is bad advice will eliminate themselves from competition? Wait, those people read FV too, so now they know that all advice will be bad advice and will therefore behave in the opposite way. Wait.......
I really don't think that the reason for people (for instance) drinking too much on campus visits is lack of knowledge that this is probably a bad idea.
Campus visits are stressful and purposefully so. The pressure is sometimes too much for the candidate, who then behaves badly in one way or another, for instance by drinking too much.
As for job talks, I'm always surprised how bad they often are. This is almost never due to a lack of preparation. Instead, candidates have clearly put no thought into what kind of audience they have to impress, and how job talk differs from a hyper-specialist conference paper or, even worse, the type of stuff that's presented at a grad student conference.
"I really don't think that the reason for people (for instance) drinking too much on campus visits is lack of knowledge that this is probably a bad idea."
"As for job talks, I'm always surprised how bad they often are. This is almost never due to a lack of preparation. Instead, candidates have clearly put no thought into what kind of audience they have to impress, and how job talk differs from a hyper-specialist conference paper or, even worse, the type of stuff that's presented at a grad student conference."
Can you be more specific about what the difference between a job talk and, say, an APA paper should be? Obviously the job talk is longer, broader in scope, takes into account the undergraduates and non-specialists in the audience, and will probably be light years "better" than a grad student conference paper, but are there any non-obvious differences that people might not be aware of?
Maybe the person who posted that is at a SLAC? I thought that generally research talks were supposed to be just that; I wouldn't have thought dumbing them down for undergrads a good idea, unless it is really a *teaching* presentation.
Yeah, certainly. I don't mean dumbing down the whole talk, but just including very short introductory material that might help the undergraduates along, e.g. "Herodotus, the 5th century historian of the Persian Wars." Or making sure to be really clear about things that someone who works on a totally different field is unlikely to be aware of.
I think these are good points for almost any talk. I have never understood why so many speakers make their presentations incomprehensible to everyone who is not a specialist in their chosen sub-field. Classics is interdisciplinary - it's impossible to be intimately versed in every aspect of scholarship. I'm always thankful to speakers who can deliver an intelligent, nuanced talk that is also clear. This is not only true for job candidates - it's a necessity for the survival of the field. Learn how to make the material approachable - for students, for colleagues, for the general public. Let go of the pedantry...
I think part of what happens is that people get advised not to "talk down" to their audience as if the audience is ignorant. But yeah, I have no problem with someone reminding me who herodotus is -- I don't' need it, but I don't think I would ever find it offensive, esp. if other members of the audience might need it.
Even at Ph.D. programs, which presumably value research the most, the job talk also tells us a great deal about how you will teach. If you can't make your talk interesting, informative, and clear, then I'd put good money down that you can't do those things in class, when you are talking about stuff you presumably don't have as much interest in. So the job talk does more than just communicate what you are working on. Arguably that is the least important thing, as we have read your writing sample, and whatever else is published. So, making the complex and difficult clear and interesting ought to be the goal for any job-talk giver, no matter what kind of institution they are visiting.
A good job talk convinces the specialists that you know your stuff, and it convinces the non-specialists that your work is interesting and relevant beyond the narrow confines of your sub-discipline. The trick is to be engaging, and to show that your research matters.
Departments are looking for colleagues, whom they can work with, and, yes, learn from. So you should show that you master your field, but that you are willing to look beyond your specialization, and that you enjoy talking to all kinds of different scholars.
This is hard and requires some thought and, ideally, some feedback from more seasoned colleagues. You don't your prospective colleagues to tune out. But you also don't want them to get the impression that you are all over the place and are not at home in any sub-field. So it's a balancing act.
I confess that I am writing from the perspective of having just watched a job talk this week that was stunningly bad. No framing introduction, rambling, switching from prepared notes to ad-lib speech, plus difficulties with technology that would not have occurred with the least bit of proper preparation. I wonder if the person's department failed to offer them a mock job-talk, and critical feed-back. I felt horrible for the person, though perhaps they didn't know that the talk was a disaster. Whatever you do, practice in front of as large and diverse an audience as you can muster/cajole/bribe, and then engage in a vigorous critique of your performance (you might also think about filming your performance for your own viewing after). Good luck to all of you still about to enter the arena!!
How does one show that one's research matters, given that nothing, including the survival or extinction of the human race and/or the universe, can be said to matter in any meaningful sense?
Yes, practice your job talk. And make sure that your audience isn't just fellow grad students, who don't have much experience either. Accept the possibility that your talk is awful and that you have to re-write from scratch. And by all means, contextualize your talk within a wider debate, and tell your audience at the beginning of your paper why it matters.
How does one show that one's research matters, given that nothing, including the survival or extinction of the human race and/or the universe, can be said to matter in any meaningful sense?
Great point! Just elaborate a bit on what you wrote here at the very beginning of your talk. Invite most people to leave. Then take two brief questions. Everybody will be impressed and the job will be yours.
Seriously, nothing matters. The only thing to do is keep entertained until death, therefore the only viable criterion for good research is whether or not it is interesting. Even truth or falsehood is irrelevant. So are you saying that you should try to convince the audience that your work is interesting? Or in what other sense could it be said to matter? Or are you coming from some weird pseudo-religious a priori assumption that there is some way for things to matter? If so, consider becoming a priest or seomthing.
Also, even if I did care, how could I possibly anticipate what matters to you (or to any given audience member)? I don't have a mind-reading device.
Asking a candidate to show why their research matters is just plain silly; the question itself makes no sense. It presumes a common system of values that does not actually exist.
Pointing out a fundamental flaw in the whole concept of a thing mattering is not dickish. If you can't see that, you probably shouldn't be an academic.
Hey man, slow down! No need to throw a ferret into our bathwater! Interesting is as interesting does, man. So, yeah, just make clear how your research really ties the room together. Nobody is going to pee on it.
You may get some young assistant professor or grad student going all, "Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man." But, dude, you can handle that. Just be chill. You are not out of your element, remember that. Nothing else matters.
Seriously, nothing matters. The only thing to do is keep entertained until death, therefore the only viable criterion for good research is whether or not it is interesting. Even truth or falsehood is irrelevant. So are you saying that you should try to convince the audience that your work is interesting? Or in what other sense could it be said to matter? Or are you coming from some weird pseudo-religious a priori assumption that there is some way for things to matter? If so, consider becoming a priest or seomthing.
Way to miss the forest for the beetles in the bark! If you have to parse out what it means "to matter" in this context then by all means, go for it. In some places excessive pedantry will certainly get you the job, God help us all.
Yes, it is so true. Classics as a field not only does NOT embrace any form of controversy, but controversy is in fact confused with aporia. In my experience submitting a book TS to several presses, I was stunned by the ignoramuses who pose as experts on the Other, gender, diversity, even textual criticism. Our field is doomed. There is no hope. And the standards count for nothing. The battle is fierce but the stakes are so low,
I really enjoyed this, @January 30, 2014 at 3:44 PM
Anonymous said... The battle is fierce but the stakes are so low
It's too bad that the tone at FV is no better than when things got started. When I was first on the market, FV was a powerful tool to demystify the job market. Has nothing come from knowing more? Or is this mainly a space to vent?
I would say that the much higher proportion of venting to helpful advice probably has something to do with the increasingly smaller number of jobs and the increasingly larger backlog of people trying desperately to get hired.
Me, I'm not bitter anymore. I left Classics, and now I can have mental health AND an income with health insurance to boot! Who knew that was possible?
Okay, so I have read on FV about the supposed inside candidate for the Duke job, but what about the job at univ. of Washington, where there does actually seem to be an inside candidate...? any info?
Based on the number of ABDs and/or freshly minted PhDs (still at their grad institution) getting campus interviews, it seems clear that search committees have basically abandoned my "generation" - i.e. those who had the unfortunate luck of defending between the crisis of 2008 and the following years of economic depression. I find it hard to fathom that search committees are so willfully ignorant of our plight that they continue to choose the young and inexperienced over those of us who have slogged through exploitative visiting positions, moving year and year, trying to keep our heads above water. There is STILL the notion (conscious or unconscious) that those who don't have a TT job 3 or more years beyond the PhD are somehow "problematic". I already anticipate the chorus of voices (mainly from the established tenured and TT) who will tell me that I'm wrong. But I've been around the block long enough to know the truth. I'm sick and tired of working my ass off in my temp job, watching younger ABDs and new grads get permanent positions - in my own departments - while I strike out year and year on the market. This system is broken, and fundamentally unfair. In what other career does experience work against your chances of finding employment? Yes, go ahead, justify to yourselves how this is not true, and then head to bed tonight knowing that your paycheck is secure, while I, along with many other underlings, teach the vast majority of courses in your department that put the butts in the seats. I would say that I would be glad not to be you, because I couldn't live with the injustice, but I'd be lying, because all I want after all these years of toil is some fucking stability.
To everyone out there who has not landed a TT job out of grad school: quit now. Don't be lured by VAPs. It's far more likely than not a dead end. You will only become older, more bitter and less employable at the end of the game. Better to redefine your life now, before you waste the rest of your youth in a field that will cast you out like the day's garbage. I'm deadly serious.
I agree completely with the poster above, and the explanation is very simple: other people don't care about you (or me, or any of us). Not even a little bit, not at all. Choosing newly minted PhDs is much more logical because they have not yet been embittered; naivete is valuable in an industry that has quite a bit it would rather keep under wraps.
Get out. Get out now, reader. Even if you are lucky and get a TT job, can you really live with turning into the kind of person who does this to other people?
I could not agree more with the two previous postings. With a PhD earned as the economic crisis was about the explode, the string of fairly high end temp teaching jobs I've done, and the huge amount of publication is now an albatross dragging me to my doom. The field doesn't care about this, tho. It just wants to keep doing what it's doing and pretending the Victorian age is still where we live. Don't get a degree in Classics and don't let a sad devotion to the Classics world upend your apple cart. Avoid it as if your life depended on it (as it may well).
This is astounding. Shame on UW for demanding a separate teaching/research statement for a fake job. Thanks for wasting my time, assholes. If you're going to screw with us, at least limit yourself to a cover letter and cv and be done with it.
I also want to add my voice in agreement to the above posts about VAPs. I have been fortunate to have landed some good visiting gigs -- which include fair pay and good benefits -- but the instability is simply not worth it. You'll be under immense pressure to publish while you also navigate the job market year after year. It's also very hard to maintain relationships and make and re-make a social support network from position to position, and with the amount of stress you'll be under teaching all the shitty classes no one else in the department wants to cover (hence: they hired you), it all becomes a recipe for extreme unhappiness. It's really hard not to become bitter. I don't even know how those who aren't compensated decently for this work make it through.
Look, it's hard as an ABD who struck out on the t-t market to say no to a visiting job and the "opportunities" it presents. I get that. That was me. Just start forming a back-up plan now. You may believe in your heart of hearts that there's nothing you'd rather do than be a tenure-track professor, but chances are, you won't, and it doesn't have a whole hell of a lot to do with your "merit" as a teacher or a scholar either. The lottery metaphor is an apt one. Everyone on the market is really good right now; everyone is not equally lucky.
If you come to the decision that you should leave the field, as you may indeed do after some years on the visiting/lecturer track, be sure to have taken some steps to acquire marketable skills in the meantime. I am speaking as one who wishes I had been given and followed such advice. Volunteer in the summers. Do some administrative work here and there. Find something right now that you can put on a RESUME and do it. Be smart about positioning yourself for a possible exit.
Right now, I view my years "visiting" as a mere extension of much of my time in graduate school: a lost opportunity cost. Cheap living with no retirement savings is all well and good when you're younger. But now, to quote the venerable Danny Glover, I'm getting too old for this shit.
But now, to quote the venerable Danny Glover, I'm getting too old for this shit. right on. the gaining of real world experience is key. the transferability of academic skills is tricky. i am out of the academy now, but finding a fit is pretty tough and i have not managed it so far.
There is a lot to what the posters above are saying about PhDs 3+ years out in the search process. But, even though there are still a lot people on hiring committees who never experienced the market in this way, there are some who did and others who have their eyes open. I advocate for for VAPs and I do not like insider hiring. And, if you work in my department as a VAP, I'll network on your behalf. One of my colleagues is a master of this. It may be that all our kind of influence can help you get are more VAPs. But we want you to succeed. I want you to be able to stay in the game for as long as you want to be in it.
One problem is that the skills required to succeed as a VAP are fairly different from those required to succeed on the TT. Experience as a VAP is pretty good for getting you another VAP, but not so much for TT jobs.
So who's got the scoop on this UMBC Roman Archaeology VAP? Not publicized widely, with strangely specific criteria for the ideal candidate. Is this an inside job? Please tell me now before I waste more time, like U Washington did to all of us Roman Archs earlier.
One problem is that the skills required to succeed as a VAP are fairly different from those required to succeed on the TT. Experience as a VAP is pretty good for getting you another VAP, but not so much for TT jobs.
"One problem is that the skills required to succeed as a VAP are fairly different from those required to succeed on the TT. Experience as a VAP is pretty good for getting you another VAP, but not so much for TT jobs."
This makes no sense to me. Can you explain?
**** Well, I can only speak for my own very small dept. at a SLAC. (I'm not the original poster, btw.)
When we advertise for a one-year VAP, we need someone to cover classes for a tenured or tenure-track prof. who's away on sabbatical or family leave or whatever. We need someone who can step in and teach (usually) a first-year language sequence and 3 classical civ. courses. We don't need to know what you'd do for senior seminars; you won't be doing those as a VAP. We don't need to know what new courses you'd like to develop if you were here permanently. We need you to cover our regularly scheduled courses that are part of our permanent curriculum--whatever the person you're replacing would have been teaching, in other words.
To be blunt, we're not really interested in your research. If this were a T-T position, your research would be a crucial part of the picture. For a VAP position, it doesn't much matter. What we need to know, and see demonstrated in your application materials, is that you can teach what we need you to teach (the job ad will have specified what that is).
To get a T-T job, you have to persuade the SC that your research area--and the courses you'll develop based on that--will be a good complement to the areas they've already got covered in their dept. You also (of course) have to persuade them that you can become an excellent teacher, but they may be willing to hire you even if you're not a great teacher yet because they're looking at the position as an investment of several years and they will expect to mentor you. They're more interested in your overall profile as research AND teacher. For a VAP, the SC wants someone who can teach well, from day one, and who will not require much if anything in the way of mentoring. And whether you publish or not isn't a matter of any concern to them. They want a teacher, not a scholar. If you're also a productive scholar, great, but that's not going to tip the scales for or against you for a VAP hire. T-T SCs, even at SLACs, tend to put much more emphasis on research.
I was a VAP for a few years before getting a permanent position in a non-Classics department at a SLAC, and what 11:02 says is spot on. One of my VAP institutions did actually seem to care about my research (and they most helpfully took the time to help me develop it, which I don't think is the norm). Now, when I'm on a SC for a VAP, I want to know that the candidate can hit the ground running and that I won't have to teach her/him how to teach. I personally like hearing about their research, but ultimately it doesn't figure into the SC's decision. VAP candidates never give a research talk, only the teaching demo. For a TT job, we value research as much as teaching. All of our TT position candidates give both research talks and teaching demos, and the two are about equally important, at least for my large department.
While I understand the frustration here re the disconnect between hiring and experience, and I think SCs ought to privilege those with a few years under their belt for TT positions, I do think the (potential) rewards of the VAP are being undersold.
The years spent in a VAP position creating courses, learning what works in class and what doesn't, and simply defining oneself as a professional classicist are years not on the tenure clock. That is a wonderful thing.
I was hired ABD, with no teaching experience, into a teaching-intensive position that also carries high research expectations. To be honest, I wouldn't hire myself if given the choice now, because of my lack of experience!
Because I was so green and new to all of this, my own tenure track experience has been sheer, bloody hell. My colleagues are well-meaning, but far too busy themselves to "mentor" me. I've had to finish my dissertation, create a whole world of new courses, many of them well outside my field, convert dissertation to book, write articles, learn how to navigate university politics, blah blah blah blah. All of while my clock ticks ever more loudly and ever faster (it feels).
If I had started this position with dissertation done, a few years of VAPing behind me, a dossier of syllabi and taught courses in my hands, and a few articles in the pipeline, I would be in much better shape. In fact, I would stand a much better chance at tenure. As it is, I doubt I will get tenure. Not for lack of working extremely hard, but simply for lack of seasoning when my clock started ticking.
I think it is criminally insane that SCs pass over so many excellent candidates with years of VAP experience in favor of ABDs or newly minted PhDs. I really don't understand it. One of the many changes I will make to the hiring process in Classics when I become the benevolent tyrant of all academe I've always wanted (and deserved) to become, is to stipulate that nobody can be hired onto the TT without 3 years of VAP experience in at least 2 different institutions beyond their PhD institution. Don't worry, I'll offer heavy financial subsidies so that this doesn't privilege the rich kids who can afford to bounce around and "find themselves" thanks to family money.
--continued next
ps - one of my Captcha terms is "Contingency." How ridiculously, fucking appropriate...............
Think about it, though. It would improve life for everybody. It would help separate the wheat from the chaff regardless of pedigree (and I grant that I may well have been the chaff in such a system). It would allow everybody different experiences at different institutions, which would diffuse some of the powerful networks at play now in the hiring process, and it would help everybody hit the ground running once hired onto the TT. Most importantly, it would erase the current stigma attached to years of VAPing. Actual experience and performance would be valued and better assessed instead of "promise."
Now, of course, this is a pipe dream. And I predict the same idiotic hiring practices predominating for years. But in the meantime, if you get a VAP, try to realize that you *are* getting experience that will serve you very well once you get the brass ring of a TT job. The trick, unfortunately, is for all of us who understand the value of VAPing to convince the rump of the ass in our field that hiring the latest shiny thing ABD is too risky, for them and for the shiny thing.
I'm not complaining about my good fortune in landing a TT job ABD. I won the lottery. I wouldn't trade the known issues of my current misery for the unknown risks of VAPing in this market. But, like many lottery winnings, it has proven to be a mixed blessing. If I do get tenure and can be more heavily involved in the hiring decision of my dept. and uni., I hope I can work to change the system that unfairly elevated me and ignored others. Until then, know that the system is illogical and unfair, and know that the longer one toils in the shadows of precarious positions, the longer the odds of getting a TT job.
(And one of my Captcha terms is "faculty," while the other is "ntStrav," which is almost what I'm grasping at...)
Based on the conversation about old-timers who are still out here, this seems worth noting. A few years ago there was an APA panel on job discrimination, with the specific focus on age discrimination. (I did not attend, but learned of it from someone who did.) Apparently, it was well attended by department chairs, perhaps some of whom have turned back into pumpkins and did not pass along all of the wisdom they had acquired. Part of that wisdom, as explained during this panel, is that it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of age. And yet, it most certainly is happening that SC's are looking to see how long candidates have been around, and especially what year they graduated college, and going with the younger applicants. It would appear that some good, decent people, who would turn ashen at the very thought of discriminating against someone because of race, sexual status or religion, will automatically do so on account of age. And some do not even realize that they are acting unethically, while others do but realize it cannot be proven.
To this I might add that we all know -- or we should all know -- that some searches will interview and even bring to campus a woman or, when available, a minority, just to show the dean and H.R. people that it was a fair search. But do committees ever make a point of including one or two more senior candidates? Not that I've ever heard of. Which shows just how unseriously this problem is taken.
Put me down as a person who was hired a while ago as a VAP by as department that cared about by research, and who has always been in departments that care about the research of visitors. You want them to be able to say smart things to your students in 3rd year Latin and Greek classes, and you want them too be interesting to talk to.
Where is the evidence that depts are discriminating against older candidates? Departments look to see when you graduated to see how much research you've produced in how many years. Often young smart people get hired over older people. Often smart young people lose out to experienced older people. People get hired at 26 and at 40.
Anonymous 6:09, Go back and read what I wrote, and you will see that I said "graduate college," not "graduated graduate school." So your point falls apart. And anyway, if I'm wrong about this being a problem, why was there an APA panel devoted to it a few years ago?!? Does the APA devote precious time and resources to phantom issues? (Yes, yes, even I can come up with witty responses to that last sentence, so please don't bother...)
Kudos to Georgetown for successfully running a TT search with Skype and campus visits only. Perhaps more people will follow suit and kill the conference interview! Down with the APA meat-market!! Up with the Hoyas!!
"Kudos to Georgetown for successfully running a TT search with Skype and campus visits only. Perhaps more people will follow suit and kill the conference interview!"
That's marvelous. Let's hope it proves infectious.
Yes. Aside from getting to see Rudens (which was *almost* worth the $900), this last APA was completely useless for me. Far better to have done four Skype interviews, saved half a month's rent and 1/30 of my annual pre-tax income, and missed out on a miserable extended weekend punctuated by awkward reunions.
When a search committee sends an e-mail to let you know that the position is currently "on hold" and that, as of now, they are not moving forward with campus visits, does this mean that there is a chance there will be campus visits in the future, or are you completely f***ed?
APA interviews are long over, Campus visits underway. To those I’ve not heard anything from, may you be punished eternally, unless, of course, you call me. To those I visited, may your slowness in contacting me again be the result that terrible storms closed your campus. If it is because you offered the job to someone else, may you be punished eternally, unless, of course, that person turns you down and you call me. If you are the person who was offered that job, May you get your number one choice somewhere else, and there may you be happy and content forever. If you take that job that should have been mine, may you be punished eternally, unless, of course, you’re doing a hire next year.
Anon 6:17. Ha! That'll learn 'em for e-mailing the grad students!
I suspect that UT's top candidates will be finalists at more than one institution. We're hitting the time of year when people sit on offers to negotiate the best deal, whether it be in their home department or to make a move laterally or into T-T. While it's good to know who may have got the first offer, it will be interesting to see how things fall out.
That said, while the stakes may be different for finalists and for SCs, the wait can be agonizing all around. I am old enough to know that no department wants to risk a failed search in this budget environment and young enough to well remember the clusterf&#% that is a job search.
Does anyone know what the hell happened with Xavier's search? It was listed as approved/definite in the initial round of job ads, and all of a sudden it's on hold and there are no campus visits. (Anon @ 9:49 on 2/14, I trust you're in the same boat. Or same sinking life raft. Whatever.)
In all seriousness, Xavier and other schools that pull this shit should have to reimburse candidates who had to fly to the APA for what turns out to have been no reason.
Have the CHS fellowships recently turned into fellowships largely for foreign scholars (esp. Italians and Greeks) instead of Americans, or is this how it has always been?
Just got three e-mails from Xavier HR confirming that their position is canceled. Fwiw, everything I've heard about Xavier over the past couple of years indicates that the entire institution is imploding.
Anonymous 8:01, You are definitely not imagining that, and I believe I heard something about it being deliberate, but wouldn't swear to it. Perhaps bringing in more(?) Greeks is away of helping during the financial crisis over there.
Glad to hear that I am not crazy for thinking that about the CHS. I understand the motivations, but I do find it frustrating. There are so few funding opportunities for Classicist as it is, and to have one that is in my backyard essentially closed to American applicants makes it all the harder. Let's hope the Loeb Foundation doesn't follow suit.
How soon after the final candidate leaves campus can you expect to hear back? I would imagine that if more than a week goes by, the offer has gone to someone else -- is that generally about right?
A week sounds very fast to me-don't these things usually have to go through deans and provosts before you hear anything? Besides, given the weather on the east coast in the past few weeks, many visits have had to be rescheduled. I wouldn't give up hope just yet.
In the searches I've been a candidate for (both state and SLAC schools), offers were made within three days of the final campus visit (from a Friday to a Monday). Same for the schools where I wasn't a candidate but where I knew search committee members
A week's turn-around from department to dean/provost and back is certainly possible and probably even likely at some places, but institutions also know that they can lose out on their top pick if they're not quick at this stage.
So while you might not lose hope just yet, you shouldn't dwell on it either.
RE: How long after a visit are first-choice candidates notified of an offer?
It takes at least two weeks at my institution. First the entire department has to meet to decide. Then we send our choice to the provost, the dean, and the president, who each have to approve (they usually do, but this can take time). Then our college-wide committee which handles all new appointments, tenure cases, promotions etc. also has to give the go-ahead. They only meet twice a month. My (non-Classics) department voted on candidates two weeks ago, but because of weather delays we are still waiting to notify our first choice.
This is why I hate job market rumors. They don't help anyone, because all you can do is apply, do your best, and hope for the best. Knowing that there was an inside candidate is useless information, and nine times out of ten it's bullcrap to begin with.
Whoever was spreading that rumor about Duke and pretending to know what was going on should be glad that he/she doesn't live in feudal Japan, since that level of dishonorable stupidity would have been best addressed by ritual suicide back then. Feel free to slap yourself across the face for us all, though. Good and hard.
On the CHS. I find it encouraging that the ABDs and recent grads from ivy leagues can grab good jobs but have no chance at CHS unless they have a solid publication record (which they typically do not have). There is some fairness in this.
Correction: the Duke job has been offered, not yet accepted. I wouldn't blame the people spreading rumors too much. Sometimes there is a preferred candidate but things change at the on-campuses, or the hiring committee has an agenda but the department as a whole doesn't. The main thing is that spreading rumors doesn't help anyone, so why do it?
A cut-and-paste rejection seems a rather lazy way to respond to people who traveled to Chicago to meet with you, Randolph-Macon. A simple salutation would have been nice given the money we spent. And the use of several fonts so there's no doubt this was a cut and paste job just added insult to injury.
Wonder what they sent to people who didn't get an interview?
Thank you for your interest in the Latinist position at Randolph-Macon College. Bartolo Natoli of the University of Texas has accepted our offer and will be joining the department of Classics in the Fall. Please accept our best wishes for your job search. We were very impressed with the high quality of the applicants.
Gregory N. Daugherty Shelton H. Short III Professor in the Liberal Arts Department of Classics Randolph-Macon College
This is what those of us who did not get an interview received:
Dear Colleague:
Thank you for your interest in the Latinist position in the Classics Department of Randolph-Macon College. We had over 100 highly qualified applicants. I regret to say that we have not included you among the candidates to be interviewed at the APA meeting in Chicago. You have our best wishes for a Happy Holiday and a successful job search.
Gregory N. Daugherty Department of Classics Randolph-Macon College PO Box 5005 Ashland VA 23005-5505
If you read one thing today, please go read the four posts up at a blog devoted to the academic job market in German. Pretty much everything written there is applicable to Classics.
So is it better to get a totally dismissive rejection letter that was clearly a cut-and-paste job (or a sort of pastiche of pastes?), or would you rather have no rejection whatsoever? The latter is my personal favorite, especially if I've been been through the on-campus interview process. Best feeling in the world. I'm sure it's HR's fault, in every instance, as will now be asserted by half a dozen people in the know.
Oh, grow up, (some) people. So you got a sub-optimal rejection. Is it really worth complaining about?
Me, I've received so many rejections over the years that if they were each written on a slip of paper the size of a fortune cookie fortune and I had some sort of adhesive I could cover my entire body with them. (Heck, now that I think of it, that sounds like a pretty good piece of performance art for the next APA meeting...) Some rejections are more properly executed than others, and unless personalized -- as some of mine have been -- none of them merit more than two seconds of thought.
If you're lucky, you can get rejected even if you don't apply! I once got a rejection for a job I never applied for. I had been a finalist for a job at the same school the previous year, but the job the second year was at the opposite end of the field from me (think Greek archaeology vs. Latin poetry), and I certainly didn't apply. But they wrote to reject me anyway. I guess they just wanted to make sure I knew that I wasn't wanted at their institution. The funny thing was, my email had changed in that year, but they sent it to the correct, updated email address.
Es war sehr früh am Morgen, die Straßen rein und leer, ich ging zum Bahnhof. Als ich eine Turmuhr mit meiner Uhr verglich, sah ich daß schon viel später war als ich geglaubt hatte, ich mußte mich sehr beeilen, der Schrecken über diese Entdeckung ließ mich im Weg unsicher werden, ich kannte mich in dieser Stadt noch nicht sehr gut aus, glücklicherweise war ein Schutzmann in der Nähe, ich lief zu ihm und fragte ihn atemlos nach dem Weg. Er lächelte und sagte: ‚Von mir willst Du den Weg erfahren?‘ ‚Ja‘ sagte ich ‚da ich ihn selbst nicht finden kann‘ ‚Gibs auf, gibs auf‘ sagte er und wandte sich mit einem großen Schwunge ab, so wie Leute, die mit ihrem Lachen allein sein wollen.
American Classicists haven't really been learning German for a long time now (despite having to pass laughable "German exams"). What, you think PhD programs would be cranking them out at the rate they are if they had standards?
Ah yes, Classics. The one discipline through which one can transcend all the several viewpoints and perspectives of mankind and attain the unfiltered and universal truth about the world. Why would someone who has attained this god's eye view bother to scrutinize their own and others' intellectual motivations?
Right, because *that's* what theory does. If, on the other hand, it were a great big load of bullshit, your argument would likewise be full of said bullshit.
Do you not see that it might be a slightly naive and reactionary move to dismiss out of hand 100+ years of continental philosophical thought and all of a diverse group of influential writers lumped together as "theory" by people who haven't read them? No one's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read Lacan, but knee-jerk hostility to ideas you don't understand is so depressing. And also pretty self-destructive, given that the slick university administrators looking to make college education more 'relevant' are going to find Aristotle just as impenetrable as Adorno.
The problem isn't that they're impenetrable, the problem is that they belong to a genre the point of which is to explore to its logical conclusion Hans Christian Anderson's observation in the Emperor's New Clothes: if we just write a bunch of gibberish that can't even be nonsensical because it is impossible to determine what it is trying to mean in the first place, but pretend to our dying breath that it is deeply profound, how many gullible people who want to ingratiate themselves to us can we get to think that we are just that much smarter than they? The answer, of course, is a sizable chunk of academia.
Coincidentally, I would put all of philosophy in this same genre, *including* Aristotle and Plato. Plato in particular in the absolute worst for making up random shit, having a strategy for never actually committing himself to anything he writes (the dialogue form), and in particular pulling the wool over the eyes of a sizable chunk of the influential people in western civilization for 2400 years.
That anyone has ever taken *any* of the thinkers in that tradition seriously is every bit as laughable as the continued existence of religion in the 21st century.
Duke rumor was the biggest BS. None of the supposed inside candidates even applied.
Perhaps the jackass(es) earlier posting on this rumor will now shift tactics and argue that the Duke faculty must still be held in contempt, because if those non-candidates HAD applied they would have gotten the job due to an improper search?
Serious (non-trolling) question. Anyone on here been denied tenure? What did you do afterwards? Follow-up question: how is it that so many people on the T-T at research-intensive schools, with relatively low teaching loads, manage not to produce ANYTHING in 5-7 years?
I haven't been denied tenure, but one very obvious answer to the second question is the depression and other mental health issues that plague our field and academia more generally, and that are both more likely in the kind of people who choose academia and encouraged by the dominant culture of higher education.
What to do after not getting tenure: there are pretty famous and successful people at Brown, Penn, Emory, Michigan, B.U., Virginia, WashU St Louis, UC San Diego, Mississippi, Reading and elsewhere who either were turned down for tenure or taught for 6-9 years at a place where you had virtually no chance even to come up for tenure. It's harder now, of course, but people do still move from being turned down to getting good jobs--at least one is doing it this year.
I've seen people who didn't get tenure go on to get tt jobs and tenure elsewhere too. Depends a lot on where you were denied tenure and why. As to how some people manage not to publish anything, in addition to the answer about depression and mental health, I'd add other personaility issues ranging from imposter syndrome (with fear of publishing) to perfectionism (not being able to let what you've written out of your hands because it isn't perfect yet). I expect also that having a young family while on the tenure track can be hard, especially (but not only) for women. And then there are a whole host of other special circumstances, e.g., schools always want to hire archaeologists with digs, but having a dig isn't very conducive publishing the kinds of things you need to get tenure. I've seen that happen to a couple of people.
Re: the job after tenure denial thing, I think a lot of it depends on the reasons for getting denied. Some people don't publish very much for whatever reason, and they often just leave the field. But a lot of people don't get tenure because either their institution/dept is ridiculous about requirements, or else there is a personality conflict with people in the dept, or even just because of a random whim of the provost or president. I've known a lot of people who didn't get tenure, most of whom definitely deserved to have gotten it, and nearly all of them have landed other jobs, sometimes 'better' ones. But it is pretty scary, because I've also known people who haven't managed to land another position and had to involuntarily leave the field. One thing I would advise people; you should seriously look into the tenuring percentages at your future employer because they vary widely (often having nothing to do with the university's quality or reputation). You can do the same exact work at two institutions that look equivalent on paper, but get tenure at one and not the other. It sucks to not be hired, but it also sucks to be fired and then find yourself back out pounding the pavement for a job when you're pushing 40. Sorry, it's not all over when you land that TT gig!
694 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 401 – 600 of 694 Newer› Newest»Yes. I work on drama. There are still fuckers out there who will literally deny, to your face, the relevance of the fact that these things were *performed*. In any other discipline, people like that would have been fucking crucified long since.
yes. and they also think that working on drama means working on dramatic texts (another drama person here).
The problem is not just conservatism. The problem is that Classics, as a field, doesn't embrace controversy as a good thing. In other fields, a book is considered a success if it stirs up debate and is embraced by some and rejected by others. My impression is, that this does not apply to Classics.
Yes, yes, yes to the drama stuff! My favorite is when classicists insist that the plays are just poetry and that's it. It's just sad that in classics suggesting that plays should be read as play scripts is rejected out of hand by some scholars. I can't imagine (but I can't speak from experience) that this happens with Shakespeare or Spanish Golden Age drama.
Unfortunately it DOES happen with Shakespeare. English departments often still teach Shakespeare as "just poetry" and I have known many English profs who are openly hostile to discussions of staging, stagecraft, performance conditions, etc. This is an ongoing bone of contention between theatre professors (who often are aggressively hostile towards considering the poetic aspects) and English professors (who are often equally hostile towards considering the dramatic aspects). I would guess it's exactly the same with Spanish Golden Age drama, Racine and Moliere, etc. It's inexplicable to me, but there does seem to be a strong bias on the part of many scholars of literature to admit that the works they study were in fact performance scripts.
Sorry, posted too quickly. I meant to say:
"strong bias *against admitting*"
or
"strong *reluctance* to admit."
Oh well.
Hi, I work on plays as poetry.
I don't think that I'm hostile or in denial about the fact that they written to be staged, and I think work on stagecraft is interesting, but I don't think that recovering the conditions of production is going to reveal the meaning of the play, or at least not in any more effective way than literary analysis.
The fact that a play is written for performance does not mean that there is one definitive performance which captures the true meaning of the play - as if the aim of every Shakespearean production was to capture the spirit of the first night, in which Will himself had a hand in the staging.
Intentionally or not, good plays are open to multiple interpretations (onstage and in analysis) and it's totally legitimate to think about this range.
I hereby nominate the following to be the official Classics Job Market theme-song/video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U13xOvDa19U&list
OMG. there are still scholars talking about the meaning of a play.
Anon 4:32am, your attitude is perfectly reasonable, and is emphatically *not* the kind of attitude I was objecting to earlier.
To clarify, I was objecting to hostility to considering issues of stagecraft at all, NOT claiming that there is nothing useful to do apart from such considerations.
Does anybody not see the irony in moving from a conversation about how irrelevant Classics is due to hyperspecialization, pedantic Ivory Tower conservatism, and how nobody cares, to a pedantic Ivory Tower conservative discussion about staging ancient plays that nobody cares about?
"Staging ancient plays that nobody cares about"? Uh huh. To test that statement's validity, you could start with browsing through Mee and Foley's Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage. In fact, a great many people care a great deal about ancient plays and how to stage them.
On a different note, anyone know anything about Hunter College and how their search is progressing? There's nothing on the wiki. Thanks!
" In fact, a great many people care a great deal about ancient plays and how to stage them."
Either you're an adjunct who still has big puppy eyes and dreams for the field, or you're a bitter tenured prof whose self-worth is based on people recognizing your work on ancient drama is totally super important and a big deal.
I have been properly rebuked. Ancient plays and how they were staged are vitally important subjects for our society to survive.
Come on. If your test for whether something is worth thinking about is "is it necessary for the survival of society?" then clearly no humanities subject is for you. What on earth are you doing in Classics in the first place?
EAlmost no career is necessary for our society to survive.
"Come on. If your test for whether something is worth thinking about is "is it necessary for the survival of society?" then clearly no humanities subject is for you. What on earth are you doing in Classics in the first place?"
Hyperbole:
An extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally.
Here endeth the lesson.
But really, if the staging of ancient drama is not a valid issue *in Classics* - what is? My point is, once we're talking about conversations within a discipline concerned with the study of the ancient world, how can contemporary relevance be a meaningful criterion of importance? Honestly, I just can't imagine what issues within Classics you think meet this standard.
Quoth Anon 1.32:
(quoting me) " 'In fact, a great many people care a great deal about ancient plays and how to stage them.'
Either you're an adjunct who still has big puppy eyes and dreams for the field, or you're a bitter tenured prof whose self-worth is based on people recognizing your work on ancient drama is totally super important and a big deal."
Nope, I'm neither. I'm a tenured professor, not particularly embittered, who has never published on drama.
The "great many people who care a great deal" about ancient theatre whom I mentioned are not, for the most part, classicists. I was thinking of people who actually work in theatre and stage ancient plays; prisoners who read and/or stage plays in prison (e.g., Nelson Mandela, who played Creon in a prison production of *Antigone*); playwrights who respond to ancient plays in their own works; etc.
1:32 again: "I have been properly rebuked. Ancient plays and how they were staged are vitally important subjects for our society to survive."
This is just silly, even for hyperbole. Important for society to survive? Well, obviously, no, and we didn't need the heavy-handed sarcasm to know that. Important? Yes.
Well, now you've switched from "innovative" to truly paradigm-shifting, and suggested Wilamowitz and Finley as models that today's lit PhDs are falling short of. Ok, then, guilty: most dissertations on literary subjects (or in engineering or music or anthro or poll sci) are not as revolutionary as work done by giants in the field. But your claim that people are writing books about literature that everyone believes because they are not innovative is just 100% wrong. You literally cannot name a book on Vergil written in the last 100 years that even 75% of its readers think is "right." Manuscript referees and tenure referees and reviewers and people in hiring meetings always describe boring non-original work as boring and unoriginal--trust me, I've done it. I hope the depth of your ignorance about this is not showing up in your job interviews.
On a related (to this discussion) note, I'll share the final paragraph from Brent Shaw's review of Keith Bradley's Apuleius book in the new JRA, which ends wonderfully (p. 713):
On the one hand, working historians will find a gold mine of information and argument on precise persons, places, and practices that were part of the Antonine world of Apuleius. On the other, literary scholars looking at these same forays might perhaps remain phlegmatically sceptical about what is actually being discovered, and what, if anything, the historian's efforts contribute to a finer literary or ideological understanding of Apuleius' writings.... Here lies some of the gulf in a divided world of scholarly interest and endeavor. Not too long ago, at a conference on Apuleian studies I was challenged by a very eminent Latinist to name something other than Plato that was centrally important to Apuleius. "The Roman Empire?," I timidly ventured.
As someone who works mainly with historical sources and material culture but routinely checks literary commentaries and studies about works and passages important to my scholarship, I can say that I continue to be shocked by how insular scholars of literature can be, far too often revealing themselves to be ignorant of important sources and scholarship found outside the normal bounds of literary studies. And it's actually quite pathetic, that these people go through their lives apparently unaware of how incomplete their scholarship is, as if they are still stuck in Plato's Cave, not even suspecting what else is out there. While I am curious to whom Shaw was referring, it does not really matter, as there are a good number of people that anonymous Latinist represents.
(Note to Servius: I know we're not supposed to name names, but cannot believe that a favorable quotation from a scholarly book review violates that rule. It's not like I'm accusing Shaw of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby or being the one who leaked Quentin Tarantino's new script, or some other form of malfeasance.)
I have to say, the Shaw-Dog is The Man.
"When the system you work under devalues your labor in the manner it does, for as long as it has, you can’t help but begin to believe you are worth less. I am a fraud, a fake, I have felt, have told myself countless times. When people ask me what I do, I tell them, accurately, “I am a college professor,” and then hope, depending on the person, that they ask me nothing further. All of the pride that I take in the job that I do, and do, I have no problem freely stating, very well, is sucked from me when I have to find a way to describe the situation of the adjunct, the bizarre logic that my mind bats about like a cat with string."
http://fb.me/2t8pokFh2
@January 23, 2014 at 5:38 PM
Personally, if I were setting out to defend the discipline of the charge that it makes it hard for younger scholars to be controversial, I wouldn't do it by pulling rank on someone you assume is less advanced in their career.
The blog post linked by Anonymous on January 24, 2014 at 12:22 AM was well worth reading. (here: http://fb.me/2t8pokFh2)
Now back to your regularly scheduled, ever more pointless, debate about the relative merits of the different subfields of Classics.
Any word on amherst?
In my experience with hiring and tenure cases, it is quite easy to defend someone against the charge of being boring, if there is no general consensus that the candidate's work is tedious: the candidate clearly didn't write the dissertation/book her critics wanted her to write and that's a good thing.
Neutralizing a bad tenure letter or a negative review is much harder. That is not to say, that I have never shot down candidates if I found their work boring (one Vergil scholar comes to mind). But I have seen more than once how a brilliant candidate was turned down for a job or tenure, because her work had offended someone or because it was badly reviewed somewhere important. I'm aware that this is anecdotal evidence, but it's just as valuable as yours.
thanks to the poster above. Does the work that offends so-and-so qualify as 'bad' work? Or does this apply only to those cases where the offended person sits on the hiring/tenure committee? I would he happy to know.
yes, it does count as "bad" and "not persuasive" to the offended party. If you offend a senior scholar enough to write a highly critical but seemingly fair-minded review, you are in trouble (hatchet jobs are, typically, ignored). This is because not everyone on a hiring committee will have spent a lot of time with your work, which is why expert outside opinion matters.
That's also true of tenure cases. Technically, deans and those serving on university-wide tenure committees should have read all of a tenure candidate's work, but also that doesn't always happen.
If a department wants to get you tenure, they will have selected letter writers who they believe to be supportive, but there are sometimes errors of judgement. If your work annoys one of your departmental colleagues enough to vote against your tenure case, you are in trouble too.
That's not to say that a young scholar has to spend six or seven years brown nosing. But ass. professors have to be careful with what they write. Naturally, not everyone can be a Wilamowitz or a Finley. That's not my point. My point was that a Wilamowitz would never have been tenured in the US, just like Finley was denied tenure at Rutgers and could never again find employment in the US.
Of course, some brave young brilliant scholars sail through the tenure system. But in my time, I have seen a lot of great young scholars get in trouble, and I find that very frustrating.
I've seen a tenure case where one famous referee said "This person's interesting work is completely wrong for the following reasons" and then went on for three detailed pages. The department was able to contextualize the criticism, the deans believed us, and everything was fine. Bad things happen lots of places in lots of fields, but these casual claims that the whole system is incompetent and that you won't get tenure if you say some old guy is wrong are based on very little solid evidence.
On the other hand, boring work that offers nothing new will generally make you finish well behind the interesting people.
Of course, by "boring" I mean boring to people who like the field. If you find something boring because you don't like literature or history or archaeology or philosophy or poetry, that's different.
I've also seen cases like that. And I've seen others. In my view, it's just irresponsible to tell young scholars to write whatever they want (and can get published), never mind the consequences. In the US, junior colleagues have to be politically savvy. In my experience, there is plenty of solid evidence for that.
I'm not, on principle, opposed to Vergil scholarship or any other branch of the Classics. And I'm also aware that my standards and views are not shared by everyone (one man's "boring" is another man's "innovative"). That's why I would like the field to be a little broader and more tolerant of controversy than it actually is. In my view, other disciplines do a much better job in fostering debate.
Now, on this blog, we can't name names and talk about individual cases, which I think is a good thing. But I think that the field is not doing well. It's not entirely incompetent and corrupt, but not all is well, and Classics is, I think, in crisis.
Folks, if there are no reports on the wiki that candidates have been contacted post-APA, and the search committees did not give any sort of timeline for contact at the interviews, is it at all appropriate to send an SC a short e-mail asking for an update on the progress of the search? I don't want to be rude; on the other hand, my liver can't take much more "oh God will they call me" drinking, and I want to be sure it's still in working order for the "oh God I will have no job" drinking stage of the festivities.
Anon. 6:15 asked if it's appropriate to contact a SC and ask about the progress of the search.
I would *strongly* advise against doing so. It is not to your advantage to do anything that makes you seem hyper, or "high maintenance", or in any other way singles you out in the SC's mind as someone who asks for extra attention (not in a good way). Difficult as it is, wait for them to contact you.
I know it is incredibly nerve-wracking--I remember--and that from the candidate's point of view it seems as though the APA was aeons ago. But the timeline is very different from the administration's point of view, and it's not time to despair of hearing back yet.
Some places start after MLK Day and have only just completed their first week of the semester. In those instance, the SCs may not even have finalized their short lists yet. In more cases, the short list may be waiting for approval by the Dean or other administrator -- if there are numerous searches going on in numerous depts. the Dean may take a while to approve all the short lists and Classics is probably not first in line/pecking order.
And speaking of late -- I was the fourth candidate brought to campus for the job I now have. I've heard that the first three all blew it one way or another, though of course I don't know any details. I did not get the call asking me for an on-campus interview until late February, and my campus visit was in early March. I assume that's unusual but it's not impossible.
"I would *strongly* advise against doing so. It is not to your advantage to do anything that makes you seem hyper, or "high maintenance", or in any other way singles you out in the SC's mind as someone who asks for extra attention (not in a good way)."
Exactly what I was worried about. Thank you for the advice!
Frankly, I don't think that it makes much of a difference to ask about timelines. I've done so with many searches and did get campus visits in the end.
The question is *how* you ask. Sure, you can come across as particularly eager and maybe sometimes that may blow your chances. On the other hand, if a department is genuinely interested in you, small things like that won't make much of difference.
What makes a difference is your campus visit. Here is how, in the past, candidates blew their chances in my department:
1) by giving a bad job talk. Practice your talk, and, if at all possible, schedule a mock job talk with your colleagues/mentors. If you are not a seasoned public speaker, you should definitely seek some advice on your paper.
2) by blowing the Q&A session after the job talk. Never come across as defensive. Always frame disagreements in terms of legitimate intellectual debates. Don't come across as petty and mean spirited. Be gracious and professional.
3) by talking badly about others. Even if everyone else at dinner is bitching about so-and-so and his or her work, don't join in. Your prospective colleagues don't know you yet and if you speak badly of others, they will assume that you are a gossip, who will speak badly about them on another occasion. Always be generous and diplomatic.
4) by sharing inappropriate details of their lives.
5) by mentioning that their spouse may want a spousal hire. You won't be asked about your spouse, because it's illegal in most places, so you don't bring it up yourself.
6) by having too much to drink.
I hope this helps.
I understand that posts like the previous one come from a good place, but wish to suggest that experienced faculty not give the kind of advice that can help a potentially disastrous hire conceal that potential. If someone is too stupid to know that he/she shouldn't drink too much, shouldn't gossip, should put some effort into preparation, etc., that person should not be hired. (Certainly not in this job market!) And if that person is hired, it may be ahead of someone more deserving, someone who didn't need to be told such things. So let the potentially terrible colleagues out themselves now, not after they've been hired -- it's best for the departments, and best for the other candidates, and best for the field.
I write this as one with no on-campus interviews, but who has certainly encountered a few tenure-stream faculty who should never have been hired, and I don't like seeing those with obviously good intentions contributing to the problem.
So maybe we should all give really *bad* advice, and only those too stupid to figure out that it is bad advice will eliminate themselves from competition? Wait, those people read FV too, so now they know that all advice will be bad advice and will therefore behave in the opposite way. Wait.......
Oh, just go watch The Princess Bride.
I really don't think that the reason for people (for instance) drinking too much on campus visits is lack of knowledge that this is probably a bad idea.
Campus visits are stressful and purposefully so. The pressure is sometimes too much for the candidate, who then behaves badly in one way or another, for instance by drinking too much.
As for job talks, I'm always surprised how bad they often are. This is almost never due to a lack of preparation. Instead, candidates have clearly put no thought into what kind of audience they have to impress, and how job talk differs from a hyper-specialist conference paper or, even worse, the type of stuff that's presented at a grad student conference.
"I really don't think that the reason for people (for instance) drinking too much on campus visits is lack of knowledge that this is probably a bad idea."
How un-Socratic of you.
Yes. Socrates was an asshole.
I am a different kind of asshole.
Hey y'all, check it out:
https://twitter.com/RhetoricUCB/status/427839765569089537
Ouch. As literally everyone on Twitter has pointed out, that was very bad form indeed.
Re: UCB twitter. They deleted the post--care to relate the content?
Candidates are on UCB website.
The tweet had named all three finalists for UCB's Rhetoric position.
I didn't think it was possible to delete tweets, ever. Huh.
Anon. at January 27, 2014 at 6:38 PM
"As for job talks, I'm always surprised how bad they often are. This is almost never due to a lack of preparation. Instead, candidates have clearly put no thought into what kind of audience they have to impress, and how job talk differs from a hyper-specialist conference paper or, even worse, the type of stuff that's presented at a grad student conference."
Can you be more specific about what the difference between a job talk and, say, an APA paper should be? Obviously the job talk is longer, broader in scope, takes into account the undergraduates and non-specialists in the audience, and will probably be light years "better" than a grad student conference paper, but are there any non-obvious differences that people might not be aware of?
Maybe the person who posted that is at a SLAC? I thought that generally research talks were supposed to be just that; I wouldn't have thought dumbing them down for undergrads a good idea, unless it is really a *teaching* presentation.
Yeah, certainly. I don't mean dumbing down the whole talk, but just including very short introductory material that might help the undergraduates along, e.g. "Herodotus, the 5th century historian of the Persian Wars." Or making sure to be really clear about things that someone who works on a totally different field is unlikely to be aware of.
Good point that that person might be talking about a SLAC, though, thanks!
I think these are good points for almost any talk. I have never understood why so many speakers make their presentations incomprehensible to everyone who is not a specialist in their chosen sub-field. Classics is interdisciplinary - it's impossible to be intimately versed in every aspect of scholarship. I'm always thankful to speakers who can deliver an intelligent, nuanced talk that is also clear. This is not only true for job candidates - it's a necessity for the survival of the field. Learn how to make the material approachable - for students, for colleagues, for the general public. Let go of the pedantry...
(Original poster here)
I think part of what happens is that people get advised not to "talk down" to their audience as if the audience is ignorant. But yeah, I have no problem with someone reminding me who herodotus is -- I don't' need it, but I don't think I would ever find it offensive, esp. if other members of the audience might need it.
Even at Ph.D. programs, which presumably value research the most, the job talk also tells us a great deal about how you will teach. If you can't make your talk interesting, informative, and clear, then I'd put good money down that you can't do those things in class, when you are talking about stuff you presumably don't have as much interest in. So the job talk does more than just communicate what you are working on. Arguably that is the least important thing, as we have read your writing sample, and whatever else is published. So, making the complex and difficult clear and interesting ought to be the goal for any job-talk giver, no matter what kind of institution they are visiting.
Thanks, Atticus.
(Original poster here)
A good job talk convinces the specialists that you know your stuff, and it convinces the non-specialists that your work is interesting and relevant beyond the narrow confines of your sub-discipline. The trick is to be engaging, and to show that your research matters.
Departments are looking for colleagues, whom they can work with, and, yes, learn from. So you should show that you master your field, but that you are willing to look beyond your specialization, and that you enjoy talking to all kinds of different scholars.
This is hard and requires some thought and, ideally, some feedback from more seasoned colleagues. You don't your prospective colleagues to tune out. But you also don't want them to get the impression that you are all over the place and are not at home in any sub-field. So it's a balancing act.
I confess that I am writing from the perspective of having just watched a job talk this week that was stunningly bad. No framing introduction, rambling, switching from prepared notes to ad-lib speech, plus difficulties with technology that would not have occurred with the least bit of proper preparation. I wonder if the person's department failed to offer them a mock job-talk, and critical feed-back. I felt horrible for the person, though perhaps they didn't know that the talk was a disaster. Whatever you do, practice in front of as large and diverse an audience as you can muster/cajole/bribe, and then engage in a vigorous critique of your performance (you might also think about filming your performance for your own viewing after). Good luck to all of you still about to enter the arena!!
Quick question:
How does one show that one's research matters, given that nothing, including the survival or extinction of the human race and/or the universe, can be said to matter in any meaningful sense?
Yes, practice your job talk. And make sure that your audience isn't just fellow grad students, who don't have much experience either. Accept the possibility that your talk is awful and that you have to re-write from scratch. And by all means, contextualize your talk within a wider debate, and tell your audience at the beginning of your paper why it matters.
How does one show that one's research matters, given that nothing, including the survival or extinction of the human race and/or the universe, can be said to matter in any meaningful sense?
Great point! Just elaborate a bit on what you wrote here at the very beginning of your talk. Invite most people to leave. Then take two brief questions. Everybody will be impressed and the job will be yours.
Way to miss the point Atticus!
Seriously, nothing matters. The only thing to do is keep entertained until death, therefore the only viable criterion for good research is whether or not it is interesting. Even truth or falsehood is irrelevant. So are you saying that you should try to convince the audience that your work is interesting? Or in what other sense could it be said to matter? Or are you coming from some weird pseudo-religious a priori assumption that there is some way for things to matter? If so, consider becoming a priest or seomthing.
That is, whenever anything refers to whether or not something matters, their question is really whether or not it matters *to them*.
My question is: Why should I give a fuck what matters to you? You aren't me.
Also, even if I did care, how could I possibly anticipate what matters to you (or to any given audience member)? I don't have a mind-reading device.
Asking a candidate to show why their research matters is just plain silly; the question itself makes no sense. It presumes a common system of values that does not actually exist.
What an amazing juxtaposition of people trying to be helpful and people just trying to be an anonymous dick
Pointing out a fundamental flaw in the whole concept of a thing mattering is not dickish. If you can't see that, you probably shouldn't be an academic.
Hey man, slow down! No need to throw a ferret into our bathwater! Interesting is as interesting does, man. So, yeah, just make clear how your research really ties the room together. Nobody is going to pee on it.
You may get some young assistant professor or grad student going all, "Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man." But, dude, you can handle that. Just be chill. You are not out of your element, remember that. Nothing else matters.
I want a ferret in my bathwater. It sounds fun, and possibly arousing.
Yeah, I mean, say what you want about the criteria of the Search Committee, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
Your *mother* is an ethos.
Mmm, good ferret.
Way to miss the point Atticus!
Seriously, nothing matters. The only thing to do is keep entertained until death, therefore the only viable criterion for good research is whether or not it is interesting. Even truth or falsehood is irrelevant. So are you saying that you should try to convince the audience that your work is interesting? Or in what other sense could it be said to matter? Or are you coming from some weird pseudo-religious a priori assumption that there is some way for things to matter? If so, consider becoming a priest or seomthing.
Way to miss the forest for the beetles in the bark! If you have to parse out what it means "to matter" in this context then by all means, go for it. In some places excessive pedantry will certainly get you the job, God help us all.
Any word about the Western Washington job?
Yes, it is so true. Classics as a field not only does NOT embrace any form of controversy, but controversy is in fact confused with aporia. In my experience submitting a book TS to several presses, I was stunned by the ignoramuses who pose as experts on the Other, gender, diversity, even textual criticism. Our field is doomed. There is no hope. And the standards count for nothing. The battle is fierce but the stakes are so low,
What is happening with the Hunter College search?!
Is there anyone on here who comes from a historically underrepresented minority?
Yes.
No. We are all older white dicked property owners.
I am especially white and dicked.
"Is there anyone on here who comes from a historically underrepresented minority?"
Yes, but I left the field a couple years ago. I just come back here for the lulz.
so many lulz
I am lulling right now!
Mmm, lulz.
DAE Classics?
I really enjoyed this, @January 30, 2014 at 3:44 PM
Anonymous said...
The battle is fierce but the stakes are so low
It's too bad that the tone at FV is no better than when things got started. When I was first on the market, FV was a powerful tool to demystify the job market. Has nothing come from knowing more? Or is this mainly a space to vent?
I would say that the much higher proportion of venting to helpful advice probably has something to do with the increasingly smaller number of jobs and the increasingly larger backlog of people trying desperately to get hired.
Me, I'm not bitter anymore. I left Classics, and now I can have mental health AND an income with health insurance to boot! Who knew that was possible?
Okay, so I have read on FV about the supposed inside candidate for the Duke job, but what about the job at univ. of Washington, where there does actually seem to be an inside candidate...? any info?
There are no jobs, and the world is a gigantic ball of shit.
However, I am drunk. Huzzah!
"...what about the job at univ. of Washington, where there does actually seem to be an inside candidate...? any info?"
First I've heard of this. Can anybody share more?
One of the finalists taught there before, but that hardly qualifies her as an "inside candidate."
More importantly, can we all agree that Penn did NOT run a search for a Roman Historian this year? Why is that job listed on the wiki?
Based on the number of ABDs and/or freshly minted PhDs (still at their grad institution) getting campus interviews, it seems clear that search committees have basically abandoned my "generation" - i.e. those who had the unfortunate luck of defending between the crisis of 2008 and the following years of economic depression. I find it hard to fathom that search committees are so willfully ignorant of our plight that they continue to choose the young and inexperienced over those of us who have slogged through exploitative visiting positions, moving year and year, trying to keep our heads above water. There is STILL the notion (conscious or unconscious) that those who don't have a TT job 3 or more years beyond the PhD are somehow "problematic". I already anticipate the chorus of voices (mainly from the established tenured and TT) who will tell me that I'm wrong. But I've been around the block long enough to know the truth. I'm sick and tired of working my ass off in my temp job, watching younger ABDs and new grads get permanent positions - in my own departments - while I strike out year and year on the market. This system is broken, and fundamentally unfair. In what other career does experience work against your chances of finding employment? Yes, go ahead, justify to yourselves how this is not true, and then head to bed tonight knowing that your paycheck is secure, while I, along with many other underlings, teach the vast majority of courses in your department that put the butts in the seats. I would say that I would be glad not to be you, because I couldn't live with the injustice, but I'd be lying, because all I want after all these years of toil is some fucking stability.
To everyone out there who has not landed a TT job out of grad school: quit now. Don't be lured by VAPs. It's far more likely than not a dead end. You will only become older, more bitter and less employable at the end of the game. Better to redefine your life now, before you waste the rest of your youth in a field that will cast you out like the day's garbage. I'm deadly serious.
I agree completely with the poster above, and the explanation is very simple: other people don't care about you (or me, or any of us). Not even a little bit, not at all. Choosing newly minted PhDs is much more logical because they have not yet been embittered; naivete is valuable in an industry that has quite a bit it would rather keep under wraps.
Get out. Get out now, reader. Even if you are lucky and get a TT job, can you really live with turning into the kind of person who does this to other people?
I could not agree more with the two previous postings. With a PhD earned as the economic crisis was about the explode, the string of fairly high end temp teaching jobs I've done, and the huge amount of publication is now an albatross dragging me to my doom. The field doesn't care about this, tho. It just wants to keep doing what it's doing and pretending the Victorian age is still where we live. Don't get a degree in Classics and don't let a sad devotion to the Classics world upend your apple cart. Avoid it as if your life depended on it (as it may well).
Re: University of Washington insider
I heard that one of the candidates is the signficant other of a current faculty member.
RE: Washington insider.
This is astounding. Shame on UW for demanding a separate teaching/research statement for a fake job. Thanks for wasting my time, assholes. If you're going to screw with us, at least limit yourself to a cover letter and cv and be done with it.
I also want to add my voice in agreement to the above posts about VAPs. I have been fortunate to have landed some good visiting gigs -- which include fair pay and good benefits -- but the instability is simply not worth it. You'll be under immense pressure to publish while you also navigate the job market year after year. It's also very hard to maintain relationships and make and re-make a social support network from position to position, and with the amount of stress you'll be under teaching all the shitty classes no one else in the department wants to cover (hence: they hired you), it all becomes a recipe for extreme unhappiness. It's really hard not to become bitter. I don't even know how those who aren't compensated decently for this work make it through.
Look, it's hard as an ABD who struck out on the t-t market to say no to a visiting job and the "opportunities" it presents. I get that. That was me. Just start forming a back-up plan now. You may believe in your heart of hearts that there's nothing you'd rather do than be a tenure-track professor, but chances are, you won't, and it doesn't have a whole hell of a lot to do with your "merit" as a teacher or a scholar either. The lottery metaphor is an apt one. Everyone on the market is really good right now; everyone is not equally lucky.
If you come to the decision that you should leave the field, as you may indeed do after some years on the visiting/lecturer track, be sure to have taken some steps to acquire marketable skills in the meantime. I am speaking as one who wishes I had been given and followed such advice. Volunteer in the summers. Do some administrative work here and there. Find something right now that you can put on a RESUME and do it. Be smart about positioning yourself for a possible exit.
Right now, I view my years "visiting" as a mere extension of much of my time in graduate school: a lost opportunity cost. Cheap living with no retirement savings is all well and good when you're younger. But now, to quote the venerable Danny Glover, I'm getting too old for this shit.
But now, to quote the venerable Danny Glover, I'm getting too old for this shit.
right on. the gaining of real world experience is key. the transferability of academic skills is tricky. i am out of the academy now, but finding a fit is pretty tough and i have not managed it so far.
There is a lot to what the posters above are saying about PhDs 3+ years out in the search process. But, even though there are still a lot people on hiring committees who never experienced the market in this way, there are some who did and others who have their eyes open. I advocate for for VAPs and I do not like insider hiring. And, if you work in my department as a VAP, I'll network on your behalf. One of my colleagues is a master of this. It may be that all our kind of influence can help you get are more VAPs. But we want you to succeed. I want you to be able to stay in the game for as long as you want to be in it.
One problem is that the skills required to succeed as a VAP are fairly different from those required to succeed on the TT. Experience as a VAP is pretty good for getting you another VAP, but not so much for TT jobs.
One way of getting out:
http://latin.thejaggedhedgehog.com/about.html
So who's got the scoop on this UMBC Roman Archaeology VAP? Not publicized widely, with strangely specific criteria for the ideal candidate. Is this an inside job? Please tell me now before I waste more time, like U Washington did to all of us Roman Archs earlier.
The UMBC VAP is not an inside job.
One problem is that the skills required to succeed as a VAP are fairly different from those required to succeed on the TT. Experience as a VAP is pretty good for getting you another VAP, but not so much for TT jobs.
This makes no sense to me. Can you explain?
"One problem is that the skills required to succeed as a VAP are fairly different from those required to succeed on the TT. Experience as a VAP is pretty good for getting you another VAP, but not so much for TT jobs."
This makes no sense to me. Can you explain?
****
Well, I can only speak for my own very small dept. at a SLAC. (I'm not the original poster, btw.)
When we advertise for a one-year VAP, we need someone to cover classes for a tenured or tenure-track prof. who's away on sabbatical or family leave or whatever. We need someone who can step in and teach (usually) a first-year language sequence and 3 classical civ. courses. We don't need to know what you'd do for senior seminars; you won't be doing those as a VAP. We don't need to know what new courses you'd like to develop if you were here permanently. We need you to cover our regularly scheduled courses that are part of our permanent curriculum--whatever the person you're replacing would have been teaching, in other words.
To be blunt, we're not really interested in your research. If this were a T-T position, your research would be a crucial part of the picture. For a VAP position, it doesn't much matter. What we need to know, and see demonstrated in your application materials, is that you can teach what we need you to teach (the job ad will have specified what that is).
To get a T-T job, you have to persuade the SC that your research area--and the courses you'll develop based on that--will be a good complement to the areas they've already got covered in their dept. You also (of course) have to persuade them that you can become an excellent teacher, but they may be willing to hire you even if you're not a great teacher yet because they're looking at the position as an investment of several years and they will expect to mentor you. They're more interested in your overall profile as research AND teacher.
For a VAP, the SC wants someone who can teach well, from day one, and who will not require much if anything in the way of mentoring. And whether you publish or not isn't a matter of any concern to them. They want a teacher, not a scholar. If you're also a productive scholar, great, but that's not going to tip the scales for or against you for a VAP hire. T-T SCs, even at SLACs, tend to put much more emphasis on research.
I was a VAP for a few years before getting a permanent position in a non-Classics department at a SLAC, and what 11:02 says is spot on. One of my VAP institutions did actually seem to care about my research (and they most helpfully took the time to help me develop it, which I don't think is the norm). Now, when I'm on a SC for a VAP, I want to know that the candidate can hit the ground running and that I won't have to teach her/him how to teach. I personally like hearing about their research, but ultimately it doesn't figure into the SC's decision. VAP candidates never give a research talk, only the teaching demo. For a TT job, we value research as much as teaching. All of our TT position candidates give both research talks and teaching demos, and the two are about equally important, at least for my large department.
While I understand the frustration here re the disconnect between hiring and experience, and I think SCs ought to privilege those with a few years under their belt for TT positions, I do think the (potential) rewards of the VAP are being undersold.
The years spent in a VAP position creating courses, learning what works in class and what doesn't, and simply defining oneself as a professional classicist are years not on the tenure clock. That is a wonderful thing.
I was hired ABD, with no teaching experience, into a teaching-intensive position that also carries high research expectations. To be honest, I wouldn't hire myself if given the choice now, because of my lack of experience!
Because I was so green and new to all of this, my own tenure track experience has been sheer, bloody hell. My colleagues are well-meaning, but far too busy themselves to "mentor" me. I've had to finish my dissertation, create a whole world of new courses, many of them well outside my field, convert dissertation to book, write articles, learn how to navigate university politics, blah blah blah blah. All of while my clock ticks ever more loudly and ever faster (it feels).
If I had started this position with dissertation done, a few years of VAPing behind me, a dossier of syllabi and taught courses in my hands, and a few articles in the pipeline, I would be in much better shape. In fact, I would stand a much better chance at tenure. As it is, I doubt I will get tenure. Not for lack of working extremely hard, but simply for lack of seasoning when my clock started ticking.
I think it is criminally insane that SCs pass over so many excellent candidates with years of VAP experience in favor of ABDs or newly minted PhDs. I really don't understand it. One of the many changes I will make to the hiring process in Classics when I become the benevolent tyrant of all academe I've always wanted (and deserved) to become, is to stipulate that nobody can be hired onto the TT without 3 years of VAP experience in at least 2 different institutions beyond their PhD institution. Don't worry, I'll offer heavy financial subsidies so that this doesn't privilege the rich kids who can afford to bounce around and "find themselves" thanks to family money.
--continued next
ps - one of my Captcha terms is "Contingency." How ridiculously, fucking appropriate...............
Think about it, though. It would improve life for everybody. It would help separate the wheat from the chaff regardless of pedigree (and I grant that I may well have been the chaff in such a system). It would allow everybody different experiences at different institutions, which would diffuse some of the powerful networks at play now in the hiring process, and it would help everybody hit the ground running once hired onto the TT. Most importantly, it would erase the current stigma attached to years of VAPing. Actual experience and performance would be valued and better assessed instead of "promise."
Now, of course, this is a pipe dream. And I predict the same idiotic hiring practices predominating for years. But in the meantime, if you get a VAP, try to realize that you *are* getting experience that will serve you very well once you get the brass ring of a TT job. The trick, unfortunately, is for all of us who understand the value of VAPing to convince the rump of the ass in our field that hiring the latest shiny thing ABD is too risky, for them and for the shiny thing.
I'm not complaining about my good fortune in landing a TT job ABD. I won the lottery. I wouldn't trade the known issues of my current misery for the unknown risks of VAPing in this market. But, like many lottery winnings, it has proven to be a mixed blessing. If I do get tenure and can be more heavily involved in the hiring decision of my dept. and uni., I hope I can work to change the system that unfairly elevated me and ignored others. Until then, know that the system is illogical and unfair, and know that the longer one toils in the shadows of precarious positions, the longer the odds of getting a TT job.
(And one of my Captcha terms is "faculty," while the other is "ntStrav," which is almost what I'm grasping at...)
Based on the conversation about old-timers who are still out here, this seems worth noting. A few years ago there was an APA panel on job discrimination, with the specific focus on age discrimination. (I did not attend, but learned of it from someone who did.) Apparently, it was well attended by department chairs, perhaps some of whom have turned back into pumpkins and did not pass along all of the wisdom they had acquired. Part of that wisdom, as explained during this panel, is that it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of age. And yet, it most certainly is happening that SC's are looking to see how long candidates have been around, and especially what year they graduated college, and going with the younger applicants. It would appear that some good, decent people, who would turn ashen at the very thought of discriminating against someone because of race, sexual status or religion, will automatically do so on account of age. And some do not even realize that they are acting unethically, while others do but realize it cannot be proven.
To this I might add that we all know -- or we should all know -- that some searches will interview and even bring to campus a woman or, when available, a minority, just to show the dean and H.R. people that it was a fair search. But do committees ever make a point of including one or two more senior candidates? Not that I've ever heard of. Which shows just how unseriously this problem is taken.
Put me down as a person who was hired a while ago as a VAP by as department that cared about by research, and who has always been in departments that care about the research of visitors. You want them to be able to say smart things to your students in 3rd year Latin and Greek classes, and you want them too be interesting to talk to.
Where is the evidence that depts are discriminating against older candidates? Departments look to see when you graduated to see how much research you've produced in how many years. Often young smart people get hired over older people. Often smart young people lose out to experienced older people. People get hired at 26 and at 40.
aren't you naive.
Minority!? WTF are you smoking (and can I have some)? I can't remember a single instance of a token minority brought to campus for classics.
Token minority? More like a token unicorn. Have you been to the APA? You can count all the visible minorities on your fingers.
Anonymous 6:09,
Go back and read what I wrote, and you will see that I said "graduate college," not "graduated graduate school." So your point falls apart. And anyway, if I'm wrong about this being a problem, why was there an APA panel devoted to it a few years ago?!? Does the APA devote precious time and resources to phantom issues? (Yes, yes, even I can come up with witty responses to that last sentence, so please don't bother...)
(And if I'd read carefully what I wrote just now, I'd have seen that I was supposed to have "graduated college" rather than "graduate college.")
Kudos to Georgetown for successfully running a TT search with Skype and campus visits only. Perhaps more people will follow suit and kill the conference interview! Down with the APA meat-market!! Up with the Hoyas!!
Yaaaaayyyyyy!!!!
"Kudos to Georgetown for successfully running a TT search with Skype and campus visits only. Perhaps more people will follow suit and kill the conference interview!"
That's marvelous. Let's hope it proves infectious.
Yes. Aside from getting to see Rudens (which was *almost* worth the $900), this last APA was completely useless for me. Far better to have done four Skype interviews, saved half a month's rent and 1/30 of my annual pre-tax income, and missed out on a miserable extended weekend punctuated by awkward reunions.
Any word from UT-Austin about the archaeology of the Greek and Roman world TT search? Their campus visits ended last week.
When a search committee sends an e-mail to let you know that the position is currently "on hold" and that, as of now, they are not moving forward with campus visits, does this mean that there is a chance there will be campus visits in the future, or are you completely f***ed?
I'm betting the latter.
A job seeker’s prayer
APA interviews are long over,
Campus visits underway.
To those I’ve not heard anything from,
may you be punished eternally,
unless, of course, you call me.
To those I visited,
may your slowness in contacting me again
be the result that terrible storms closed your campus.
If it is because you offered the job to someone else,
may you be punished eternally, unless,
of course, that person turns you down and you call me.
If you are the person who was offered that job,
May you get your number one choice somewhere else,
and there may you be happy and content forever.
If you take that job that should have been mine,
may you be punished eternally, unless,
of course, you’re doing a hire next year.
Another job seeker's prayer:
Fuck the Classics hard
I am leaving this shitstorm
Outside, there are jobs
Re: the UT-Austin search, they will make an offer to the man with a TT job.
Does anyone have the scoop on Roman History at Toronto?
Re: Toronto, all three candidates have come and gone. The committee will meet the week after next (i.e., the last week of February).
Anon 8:49 - do you have inside info to this effect or are you making an assumption?
Inside info: e-mail sent from search committee to graduate students.
Anyone heard anything from Hampden-Sydney?
Anon 6:17. Ha! That'll learn 'em for e-mailing the grad students!
I suspect that UT's top candidates will be finalists at more than one institution. We're hitting the time of year when people sit on offers to negotiate the best deal, whether it be in their home department or to make a move laterally or into T-T. While it's good to know who may have got the first offer, it will be interesting to see how things fall out.
That said, while the stakes may be different for finalists and for SCs, the wait can be agonizing all around. I am old enough to know that no department wants to risk a failed search in this budget environment and young enough to well remember the clusterf&#% that is a job search.
Does anyone know what the hell happened with Xavier's search? It was listed as approved/definite in the initial round of job ads, and all of a sudden it's on hold and there are no campus visits. (Anon @ 9:49 on 2/14, I trust you're in the same boat. Or same sinking life raft. Whatever.)
Anon 8:49--*sigh* The rich keep getting richer, I suppose. Thanks for the info.
RE: UT AUSTIN
Pretty sure the offer is going to the WOMAN who already has a TT job.
So, at least it isn't yet another male ABD. Small mercies.
Who the fvck wants to work in a shithole like UT, anyway?
In all seriousness, Xavier and other schools that pull this shit should have to reimburse candidates who had to fly to the APA for what turns out to have been no reason.
Honest questions:
Have the CHS fellowships recently turned into fellowships largely for foreign scholars (esp. Italians and Greeks) instead of Americans, or is this how it has always been?
If this is a new development, why is it so?
Just got three e-mails from Xavier HR confirming that their position is canceled. Fwiw, everything I've heard about Xavier over the past couple of years indicates that the entire institution is imploding.
Anonymous 8:01,
You are definitely not imagining that, and I believe I heard something about it being deliberate, but wouldn't swear to it. Perhaps bringing in more(?) Greeks is away of helping during the financial crisis over there.
Anon 8:01 here.
Glad to hear that I am not crazy for thinking that about the CHS. I understand the motivations, but I do find it frustrating. There are so few funding opportunities for Classicist as it is, and to have one that is in my backyard essentially closed to American applicants makes it all the harder. Let's hope the Loeb Foundation doesn't follow suit.
How soon after the final candidate leaves campus can you expect to hear back? I would imagine that if more than a week goes by, the offer has gone to someone else -- is that generally about right?
A week sounds very fast to me-don't these things usually have to go through deans and provosts before you hear anything? Besides, given the weather on the east coast in the past few weeks, many visits have had to be rescheduled. I wouldn't give up hope just yet.
In the searches I've been a candidate for (both state and SLAC schools), offers were made within three days of the final campus visit (from a Friday to a Monday). Same for the schools where I wasn't a candidate but where I knew search committee members
A week's turn-around from department to dean/provost and back is certainly possible and probably even likely at some places, but institutions also know that they can lose out on their top pick if they're not quick at this stage.
So while you might not lose hope just yet, you shouldn't dwell on it either.
Anyone know if Bowdoin's scheduled campus visits?
RE: How long after a visit are first-choice candidates notified of an offer?
It takes at least two weeks at my institution. First the entire department has to meet to decide. Then we send our choice to the provost, the dean, and the president, who each have to approve (they usually do, but this can take time). Then our college-wide committee which handles all new appointments, tenure cases, promotions etc. also has to give the go-ahead. They only meet twice a month. My (non-Classics) department voted on candidates two weeks ago, but because of weather delays we are still waiting to notify our first choice.
I have it on good authority that the Texas job has been accepted by a man with a TT job elsewhere.
^Go Ducks!
A Brown postdoc has accepted the Duke job. Was this the inside candidate that everyone was chattering about?
No, it wasn't.
So much for the "inside scoop!"
This is why I hate job market rumors. They don't help anyone, because all you can do is apply, do your best, and hope for the best. Knowing that there was an inside candidate is useless information, and nine times out of ten it's bullcrap to begin with.
Any news on why the Loyola job imploded?
Whoever was spreading that rumor about Duke and pretending to know what was going on should be glad that he/she doesn't live in feudal Japan, since that level of dishonorable stupidity would have been best addressed by ritual suicide back then. Feel free to slap yourself across the face for us all, though. Good and hard.
Please. If any of us had kind of the integrity it takes to commit ritual suicide, we wouldn't be academics.
On the CHS. I find it encouraging that the ABDs and recent grads from ivy leagues can grab good jobs but have no chance at CHS unless they have a solid publication record (which they typically do not have). There is some fairness in this.
Correction: the Duke job has been offered, not yet accepted. I wouldn't blame the people spreading rumors too much. Sometimes there is a preferred candidate but things change at the on-campuses, or the hiring committee has an agenda but the department as a whole doesn't. The main thing is that spreading rumors doesn't help anyone, so why do it?
A cut-and-paste rejection seems a rather lazy way to respond to people who traveled to Chicago to meet with you, Randolph-Macon. A simple salutation would have been nice given the money we spent. And the use of several fonts so there's no doubt this was a cut and paste job just added insult to injury.
Wonder what they sent to people who didn't get an interview?
Thank you for your interest in the Latinist position at Randolph-Macon College. Bartolo Natoli of the University of Texas has accepted our offer and will be joining the department of Classics in the Fall. Please accept our best wishes for your job search. We were very impressed with the high quality of the applicants.
Gregory N. Daugherty
Shelton H. Short III Professor in the Liberal Arts
Department of Classics
Randolph-Macon College
This is what those of us who did not get an interview received:
Dear Colleague:
Thank you for your interest in the Latinist position in the Classics Department of Randolph-Macon College. We had over 100 highly qualified applicants. I regret to say that we have not included you among the candidates to be interviewed at the APA meeting in Chicago. You have our best wishes for a Happy Holiday and a successful job search.
Gregory N. Daugherty
Department of Classics
Randolph-Macon College
PO Box 5005
Ashland VA 23005-5505
Does the level of crappy false information presented on the wiki as though true seem higher than usual this year?
If you read one thing today, please go read the four posts up at a blog devoted to the academic job market in German. Pretty much everything written there is applicable to Classics.
http://zugunglueck.blogspot.com/
Read them in order, from 1 to 4.
Then have a few shots of whiskey.
I should point out that the fourth post is actually here (read this one last):
http://pankisseskafka.com/2014/02/24/adjunct-nate-silver-the-real-placement-rates-of-german-phd-programs/
10:37 AM. At least he gave you a "dear colleague.
I guess after the interview he decided I was never going to be a colleague.
So is it better to get a totally dismissive rejection letter that was clearly a cut-and-paste job (or a sort of pastiche of pastes?), or would you rather have no rejection whatsoever? The latter is my personal favorite, especially if I've been been through the on-campus interview process. Best feeling in the world. I'm sure it's HR's fault, in every instance, as will now be asserted by half a dozen people in the know.
Oh, grow up, (some) people. So you got a sub-optimal rejection. Is it really worth complaining about?
Me, I've received so many rejections over the years that if they were each written on a slip of paper the size of a fortune cookie fortune and I had some sort of adhesive I could cover my entire body with them. (Heck, now that I think of it, that sounds like a pretty good piece of performance art for the next APA meeting...) Some rejections are more properly executed than others, and unless personalized -- as some of mine have been -- none of them merit more than two seconds of thought.
Seriously. If you didn't want to be rejected, you shouldn't have applied.
What, did you think you might actually *get* a job? What world do you think you live in?
If you're lucky, you can get rejected even if you don't apply! I once got a rejection for a job I never applied for. I had been a finalist for a job at the same school the previous year, but the job the second year was at the opposite end of the field from me (think Greek archaeology vs. Latin poetry), and I certainly didn't apply. But they wrote to reject me anyway. I guess they just wanted to make sure I knew that I wasn't wanted at their institution. The funny thing was, my email had changed in that year, but they sent it to the correct, updated email address.
That's hilarious. What did you do to them!!??? do tell.
Any word from Calgary?
"Any word from Calgary?"
I'm wondering the same.
I don't think much has happened in that neighborhood since Jesus died there.
Any news on UWasington?
Or Western Washington?
RE: University of Washington.I have heard through the grapevine that an offer has been made.
Don't go to grad school:
http://pileusblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/dont-go-to-grad-school/
Uh, too late.
Es war sehr früh am Morgen, die Straßen rein und leer, ich ging zum Bahnhof. Als ich eine Turmuhr mit meiner Uhr verglich, sah ich daß schon viel später war als ich geglaubt hatte, ich mußte mich sehr beeilen, der Schrecken über diese Entdeckung ließ mich im Weg unsicher werden, ich kannte mich in dieser Stadt noch nicht sehr gut aus, glücklicherweise war ein Schutzmann in der Nähe, ich lief zu ihm und fragte ihn atemlos nach dem Weg. Er lächelte und sagte: ‚Von mir willst Du den Weg erfahren?‘ ‚Ja‘ sagte ich ‚da ich ihn selbst nicht finden kann‘ ‚Gibs auf, gibs auf‘ sagte er und wandte sich mit einem großen Schwunge ab, so wie Leute, die mit ihrem Lachen allein sein wollen.
I can't read this.
dies ist von der brillanten Schreiben von Franza Kafka. Sie Klassizisten nicht Deutsch lernen?
@ 1:24 PM: Arzt, hilf dir selber!
American Classicists haven't really been learning German for a long time now (despite having to pass laughable "German exams"). What, you think PhD programs would be cranking them out at the rate they are if they had standards?
Learn German? No way! Too much theory to cover these days.
Ah yes, theory. Because gods forbid anyone should go into Classics to actually study Classics.
Ah yes, Classics. The one discipline through which one can transcend all the several viewpoints and perspectives of mankind and attain the unfiltered and universal truth about the world. Why would someone who has attained this god's eye view bother to scrutinize their own and others' intellectual motivations?
Right, because *that's* what theory does. If, on the other hand, it were a great big load of bullshit, your argument would likewise be full of said bullshit.
Any rumors on Toronto? Is there an offer?
Do you not see that it might be a slightly naive and reactionary move to dismiss out of hand 100+ years of continental philosophical thought and all of a diverse group of influential writers lumped together as "theory" by people who haven't read them? No one's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read Lacan, but knee-jerk hostility to ideas you don't understand is so depressing. And also pretty self-destructive, given that the slick university administrators looking to make college education more 'relevant' are going to find Aristotle just as impenetrable as Adorno.
The problem isn't that they're impenetrable, the problem is that they belong to a genre the point of which is to explore to its logical conclusion Hans Christian Anderson's observation in the Emperor's New Clothes: if we just write a bunch of gibberish that can't even be nonsensical because it is impossible to determine what it is trying to mean in the first place, but pretend to our dying breath that it is deeply profound, how many gullible people who want to ingratiate themselves to us can we get to think that we are just that much smarter than they? The answer, of course, is a sizable chunk of academia.
Coincidentally, I would put all of philosophy in this same genre, *including* Aristotle and Plato. Plato in particular in the absolute worst for making up random shit, having a strategy for never actually committing himself to anything he writes (the dialogue form), and in particular pulling the wool over the eyes of a sizable chunk of the influential people in western civilization for 2400 years.
That anyone has ever taken *any* of the thinkers in that tradition seriously is every bit as laughable as the continued existence of religion in the 21st century.
So, wait, the Duke insider rumor was total BS? I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Duke rumor was the biggest BS. None of the supposed inside candidates even applied.
Duke rumor was the biggest BS. None of the supposed inside candidates even applied.
Perhaps the jackass(es) earlier posting on this rumor will now shift tactics and argue that the Duke faculty must still be held in contempt, because if those non-candidates HAD applied they would have gotten the job due to an improper search?
Well, let's invite them back here and have you guys Duke it out.
Get it?
Duke it out?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Serious (non-trolling) question. Anyone on here been denied tenure? What did you do afterwards?
Follow-up question: how is it that so many people on the T-T at research-intensive schools, with relatively low teaching loads, manage not to produce ANYTHING in 5-7 years?
I haven't been denied tenure, but one very obvious answer to the second question is the depression and other mental health issues that plague our field and academia more generally, and that are both more likely in the kind of people who choose academia and encouraged by the dominant culture of higher education.
Western Washington, anyone?
What to do after not getting tenure: there are pretty famous and successful people at Brown, Penn, Emory, Michigan, B.U., Virginia, WashU St Louis, UC San Diego, Mississippi, Reading and elsewhere who either were turned down for tenure or taught for 6-9 years at a place where you had virtually no chance even to come up for tenure. It's harder now, of course, but people do still move from being turned down to getting good jobs--at least one is doing it this year.
I've seen people who didn't get tenure go on to get tt jobs and tenure elsewhere too. Depends a lot on where you were denied tenure and why. As to how some people manage not to publish anything, in addition to the answer about depression and mental health, I'd add other personaility issues ranging from imposter syndrome (with fear of publishing) to perfectionism (not being able to let what you've written out of your hands because it isn't perfect yet). I expect also that having a young family while on the tenure track can be hard, especially (but not only) for women. And then there are a whole host of other special circumstances, e.g., schools always want to hire archaeologists with digs, but having a dig isn't very conducive publishing the kinds of things you need to get tenure. I've seen that happen to a couple of people.
Yes, imposter syndrome was a big part of my crash and burn out of academia. Well, that and actually being an imposter.
The Toronto Roman history job has been offered and accepted.
Any news about the University of Tennessee TT archaeology search?
Any news about BYU?
Re: the job after tenure denial thing, I think a lot of it depends on the reasons for getting denied. Some people don't publish very much for whatever reason, and they often just leave the field. But a lot of people don't get tenure because either their institution/dept is ridiculous about requirements, or else there is a personality conflict with people in the dept, or even just because of a random whim of the provost or president. I've known a lot of people who didn't get tenure, most of whom definitely deserved to have gotten it, and nearly all of them have landed other jobs, sometimes 'better' ones. But it is pretty scary, because I've also known people who haven't managed to land another position and had to involuntarily leave the field. One thing I would advise people; you should seriously look into the tenuring percentages at your future employer because they vary widely (often having nothing to do with the university's quality or reputation). You can do the same exact work at two institutions that look equivalent on paper, but get tenure at one and not the other. It sucks to not be hired, but it also sucks to be fired and then find yourself back out pounding the pavement for a job when you're pushing 40. Sorry, it's not all over when you land that TT gig!
Any news about the Harvard Latin job? And who got the offer from Wisconsin?
Thanks
Any news about the Harvard Latin job? And who got the offer from Wisconsin?
Thanks
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