"If I had pursued a Ph.D. in a discipline that I thought was dead, I would feel a little embarrassed about that. But maybe that's just me."
Of course, we're not stupid. It's just that phantom pains can be deceptive. Before you realize what's going on, you're either near graduation or one of the few lucky ones tapped to be the next sabre-tooth, resulting in rosy outlook.
If I had pursued a Ph.D. in a discipline that I thought was dead, I would feel a little embarrassed about that. But maybe that's just me.
Or you're in a cognate field (ancient history) in a different department (history) that has full confidence in its survival, yet believes that "classics," as construed by the mainstream in the discipline and manifested in their departments of classics, is dead.
Seriously, how many independent departments of classics will be around in fifty years? Ten? I'm guessing Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Chicago, and maybe Michigan, Berkeley, Duke, Brown, and UNC.
Dear Lennon: Wow, buy a clue. The % of people in this field who are major silverbacks is vanishingly small, compared to the number of us who are simply old, have seen a lot, have seen all kinds of young people (I'm guessing you're young) crash and burn, for simple reasons that could easily have been avoided. I'm not a silverback. I'm not even in a classics dept., actually - I'm a powerless lurker but one who's seen a lot, and I was hoping that a night's sleep and a gentle nudge would help you see that a plan to announce what elements of dept searches piss you off is just possibly not the path to tenure at a good school, however you define that. Whine less. Read and publish more. Don't be so suspicious. Some of us, like Gandalf, are simply trying to help.
Surely some of those who take the position that "Classics is dead" have been of this opinion for more than a few months. I'd be interested to know why they are still pursuing a position in Classics if they really believe it's dead. I mean, I can see sticking to a career because you've always dreamed of practicing it, but if it's dead, why keep at it? I sure hope it's not because they're expecting vast prestige and fat stacks of cash.
The most disheartening thing is that these sabre-tooths were probably the ones prancing around in the 60s talking of love.
Uh, I think I'm one of the commenters you're calling a "sabre-tooth" and a "silverback," and the people you're talking about here are my parents. I did most of my prancing in the '90s.
I think there's a very wrong impression that there are lots of prominent senior people looking at this blog. Many senior classicists have barely begun to explore the non-word-processing functions of their computers.
How stupid of us, we should walk into the offices of Google, flash our classics Ph.D., and wait for the extravagant offers to roll in.
Well, no. But if you realize, say, 6 mos. before you file your dissertation that it's time to abandon ship, or 6 mos. before your VAP contract is running out, then you have plenty of time to find a job that pays as well as an assistant professor position. Kids with BAs do this. People with normal jobs often have very little notice before they're laid off, and don't have the time to plan and search that the academic year permits. And yet people find jobs. No, offers don't usually "come rolling in." I wasn't aware they did that in Classics, either.
You're right, how foolish of me. I should flash my BA in Classics and wait for the jobs to roll in.
If I were to come to the firm conclusion that the discipline I had chosen to dedicate my working life to was in fact dead, then yeah, I might send out a resume or two. Sure, jobs don't just fall from the sky like raindrops, but they don't do that in academia, either.
Now, I'm not sending out any resumes, and I want to be employed in Classics, but I don't think Classics is dead. That's the part I don't get.
Judging by the fact that all the SCs were kissing my shoes, I think it's safe to say that I'm well on my way to joining their ranks. Six flybacks and counting. So much for them ripping me a new one.
Hah! I have fourteen and two-thirds flybacks, and I'm only getting started. I received sexy, sexy lapdances from several SC members at every interview I had. Also, I really exist, unlike the so-called "Future Dr. Sabretooth, aka the Real Princeford Villain." Also, everything I said is true, especially about the lapdances.
**Disclaimer: I am neither a silverback nor a sabre-tooth tiger. I'm on the market.**
I don't have a problem with a cheers and jeers blog; like FV, people can go there or not. I'd be fine with posting a cheer, but I'm not taking the risk of posting a jeer, for reasons stated above. If you want to, go ahead. But I think a poster up above (no, I'm not going to hunt) had it right: if you want to become a sabre-tooth, read and publish more, and I'd add become a good teacher, develop a network. Quit thinking of how wronged you are. (I'm betting if Princeford villain actually exists, s/he may have done some of these things, but since s/he doesn't exist...)
As for Classics dying? I don't think so. Maybe in the traditional, heavily philological, 19C German sense, but Classical Civilization courses are thriving everywhere I and my friends have attended or taught. If you're smart, you'll start thinking about how you can offer Classical Civ courses that will draw students in. And maybe the sabre-tooths will hire you.
You are obviously a pup. You fail to understand that civ concentrations are the red-headed stepchild of the current system. Do you honestly believe that the average classics hire's strength is in teaching large civ lectures? It's in teaching small seminars or language courses with 10 students at best. The large civ and myth courses are typically taught by junior or adjunct faculty and jetisoned from their responsibilities asap.
"The large civ and myth courses are typically taught by junior or adjunct faculty and jetisoned from their responsibilities asap."
Speaking as a non-pup who teaches these kinds of things regularly, and whose tenured colleagues do as well, I can say that this is not true of my institution. Nor has it been true anywhere else I have ever worked, or studied, for that matter. At state institutions, individual faculty are often expected to teach a certain average number of students per class, and it's through big courses like these that we balance out our relatively small 20-person language classes.
And the "pup" you deride is absolutely right about the civ courses and myth courses. The kids love them (depending on the instructor...) and enrollments are great.
Yes, it is a myth that only adjunct or temp people teach the big lecture courses. Maybe this myth persists because most students come from huge R1 schools whose departments don't have to worry about enrollments. In the real world, where most of you will teach (if you are lucky), however, butts in the seats rule.
History and Archaeology are our "money" courses. We need to teach these well, draw students, and keep them interested, in order to justify teaching the 5-person Greek classes. Giving them to part-time faculty would be suicidal
Language classes are dying out. The only courses that allow us to maintain them are the big Civ courses. Any Classicist worthy of the name can teach an mid- or upper-level language course. They are by far the easiest courses on the docket. Beginning languages, however, are actually more difficult, and more important. But the most important are the Civ courses. It takes talent and time to make a large history or archaeology course hum.
"Do you honestly believe that the average classics hire's strength is in teaching large civ lectures?"
I absolutely agree with this statement. So why does the average classics department have a 5+:1 ratio of lit to history/archaeology position? Why are there 5+ language/lit courses offered for every civ/history/archaeology course? Your average historian/archaeologist can run circles around a mainstream classicist when teaching civ/archaeology courses. By your own observation, and based on class enrollment, classics departments should have 5+ historians/archaeologists for every lit person. This is obviously not the case. Supply and demand is obviously not at work here, but old traditions. Classics is a relic and deans are catching on.
Let me offer a case study. I had a high number of interviews at the APA this year (I will not be specific, but it was in upper numbers posted on the wiki). All but one VERY specifically asked me about classical civilization courses, both basic and advanced, I would teach. And I am not an historian or archaeologist. The exception was a small college that didn't have the staff to do Classical Civ, and was openly regretful about that, because their enrolments are suffering. And I should add, that was a temporary job. The rest were tenure-track.
That suggests to me that "pup" and his/her defenders above are correct. I agree that Classics isn't dying except in the sense "pup" says, a very old-fashioned sense. You could disprove your own point just by going and looking at a random sample of schools with Classics programs and the ratio of their courses, instead of generalizing.
Assuming that "civ" does not mean the greatest hits of classical literature, do you honestly believe that the AVERAGE classics graduate is well-equipped to teach a proper civ course, which includes history and material culture? If so, I have nothing else to say. If not, why are classics departments stuffed full of lit people and continue to get stuffed with lit people? Because lit people hold the keys and at best are kindly ignorant in their attempts to revise curriculum or at worst preservers of antiquated paradigmns. Take your pick, the numbers don't lie.
Let's do a couple case studies (and I'm leaving out schools like Princeton, Columbia, Bryn Mawr, etc. where history and archaeology faculty are in separate departments).
Guys, breakdown of faculty proves nothing. What matters is what they're teaching - as we've discussed before, what you specialize in, you may never teach. I quote "A Cool Cat" from the next thread down, referencing UT-Austin:
the literary people in the department do about 50% of their teaching in civ/lit in trans. courses
So, yeah, UT has more lit people than other specialties: 4 MC, 3 historians, 1 philosopher, 8 lit (not counting lecturers). But those lit folks are doing quite a bit of class civ teaching, according to the horse's mouth. Frankly, I think that is what Anon. 10:25 was getting at, and it's an important point: classical civ courses are key to most departments, to drawing in students, and maybe to getting hired. Throwing faculty lines at us and lengthening the blog ain't gonna win you converts.
For the most revealing state of all check the ladder track jobs listed in the wiki. Even disregarding the fact that art history and history department posts are includeds, the vast majority are for language/lit/generalist. If civ/history/archaeology courses truly are the money courses, our hiring practices do not reflect this. We are either ignorant of curriculum patterns or don't believe we need people who specialize in these topics.
I think the person who has nothing better to do on a Saturday night than look at Classics websites was misled by 9:53's statement that "History and Archaeology are our money courses." It does not follow that only historians and archaeologists teach those. Quite the contrary.
11:11a and I crossed. That's exactly the point I was trying to make. Historians and archaeologists teach languages (a point we've belabored to death), so why can't lang/lit people teach class civ, history, and archaeology courses?
Oh, I see, it doesn't matter what you specialize in and do for research, but what you teach. My mechanic is a fool for moonlighting as an instructor at Devry. He should be teaching at the med school down the street.
"11:11a and I crossed. That's exactly the point I was trying to make. Historians and archaeologists teach languages (a point we've belabored to death), so why can't lang/lit people teach class civ, history, and archaeology courses?"
Maybe because archaeologists and historians have taken years of language classes and are trained at it? If you're not an archaeologist or historian, how many archaeology courses did you take in grad school? 1? 2?
The point is, maybe historians and archaeologists SHOULD be teaching those courses, but they're often not. I regret the state of affairs, but that's the way it is. I think anyone who is questioning that, for a good number of classics departments in the US, civ courses (excluding history and archaeology, including stuff like myth, greek and roman civ, upper-level civ topics like women in antiquity or classics in film, and so on) fill the seats as much or more than 10 people in baby Greek and 50 in baby Latin, with declining numbers as the level rises, is just flat out wrong.
You are right. As the lone historian in a department, I have to cringe when my colleagues teach civ. They either read straight off of wikipedia or talk about Minyans as if it's fact. Contrary to what most classicists think, teaching history and civ properly requires more than reading general treatments texts from 40 years ago.
"The point is, maybe historians and archaeologists SHOULD be teaching those courses, but they're often not. I regret the state of affairs, but that's the way it is."
This is good and fine, and can excuse departmental demographics that were largely shaped years ago, but why aren't we correcting course now? We're still largely training and hiring people who have little interest or expertise in teaching the largest courses.
I think the person who has nothing better to do on a Saturday night than look at Classics websites was misled by 9:53's statement that "History and Archaeology are our money courses." It does not follow that only historians and archaeologists teach those. Quite the contrary
True, it doesn't necessarily follow, but in our case (and, I think, in most departments) it does.
Let's be blunt: philologists continue to exist thanks only to the heavy lifting done by the ancient historians and archaeologists. Philologists teach the boutique language classes which range from 2-15 students each, while we (historians and archaeologists) teach the large lecture courses that consistently fill up to 60 students and more. Now, sometimes philologists teach Myth, Film & Classics, etc., but those are not part of their regular rotations.
I, as the resident historian, have also taught every level of both Greek and Latin. Our archaeologist has done the same.
The lit folks couldn't dream of teaching our lecture courses successfully. But the department desperately needs the numbers our courses bring in order to counterbalance the anemic enrollments in lit and language classes. So the burden of enrollments falls disproportionally on historians and archaeologists. This, I am sure, is much more the norm across the profession than not.
Now, this isn't just sour grapes. Everybody has the same teaching load, as far as numbers of courses go. But the amount of time it takes to prepare a lecture course for 60 undergrads, grade exams, papers, etc. is much, much more than any language course. I know because I have taught them all. So, when it comes to teaching hours, historians and archaeologists actually have to spend a heck of a lot more time than philologists. But our research and service expectations are the same.
We are more versatile, more over-worked, bring in more students, and at the same time have a tougher time getting the jobs in the first place. Am I bitter? No. I have a job. But I do recognize injustice when it bites me and my fellow historians (and archaeologists) in the collective ass.
WDNTFF, don't forget the fact that many archaeologists and historians conduct field work and schools. So not only do we teach like dogs, we need to write grant proposals and field reports on top of scholarly publications. When do we write these? Not during the summers. And guess who usually does community outreach lectures? The faculty member who wants to talk about Juvenal or the one who wants to talk about the movie 300?
Philologists teach the boutique language classes which range from 2-15 students each, while we (historians and archaeologists) teach the large lecture courses that consistently fill up to 60 students and more. Now, sometimes philologists teach Myth, Film & Classics, etc., but those are not part of their regular rotations.
Greek and Roman civ, and myth, plus turns in "Western" or "World" civ courses, are regular gigs for Hellenists and Latinists at every public school in the states. I don't know where you're working that 60 is a big class and language teachers don't clip on a microphone, but you should really get out more.
If you're talking about an independent Department of Classics, this is a patent lie. I can't think of one independent department where even the majority of philologists teach large courses. Western Civ (Cave to Renaissance) courses are the domain of history departments or the larger catch all departments that classics is getting funneled into.
Even if what you say is true, and I have no doubts it eventually has to happen, how can a discipline supply teachers for universities when the classes we take in grad school will almost certainly have little to do with the classes we teach? I don't know about you, but the cosomography of Vergil does not really help me teach Roman Civ.
Yes, occasionally lit/language folks clip on a microphone, but they don't own one of their own, like the historians and archaeologists do.
Myth is a regular one for some, granted. Greek and Roman civ courses are more often taught by historians. Ditto "Western Civ". C'mon, these classes are "regular gigs" for Latinists and Hellenists only if you think jamming at the local bar every few months is a "regular gig".
60 is a large course when you don't have a TA to help with grading, and your school is such that you are expected to assign 2 research papers in such courses. As far as time-suck is concerned, I'd rather lecture to an auditorium of 500 and have TAs do all of my grading than lecture to 30 and have to do it all myself.
If you're talking about an independent Department of Classics, this is a patent lie. I can't think of one independent department where even the majority of philologists teach large courses. Western Civ (Cave to Renaissance) courses are the domain of history departments or the larger catch all departments that classics is getting funneled into.
Myth is a regular one for some, granted. Greek and Roman civ courses are more often taught by historians. Ditto "Western Civ".
Lord above. Yes, please, do continue to tell me what I'm not teaching and have not taught.
Look, if this is something you're interested in, don't just make wild generalizations; go look at university course listings. The last time this came up, regarding Texas in particular, I went and looked at their listings, and they had literary people teaching all of those courses both semesters this year. I've just gone to the Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, and UNC sites, and it looks to me like a bunch of literary classicists teaching civ courses and myth courses this year.
Now, if the literary people at those public schools aren't dodging lecture courses, at what public schools are they dodging them?
I don't know about you, but the cosomography of Vergil does not really help me teach Roman Civ.
OK, well, just by saying that you've demonstrated to my satisfaction that there are certain literary classicists who shouldn't be let anywhere near a civ course. So, congratulations, I guess.
Wow. After reading the comments from the last 24 hours, I have to say that the only scholars I currently don't loathe are the art historians and ancient philosophers. Go figure.
I have to say that the only scholars I currently don't loathe are the art historians and ancient philosophers.
Me, too. Heck, I'm an historian, and I even hate myself now.
But as an historian, I'm still puzzled by this question:
If you believe that Classics is dead, or dying, why are you in the field? I am especially curious because those insisting that Classics is dying or dead don't seem to be offering ideas for its resurrection.
As for being given instruction in how to teach classical civ courses, my grad program (and every grad program I know anything about) made darn sure every student TA'd either Greek or Roman civ AND Mythology. So when it came my turn to teach those classes as faculty, I was nervous, and still had stuff to learn, but I felt prepared. Those grad seminars on Vergilian cosmogony aren't pre-professional training in the pedagogical sense.
Er, I've studied Classics for twenty years and I've never heard of a class on Vergilian cosmography or cosmogony. I've heard of classes on Vergil though. Call me weird but I think we should keep those.
There seem to be some pretty bad analogies drawn here. Philology classes are pitched at fairly advanced students - they aren't the equivalent of, nor a substitute for, large lecture classes. The students' input is supposed to be active rather than passive, and if you were to try to teach analysis of a text to a hundred students at a time, well, you couldn't. You probably couldn't even manage it with more than twenty students in the room since everyone needs to have a go contributing a meaningful quantity. If you were to teach an art history or archaeology or philosophy class at a similar level of sophistication you wouldn't have any more students - these aren't seminars in finance, government, or anything pre-med. Should there be more of those non-philological advanced classes? Perhaps. Probably. But it's not as if there are so many advanced philology classes these days anyway, since the general level of linguistic ability is lower than it used to be. So by default we're probably going to see more of those other classes in the near future. Anyway, which is all to say, you're comparing lemons with platypuses.
Look, if this is something you're interested in, don't just make wild generalizations; go look at university course listings. The last time this came up, regarding Texas in particular, I went and looked at their listings, and they had literary people teaching all of those courses both semesters this year. I've just gone to the Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, and UNC sites, and it looks to me like a bunch of literary classicists teaching civ courses and myth courses this year.
This is a great example of professional clueslessness. Those are the top of the tour. They can do things most (i.e. 90%) departments can't. Who cares what is going on at those places? Check your Denisons, your Emorys, your OSU-somewheres, your Regional State U. of Interstate 70, etc. etc. etc. in order to figure out general rules of thumb.
Gesturing towards what the folks at Berkeley or Michigan do in order to extrapolate what "the field" does is like figuring out the average duffer's short game by watching Tiger Woods.
Gesturing towards what the folks at Berkeley or Michigan do in order to extrapolate what "the field" does is like figuring out the average duffer's short game by watching Tiger Woods.
I teach at an SLAC and we get more than half our enrolments from classical civ courses - myth, Women in the Ancient World, Age of Pericles, Age of Augustus (usually 40-50 students per class), and each faculty member has at least one of these courses a year. This in turn gives the dean a good reason to keep our tiny tiny 4th semester Greek and 3rd year Latin courses open.
I'm sure not all SLACs take that route, of course, but I think quite a few do.
"Those are the top of the tour. They can do things most (i.e. 90%) departments can't."
Right. In fact, I picked them because they're an extreme case. Those places should be best positioned to have their literature people dodging lecture courses, because they have large undergrad language and grad programs for them to teach in. And yet that is obviously not going on.
So, if that's the case, what you're suggesting is that literary classicists at less famous and wealthy state schools lead a luxurious life of tiny Greek classes, and never appear before more than 12 students at once, whereas at UT the poor, hapless famous people have no choice but to teach the intro civ and myth courses.
Even at the top schools, it's misleading to say a "bunch" of philologists teach large classes. As a graduate of the history program at UCLA, I know for a fact that exactly ONE philologist teaches a large course per quarter - Classics 10 - Discovering Greeks, Classics 20 - Discovering Romans, Classics 30 - Myth. And guess what, I've taken the first two and they are basically the "greatest hits of literature" as someone suggested (at least to this one historian). For this one large course per quarter, there are ten philologists who teach "Plato - early dialogues" with five students, "Aristotle" with three, or Advanced Latin Prose with seven.
So what's the problem with this? We're not offering courses that would make classics more balanced/relevant. Why aren't we offering more non-language courses such as the rise of Athens, Roman Colonization, Hellenistic History, or the life of Constantine. No, it won't draw 300 like the large lectures, but it will surely draw more than 3, 5, and 7. The "best" answer I've heard is, "We don't have the people to teach this." So train them and hire them.
"For this one large course per quarter, there are ten philologists who teach "Plato - early dialogues" with five students, "Aristotle" with three, or Advanced Latin Prose with seven."
If you want to have a Classical language major, these courses are going to have to exist. They're almost never going to get over 20 students, and sometimes many fewer. But every term, in each language, there need to be one or two intermediate level courses, and one or two senior level courses. If not, students aren't going to be able to complete a major in their four years. And whatever other threats exist to Classics—and there are many—it definitely doesn't have a future if we don't train some small number of people who can actually read the languages of Greco-Roman civilization.
And there really isn't an alternative to teaching those classes in a small room. It's not as though, if had 200 people taking intermediate Euripides, we'd book a lecture hall for it; we'd book eight 25-seat classrooms. Not that a big lecture class is great for learning any subject, but it's completely useless for language teaching.
Where I teach, we offer enough language courses to support the major, and then the other undergrad courses are big-to-giant intro lectures and medium-sized (50-100) courses on religion, epic, "Age of Augustus," or other subjects of pretty broad interest. Our numbers would be better if we got rid of the language courses, but I don't think Classics would be better off in the long run if we stopped having a viable major that focused on language training.
It may be that there are places out there with an extravagant number of language courses with virtually no enrollment, and that I just I haven't encountered that personally.
Exactly. French studies require the knowledge of French, so Classics requires the knowledge of Greek and Latin. Unlike French, not everyone has to have a generally equal mastery of the languages, since you can't simultaneously be expected to be an archaeologist, a philosopher, and a palaeographer. We already build that flexibility into Classics in a way the modern languages do not (you'd look pretty stupid in a French dept if you didn't speak French). But the language classes we teach (except for the most advanced) aren't designed to produce one thing or the other, they're designed to make students good at reading texts (any texts) in the ancient languages. As it happens they tend to be literary texts because that's about the only thing we can get even five students to read. Imagine the even greater emptiness of language classes if we taught disproportionately more Mycenaean, Latin inscriptions or Augustinian sermons (excepting schools where the last would be a major draw...). It's not that those subjects aren't worthwhile, it's that we're having enough problems as it is filling language classes on Homer and Vergil. The archaeologists' solution - let's ditch the languages - would make us look as stupid as the Frenchless French dept. The best compromises, as mentioned in several earlier posts, involve a healthy balance of large lecture classes and small seminars IN ALL SUBFIELDS. Some institutions are simply better than others at making that happen.
To Anonymous 1:23 and other disgruntled/unappreciated realia folks:
Just to set the record straight: at UCLA there are 17 members of the regular faculty in Classics. Of these, 4 are focused on realia, the rest (13) are "lit people." In Winter 2009, they are offering 13 "civ" courses, 3 Greek courses, and 4 Latin courses at the undergrad level. Of those "civ" courses, only 3, at most, are things that a philologist could not teach as well as, or better than, an archaeologist or historian. The Plato course to which you refer is being taught by a "cooperating" faculty member whose appointment is in the Philosophy department. The total enrollment in "civ" courses taught by philologists is 288+16+29+38+27+12=410. The total enrollment in "civ" courses taught by the realia people in the department is 148+1+35=184. The remaining four courses are being taught by people with their appointments in other departments. So it looks like the realia people, whose specialty is supposed to be the "civ" stuff, are bringing in an average of 61.3 students per "civ" course, while the philologists are bringing in an average of 68.3 people per "civ" course.
And there are people teaching things like "Hellenistic History": Andrew Koh, a realia person, is teaching "The Age of Alexander the Great," with 35 students. I am sure that his research specialty in ancient flora and aromata (true, it's not quite as esoteric as "Vergil's Cosomography," whatever that is supposed to be), makes him the best possible person to be talking about Menander, or evaluating the historicity of the Alexander Romance and its manifold recensions (no insult intended to A. J. Koh: I am just pointing out the absurdity of what some people on here have been arguing, namely that realia people are somehow automatically the linguistic equals of philologists, or that people who study ancient texts don't have to know anything about history or archaeology: we all have our specialties, and I know plenty of Archaeologists whose Greek and Latin skills aren't even as good as some of my undergraduates').
But it sounds like anon 1:23 resents the fact that Ancient Historians are given appointments in Classics departments, because they end up having to bring up enrollments for "lit" people. If that's the case, he/she should look for a History department appointment. I am sure the 4 people who specialize in Ancient History are treated much better by the 26 people in the UCLA History department who work on "European History" (i.e. all of the more recent, better documented, and more relevant stuff in your geographical area of specialty) than they are by the people in Classics. And I'm sure it is much better trying to explain to a dean why your general class on "History of the Ancient Mediterranean World" (HIST 122A) can only draw 58 people, while your colleague's quite specialized "Latin American Elitelore" (HIST 160A) brings in 138.
Perhaps Classics departments will soon die (which is just as likely from all of this in-fighting as from the dropping enrollments). Then all of those obnoxious "lit" people so many of you resent will be rolled into some language department, where their enrollments like 57 for two sections of Latin 2 taught by the same person, or even the 7 people in Advanced Latin Prose look good beside the 2 people who enrolled in Czech 102. And they won't have to explain to you all how the historical infinitive works ever again.
For crying out loud, everyone in the Classics department benefits from there being Classics departments, even if the philologists benefit a little more. Whether Classics as such has a future or not is one thing. But the facts are these: language classes, no matter the language, have small enrollments. They need small enrollments, or they don't work. If you wanted to teach lots of classes with small enrollments, you should have been a philologist (if your language skills were good enough). Because people in language departments, no matter what, teach a lot of small courses. They also teach a lot of "civ" courses, however, to keep enrollments up. I have taught at least one "civ" course for every two language courses, including the introductory language courses, which typically have fairly large enrollments and are more difficult to teach than lecture courses. And finally, I doubt that most historians and archaeologists, however dissatisfied they may be with their workload, however unappreciated they may feel, would be happier in a department where topics like the Vietnam War or the Black Death were more commonplace than the reign of Augustus; I, at any rate, am very happy to be in a department where all of my colleagues know that Nero didn't actually play a fiddle while Rome burned, and where the lectures and job-talks I am expected to attend are comprehensible, whether given by archaeologists, historians or philologists. And I am also very happy to be in a department where I can talk to a colleague with a better understanding of the fall of the Roman Republic before I lecture on Caesar, and where the same colleague will ask for my perspective on a tricky sentence in Cicero before teaching it to an undergrad Latin class. Let's stop all the bickering and try to keep this ship from sinking, shall we?
How many independent Departments of French are there? Even then, how many French seminars with 5 students are there in "Early Rousseau" and "Cosmography in the Candide?" How ludicrous would that be? And French is actually practical in today's world.
If you want to be a language program, join a large language and lit department - problem solved. You can't have it both ways and deans are agreeing. You can't be an independent classical language program that pays lip service to culture, which is what you're doing when 90% of your course listings are language and literature. It is just not sustainable. Now if you want to be a truly holistic, sustainable, independent classical studies program (more than just in name) you need to balance the curriculum and have less language courses. Hiding behind a Greek civ, Roman civ, and myth course taught by three faculty out of twenty will not protect the language classes forever.
It sucks, but this is the choice facing classics in the 21st century. Adapt or perish.
Anon 4:10, I know AJ Koh from working with him at Corinth. He's an archaeologist teaching what sounds like a history course. How does this support your argument that universities are well served by having 14/17 classics faculty members specialize in lang/lit? If you believe that lang/lit people can teach civ courses just as well as historians/achaeologists, I'm afraid you have an unbalanced definition of civ or you overestimate the capabilities of lang/lit people.
Agreed - I doubt your average "Roman Civ" or "Greek Civ" course would be recognized as a civ course by any anthropology or history department. Therein lies the rub - classics is in its own lala land.
Civilization includes more than just literacy - what about economics, architecture, art, politics, ritual, etc? Your average Greek civ courses reads like this: Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Thucydides, Lysias, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Xenophon - or something like that. It's been a while since I've kept up, but you get my point.
Now if you want to be a truly holistic, sustainable, independent classical studies program (more than just in name) you need to balance the curriculum and have less language courses.
How do you envision a classical studies program existing if it reduces its language offerings to a point at which it is not practical for students to major in the languages?
Civilization includes more than just literacy - what about economics, architecture, art, politics, ritual, etc? Your average Greek civ courses reads like this: Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Thucydides, Lysias, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Xenophon - or something like that.
Given that these courses are usually lower-division general ed courses, I think there's a wide variety of perfectly acceptable ways of doing them. What you describe is a course that's mainly literature and intellectual history, studied within historical and social context. A historian or an archaeologist could do the course with a similar emphasis on their areas of interest and expertise. The point is to have the class learn, think, and write about some set of notable and interesting aspects of Greek society; it's not an introduction to a particular discipline.
Okay anon 4:10, let's go over the Winter 2009 numbers since UCLA is kind enough to provide enrollment figures. I'm only listing courses taught by faculty with primary appointments in classics.
Classics 20 - Discovering Greeks Philologist (Gurval) - 288 students Bravo, heres your sacrificial philologist for the term
Classics 51B - Roman Art and Archaeology Archaeologist (McDonnell) - 148 students Here's one of your few archaeologists already with 1/3 of the terms enrollment yet is 1/5 of the faculty
Classics 89 - Honors Seminar Philologist (Gurval) - 16 students Looks like the aforementioned sacrificial philologist scored an easy "honors" seminar anyway
Classics 89HC - Honors Contracts Archaeologist (McDonnell" - 1 student Presumably an independent study
Classics 142 Ancient Epic Philologist (Bergren) and ? (Snyder) - 38 students This poor philologist has to bear the burden of having 38 students, but thankfully has a team teacher
Classics 144 Studies-Ancient Culture (Age of Alexander) Archaeologist (Koh)- 35 students Here's your archaeologist
Classics M145A Ancient Philosophy Philologist (Blank) - 27 students
Classics 191 Capstone (Immortal Experience) Philologist (Purves) - 12 students
Greek 2 Elementary Greek Archaeologist (Koh) - 20 students
Greek 100 Readings-Greek Prose Philologist (Telo) - 7 students
Greek 115 Xenophon Philologist (Phillips) - 6 students
Greek 200A History-Greek Literature Philologist (Purves) - 10 students
Greek 220 Greek Novel Philologist (Telo) - 7 students
Greek 243 Mycenaean Greek Philologist (Vine) - 11 students
Latin 2 Elementary Latin Philologist (Richlin) - 57 students
Latin 100 Latin Prose and Poetry Philologist (Johanson) - 18 students
Latin 109 Roman Satire Philologist (Richlin) - 5 students
Latin 118 Seneca Philologist (Butler) - 4 students
Latin 210 Advanced Prose Composition Philologist (Butler) - 7 students
This is a balanced classics program? You have 17 faculty members and this is it? How does the dean hold off on whacking this department and putting Greek civ, Roman civ, and myth in the history department? It's not like UCLA is the "Harvard Department of the Classics."
Are there any Classics departments out there that offer a major which requires NONE of the languages? I know of some "Classical Studies" or "Classical Civilizations" majors at various schools that require a year or two of either Greek or Latin. But I am not aware of a program that offers a major completely bereft of the languages.
I don't know if this is even a good idea, but I'd like to know if it exists at all. I do know that our own (at a SLAC) Classics-lite major (two years of Latin or Greek required) is flourishing, while our hard-core "Classics" major (3 years and 2 years of each language) is struggling mightily. This does not make me happy, even though I am an historian.
I really do want the languages to flourish as well, and I suspect this debate would not be as acrimonious if we could figure out a way to grow them.
That said, I do think having this conversation in an open forum is healthy for the field, even if it is upsetting to read.
I'm slightly annoyed to be lectured to by someone who in the same comment manages to refer to "The (?!?) Candide" and writes the words "less lecture courses."
"What you describe is a course that's mainly literature and intellectual history, studied within historical and social context."
UCLA is also kind enough to provide textbooks and I think you're absolutly right. For "Discovering the Romans" the texts are Virgil's Aeneid, Boatwright's Brief History of Romans, and Petronius' Satyricon. If this is how we introduce a general student population to the Romans, I don't see how it's sustainable and why its not in some large history or language department.
I am sure that the fine folks at UCLA don't appreciate that their departmental roster is now up on a random blog... even though one of their own faculty members appears to have started it by naming a certain flora specialist...
Meh..... What to do? It seems that it is being used for purely illustrative purposes, and does not appear to be aimed at hurting individuals, nor aimed at hurting UCLA. So, I will leave what is up for now, unless I receive a request to remove it.
But, please please please! NO NAMES!! You can talk about these things without using such particular examples, I imagine.
"I don't know if this is even a good idea, but I'd like to know if it exists at all. I do know that our own (at a SLAC) Classics-lite major (two years of Latin or Greek required) is flourishing, while our hard-core "Classics" major (3 years and 2 years of each language) is struggling mightily. This does not make me happy, even though I am an historian."
Regardless of the specific solution, your scenario suggests that classics is not tapping its full potential as a vital component of the academic community by having a 3:1 or 5:1 ratio of philologists to "everyone else." There is apparently an outdated paradigm at work here by the person who states, "And whatever other threats exist to Classics—and there are many—it definitely doesn't have a future if we don't train some small number of people who can actually read the languages of Greco-Roman civilization."
So for classics to survive, you need a graduate student who takes 3-4 years of Greek, 3-4 years of Latin, a bunch of esoteric seminars, and maybe a general class or two? You then throw them into a job where they teach myth or civ and they're probably thinking WTF is this?
You need 13/17 faculty members to, "train some small number of people who can actually read the languages of Greco-Roman civilization?" WTF is right. That percentage should be 8/17 tops. Hire a couple historians and art historians for cripes sake and maybe someone who teaches modern Greek language and culture while you're at it.
The suggestion that historians should teach Myth in a History dept. seems rather odd, to say the least. I would sooner eat a shoe full of maggots than teach a myth class, and I suspect I speak for most historians when I say that.
So for classics to survive, you need a graduate student who takes 3-4 years of Greek, 3-4 years of Latin, a bunch of esoteric seminars, and maybe a general class or two? You then throw them into a job where they teach myth or civ and they're probably thinking WTF is this?
I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble following your train of thought. Are you saying that instead of training archaeologists and philologists and historians we should be training Ph.D.s in "Myth" or "General Aspects of Ancient Rome" so that they can teach myth and Roman civ?
I would sooner eat a shoe full of maggots than teach a myth class, and I suspect I speak for most historians when I say that.
"I really do want the languages to flourish as well, and I suspect this debate would not be as acrimonious if we could figure out a way to grow them."
Grow them? The only way we can grow them is the entire world gets transported back to the 19th century. Or we find Atlantis, they only speak ancient Greek and Latin, have a GDP 5 times the US, and want to trade with the world. Every high school would then have Greek and Latin again. Otherwise, there is no way in hell there should be more than 5 programs out there with the full complement of philologists churning out Ph.D. grads for the survival of classical literature. The saved resources, both financial and human, should be used to find the cure for cancer and this economy, and generally making the world a better place. Sorry, but Seneca, as nice as it is, doesn't really do this.
"I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble following your train of thought. Are you saying that instead of training archaeologists and philologists and historians we should be training Ph.D.s in "Myth" or "General Aspects of Ancient Rome" so that they can teach myth and Roman civ?"
No I'm saying we should be training and hiring more people who are in the best position to grow classics. Philologists should be thrown into a language department and go through some selective processes unprotected from ancient paradigms protecting them in classics departments. I know for a fact that Spanish and French people would laugh at the need to have 6 Hellenists and 6 Latinists in a general language program "so that it can survive."
Philologists should be thrown into a language department and go through some selective processes unprotected from ancient paradigms protecting them in classics departments.
I love you, too. :)
But if you want to be that way about it, maybe classical archaeologists should be thrown into an anthropology department and go through some selective processes unprotected by ancient paradigms protecting them in classics departments.
And I know for a fact that European historians would laugh at the idea that we need more than one or two Classical historians in any but the largest departments. Said Classical historian would then spend his or her life teaching "Greek History" and "Roman History" in alternate semesters for the remainder of his or her career, and would be constantly berated for not keeping enrollments as high as "American History: 1900 to the present" or the like. My point was exactly this: having a Classics major and Classics department benefits us all. Or perhaps you are also disgruntled that real history departments aren't hiring more of your kind, that you cannot win in either world: on one side, you are outnumbered by "lit" people, on the other, by people who study the hundreds of other possible cultures and periods? And without a Classics department, most Classical archaeologist jobs wouldn't even exist...they would be Anthro jobs, and you'd be teaching Anthro 101 on a regular basis, instead of Roman or Greek civ; or perhaps History jobs, teaching Greek or Roman History. But perhaps most archaeologists would like that more...
The saved resources, both financial and human, should be used to find the cure for cancer and this economy, and generally making the world a better place. Sorry, but Seneca, as nice as it is, doesn't really do this.
Another joke, right? Since the above isn't really an argument in support of anything, really, except quitting and joining med school.
I think we should all be grateful for the existence of Classics Departments. I am an archaeologist, and I could probably find a niche in a couple of other cognate departments, but I like being in Classics.
I often wonder how to deal with the question of encouraging majors. I want my enrollments up, but I am reluctant to encourage students to major in Classics if they don't have a clear and realistic plan about what they are going to do with that major. There aren't a lot of options.
But perhaps most archaeologists would like that more...
I think they would, they're not getting hired, and they're taking it out on the rest of us historians and philologists. Understandable, but not really the stuff of good argument. Classics isn't in trouble because of language or a lack of material culture; it's in trouble because that's the way the world's moved. We're actually in the same general boat as all the humanities. End of story. Now let's do what little we can to stem the tide.
"But if you want to be that way about it, maybe classical archaeologists should be thrown into an anthropology department and go through some selective processes unprotected by ancient paradigms protecting them in classics departments."
Throw the maybe one clarch into an anthro program? I think that clarch has a better chance to survive than 6 classical philologists in a language department.
We could always start a - gasp! - practical thread on designing a decent classics major. The thread could also include tips on how to increase / organize language enrollments. The other practical thread (now long forgotten) on hiring statistics worked out really well, though I suppose it was more data-based (so couldn't be too acrimonious).
Who the hell are we kidding? Philologists will go down with the ship before balancing their curriculum and faculty.
And most of you clarchs, you're just philologists who dig (or dug) in the dirt once in a while. I don't blame you since the committee that chose you couldn't tell a pot from a bone. I've met plenty of Roman archaeologists who can conjugate amo and decline amicus in their sleep but couldn't tell one end of a theodolite from the other. DUCKING
Since we've had a go at just about everyone I'd like to add some venom against the stupid, lazy undergraduates who want everything spoonfed to them before they wonder why all their jobs are going to more energetic people overseas. This country is doomed, and no 500 person myth or material culture class is going to help us.
Please shut this operation down. The collateral damage to departments and candidates has become too high. The health of a democracy depends on the self-restraint of its citizens. This blog is now diseased.
Yeah, I'm afraid that classical archaeology hasn't been developing along the same lines as the rest of the archaeological universe, and that anthro departments aren't exactly dying to hire classical archaeologists, many of whom they consider to be working with a (figuratively) Neolithic intellectual apparatus.
So, unless clarch changes how it works, it's the Classics department or nothing. Which is fine with me; I love me some classical archaeologists. When they're not dreaming aloud about kicking me out of the Classics department, anyway.
The fact is that Classics departments are, by and large, language and literature departments. A lot of them are even called things like "The Department of Classical Languages and Literature." They always have been. The new disciplines (relatively) are History and Archaeology. Most of them have gone off to join other departments. The few who haven't are the few that get hired by Classics departments to teach some (not all) of their civ courses. Now I am not sure if the argument here is that a) there should be more of you people hired, b) there should be less language people in the language department into which you have been hired, c) the language department into which have been hired shouldn't be a language department, d) the language department into which you've been hired should cease to exist, and its members should be sent off to other departments. Whatever the argument, the point is that you have been hired to teach civ courses. Why does it matter whether you teach them for a History department or for a Classics department or for an Anthro department? Do you think your enrollments would be lower if you taught in a History department, and that you would thus have less work? Or is it that you think the language people don't have to work as hard as you do because you have to grade more papers? Last I checked, I couldn't give a scantron test to an advanced Latin class: I actually have to read each quiz, test, and 20-page essay by hand, as opposed to having a machine and TAs do my work for me as I would in a 400-seat introductory history course. And last I checked, introductory languages still met twice as often as lecture classes, often at ungodly hours, and had quizzes and homework to grade every day. But it may be true that all of us "lang/lit" people (whether linguists, comp lit folks, critics, stylistic critics, papyrologists, palaeographers, textual critics or epigraphers) are just slackers and that what we do is even more useless than what the historians and archaeologists do, and we have no right to have our own department. In that case, perhaps your dream will come true, and we will disappear into a department where we have real competition for enrollment, with all of the room fillers like advanced French in the French and Francophone department (enrollment 12, capped at 24). And the Anthro people can laugh at our civ courses like myth for their absurdity (what? teach myth without including at least a day out of your forty to talk about Neanderthal man and the vast amounts we know about his mythological system? How quaint!), and you can laugh right along with them, now the token Classicist in an Anthro department, rather than the token Archaeologist in a Classics department.
I have some questions for the anti-philology crowd: given that most Clarch or Ancient History PhD programs have admissions policies like the following: "preference will normally be given to applicants who have already demonstrated significant preparation in at least one of the required ancient languages," do you really think most of you would have gotten into grad school if there hadn't been all of those "boutique classes" you are so scornful of? Or do you think that sort of admissions policy should be changed? In which case your argument about being able to teach the languages as well as the civ courses goes out the window, the languages lose ground, and then who will tell you what Pausanias has to say about your site?
Another question: intro civ courses bring the enrollments up for sure, but what about majors? You can't have a department with no majors. And how many students, thrilled at the prospect of learning more about the ancient world from your civ courses that focus on material culture, find out that they have to take languages, and say "sure, sign me up"? Obviously not enough to keep the language enrollments up. And what are you going to teach at the advanced level that will interest people who are Classics majors because they want to understand the poetic art of Vergil in the original language, or to put on a dramatic performance of Aristophanes in Greek (whether you like it or not, a lot of Classics majors are those sorts of people)? Yet I can guarantee that every single student who would take a class like "Vergil's Cosmogony," if such a class existed, either is or becomes a major.
If Classics departments were the way some of you seem to envision them, the "boutique" classes would be things like "The Topography of the Esquiline Hill" or "Baths and Toilets in Baiae" or "The Life and Times of Julian, Rome's Most Backwards Emperor." Would those really draw more people than a class on the Aeneid? And where would the people who just want to read Vergil, and have not the slightest interest in Roman topography (significantly more people, I think, than vice versa) go for their courses?
It seems to me that the main problem is that plenty of people in other departments can do what you do, albeit with different data. Generally, only people in Classics can teach Latin and Greek. That makes it mainly a language department, because the only reason to be in it, rather than somewhere else, is because of the linguistic component of our discipline. Otherwise, you might as well just be in an Anthro or History department. If an undergrad wants to study history, primarily, he or she will major in History. He or she will only be a Classics major if his or her interest in the languages is great enough, if, that is he or she wants to be able to read Thucydides in the original language for a paper on Pericles, rather than in translation. People come to Classics departments primarily for the languages, not for learning historical methods (they can do that in History) or how to take part in an archaeological dig (for which they can go to a field school and/or take classes in an Anthro department). The only thing which brings them specifically to Classics is the languages, which is why those are the emphasis of every Classics department. If you change that, its not a department any more: its a "track" or subfield or whatever you want to call it within History or Anthro or Romance Languages or whatever your preferred, non-Latin and Greek, focus is.
"Classics isn't in trouble because of language or a lack of material culture; it's in trouble because that's the way the world's moved. We're actually in the same general boat as all the humanities. End of story. Now let's do what little we can to stem the tide.
No we're not really in the same boat. History, English, Art History, etc. aren't getting shut down like Classics. Why? Look at their faculty roster. They have faculty who specialize in and teach topics such as South Asian Art or South American History. Was this the case 100 years ago? No, but as the world changed so did they. If I started a new university today, I would include History, English, Anthropology, Chemistry, etc., but classics would most definitely not even be on the radar.
You say that Classics doesn't have such a far reaching scope? I disagree, we just not tapping the potential. Why don't more classics departments teach topics such as Greek warfare or Foreigners in Constantiople? Because not enoughh literature is written about it? Surely these topics could fall under the rubric of classics and be more relevant today than pastoralism in Hesiod and Vergil. So that's my tenet - that Classics hasn't evolved nearly as much as it can. We're to blame for our irrelevance, not the content. The curriculum is by no means set in stone and we don't need to just "work with what we have" as some of you have suggested.
There aren't that many Classics depts getting shut down. And we are in the same boat as the rest of the humanities. You have to look at things proportionally. Sure, a history dept is going to be bigger than a Classics dept, but it's trying to cover all of world history pretty patchily. That's a pretty big ask and they're not being given the resources to do that. There'll be some increased funding for China and S. Asia studies, maybe some more local regional interests too (S. America), but the rest of world history is just as shafted as Classics. The same goes for English. Go talk to a medievalist or modernist in a language or art history dept. We really are in the same boat, I promise. Now Chemistry's a completely different ballgame, but last I remember that wasn't in the Humanities. To think that anthropology is the panacaea for our ills is preposterous. To study almost ANY humanities subject is increasingly seen as self-indulgent, useless, soft, career-threatening, time-wasting, old-fashioned. Tack on some anthropology and all you've got is mutton dressed as lamb. It doesn't get to the heart of the problem at all.
"History, English, Art History, etc. aren't getting shut down like Classics."
What are some examples of Classics departments getting shut down? And how does this picture account for the University of Miami--the nation's youngest Classics department, as we learned from the November issue of the Placement Bulletin--which was started from scratch just 2 (or so) short years ago and is growing (and being grown) rapidly? I'm not sure I've seen any evidence that Classics isn't at least as healthy (relatively speaking) as other humanities departments these days.
"It seems to me that the main problem is that plenty of people in other departments can do what you do, albeit with different data."
The same is true for you. That different data? It's called French, Russian, or Chinese rather than Latin or Greek.
I don't think that anyone denies that there are students who want to read Vergil in Latin or Thucydides in Greek, but let's be honest, there aren't flocks of them. That does not reduce the importance of those who do want to, but there just aren't flocks. And I have taught a course on Roman topography, and it drew more students than the intermediate Latin course I taught that same semester.
I am an archaeologist. I teach history classes. I teach civ classes. I teach language classes. I like them all. Anyone who wants to push the other subfields out is shooting himself in the foot. I am frustrated by the lack of equity that (I believe) I see sometimes-- for archaeologists on the job market especially-- but, come on, this kind of "my area is the only thing anyone is REALLY interested and your subfield is really something that any other department could cover" attitude is silly, bogus, and counterproductive for everyone.
I followed this site last year, and I thought I'd stop by to see what was going on.
Guess I picked a bad night to do so.
I had some very nice conversations at the meetings this year, and it reminded me that Classicists as a whole are pretty nice people. Stressful situations always exacerbate minor tensions, and you all are dealing with a terribly stressful market this year.
I hope you all end up with very nice jobs. Best of luck on the market, and for those of you finishing your degrees, best of luck with the dissertation.
It seems to me that the main problem is that plenty of people in other departments can do what you do, albeit with different data. Generally, only people in Classics can teach Latin and Greek. That makes it mainly a language department, because the only reason to be in it, rather than somewhere else, is because of the linguistic component of our discipline. Otherwise, you might as well just be in an Anthro or History department. If an undergrad wants to study history, primarily, he or she will major in History. He or she will only be a Classics major if his or her interest in the languages is great enough, if, that is he or she wants to be able to read Thucydides in the original language for a paper on Pericles, rather than in translation. People come to Classics departments primarily for the languages, not for learning historical methods (they can do that in History) or how to take part in an archaeological dig (for which they can go to a field school and/or take classes in an Anthro department). The only thing which brings them specifically to Classics is the languages, which is why those are the emphasis of every Classics department. If you change that, its not a department any more: its a "track" or subfield or whatever you want to call it within History or Anthro or Romance Languages or whatever your preferred, non-Latin and Greek, focus is.
I never knew the philologist's argument for the hierarchy in classics, but this made it pretty clear. In essence, historians and archaeologists are lucky that philologists throw them a token bone here and there, because language is king.
For what's it's worth, I do disagree with the statement that students gravitate to classics to study the languages, especially in the 21st century. I would argue that most are lured in from taking the large gateway courses, watching the history channel, or even Xena. If I'm wrong, we really don't have a future if our hopes hinge on students licking their chops to wade through Wheelock and Hansen/Quinn.
"That makes it mainly a language department, because the only reason to be in it, rather than somewhere else, is because of the linguistic component of our discipline. Otherwise, you might as well just be in an Anthro or History department."
If it's just a langauge department, why not just combine Classics with Spanish, French, and German if it's just a language department? Am I missing something here? Surely a few token civ/history/archaeology courses and faculty doesn't justify its existence as a separate department? I've heard the argument that their nature as dead languages requires a separate department, but I still don't buy it. Why not just have a separate major or program within a general language department? The colleagues I have in South America and Asia are mystified how a classics department exists independently, and I can see why.
To be honest with you, I'm a 38 year old latinist and I would most definitely rather meet the board of trustees of the AIA than the APA. Call me a sell-out, but give me Harrison Ford, not Theodor Mommsen. mrrrrow
Yes, I sometimes think it is odd that it is not more often part of another language department (it actually is, in schools that don't have Classics but still want to offer Latin and Greek), but I think it is wonderful that it usually is not, and I also think it is wonderful that there are historians and archaeologists in Classics departments. Why it is that way has to do with the history of college education, which used be heavily based in Classical Philology. Whether it can stay that way has a great deal to do with whether it can reshape itself into the first truly interdisciplinary department. That will almost certainly involve bringing more people with a non-language approach into our departments. And I think I see that trend starting to emerge. Five out of the six hires that have happened at my department since my arrival were either archaeologists or historians, though the historians were still pretty language oriented because the History department has Ancient Historians of its own; all but one of these was either a new hire or a hire to replace a retired, oldschool philologist. That is anecdotal, it is true, but there were also an extremely large number of American Philological Association based searches this year that specifically asked for people with expertise in material culture, at the same time as they asked for a Latin prose research focus, for example. I think this is great, which brings me to my real point: the posting above was completely misunderstood, and I apologize if I was unclear. It was partly sarcastic (which does not come across well in type, without intonation, I am afraid), and was largely meant as an explanation of why there are so many philologists in most departments (because they, unlike the Historians and Archaeologists, have nowhere else to peddle their wares), rather than a plea to have fewer realia people in Classics departments. I am simply saying that this hostility that seems directed at philologists, as if we took all of your jobs, is rather depressing, when, as we see it, we like having you in our language departments, we even let you teach some of our language courses (though you seem rather upset that we would want to teach non-language courses, when the deans won't let us hire enough of you to teach them all for us: "Why do you need an historian? The History department has hundreds of them!") just so that we can justify hiring you into the Classics department instead of letting the History department take you off and pay you more to teach everything you want to teach and nothing you don't. But please, don't grudge us "Vergil's Cosmogony" (though I myself would probably be better qualified to teach, and more interested in teaching, "Toilets and Baths at Baiae." At least I know what toilets and baths are, and where Baiae is). It is interesting to some people. And no other department will let us teach anything there, let alone a class like that. We will teach something maggoty but seat filling like Myth or (shudder!) Etymology (which I have yet to hear one of the realia people mention teaching; if you think myth is bad...) just to make up for it. Pax?
To all involved in the recent discussions, take heart in knowing that you've illuminated some important issues concerning the future of classics that were unclear to me in the past. I honestly thank you all.
I just started grad school, but THANK GOD I jumped from a BA in classics to a Ph.D. program in anthro. I've saved this page and will send it to all my classical archaeology friends thinking about grad school.
Exactly. French studies require the knowledge of French, so Classics requires the knowledge of Greek and Latin. Unlike French, not everyone has to have a generally equal mastery of the languages, since you can't simultaneously be expected to be an archaeologist, a philosopher, and a palaeographer. We already build that flexibility into Classics in a way the modern languages do not (you'd look pretty stupid in a French dept if you didn't speak French). But the language classes we teach (except for the most advanced) aren't designed to produce one thing or the other, they're designed to make students good at reading texts (any texts) in the ancient languages. As it happens they tend to be literary texts because that's about the only thing we can get even five students to read. Imagine the even greater emptiness of language classes if we taught disproportionately more Mycenaean, Latin inscriptions or Augustinian sermons (excepting schools where the last would be a major draw...). It's not that those subjects aren't worthwhile, it's that we're having enough problems as it is filling language classes on Homer and Vergil. The archaeologists' solution - let's ditch the languages - would make us look as stupid as the Frenchless French dept. The best compromises, as mentioned in several earlier posts, involve a healthy balance of large lecture classes and small seminars IN ALL SUBFIELDS. Some institutions are simply better than others at making that happen.
This seems reasonable to me. There may indeed be a few archaeologists and historians out there who think we should ditch the languages (and it seems they all hang out here). Well, this one historian certainly doesn't, and I suspect that very few of my material culture/historically-minded colleagues would either. I love Latin and Greek, and want to see them both flourish.
But, it is a question of equity. I teach six classes per year. Four of those are lecture classes, two are language classes. My "literary" colleagues teach six classes per year. Generally 4, often 5, are language classes, and 2, often 1, are lecture classes. I teach all ranges of both languages, as do they.
Two things: at my school we don't have scan-trons. I give two-hour, sit down and scribble as fast as you can, essay exams. I assign two research papers in each of my lecture classes. In my upper-level classes the final paper is generally between 15-20 pages. I average around 50 students for my lower-level lectures, 20 for my upper-level lecture/seminars. So, many papers, many exams.
As importantly, crafting a lecture takes a huge amount of work. For every hour of lecture I give I spend about 10 hours preparing (revising, fiddling with power-point, rethinking old points, etc.). And I am an experienced lecturer! Reading Cicero or Vergil or Livy with a small group of students does not require anywhere near the amount of preparation time. As somebody mentioned above, language classes need to be small because they require active learning on the part of the student. Active learning generally means less preparatory work on the teacher's part. Our language skills and knowledge of the text can carry us through most literary classes. They just can, and we all know it. In my experience beginning languages actually take a bit more prep time than reading courses, but not as much as lecture courses.
I think you all can see where I am going with this... Again, I value the work my lit/lang colleagues do. I value the languages themselves, and I enjoy teaching them. We have a remarkable discipline that demands a great deal of us all. Much more than most other disciplines, which is probably why we are all so cranky here.
So, if we agree that we need archaeology, civ and history classes for enrollment purposes, and that those are, generally speaking, best taught by historians and archaeologists, what is the lesson learned here?
Ditch the languages? Not at all. But the lit/lang folks need to be sharing the burden more than they are currently doing. If you can only convince 5 students to take your upper-level Propertius class, then you should think about offering that as an independent study and design a course in translation that will get some serious numbers. Let's call it "How to win Girlfriends, Boyfriends, and Lovers: from the Campus Martius to the South Quad". Still in your area of interest, broad enough to attract a good crew of students, and, perhaps most importantly, can act as a gateway drug towards filling up that Propertius class a couple years down the line!
The only way to get the languages off the ground is to offer exciting, well-designed courses in translation that will then convince students to take a dip in Latin or Greek. Our old model of waiting for the students who had Latin and maybe Greek in HS is failing.
We ALL need to do this, archaeologists, historians and literarians alike. One of my jobs, besides teaching a set of well-constructed history classes, is piquing the interest of a few students such that they decide that reading Thucydides in the original is a worthy goal.
So, the "boutique" (small-enrollment, special author) language courses should be taken off the FTE class credit. Offer them, of course, to the students who can and want to take them, but do it as an extra, until the time comes when they can actually be filled up by a reasonable number of bodies. This means I will have to offer an upper-level Thucydides class every now and then gratis. And that is OK. But, and here is the big "but", the lit/lang folks must replace those small, boutique classes with some seriously good lecture/seminar classes in order to draw students into the field and, ultimately, take the languages. This will make the teaching load more equitable across the discipline, and correct the job-market so that we start to hire folks who can actually offer enrollment-boosting, curriculum-enhancing classes, in addition to the middle- and upper-level language classes we can all teach.
Finally, some constructive comments. This sounds quite reasonable to me, and I will do my best to push the trend towards this sort of curricular design wherever I teach. Now, can we leave off the vitriol and get back to a collegial, friendly discussion before we lose more future colleagues to other departments?
WDNTFF said: "So, the "boutique" (small-enrollment, special author) language courses should be taken off the FTE class credit. Offer them, of course, to the students who can and want to take them, but do it as an extra, until the time comes when they can actually be filled up by a reasonable number of bodies."
Schools already track this - it's called 'minimum enrollments'. If you want to reset minimums from c. 7 to 10, to c. 30, you'll wreak havoc in all sorts of departments and advanced classes. Universities were never designed only to teach classes that appeal to the broad masses. The principle of the humanities is to teach all sorts of things, in all sorts of ways, including large and small classes. I suspect you of being an engineer, WDNTFF, with your argument that large enrollment should be the determiner of class existence. Bah. I wave my paw in your direction.
If you can only convince 5 students to take your upper-level Propertius class, then you should think about offering that as an independent study and design a course in translation that will get some serious numbers.
If this is a department offering more language courses than are needed to support a languages major, that seems fine. But if by doing this you're reducing upper-level language courses to a point at which majors can't count on getting in a timely manner the courses they need to graduate, that seems like a problem.
Honestly, I don't know how many institutions offer more language courses than necessary to support a languages major. Maybe more than I realize. But I think you have to have at least one intermediate and one senior level course per term, per language, and you'd be better off having two of them as often as you can, so that you're not losing students to scheduling conflicts.
I want to reiterate what some earlier posters have already indicated. This dismissal of the languages as independent study in favor of larger classes (at most institutions) would push elite departments to retain, if not maximize, their philological spine. Elite departments would see themselves as the only places able to sustain serious language study.
Further, you can't train any strong numbers in the languages through independent study. There needs to be a visible program that offers small classes - that's what that kind of student wants and if they can't get it they'll simply go elsewhere. It sounds as if individuals bitter about inequitable loads (understandable) are consequently blind to the disciplinary and institutional needs for diversity. Does that mean philologists shouldn't teach large lecture classes? No, of course they should. It does mean, however, that it'd be a mistake to take small language classes off the FTE. I'm happy teaching one or two large lecture classes a year. But I've got to be left enough classes to build a visible language program, with no restriction on enrollment for those years when there just aren't so many kids in intermediate Greek.
Does anyone else find it ironic that a bunch of people who can't find jobs are busy drawing up blueprints for a complete restructuring of their discipline, including plans to put half their would-be colleagues in front of a firing squad?
Speaking as someone who also can't find a job (and not a member of the vast philologist conspiracy) -- it seems a bit comical.
To be honest with you, I'm a 38 year old latinist and I would most definitely rather meet the board of trustees of the AIA than the APA. Call me a sell-out, but give me Harrison Ford, not Theodor Mommsen. mrrrrow
I'm also a 38-year-old Latinist, and just want everyone to know that I didn't write this post.
Does anyone else find it bad form that Swarthmore made campus invites for their TT position before the application deadline had been reached? And that they decided to interview a few people at the APA who had only applied for the TT when they were still receiving applicantions? Sorry, but that is uncool.
Yeah, I didn't apply for either of their positions, but that whole setup seems like it was really poorly handled. Basically the ad in the December issue said if you already applied for the 'possible one-year leave replacement,' you would be considered for the tenure-track. It sort of reminded me of a daily double on Jeopardy...you thought you were going to be answering a question on "generalist VAP for 200," and then it turned out to be a "tenure-track poetry" question on which you could wager your entire future. And too bad for those non-poetry people who applied for the generalist 1-year, since (as I've heard through the grapevine) the 1-year hire will be selected from the shortlist of people they interviewed at the APA (for a poetry position). But it may not have been the SCs fault.
It is really odd. I know a Latinist who applied for the one year who was interviewed at the APA and Hellenist who only applied for the TT who was interviewed. Sc fault or not, it really is confusing. It would have been nice for those who weren't getting their apps in by the APA to know they shouldn't bother.
Anonymous said... Does anyone else find it ironic that a bunch of people who can't find jobs are busy drawing up blueprints for a complete restructuring of their discipline, including plans to put half their would-be colleagues in front of a firing squad?
Thank you for stating it so well. Yes, I find it hilarious.
It is a stressful job year, so we should cut everyone here a little slack and maybe laughter is the answer.
On the other hand, regarding the specific individuals attacking their philological brethren: What department would want this sort of vitriol, arrogance, and astounding ignorance in a new colleague? Do you (singular or plural) seriously think that this sort of antagonism to your own field and potential colleagues doesn't come through in interviews? (And I know that you think you're right and everyone else is wrong-- but this is yet another case where you don't know everything when you are viewing departments from the outside. I know, I know-- I don't know what you do or don't know. Fair enough. But what has been stated on this blog --and corrected or commented on by many cooler heads-- is often simply uninformed. No matter how well connected you think you are, you just don't know it all. Have a little humility. Seriously. It will help.)
The assumption of great wrongs committed by a conspiring philology class against an oppressed yet more noble band of non-philology miracle scholars has gone well past the point of pathological. Clearly nothing will assuage this anger, up to and including the aforementioned firing squad and overthrow of the illegitimate philological overlords in all departments across the land.
Well, here is at least one non-philology person you have to worry about. This is my first time contributing to this thread, but the real second-tier status given to classicists who are not primarly philologists by trade, and so easily dismissed by some, resonates with me. I'm choosing a museum job in Baltimore over another VAP as a civ serf. I know many if not most will miss me in classics, but I've seen a glimmer of hope from some rational philologists that this trend is not good for the discipline. Pax and good luck on the leaky ship.
Apparently, no one is supposed to know that Swarthmore's search is screwy. Whoever removed the info from the wiki--shame on you. It's bad enough that the department has conducted the search so poorly, but another thing entirely to try to hide it like that. Makes one suspicious that the search is one of these "fixed" searches the crazies here are always moaning about.
The problem that's becoming apparent with FV and the wiki is that SCs are now savvy to their existence. The wiki in particular democratized the process somewhat and they are now trying to reverse this.
The problem that's becoming apparent with FV and the wiki is that SCs are now savvy to their existence. The wiki in particular democratized the process somewhat and they are now trying to reverse this.
How do you mean? With the wiki especially. I'm curious.
The problem that's becoming apparent with FV and the wiki is that SCs are now savvy to their existence. The wiki in particular democratized the process somewhat and they are now trying to reverse this.
I am on an SC, and I have to disagree. I think both the wiki and FV have encouraged us on the hiring side to be more mindful of good communication practices, where possible. In fact, I have updated the wiki myself in order to communicate with our applicant pool. Normally we aren't allowed to send out "Dear John" letters until the search is completely finished. I hated this as a candidate. Now, the blog and the wiki let me signal to those unsuccessful in getting APA interviews, and now campus interviews, where they stand. I think the system, for all its faults, is an improvement over the bad old days when I was job-hunting.
The last couple of days haven't been this place's finest hour, of course, but some good might come of it all. Even I, a decrepit/textually-minded, long-toothed silverback, think some honest, no-holds-barred critiques of the field can be healthy.
I'm not celebrating this undergraduate mentality by any means, but this is the reality at even top schools such as UCLA, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
I'm not celebrating this undergraduate mentality by any means, but this is the reality at even top schools such as UCLA, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
Schools that have top grad programs in classics do not tend to be the same as schools with top undergrad programs in classics. Try not to conflate the two. I believe Holy Cross with its student body of 2400 or so has as many if not more classics majors than schools with 25-50,000 students. And these students(and students like them from similar schools) are far more likely to go to grad school in the field.
From the Daily Bruin article: "In upholding a strict liberal-arts philosophy, UCLA has lost sight of the fact that a main point in higher learning is to give students practical skills they can use in their careers after college."
So the model is that SLACs train classics undergrads and R-1s train them for graduate school? Can there be a Department of Classics without undergrads or very few for that matter? Can anyone think of an example of this? I think schools like Berkeley, Stanford, Michigan, Chicago, Harvard, Princeton, etc. all have strong undergrad programs, no? I'm just full of questions today, but I honestly would appreciate some concrete answers.
For some reason SOBHA is convinced I am a UCLA faculty member (I'm decidedly not...the last time I was in LA was when I was applying to grad schools, many years ago), and I think his polemic is directed at me. Honestly, though, I'm not sure one undergraduate columnist's take on the rise in college rankings of a perceived rival school is much by way of support for this "adapt or perish" alarm he is raising.
The columnist's lack of understanding for the point of a liberal arts education, his incessant emphasis on "practicality" and "real-world knowledge" certainly provide an excellent example of the mentality of students who would never come near a Classics course if given a choice. This statement, in particular, is illustrative:
"In reality, their [USC's] ascent up the collegiate rankings is derived from a structural approach that is vastly different, and in many ways more practical, than the expansive liberal arts mentality we have here."
To begin with, this illustrates that our columnist hasn't really examined the basis for many college rankings. They usually give fairly high marks for such measures as "alumni giving," graduation rates, average SAT scores, faculty:student ratios, class sizes, number of classes taught by full-time faculty, etc. So schools with more money (like USC) can buy their way ahead in the rankings by hiring more faculty, thus reducing class sizes; with fewer non-professional graduate programs and thus fewer TAs, they have more FTF in charge of classes; as private schools, they tend to have higher graduation rates (the student feels more pressure to graduate fast); they often have higher SAT scores because they can be more selective, not being compelled to accept the top X% from any high school in the state. Finally, and most importantly, since they are more expensive, the alumni more often come from the wealthier classes, and thus can afford to give more money very soon after graduation; this, one of the most heavily weighted measures, always privileges private schools over state ones. None of this, as should be clear, has anything to do with a "more practical" approach rather than an "expansive [read: "in my opinion, pointless"] liberal arts mentality."
I am sorry, SOBHA, but being "practical" will never be an argument in favor of studying Classics, whether history, archaeology, or languages. You can design neat courses, and try your best to make them relevant, but no one who cannot see the "practicality" of a rounded education will be convinced, and they will go right on pushing to have all Humanities GE requirements removed from the curriculum until no one takes our classes any more but the frivolous or the majors (who will be the same, from the perspective of people like your columnist). Someone in an earlier post mentioned Greek Warfare as a course that will look snazzier than plain old Greek history. Why is this more relevant? Al Qaeda doesn't use a hoplite phalanx for their attacks. Another suggestion was "Foreigners in Byzantium." Why is this more relevant than a more general course on the Byzantine Empire? Because you can correlate the "foreigners" issue to "relevant" (read: modern) debates about immigration? Given all these complaints about philologists teaching history when it's not really what they've been trained in, I wonder why a degree in ancient history qualifies a person to talk about issues that would surely be better handled by modern historians. The more you make Classics about the modern day, and try to twist it into something "practical," the more you lose sight of the diversity that Ancient Studies brings to the table, and make it just another iteration of whatever the current discourse happens to be. If you wanted to teach something that people like this columnist find "practical," I am afraid ancient history was the wrong track.
Well, no matter what anyone believes is right and how idiotic this columnist is, I hope someone has some solutions for a pardigm that is no longer working for the humanities. Yes, we are in the same boat, but I think classics is in steerage and in the most danger of drowning. You can close your eyes and pretend it's not happening, but I, for one, am not as convinced as some about the health of classics in the 21st century. Some good suggestions have been made here. Hopefully we retain this spirit of constant renewal and not the smug complacency I sense in some people. My 2 cents.
Just in case anyone is interested, I speak as a faculty member of 16 years in lower tier R-1 institution who has seen five classicists retire and only one get replaced. We're now down to three including me, a sad state for a founding department in the university that is no longer independent, no longer offers a MA, and is in danger of losing Greek. We started a civ concentration, but it never really took off, not with only a handful of us left.
The phenomenon that "Concerned Philologist" describes is a common one for Classics departments and, let's be honest here, is only going to get more common.
If "crisis" is "opportunity", then the current economic crisis is inevitably going to be seen as opportunity for administrators to axe more classicists. They will do it. Lines will not be replaced, junior folks will not be offered tenure, and all will be asked to "sacrifice" for the greater good.
If the discipline is going to survive then we had better start asking some hard questions. If some of those questions then lead to difficult-to-hear answers, well, better to start the conversation while we are here, rather than as we pull espressos together at Sweetwaters.
The phenomenon that "Concerned Philologist" describes is a common one for Classics departments and, let's be honest here, is only going to get more common.
It is not just Classics, though, and I think people forget this. Anthropology departments have also gone under the ax with faculty rolled into other departments. Same with many modern languages including Arabic, Hebrew, even Spanish and French. It isn't unknown for History departments to not renew tenure lines for anything pre-16th century. What people here want to label as a Classics problem, is not a classics problem only and all the historians and archaeologists who want to feel immune need to wake up to reality. The study of the ancient and medieval worlds in general are endangered and it isn't because of the focus on languages.
Speaking as a new TT guy with some experience with classics inside and outside this country, I must disagree somewhat with what has been said above. As sad as the state of classics is in this country, it is surprisingly good compared to what I have seen in other (including European) countries, and also compared to how other "white" humanities disciplines (e.g. German, French, etc.) have been doing here. At my current school and others I have been to, classics is winning praises from admins (yes, this is true!) for its high Student credit-hour ratios, and from undergrads for the serious commitment of its professors to their welfare. Classics is doing badly in those places where professors hate each other and their students, but this is only to be expected (though I don't want to say that the above poster belongs to such a dept.). All it takes is for one or two profs to unite the faculty and the students behind them. Of course, the fate of classics is tied to that of the humanities in general, which may not be in such a good shape now, but within humanities, I would say classics has dodged a lot of bullets successfully.
I'm glad you have a rosy outlook, but I think it's preposterous to say, we're doing terrible, but they're doing even worse outside the country?! I can't speak for the concerned philologist, but I would venture to guess that the correct assumption is that it's a relatively amiable department, not the other way around. This person gave stats - lower-tier R-1, 7 to 3 faculty members in 16 years (if I'm doing the math correct), loss of department and graduate program. The best evidence we have for the vigor of classics is, "we get praise from the admins," and "students say they love us?" Outside the top ten grad programs and elite SLACs, where we all pretty much got our degrees, how is classics doing? How's it doing in the not-quite-elite programs - U-Washington, Washington-St. Louis, UCLA, Wisconsin, Cincinnati, etc. How about the next tier? Oregon, Ohio State, etc. How about the teaching oriented state schools? Cal State, CUNY, etc. Finally, how's it doing in high school. By these measures, we are NOT doing better than 50 years ago, no matter what token "victories" we win here and there.
I think those "tiers" refer not to the graduate programs but to the overall "rank" of the schools themselves, as far as undergraduate education is concerned. I can see Oregon and OSU being comparable there, whereas they are incomparable as far as graduate education in Classics goes.
Surely the APA keeps track of "health" statistics: how many departments closed (if any), ditto how many opened, how many new lines, lines not replaced, etc.
True, but there's no 'state of the state' report, is there? something handy that people could look at to see overall growth, changes, etc. AFAIK you have to count those lines yourself, if you want to see changes.
Yes, a discussion my colleagues and I have had for some time now usually centers around the need for a professional state of things 'white paper' to be commissioned jointly by the APA and the AIA to assess the state of Classics and Classical Archaeology in N. American higher ed. Not just a patting on the back white paper, but a serious look at the state of programs (in all types of institutions), curricular issues for both ug and grad students, placement issues, statistical info on placement, research breakdowns, grant breakdowns - the works. I guess we think this is worthwhile in the spirit of not just disciplinary self-awareness but also the (naive) hope that such a study might help make some inroads on correctives to some of the issues our discipline faces. Would that the upper crust of our professional organizations thought about these issues... since they are mostly insulated from such concerns, it would take a lot to get them on board, but their collective auctoritas might help make such a study happen.
That's the thing I find most ludicrous about some of the rosy statments here. It's typically made by people recently graduated from or currently affiliated with the elite programs. Someone rightfully pointed out that we should be figuring out what's happening in high school and teaching universities like the Cal State system. Yet, very few of us know and the few posts by people likely saddled with 3-3 or 4-4 loads on top of way too many responsibilites to find time to post here are largely ignored by statements like, "Well, Bigshot U is doing great! We just erected a statue of Cicero on our lawn!"
I am one of those who posted a rosy statement above, and have to make some rebuttals here. First of all, excuse me but it is patently ridiculous to compare the state of classical education today to what it was 50 years ago - this is like comparing what classical music was 50 years ago vs. what it is now. We live in a different world, with more, stronger rivals - and only a loony like VDH (sorry for the distraction, but had to put it here!) would decry the rise of these rivals, who have very good reasons to be with us here, and will hopefully flourish in the coming years, together with us. But that said, I suspect that the absolute numbers of faculty slots and programs in classics have actually increased dramatically in the last half century (mostly because university education has had an explosive growth in the same period, of course). Now comparatively speaking, the ratio of classics to other fields has plummeted in the last century or so, of course, again because of the healthy growth in a myriad other fields. The time is past when future leaders of the West devoted most of their school years to translating Shakespeare into Euripedian trimeters (as they did in Britain 150 years ago), and we should welcome that change. Now let me tell you that I have gone through a variety of places including a SLAC, big state school, and a small state school in my career. It so happens that classics has been competing vigorously with other fields in all of them. In one school where I was, we were in danger of losing classics adjunct, the only faculty who regularly taught Greek and Latin, in a period of budge crisis. But student and faculty support saved this adjunct, while other adjuncts in economics and biology all lost their positions. In two other schools I have been to, within the past decade classics was about to be eliminated entirely - but student and faculty support again saved these programs. My experience is limited, to be sure, but it is actually in big R-1 institutions where classics has been enshrined for centuries that I have seen the worst cases of apathy and internal bickering eating away at the strength of the programs. I agree that faculty just get too complacent and lazy in some of these places (not all, I must add). But in lesser institutions I have personally seen more reason to hope - to be sure only if you are ready to work hard, understand and cooperate with other disciplines, and make the case for your own. If you expect to be just given a plum position without trying to justify what you are doing in the overall university environment, you have no place in this field.
Our dining hall just announced the "Gladiator Burger" on their menu, so we're obviously doing well. We're not even an elite program. Hopefully, we can parlay this into a $5,000/year adjunct position where the person only has to run the classics club, network with the local community, go on field trips, make the Gladiator Day parade float, organize the Cicero-athon, and juggle gladdii for new student orientation week! We hope one day to erect a statue of Vergil in our quad, then we'll really be big time! Princeford watch out!
We know there are less jobs this year due to the economy, but from a job-by-job standpoint, how's the economy affecting what institutions can offer to their chosen candidate? Start-up funds, course releases, etc. I know, I know, I have no offers in hand, but I need to think about something else. One can hope, no?
You could ponder the difference between "less" and "few," if you are bored.
Or how about "several" and "few"?
(Please, God, let the next post NOT be a disquisition on the differences between several, less, and few. One would hope we learned our lesson from the Mommsen discussion.)
Well, that was all vaguely amusing (the sinking ship discussion and the anti-philology rant).
But no one seems to want to open up the most explosive issue of them all: the field is obviously training too many PhDs.
This year, as we all know from the nice email from Ms. Plonski, there were 370+ registered with the Placement Service. Yes, that number is slightly meaningless, since it include many senior people who either were applying for senior positions, or "testing the waters." So, let's take at least 100-150 out of the picture.
That's better. We all know that several "generalist" (I am starting to despise that fig leaf) positions attract well over 100 applicants. Who forgets last year, when, where was it again, USC? said that they had about 150? or was it higher again, applicants for their position.
As we all know well, the total number of searches, including senior positions, that interviewed in Philly was 55. While pithy phrases such as "do the math" are somewhat irksome, it really does come down to this.
Even in a bad year, where there would be a strong disincentive for people still in graduate school to force themselves to finish early and get on the market, we still had many a search that had over 100 applicants or near it for a single position (at least from what I remember from a few rejection letters I received).
There are clearly too many graduate students in classics. The seniors need to buck up and do the hard thing: take in less people.
As many people here already note, Classics, as a field, is hardly growing. For every Miami, there are other places that are shedding lines, not adding them. The imbalance between supply and demand is now resulting in this extremely stressful ranting, and many people who find themselves at the end of the line, with no job in sight.
I know, I know. There will now be a torrent of responses saying "Reducing graduate enrollments and graduate programs would be the real death knell of the field." Would it really?
I think not. But this massive oversupply is going to create a large group of irate and disappointed people with an axe to grind against the field. Most will slink off, but think of the wasted time and talent, that could have been put to productive use elsewhere, but was taken in by the false assurances of faculty that while the competition is fierce, there would be a job somewhere for you.
And certain programs are much greater villains in this piece than others. I'll let you now continue your internecine warfare, figuring out which places I'm referring to…
Interesting points and certainly worth discussing, Anon 9:44; a post in the Chronicle just came out saying something similar, but with regard to the humanities generally:
There are clearly too many graduate students in classics. The seniors need to buck up and do the hard thing: take in less people.
Well, departments want them because they need them to teach for them, because they don't have enough faculty to teach all those beginning Latin courses and myth discussion sections.
Sometimes I think that the real problem is created by the departments that have atrocious placement records but still admit students—maybe if a graduate program can't reliably get jobs for its graduates, it shouldn't be in business. Then instead of teaching grad courses the faculty could cover the courses that grad students would otherwise be teaching.
On the other hand, do the students really not know that they're going to schools with an atrocious placement record? Are they really being tricked by faculty? Ultimately, as long as there is full disclosure about the dismal job prospects, shouldn't people be free to choose whatever ambition they want, even if it's probably all in vain?
In any case, I strongly agree that it would be better if fewer Classics Ph.D.s were produced. I'm just not really sure how to get there.
We also need to rethink our advising system. Instead of the apprenticeship model where our advisors try to create little clones or encourage us to work on marginalia, we have a market driven advising system whereby we start training our PhDs to teach what departments actually need taught and so increase enrollments and makes us more valuable to universities as a whole which might encourage less contraction.
we have a market driven advising system whereby we start training our PhDs to teach what departments actually need taught and so increase enrollments and makes us more valuable to universities as a whole which might encourage less contraction.
We do train PhDs to teach what departments actually want taught - they're called historians and archaeologists.
Instead of the apprenticeship model where our advisors try to create little clones or encourage us to work on marginalia, we have a market driven advising system whereby we start training our PhDs to teach what departments actually need taught and so increase enrollments and makes us more valuable to universities as a whole which might encourage less contraction.
Nobody will go to graduate school to be trained in how to teach Etymology or Myth or Ancient History in Ten Weeks. People go to graduate school in order to become professional students of things that they find interesting. Making graduate school even more boring and stupid than it already is doesn't help anything.
Well, I guess it might drive down the number of Ph.D.s we produce. So there's that, at least.
Sometimes I think that the real problem is created by the departments that have atrocious placement records but still admit students—maybe if a graduate program can't reliably get jobs for its graduates, it shouldn't be in business.
Maybe so. At my institution it is not entirely our choice. Faculty would probably prefer to have a much smaller graduate program but we have to keep graduate enrollments up (and growing every year!) to satisfy higher powers up the chain. When History and English have 100 graduate students (MA and PhD), we look bad if we only have 10. Explaining that our particular field shouldn't be training more PhDs and that there is no way they can all get jobs at the end doesn't really work. It is a big problem and I wish it were as easy as simply not producing as many PhDs.
Faculty would probably prefer to have a much smaller graduate program but we have to keep graduate enrollments up (and growing every year!) to satisfy higher powers up the chain.
That hadn't even occurred to me.
OK, I've decided that the glut of Ph.D.s is really the responsibility of the people pursuing Ph.D.s. It's widely known that job prospects in Classics are poor, and yet people keep rolling the dice. Departments that have poor placement aren't forcing students to enter their graduate programs; rather, students are going there because they've decided that they want so much to go to graduate school that they're willing to do it in a program that may well not be able to put them into jobs.
Then, every year, there's great surprise and consternation about how few jobs and how many candidates there are, and how that means that the system is diseased, the discipline dying, etc. (The economic collapse this year actually means it's one of those rare occasions on which one could actually be justified in being surprised at the job to candidate ratio.) But every year the candidates competing for those jobs are all people who knew when they started out on their studies that, when they finished, they'd be competing against a lot of people for a few jobs.
1. Myth is the largest class at most departments. It out-enrolls history and archaeology easily.
2. Do we really think that the intricacies of a Hellenistc fragment is "exciting"? Being market driven means broadly trained, not "myth machines." Anyone should be able to teach myth be they literature, MC (mostly art history types) or historians because myth touches almost every aspect of our field. A philologist should not be able to get a PhD having taken no history or MC classes (and maybe TAd for one?) any more than a historian or MC person should be able to go out having not taught a beginning language. Study whatever you want for your diss but we need to make sure that the coursework component of our degrees enables us to understand the range of the field and be active in it instead of whining about how there aren't any jobs for our particularly narrow sub-field. If departments need TAs, then we should use the opportunity to get those TAs decent training. Only people who head to large and/or elite programs will only ever teach their specialty. These are not the target programs for people outside of a handful of graduate programs. What is so wrong with broadly-trained with strengths in 3 or 4 areas with a research focus on one or two others instead of what happens more and more--narrowly trained with strength only in that specialization.
Do we really think that the intricacies of a Hellenistc fragment is "exciting"?
Well, you know. Depends on the fragment.
A philologist should not be able to get a PhD having taken no history or MC classes (and maybe TAd for one?) any more than a historian or MC person should be able to go out having not taught a beginning language.
I totally agree. I didn't realize that there were programs out there that would let you skate on this.
Just as a side note, I'm entertained to see that ancient history has been elevated to "crowd-pleaser" status, when in fact history is widely regarded as boring and pointless. I mean, for the love of God, the use of the phrase "ancient history" to mean "something that no longer matters" (e.g., "Don't sweat it; it's ancient history") is a pretty clear expression of the popular view.
1. Myth is the largest class at most departments. It out-enrolls history and archaeology easily.
Well, often not by much if at all. Also, we're leveraging myth about as far as it can go. On the other hand, we're not doing history and archaeology justice. Outside the truly elite schools, one typically only gets general introductory surveys. If you don't think more history and archaeology will "sell" you obviously haven't got the memo that there's a History Channel on tv, but nary a sign of a Philology Channel.
A philologist should not be able to get a PhD having taken no history or MC classes (and maybe TAd for one?) any more than a historian or MC person should be able to go out having not taught a beginning language.
Absolutely agreed, but take note that any historian or MC person that comes out of a classics based program will know the languages. Philologists vastly outnumber historians/archaeologists in academia combined AND the vast majority have very little experience with history/archaeology. This combination is egregious and deadly for the discipline. But we'll then get back to the argument that philologists can't graduate in a timely manner if they haven't taken their full complement of advanced language/lit classes.
If you don't think more history and archaeology will "sell" you obviously haven't got the memo that there's a History Channel on tv, but nary a sign of a Philology Channel.
1). Last I checked, the "History Channel" was basically the "Notable Wars and Battles Channel." Not exactly an argument for the popularity of history in general. In fact, my memory is that at first they tried all different kinds of history, but that over time they moved to all Luftwaffe all the time, because nobody wanted to hear about anything else.
Oh, and there's also the ever-popular "What Was Jesus Really Like" show, which we can always use more of.
2). Your "History Channel" point also seems to be an argument for teaching "Intro to Celebrities," "Intro to Porn," and "Intro to Classic NFL Games." Which would no doubt get good enrollments, I grant you.
"But we'll then get back to the argument that philologists can't graduate in a timely manner if they haven't taken their full complement of advanced language/lit classes."
Well, an introductory geomorphology class would be helping my research a lot more than the advanced Latin morphology class and the YEARS of Lang/Lit courses I took in grad school. Yet the latter does little to aid with my teaching. If I can do this, surely the philologists out there can forego one or two advanced courses - e.g. "Stagecraft of Seneca" - to take introductory courses in history/archaeology, a small investment that will serve them, and the discipline, quite well.
If you don't think more history and archaeology will "sell" you obviously haven't got the memo that there's a History Channel on tv, but nary a sign of a Philology Channel.
We have a number of real historians in our department who teach real history classes. We even have an art and archaeology class taught by a real art historian (NOTE: the historians make up half our classics department; the art historian is in the art.art history dept). Myth triples their enrollments every term regardless which one of the small number of philologists teach it. In fact, some of the historians teach it and they get higher enrollments in myth than in the history classes.
Also, did you know that many of the History Channel shows on the the Greco-Roman world are actually on myth/religion? There is a 10-part myth series coming out on HC this spring, in fact. The false division between history, MC and lit needs to go away. It is not useful and even hurtful to the field.
I didn't realize that there were programs out there that would let you skate on this.
My grad program had a 2-history course requirement but they let people cover it by taking a seminar on Thucydides or Tacitus or another ancient historian. So, you would be able to do a philology course on an ancient historian as a "history" credit.
Well, for what's it's worth, I can name 50 classical historians/archaeologists off the top of my head who have made appearances on the history channel - gladiators, werewolves, architecture, etc. I don't know of one classical philologist who's made an appearance.
To add to the evidence where the imbalance lies, I know of many archaeologists and historians who would feel equally comfortable or at least competent enough to present at the APA. In fact, many of them have. Not counting the APA/AIA joint colloquium, I don't know many philologists who've even attended an AIA session let alone competent enough to present something on the other side of the aisle.
General question: are all "literature" people by default philologists? It seems a rather arbitrary division especially for people who work on the ancient historians but tend more toward historiography. There are also people who work with literature (epic and tragedy, maybe) but who do social history or history of political thought. The division of literature from history doesn't sit well many times for people who do work of literature but do from a more contextualized or historical perspective.
And, yes, there are quite a number in this particular mold who have been on TV. But does a TV appearance denote anything? I know how people get picked for these things. It is often through recommendation and so like recommends like.
Further, ancient historians and MC people should feel comfortable presenting at the APA. The APA always has more than just philology (Numismatics, anyone? History panels?). The AIA is actually far more limited in its scope though not geography.
Seriously, Harrison Ford wanted to join the APA first but we rejected him because of his classical language skills - take that. Why does it matter anyway? He's just a stupid celebrity who caters to the masses. We care about the people who matter - the 5000 out there who can parse amo and decline anthropos, not the silly rest of the world that wants to actually study oi anthropoi.
are all "literature" people by default philologists?
This is just a result of final exhausted acquiescence in some archaeologists' division of the world into "archaeology" "history" and "philology." Never mind that only a handful of people who study texts would call themselves "philologists" anymore. Using the term "classical philologist" is exactly like calling the whole English Department "English philologists."
I use the term "literary Classicist" to describe literary Classicists, "ancient historian" to describe ancient historians, and "Classical archaeologist" to describe Classical archaeologists. However, here at least this is certain to cause a Class Nine freak-out, apparently because it is taken to suggest that anyone not a literary Classicist is a less legitimate member of a Classics department than a Classical archaeologist, who has Classic in his/her adjective but not in his/her noun.
I use the term "literary Classicist" to describe literary Classicists, "ancient historian" to describe ancient historians, and "Classical archaeologist" to describe Classical archaeologists. However, here at least this is certain to cause a Class Nine freak-out, apparently because it is taken to suggest that anyone not a literary Classicist is a less legitimate member of a Classics department than a Classical archaeologist, who has Classic in his/her adjective but not in his/her noun.
I like it! And I'm an archaeologist. Who had a spat last year on FV with a... literary Classicist... who insisted that the proper term for someone who specializes in language and literature was just Classicist, leaving the rest of us out in the cold.
I like it. Classical archaeologist, ancient historian, literary Classicist. All Classicists. Thanks, Anon. 4:01.
1,771 comments:
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If I had pursued a Ph.D. in a discipline that I thought was dead, I would feel a little embarrassed about that. But maybe that's just me.
The most disheartening thing is that these sabre-tooths were probably the ones prancing around in the 60s talking of love.
Lennon Rolling, it is sad to see those who fought the Man become the Man.
let the games begin...
http://classics-cheersandjeers.blogspot.com/
"If I had pursued a Ph.D. in a discipline that I thought was dead, I would feel a little embarrassed about that. But maybe that's just me."
Of course, we're not stupid. It's just that phantom pains can be deceptive. Before you realize what's going on, you're either near graduation or one of the few lucky ones tapped to be the next sabre-tooth, resulting in rosy outlook.
If I had pursued a Ph.D. in a discipline that I thought was dead, I would feel a little embarrassed about that. But maybe that's just me.
Or you're in a cognate field (ancient history) in a different department (history) that has full confidence in its survival, yet believes that "classics," as construed by the mainstream in the discipline and manifested in their departments of classics, is dead.
Seriously, how many independent departments of classics will be around in fifty years? Ten? I'm guessing Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Chicago, and maybe Michigan, Berkeley, Duke, Brown, and UNC.
Dear Lennon: Wow, buy a clue. The % of people in this field who are major silverbacks is vanishingly small, compared to the number of us who are simply old, have seen a lot, have seen all kinds of young people (I'm guessing you're young) crash and burn, for simple reasons that could easily have been avoided. I'm not a silverback. I'm not even in a classics dept., actually - I'm a powerless lurker but one who's seen a lot, and I was hoping that a night's sleep and a gentle nudge would help you see that a plan to announce what elements of dept searches piss you off is just possibly not the path to tenure at a good school, however you define that. Whine less. Read and publish more. Don't be so suspicious. Some of us, like Gandalf, are simply trying to help.
Wow, some don't even realize they've become the Man.
Surely some of those who take the position that "Classics is dead" have been of this opinion for more than a few months. I'd be interested to know why they are still pursuing a position in Classics if they really believe it's dead. I mean, I can see sticking to a career because you've always dreamed of practicing it, but if it's dead, why keep at it? I sure hope it's not because they're expecting vast prestige and fat stacks of cash.
How stupid of us, we should walk into the offices of Google, flash our classics Ph.D., and wait for the extravagant offers to roll in.
The most disheartening thing is that these sabre-tooths were probably the ones prancing around in the 60s talking of love.
Uh, I think I'm one of the commenters you're calling a "sabre-tooth" and a "silverback," and the people you're talking about here are my parents. I did most of my prancing in the '90s.
I think there's a very wrong impression that there are lots of prominent senior people looking at this blog. Many senior classicists have barely begun to explore the non-word-processing functions of their computers.
Look, sabre-tooth cub is all grown up.
How stupid of us, we should walk into the offices of Google, flash our classics Ph.D., and wait for the extravagant offers to roll in.
Well, no. But if you realize, say, 6 mos. before you file your dissertation that it's time to abandon ship, or 6 mos. before your VAP contract is running out, then you have plenty of time to find a job that pays as well as an assistant professor position. Kids with BAs do this. People with normal jobs often have very little notice before they're laid off, and don't have the time to plan and search that the academic year permits. And yet people find jobs. No, offers don't usually "come rolling in." I wasn't aware they did that in Classics, either.
You're right, how foolish of me. I should flash my BA in Classics and wait for the jobs to roll in.
This is why friends don't let friends fight in Afghanistan and declare a major in Classics.
Excuse the poor Latin (comp lit person), but shouldn't the title of this blog be something like vinculum famae?
You're right, how foolish of me. I should flash my BA in Classics and wait for the jobs to roll in.
If I were to come to the firm conclusion that the discipline I had chosen to dedicate my working life to was in fact dead, then yeah, I might send out a resume or two. Sure, jobs don't just fall from the sky like raindrops, but they don't do that in academia, either.
Now, I'm not sending out any resumes, and I want to be employed in Classics, but I don't think Classics is dead. That's the part I don't get.
I don't think he/she is saying classics is dead, but Classical Studies as defined by academia is dead.
Does anyone else hear that music playing. Now where's my reading spectacles.
Nearer my God to thee, nearer to thee...
vinculum stultorum is more like it...
Ah, we can only hope this happens to the sabre-tooths.
Who wouldn't want to be a sabre-tooth silverback? As long as the deans don't cull me, watch out world!
Judging by the fact that all the SCs were kissing my shoes, I think it's safe to say that I'm well on my way to joining their ranks. Six flybacks and counting. So much for them ripping me a new one.
Hah! I have fourteen and two-thirds flybacks, and I'm only getting started. I received sexy, sexy lapdances from several SC members at every interview I had. Also, I really exist, unlike the so-called "Future Dr. Sabretooth, aka the Real Princeford Villain." Also, everything I said is true, especially about the lapdances.
Alrighty, then, what's not to like about our profession?
**Disclaimer: I am neither a silverback nor a sabre-tooth tiger. I'm on the market.**
I don't have a problem with a cheers and jeers blog; like FV, people can go there or not. I'd be fine with posting a cheer, but I'm not taking the risk of posting a jeer, for reasons stated above. If you want to, go ahead. But I think a poster up above (no, I'm not going to hunt) had it right: if you want to become a sabre-tooth, read and publish more, and I'd add become a good teacher, develop a network. Quit thinking of how wronged you are. (I'm betting if Princeford villain actually exists, s/he may have done some of these things, but since s/he doesn't exist...)
As for Classics dying? I don't think so. Maybe in the traditional, heavily philological, 19C German sense, but Classical Civilization courses are thriving everywhere I and my friends have attended or taught. If you're smart, you'll start thinking about how you can offer Classical Civ courses that will draw students in. And maybe the sabre-tooths will hire you.
You are obviously a pup. You fail to understand that civ concentrations are the red-headed stepchild of the current system. Do you honestly believe that the average classics hire's strength is in teaching large civ lectures? It's in teaching small seminars or language courses with 10 students at best. The large civ and myth courses are typically taught by junior or adjunct faculty and jetisoned from their responsibilities asap.
"The large civ and myth courses are typically taught by junior or adjunct faculty and jetisoned from their responsibilities asap."
Speaking as a non-pup who teaches these kinds of things regularly, and whose tenured colleagues do as well, I can say that this is not true of my institution. Nor has it been true anywhere else I have ever worked, or studied, for that matter. At state institutions, individual faculty are often expected to teach a certain average number of students per class, and it's through big courses like these that we balance out our relatively small 20-person language classes.
And the "pup" you deride is absolutely right about the civ courses and myth courses. The kids love them (depending on the instructor...) and enrollments are great.
Yes, it is a myth that only adjunct or temp people teach the big lecture courses. Maybe this myth persists because most students come from huge R1 schools whose departments don't have to worry about enrollments. In the real world, where most of you will teach (if you are lucky), however, butts in the seats rule.
History and Archaeology are our "money" courses. We need to teach these well, draw students, and keep them interested, in order to justify teaching the 5-person Greek classes. Giving them to part-time faculty would be suicidal
Language classes are dying out. The only courses that allow us to maintain them are the big Civ courses. Any Classicist worthy of the name can teach an mid- or upper-level language course. They are by far the easiest courses on the docket. Beginning languages, however, are actually more difficult, and more important. But the most important are the Civ courses. It takes talent and time to make a large history or archaeology course hum.
"Do you honestly believe that the average classics hire's strength is in teaching large civ lectures?"
I absolutely agree with this statement. So why does the average classics department have a 5+:1 ratio of lit to history/archaeology position? Why are there 5+ language/lit courses offered for every civ/history/archaeology course? Your average historian/archaeologist can run circles around a mainstream classicist when teaching civ/archaeology courses. By your own observation, and based on class enrollment, classics departments should have 5+ historians/archaeologists for every lit person. This is obviously not the case. Supply and demand is obviously not at work here, but old traditions. Classics is a relic and deans are catching on.
Let me offer a case study. I had a high number of interviews at the APA this year (I will not be specific, but it was in upper numbers posted on the wiki). All but one VERY specifically asked me about classical civilization courses, both basic and advanced, I would teach. And I am not an historian or archaeologist. The exception was a small college that didn't have the staff to do Classical Civ, and was openly regretful about that, because their enrolments are suffering. And I should add, that was a temporary job. The rest were tenure-track.
That suggests to me that "pup" and his/her defenders above are correct. I agree that Classics isn't dying except in the sense "pup" says, a very old-fashioned sense. You could disprove your own point just by going and looking at a random sample of schools with Classics programs and the ratio of their courses, instead of generalizing.
Assuming that "civ" does not mean the greatest hits of classical literature, do you honestly believe that the AVERAGE classics graduate is well-equipped to teach a proper civ course, which includes history and material culture? If so, I have nothing else to say. If not, why are classics departments stuffed full of lit people and continue to get stuffed with lit people? Because lit people hold the keys and at best are kindly ignorant in their attempts to revise curriculum or at worst preservers of antiquated paradigmns. Take your pick, the numbers don't lie.
Let's do a couple case studies (and I'm leaving out schools like Princeton, Columbia, Bryn Mawr, etc. where history and archaeology faculty are in separate departments).
Michigan Classics
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/umich/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=9fe77787314f3110VgnVCM1000003d01010aRCRD
24 ladder track faculty
18 language/lit
2 papyrologists
4 archaeologists
I'm doing my best to find the most balanced programs with a strong history/archaeology component.
Brown Classics
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Classics/people/
16 ladder track faculty
11 language/lit
2 historians
2 archaeologists
1 philosopher
University at Buffalo
http://www.classics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/
12 ladder track faculty
7 language/lit
1 Near Eastern language/lit
1 historian
3 archaeologists
Wisconsin Classics
http://classics.lss.wisc.edu/faculty.html
7 ladder track faculty
5 language/lit
1 historian
1 archaeologist
University of Oregon
http://www.uoregon.edu/~classics/people/
6 ladder track faculty
4 language/lit
1 philosophy
1 archaeology
Ooooh, a meaningless statistics game! Can I play?
Guys, breakdown of faculty proves nothing. What matters is what they're teaching - as we've discussed before, what you specialize in, you may never teach. I quote "A Cool Cat" from the next thread down, referencing UT-Austin:
the literary people in the department do about 50% of their teaching in civ/lit in trans. courses
So, yeah, UT has more lit people than other specialties: 4 MC, 3 historians, 1 philosopher, 8 lit (not counting lecturers). But those lit folks are doing quite a bit of class civ teaching, according to the horse's mouth. Frankly, I think that is what Anon. 10:25 was getting at, and it's an important point: classical civ courses are key to most departments, to drawing in students, and maybe to getting hired. Throwing faculty lines at us and lengthening the blog ain't gonna win you converts.
For the most revealing state of all check the ladder track jobs listed in the wiki. Even disregarding the fact that art history and history department posts are includeds, the vast majority are for language/lit/generalist. If civ/history/archaeology courses truly are the money courses, our hiring practices do not reflect this. We are either ignorant of curriculum patterns or don't believe we need people who specialize in these topics.
I think the person who has nothing better to do on a Saturday night than look at Classics websites was misled by 9:53's statement that "History and Archaeology are our money courses." It does not follow that only historians and archaeologists teach those. Quite the contrary.
11:11a and I crossed. That's exactly the point I was trying to make. Historians and archaeologists teach languages (a point we've belabored to death), so why can't lang/lit people teach class civ, history, and archaeology courses?
Oh, I see, it doesn't matter what you specialize in and do for research, but what you teach. My mechanic is a fool for moonlighting as an instructor at Devry. He should be teaching at the med school down the street.
"11:11a and I crossed. That's exactly the point I was trying to make. Historians and archaeologists teach languages (a point we've belabored to death), so why can't lang/lit people teach class civ, history, and archaeology courses?"
Maybe because archaeologists and historians have taken years of language classes and are trained at it? If you're not an archaeologist or historian, how many archaeology courses did you take in grad school? 1? 2?
The point is, maybe historians and archaeologists SHOULD be teaching those courses, but they're often not. I regret the state of affairs, but that's the way it is. I think anyone who is questioning that, for a good number of classics departments in the US, civ courses (excluding history and archaeology, including stuff like myth, greek and roman civ, upper-level civ topics like women in antiquity or classics in film, and so on) fill the seats as much or more than 10 people in baby Greek and 50 in baby Latin, with declining numbers as the level rises, is just flat out wrong.
You are right. As the lone historian in a department, I have to cringe when my colleagues teach civ. They either read straight off of wikipedia or talk about Minyans as if it's fact. Contrary to what most classicists think, teaching history and civ properly requires more than reading general treatments texts from 40 years ago.
"The point is, maybe historians and archaeologists SHOULD be teaching those courses, but they're often not. I regret the state of affairs, but that's the way it is."
This is good and fine, and can excuse departmental demographics that were largely shaped years ago, but why aren't we correcting course now? We're still largely training and hiring people who have little interest or expertise in teaching the largest courses.
Bingo, that's why classics as an academic unit is dead.
I think the person who has nothing better to do on a Saturday night than look at Classics websites was misled by 9:53's statement that "History and Archaeology are our money courses." It does not follow that only historians and archaeologists teach those. Quite the contrary
True, it doesn't necessarily follow, but in our case (and, I think, in most departments) it does.
Let's be blunt: philologists continue to exist thanks only to the heavy lifting done by the ancient historians and archaeologists. Philologists teach the boutique language classes which range from 2-15 students each, while we (historians and archaeologists) teach the large lecture courses that consistently fill up to 60 students and more. Now, sometimes philologists teach Myth, Film & Classics, etc., but those are not part of their regular rotations.
I, as the resident historian, have also taught every level of both Greek and Latin. Our archaeologist has done the same.
The lit folks couldn't dream of teaching our lecture courses successfully. But the department desperately needs the numbers our courses bring in order to counterbalance the anemic enrollments in lit and language classes. So the burden of enrollments falls disproportionally on historians and archaeologists. This, I am sure, is much more the norm across the profession than not.
Now, this isn't just sour grapes. Everybody has the same teaching load, as far as numbers of courses go. But the amount of time it takes to prepare a lecture course for 60 undergrads, grade exams, papers, etc. is much, much more than any language course. I know because I have taught them all. So, when it comes to teaching hours, historians and archaeologists actually have to spend a heck of a lot more time than philologists. But our research and service expectations are the same.
We are more versatile, more over-worked, bring in more students, and at the same time have a tougher time getting the jobs in the first place. Am I bitter? No. I have a job. But I do recognize injustice when it bites me and my fellow historians (and archaeologists) in the collective ass.
APPLAUSE
WDNTFF, don't forget the fact that many archaeologists and historians conduct field work and schools. So not only do we teach like dogs, we need to write grant proposals and field reports on top of scholarly publications. When do we write these? Not during the summers. And guess who usually does community outreach lectures? The faculty member who wants to talk about Juvenal or the one who wants to talk about the movie 300?
Shit, who would want to go into classical archaeology? Sucks to be you.
Thanks, tell me about it.
Philologists teach the boutique language classes which range from 2-15 students each, while we (historians and archaeologists) teach the large lecture courses that consistently fill up to 60 students and more. Now, sometimes philologists teach Myth, Film & Classics, etc., but those are not part of their regular rotations.
Greek and Roman civ, and myth, plus turns in "Western" or "World" civ courses, are regular gigs for Hellenists and Latinists at every public school in the states. I don't know where you're working that 60 is a big class and language teachers don't clip on a microphone, but you should really get out more.
If you're talking about an independent Department of Classics, this is a patent lie. I can't think of one independent department where even the majority of philologists teach large courses. Western Civ (Cave to Renaissance) courses are the domain of history departments or the larger catch all departments that classics is getting funneled into.
Even if what you say is true, and I have no doubts it eventually has to happen, how can a discipline supply teachers for universities when the classes we take in grad school will almost certainly have little to do with the classes we teach? I don't know about you, but the cosomography of Vergil does not really help me teach Roman Civ.
Yes, occasionally lit/language folks clip on a microphone, but they don't own one of their own, like the historians and archaeologists do.
Myth is a regular one for some, granted. Greek and Roman civ courses are more often taught by historians. Ditto "Western Civ". C'mon, these classes are "regular gigs" for Latinists and Hellenists only if you think jamming at the local bar every few months is a "regular gig".
60 is a large course when you don't have a TA to help with grading, and your school is such that you are expected to assign 2 research papers in such courses. As far as time-suck is concerned, I'd rather lecture to an auditorium of 500 and have TAs do all of my grading than lecture to 30 and have to do it all myself.
If you're talking about an independent Department of Classics, this is a patent lie. I can't think of one independent department where even the majority of philologists teach large courses. Western Civ (Cave to Renaissance) courses are the domain of history departments or the larger catch all departments that classics is getting funneled into.
Myth is a regular one for some, granted. Greek and Roman civ courses are more often taught by historians. Ditto "Western Civ".
Lord above. Yes, please, do continue to tell me what I'm not teaching and have not taught.
Look, if this is something you're interested in, don't just make wild generalizations; go look at university course listings. The last time this came up, regarding Texas in particular, I went and looked at their listings, and they had literary people teaching all of those courses both semesters this year. I've just gone to the Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, and UNC sites, and it looks to me like a bunch of literary classicists teaching civ courses and myth courses this year.
Now, if the literary people at those public schools aren't dodging lecture courses, at what public schools are they dodging them?
I don't know about you, but the cosomography of Vergil does not really help me teach Roman Civ.
OK, well, just by saying that you've demonstrated to my satisfaction that there are certain literary classicists who shouldn't be let anywhere near a civ course. So, congratulations, I guess.
Wow. After reading the comments from the last 24 hours, I have to say that the only scholars I currently don't loathe are the art historians and ancient philosophers. Go figure.
well, anon 3:00, you must be very impressionable
the disciplinary bigotry is quite off-putting - poldy
I wonder how many, if any of you know how non-R1, large departments work. It seems not.
The stupidity on this blog makes me cry some days.
I have to say that the only scholars I currently don't loathe are the art historians and ancient philosophers.
Me, too. Heck, I'm an historian, and I even hate myself now.
But as an historian, I'm still puzzled by this question:
If you believe that Classics is dead, or dying, why are you in the field? I am especially curious because those insisting that Classics is dying or dead don't seem to be offering ideas for its resurrection.
As for being given instruction in how to teach classical civ courses, my grad program (and every grad program I know anything about) made darn sure every student TA'd either Greek or Roman civ AND Mythology. So when it came my turn to teach those classes as faculty, I was nervous, and still had stuff to learn, but I felt prepared. Those grad seminars on Vergilian cosmogony aren't pre-professional training in the pedagogical sense.
Er, I've studied Classics for twenty years and I've never heard of a class on Vergilian cosmography or cosmogony. I've heard of classes on Vergil though. Call me weird but I think we should keep those.
There seem to be some pretty bad analogies drawn here. Philology classes are pitched at fairly advanced students - they aren't the equivalent of, nor a substitute for, large lecture classes. The students' input is supposed to be active rather than passive, and if you were to try to teach analysis of a text to a hundred students at a time, well, you couldn't. You probably couldn't even manage it with more than twenty students in the room since everyone needs to have a go contributing a meaningful quantity. If you were to teach an art history or archaeology or philosophy class at a similar level of sophistication you wouldn't have any more students - these aren't seminars in finance, government, or anything pre-med. Should there be more of those non-philological advanced classes? Perhaps. Probably. But it's not as if there are so many advanced philology classes these days anyway, since the general level of linguistic ability is lower than it used to be. So by default we're probably going to see more of those other classes in the near future. Anyway, which is all to say, you're comparing lemons with platypuses.
Look, if this is something you're interested in, don't just make wild generalizations; go look at university course listings. The last time this came up, regarding Texas in particular, I went and looked at their listings, and they had literary people teaching all of those courses both semesters this year. I've just gone to the Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, and UNC sites, and it looks to me like a bunch of literary classicists teaching civ courses and myth courses this year.
This is a great example of professional clueslessness. Those are the top of the tour. They can do things most (i.e. 90%) departments can't. Who cares what is going on at those places? Check your Denisons, your Emorys, your OSU-somewheres, your Regional State U. of Interstate 70, etc. etc. etc. in order to figure out general rules of thumb.
Gesturing towards what the folks at Berkeley or Michigan do in order to extrapolate what "the field" does is like figuring out the average duffer's short game by watching Tiger Woods.
Gesturing towards what the folks at Berkeley or Michigan do in order to extrapolate what "the field" does is like figuring out the average duffer's short game by watching Tiger Woods.
I teach at an SLAC and we get more than half our enrolments from classical civ courses - myth, Women in the Ancient World, Age of Pericles, Age of Augustus (usually 40-50 students per class), and each faculty member has at least one of these courses a year. This in turn gives the dean a good reason to keep our tiny tiny 4th semester Greek and 3rd year Latin courses open.
I'm sure not all SLACs take that route, of course, but I think quite a few do.
"Those are the top of the tour. They can do things most (i.e. 90%) departments can't."
Right. In fact, I picked them because they're an extreme case. Those places should be best positioned to have their literature people dodging lecture courses, because they have large undergrad language and grad programs for them to teach in. And yet that is obviously not going on.
So, if that's the case, what you're suggesting is that literary classicists at less famous and wealthy state schools lead a luxurious life of tiny Greek classes, and never appear before more than 12 students at once, whereas at UT the poor, hapless famous people have no choice but to teach the intro civ and myth courses.
That doesn't really sound right, does it?
Even at the top schools, it's misleading to say a "bunch" of philologists teach large classes. As a graduate of the history program at UCLA, I know for a fact that exactly ONE philologist teaches a large course per quarter - Classics 10 - Discovering Greeks, Classics 20 - Discovering Romans, Classics 30 - Myth. And guess what, I've taken the first two and they are basically the "greatest hits of literature" as someone suggested (at least to this one historian). For this one large course per quarter, there are ten philologists who teach "Plato - early dialogues" with five students, "Aristotle" with three, or Advanced Latin Prose with seven.
So what's the problem with this? We're not offering courses that would make classics more balanced/relevant. Why aren't we offering more non-language courses such as the rise of Athens, Roman Colonization, Hellenistic History, or the life of Constantine. No, it won't draw 300 like the large lectures, but it will surely draw more than 3, 5, and 7. The "best" answer I've heard is, "We don't have the people to teach this." So train them and hire them.
"For this one large course per quarter, there are ten philologists who teach "Plato - early dialogues" with five students, "Aristotle" with three, or Advanced Latin Prose with seven."
If you want to have a Classical language major, these courses are going to have to exist. They're almost never going to get over 20 students, and sometimes many fewer. But every term, in each language, there need to be one or two intermediate level courses, and one or two senior level courses. If not, students aren't going to be able to complete a major in their four years. And whatever other threats exist to Classics—and there are many—it definitely doesn't have a future if we don't train some small number of people who can actually read the languages of Greco-Roman civilization.
And there really isn't an alternative to teaching those classes in a small room. It's not as though, if had 200 people taking intermediate Euripides, we'd book a lecture hall for it; we'd book eight 25-seat classrooms. Not that a big lecture class is great for learning any subject, but it's completely useless for language teaching.
Where I teach, we offer enough language courses to support the major, and then the other undergrad courses are big-to-giant intro lectures and medium-sized (50-100) courses on religion, epic, "Age of Augustus," or other subjects of pretty broad interest. Our numbers would be better if we got rid of the language courses, but I don't think Classics would be better off in the long run if we stopped having a viable major that focused on language training.
It may be that there are places out there with an extravagant number of language courses with virtually no enrollment, and that I just I haven't encountered that personally.
Exactly. French studies require the knowledge of French, so Classics requires the knowledge of Greek and Latin. Unlike French, not everyone has to have a generally equal mastery of the languages, since you can't simultaneously be expected to be an archaeologist, a philosopher, and a palaeographer. We already build that flexibility into Classics in a way the modern languages do not (you'd look pretty stupid in a French dept if you didn't speak French). But the language classes we teach (except for the most advanced) aren't designed to produce one thing or the other, they're designed to make students good at reading texts (any texts) in the ancient languages. As it happens they tend to be literary texts because that's about the only thing we can get even five students to read. Imagine the even greater emptiness of language classes if we taught disproportionately more Mycenaean, Latin inscriptions or Augustinian sermons (excepting schools where the last would be a major draw...). It's not that those subjects aren't worthwhile, it's that we're having enough problems as it is filling language classes on Homer and Vergil. The archaeologists' solution - let's ditch the languages - would make us look as stupid as the Frenchless French dept. The best compromises, as mentioned in several earlier posts, involve a healthy balance of large lecture classes and small seminars IN ALL SUBFIELDS. Some institutions are simply better than others at making that happen.
To Anonymous 1:23 and other disgruntled/unappreciated realia folks:
Just to set the record straight: at UCLA there are 17 members of the regular faculty in Classics.
Of these, 4 are focused on realia, the rest (13) are "lit people."
In Winter 2009, they are offering 13 "civ" courses, 3 Greek courses, and 4 Latin courses at the undergrad level.
Of those "civ" courses, only 3, at most, are things that a philologist could not teach as well as, or better than, an archaeologist or historian.
The Plato course to which you refer is being taught by a "cooperating" faculty member whose appointment is in the Philosophy department.
The total enrollment in "civ" courses taught by philologists is 288+16+29+38+27+12=410. The total enrollment in "civ" courses taught by the realia people in the department is 148+1+35=184. The remaining four courses are being taught by people with their appointments in other departments. So it looks like the realia people, whose specialty is supposed to be the "civ" stuff, are bringing in an average of 61.3 students per "civ" course, while the philologists are bringing in an average of 68.3 people per "civ" course.
And there are people teaching things like "Hellenistic History": Andrew Koh, a realia person, is teaching "The Age of Alexander the Great," with 35 students. I am sure that his research specialty in ancient flora and aromata (true, it's not quite as esoteric as "Vergil's Cosomography," whatever that is supposed to be), makes him the best possible person to be talking about Menander, or evaluating the historicity of the Alexander Romance and its manifold recensions (no insult intended to A. J. Koh: I am just pointing out the absurdity of what some people on here have been arguing, namely that realia people are somehow automatically the linguistic equals of philologists, or that people who study ancient texts don't have to know anything about history or archaeology: we all have our specialties, and I know plenty of Archaeologists whose Greek and Latin skills aren't even as good as some of my undergraduates').
But it sounds like anon 1:23 resents the fact that Ancient Historians are given appointments in Classics departments, because they end up having to bring up enrollments for "lit" people. If that's the case, he/she should look for a History department appointment. I am sure the 4 people who specialize in Ancient History are treated much better by the 26 people in the UCLA History department who work on "European History" (i.e. all of the more recent, better documented, and more relevant stuff in your geographical area of specialty) than they are by the people in Classics. And I'm sure it is much better trying to explain to a dean why your general class on "History of the Ancient Mediterranean World" (HIST 122A) can only draw 58 people, while your colleague's quite specialized "Latin American Elitelore" (HIST 160A) brings in 138.
Perhaps Classics departments will soon die (which is just as likely from all of this in-fighting as from the dropping enrollments). Then all of those obnoxious "lit" people so many of you resent will be rolled into some language department, where their enrollments like 57 for two sections of Latin 2 taught by the same person, or even the 7 people in Advanced Latin Prose look good beside the 2 people who enrolled in Czech 102. And they won't have to explain to you all how the historical infinitive works ever again.
For crying out loud, everyone in the Classics department benefits from there being Classics departments, even if the philologists benefit a little more. Whether Classics as such has a future or not is one thing. But the facts are these: language classes, no matter the language, have small enrollments. They need small enrollments, or they don't work. If you wanted to teach lots of classes with small enrollments, you should have been a philologist (if your language skills were good enough). Because people in language departments, no matter what, teach a lot of small courses. They also teach a lot of "civ" courses, however, to keep enrollments up. I have taught at least one "civ" course for every two language courses, including the introductory language courses, which typically have fairly large enrollments and are more difficult to teach than lecture courses. And finally, I doubt that most historians and archaeologists, however dissatisfied they may be with their workload, however unappreciated they may feel, would be happier in a department where topics like the Vietnam War or the Black Death were more commonplace than the reign of Augustus; I, at any rate, am very happy to be in a department where all of my colleagues know that Nero didn't actually play a fiddle while Rome burned, and where the lectures and job-talks I am expected to attend are comprehensible, whether given by archaeologists, historians or philologists. And I am also very happy to be in a department where I can talk to a colleague with a better understanding of the fall of the Roman Republic before I lecture on Caesar, and where the same colleague will ask for my perspective on a tricky sentence in Cicero before teaching it to an undergrad Latin class. Let's stop all the bickering and try to keep this ship from sinking, shall we?
How many independent Departments of French are there? Even then, how many French seminars with 5 students are there in "Early Rousseau" and "Cosmography in the Candide?" How ludicrous would that be? And French is actually practical in today's world.
If you want to be a language program, join a large language and lit department - problem solved. You can't have it both ways and deans are agreeing. You can't be an independent classical language program that pays lip service to culture, which is what you're doing when 90% of your course listings are language and literature. It is just not sustainable. Now if you want to be a truly holistic, sustainable, independent classical studies program (more than just in name) you need to balance the curriculum and have less language courses. Hiding behind a Greek civ, Roman civ, and myth course taught by three faculty out of twenty will not protect the language classes forever.
It sucks, but this is the choice facing classics in the 21st century. Adapt or perish.
Anon 4:10, I know AJ Koh from working with him at Corinth. He's an archaeologist teaching what sounds like a history course. How does this support your argument that universities are well served by having 14/17 classics faculty members specialize in lang/lit? If you believe that lang/lit people can teach civ courses just as well as historians/achaeologists, I'm afraid you have an unbalanced definition of civ or you overestimate the capabilities of lang/lit people.
Agreed - I doubt your average "Roman Civ" or "Greek Civ" course would be recognized as a civ course by any anthropology or history department. Therein lies the rub - classics is in its own lala land.
Civilization includes more than just literacy - what about economics, architecture, art, politics, ritual, etc? Your average Greek civ courses reads like this: Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Thucydides, Lysias, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Xenophon - or something like that. It's been a while since I've kept up, but you get my point.
Now if you want to be a truly holistic, sustainable, independent classical studies program (more than just in name) you need to balance the curriculum and have less language courses.
How do you envision a classical studies program existing if it reduces its language offerings to a point at which it is not practical for students to major in the languages?
Civilization includes more than just literacy - what about economics, architecture, art, politics, ritual, etc? Your average Greek civ courses reads like this: Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Thucydides, Lysias, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Xenophon - or something like that.
Given that these courses are usually lower-division general ed courses, I think there's a wide variety of perfectly acceptable ways of doing them. What you describe is a course that's mainly literature and intellectual history, studied within historical and social context. A historian or an archaeologist could do the course with a similar emphasis on their areas of interest and expertise. The point is to have the class learn, think, and write about some set of notable and interesting aspects of Greek society; it's not an introduction to a particular discipline.
Okay anon 4:10, let's go over the Winter 2009 numbers since UCLA is kind enough to provide enrollment figures. I'm only listing courses taught by faculty with primary appointments in classics.
Classics 20 - Discovering Greeks
Philologist (Gurval) - 288 students
Bravo, heres your sacrificial philologist for the term
Classics 51B - Roman Art and Archaeology
Archaeologist (McDonnell) - 148 students
Here's one of your few archaeologists already with 1/3 of the terms enrollment yet is 1/5 of the faculty
Classics 89 - Honors Seminar
Philologist (Gurval) - 16 students
Looks like the aforementioned sacrificial philologist scored an easy "honors" seminar anyway
Classics 89HC - Honors Contracts
Archaeologist (McDonnell" - 1 student
Presumably an independent study
Classics 142 Ancient Epic
Philologist (Bergren) and ? (Snyder) - 38 students
This poor philologist has to bear the burden of having 38 students, but thankfully has a team teacher
Classics 144 Studies-Ancient Culture (Age of Alexander)
Archaeologist (Koh)- 35 students
Here's your archaeologist
Classics M145A Ancient Philosophy
Philologist (Blank) - 27 students
Classics 191 Capstone (Immortal Experience)
Philologist (Purves) - 12 students
Classics 199 Directed Research
Archaeologist (Koh) - 0 student
Independent study?
Greek 2 Elementary Greek
Archaeologist (Koh) - 20 students
Greek 100 Readings-Greek Prose
Philologist (Telo) - 7 students
Greek 115 Xenophon
Philologist (Phillips) - 6 students
Greek 200A History-Greek Literature
Philologist (Purves) - 10 students
Greek 220 Greek Novel
Philologist (Telo) - 7 students
Greek 243 Mycenaean Greek
Philologist (Vine) - 11 students
Latin 2 Elementary Latin
Philologist (Richlin) - 57 students
Latin 100 Latin Prose and Poetry
Philologist (Johanson) - 18 students
Latin 109 Roman Satire
Philologist (Richlin) - 5 students
Latin 118 Seneca
Philologist (Butler) - 4 students
Latin 210 Advanced Prose Composition
Philologist (Butler) - 7 students
This is a balanced classics program? You have 17 faculty members and this is it? How does the dean hold off on whacking this department and putting Greek civ, Roman civ, and myth in the history department? It's not like UCLA is the "Harvard Department of the Classics."
Are there any Classics departments out there that offer a major which requires NONE of the languages? I know of some "Classical Studies" or "Classical Civilizations" majors at various schools that require a year or two of either Greek or Latin. But I am not aware of a program that offers a major completely bereft of the languages.
I don't know if this is even a good idea, but I'd like to know if it exists at all. I do know that our own (at a SLAC) Classics-lite major (two years of Latin or Greek required) is flourishing, while our hard-core "Classics" major (3 years and 2 years of each language) is struggling mightily. This does not make me happy, even though I am an historian.
I really do want the languages to flourish as well, and I suspect this debate would not be as acrimonious if we could figure out a way to grow them.
That said, I do think having this conversation in an open forum is healthy for the field, even if it is upsetting to read.
I'm slightly annoyed to be lectured to by someone who in the same comment manages to refer to "The (?!?) Candide" and writes the words "less lecture courses."
"What you describe is a course that's mainly literature and intellectual history, studied within historical and social context."
UCLA is also kind enough to provide textbooks and I think you're absolutly right. For "Discovering the Romans" the texts are Virgil's Aeneid, Boatwright's Brief History of Romans, and Petronius' Satyricon. If this is how we introduce a general student population to the Romans, I don't see how it's sustainable and why its not in some large history or language department.
Please, everybody,
NO NAMES!!
I am sure that the fine folks at UCLA don't appreciate that their departmental roster is now up on a random blog... even though one of their own faculty members appears to have started it by naming a certain flora specialist...
Meh..... What to do? It seems that it is being used for purely illustrative purposes, and does not appear to be aimed at hurting individuals, nor aimed at hurting UCLA. So, I will leave what is up for now, unless I receive a request to remove it.
But, please please please! NO NAMES!! You can talk about these things without using such particular examples, I imagine.
Sincerely,
Servius
"I don't know if this is even a good idea, but I'd like to know if it exists at all. I do know that our own (at a SLAC) Classics-lite major (two years of Latin or Greek required) is flourishing, while our hard-core "Classics" major (3 years and 2 years of each language) is struggling mightily. This does not make me happy, even though I am an historian."
Regardless of the specific solution, your scenario suggests that classics is not tapping its full potential as a vital component of the academic community by having a 3:1 or 5:1 ratio of philologists to "everyone else." There is apparently an outdated paradigm at work here by the person who states, "And whatever other threats exist to Classics—and there are many—it definitely doesn't have a future if we don't train some small number of people who can actually read the languages of Greco-Roman civilization."
So for classics to survive, you need a graduate student who takes 3-4 years of Greek, 3-4 years of Latin, a bunch of esoteric seminars, and maybe a general class or two? You then throw them into a job where they teach myth or civ and they're probably thinking WTF is this?
You need 13/17 faculty members to, "train some small number of people who can actually read the languages of Greco-Roman civilization?" WTF is right. That percentage should be 8/17 tops. Hire a couple historians and art historians for cripes sake and maybe someone who teaches modern Greek language and culture while you're at it.
This discussion is hard to follow.
Does the anti-philologist party really feel that large, general introduction courses are the best measure for the future of the study of antiquity?
Is removing or limiting language instruction a good thing for classics?
I feel like I am missing several crucial links in the argument and I can't tell what changes are being proposed (aside from lynching philologists).
- poldy
The suggestion that historians should teach Myth in a History dept. seems rather odd, to say the least. I would sooner eat a shoe full of maggots than teach a myth class, and I suspect I speak for most historians when I say that.
So for classics to survive, you need a graduate student who takes 3-4 years of Greek, 3-4 years of Latin, a bunch of esoteric seminars, and maybe a general class or two? You then throw them into a job where they teach myth or civ and they're probably thinking WTF is this?
I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble following your train of thought. Are you saying that instead of training archaeologists and philologists and historians we should be training Ph.D.s in "Myth" or "General Aspects of Ancient Rome" so that they can teach myth and Roman civ?
I would sooner eat a shoe full of maggots than teach a myth class, and I suspect I speak for most historians when I say that.
I hear that... and I'm a literary scholar.
"I really do want the languages to flourish as well, and I suspect this debate would not be as acrimonious if we could figure out a way to grow them."
Grow them? The only way we can grow them is the entire world gets transported back to the 19th century. Or we find Atlantis, they only speak ancient Greek and Latin, have a GDP 5 times the US, and want to trade with the world. Every high school would then have Greek and Latin again. Otherwise, there is no way in hell there should be more than 5 programs out there with the full complement of philologists churning out Ph.D. grads for the survival of classical literature. The saved resources, both financial and human, should be used to find the cure for cancer and this economy, and generally making the world a better place. Sorry, but Seneca, as nice as it is, doesn't really do this.
"I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble following your train of thought. Are you saying that instead of training archaeologists and philologists and historians we should be training Ph.D.s in "Myth" or "General Aspects of Ancient Rome" so that they can teach myth and Roman civ?"
No I'm saying we should be training and hiring more people who are in the best position to grow classics. Philologists should be thrown into a language department and go through some selective processes unprotected from ancient paradigms protecting them in classics departments. I know for a fact that Spanish and French people would laugh at the need to have 6 Hellenists and 6 Latinists in a general language program "so that it can survive."
Philologists should be thrown into a language department and go through some selective processes unprotected from ancient paradigms protecting them in classics departments.
I love you, too. :)
But if you want to be that way about it, maybe classical archaeologists should be thrown into an anthropology department and go through some selective processes unprotected by ancient paradigms protecting them in classics departments.
And I know for a fact that European historians would laugh at the idea that we need more than one or two Classical historians in any but the largest departments. Said Classical historian would then spend his or her life teaching "Greek History" and "Roman History" in alternate semesters for the remainder of his or her career, and would be constantly berated for not keeping enrollments as high as "American History: 1900 to the present" or the like. My point was exactly this: having a Classics major and Classics department benefits us all. Or perhaps you are also disgruntled that real history departments aren't hiring more of your kind, that you cannot win in either world: on one side, you are outnumbered by "lit" people, on the other, by people who study the hundreds of other possible cultures and periods? And without a Classics department, most Classical archaeologist jobs wouldn't even exist...they would be Anthro jobs, and you'd be teaching Anthro 101 on a regular basis, instead of Roman or Greek civ; or perhaps History jobs, teaching Greek or Roman History. But perhaps most archaeologists would like that more...
The saved resources, both financial and human, should be used to find the cure for cancer and this economy, and generally making the world a better place. Sorry, but Seneca, as nice as it is, doesn't really do this.
Another joke, right? Since the above isn't really an argument in support of anything, really, except quitting and joining med school.
I think we should all be grateful for the existence of Classics Departments. I am an archaeologist, and I could probably find a niche in a couple of other cognate departments, but I like being in Classics.
I often wonder how to deal with the question of encouraging majors. I want my enrollments up, but I am reluctant to encourage students to major in Classics if they don't have a clear and realistic plan about what they are going to do with that major. There aren't a lot of options.
But perhaps most archaeologists would like that more...
I think they would, they're not getting hired, and they're taking it out on the rest of us historians and philologists. Understandable, but not really the stuff of good argument. Classics isn't in trouble because of language or a lack of material culture; it's in trouble because that's the way the world's moved. We're actually in the same general boat as all the humanities. End of story. Now let's do what little we can to stem the tide.
"But if you want to be that way about it, maybe classical archaeologists should be thrown into an anthropology department and go through some selective processes unprotected by ancient paradigms protecting them in classics departments."
Throw the maybe one clarch into an anthro program? I think that clarch has a better chance to survive than 6 classical philologists in a language department.
We could always start a - gasp! - practical thread on designing a decent classics major. The thread could also include tips on how to increase / organize language enrollments. The other practical thread (now long forgotten) on hiring statistics worked out really well, though I suppose it was more data-based (so couldn't be too acrimonious).
Who the hell are we kidding? Philologists will go down with the ship before balancing their curriculum and faculty.
And most of you clarchs, you're just philologists who dig (or dug) in the dirt once in a while. I don't blame you since the committee that chose you couldn't tell a pot from a bone. I've met plenty of Roman archaeologists who can conjugate amo and decline amicus in their sleep but couldn't tell one end of a theodolite from the other. DUCKING
Since we've had a go at just about everyone I'd like to add some venom against the stupid, lazy undergraduates who want everything spoonfed to them before they wonder why all their jobs are going to more energetic people overseas. This country is doomed, and no 500 person myth or material culture class is going to help us.
Dear managers of this blog,
Please shut this operation down. The collateral damage to departments and candidates has become too high. The health of a democracy depends on the self-restraint of its citizens. This blog is now diseased.
Please end this now.
Yeah, I'm afraid that classical archaeology hasn't been developing along the same lines as the rest of the archaeological universe, and that anthro departments aren't exactly dying to hire classical archaeologists, many of whom they consider to be working with a (figuratively) Neolithic intellectual apparatus.
So, unless clarch changes how it works, it's the Classics department or nothing. Which is fine with me; I love me some classical archaeologists. When they're not dreaming aloud about kicking me out of the Classics department, anyway.
oof, go down with the ship already, you scuttling butts!
The fact is that Classics departments are, by and large, language and literature departments. A lot of them are even called things like "The Department of Classical Languages and Literature." They always have been. The new disciplines (relatively) are History and Archaeology. Most of them have gone off to join other departments. The few who haven't are the few that get hired by Classics departments to teach some (not all) of their civ courses. Now I am not sure if the argument here is that a) there should be more of you people hired, b) there should be less language people in the language department into which you have been hired, c) the language department into which have been hired shouldn't be a language department, d) the language department into which you've been hired should cease to exist, and its members should be sent off to other departments. Whatever the argument, the point is that you have been hired to teach civ courses. Why does it matter whether you teach them for a History department or for a Classics department or for an Anthro department? Do you think your enrollments would be lower if you taught in a History department, and that you would thus have less work? Or is it that you think the language people don't have to work as hard as you do because you have to grade more papers? Last I checked, I couldn't give a scantron test to an advanced Latin class: I actually have to read each quiz, test, and 20-page essay by hand, as opposed to having a machine and TAs do my work for me as I would in a 400-seat introductory history course. And last I checked, introductory languages still met twice as often as lecture classes, often at ungodly hours, and had quizzes and homework to grade every day. But it may be true that all of us "lang/lit" people (whether linguists, comp lit folks, critics, stylistic critics, papyrologists, palaeographers, textual critics or epigraphers) are just slackers and that what we do is even more useless than what the historians and archaeologists do, and we have no right to have our own department. In that case, perhaps your dream will come true, and we will disappear into a department where we have real competition for enrollment, with all of the room fillers like advanced French in the French and Francophone department (enrollment 12, capped at 24). And the Anthro people can laugh at our civ courses like myth for their absurdity (what? teach myth without including at least a day out of your forty to talk about Neanderthal man and the vast amounts we know about his mythological system? How quaint!), and you can laugh right along with them, now the token Classicist in an Anthro department, rather than the token Archaeologist in a Classics department.
I have some questions for the anti-philology crowd: given that most Clarch or Ancient History PhD programs have admissions policies like the following: "preference will normally be given to applicants who have already demonstrated significant preparation in at least one of the required ancient languages," do you really think most of you would have gotten into grad school if there hadn't been all of those "boutique classes" you are so scornful of? Or do you think that sort of admissions policy should be changed? In which case your argument about being able to teach the languages as well as the civ courses goes out the window, the languages lose ground, and then who will tell you what Pausanias has to say about your site?
Another question: intro civ courses bring the enrollments up for sure, but what about majors? You can't have a department with no majors. And how many students, thrilled at the prospect of learning more about the ancient world from your civ courses that focus on material culture, find out that they have to take languages, and say "sure, sign me up"? Obviously not enough to keep the language enrollments up. And what are you going to teach at the advanced level that will interest people who are Classics majors because they want to understand the poetic art of Vergil in the original language, or to put on a dramatic performance of Aristophanes in Greek (whether you like it or not, a lot of Classics majors are those sorts of people)? Yet I can guarantee that every single student who would take a class like "Vergil's Cosmogony," if such a class existed, either is or becomes a major.
If Classics departments were the way some of you seem to envision them, the "boutique" classes would be things like "The Topography of the Esquiline Hill" or "Baths and Toilets in Baiae" or "The Life and Times of Julian, Rome's Most Backwards Emperor." Would those really draw more people than a class on the Aeneid? And where would the people who just want to read Vergil, and have not the slightest interest in Roman topography (significantly more people, I think, than vice versa) go for their courses?
It seems to me that the main problem is that plenty of people in other departments can do what you do, albeit with different data. Generally, only people in Classics can teach Latin and Greek. That makes it mainly a language department, because the only reason to be in it, rather than somewhere else, is because of the linguistic component of our discipline. Otherwise, you might as well just be in an Anthro or History department. If an undergrad wants to study history, primarily, he or she will major in History. He or she will only be a Classics major if his or her interest in the languages is great enough, if, that is he or she wants to be able to read Thucydides in the original language for a paper on Pericles, rather than in translation. People come to Classics departments primarily for the languages, not for learning historical methods (they can do that in History) or how to take part in an archaeological dig (for which they can go to a field school and/or take classes in an Anthro department). The only thing which brings them specifically to Classics is the languages, which is why those are the emphasis of every Classics department. If you change that, its not a department any more: its a "track" or subfield or whatever you want to call it within History or Anthro or Romance Languages or whatever your preferred, non-Latin and Greek, focus is.
"Classics isn't in trouble because of language or a lack of material culture; it's in trouble because that's the way the world's moved. We're actually in the same general boat as all the humanities. End of story. Now let's do what little we can to stem the tide.
No we're not really in the same boat. History, English, Art History, etc. aren't getting shut down like Classics. Why? Look at their faculty roster. They have faculty who specialize in and teach topics such as South Asian Art or South American History. Was this the case 100 years ago? No, but as the world changed so did they. If I started a new university today, I would include History, English, Anthropology, Chemistry, etc., but classics would most definitely not even be on the radar.
You say that Classics doesn't have such a far reaching scope? I disagree, we just not tapping the potential. Why don't more classics departments teach topics such as Greek warfare or Foreigners in Constantiople? Because not enoughh literature is written about it? Surely these topics could fall under the rubric of classics and be more relevant today than pastoralism in Hesiod and Vergil. So that's my tenet - that Classics hasn't evolved nearly as much as it can. We're to blame for our irrelevance, not the content. The curriculum is by no means set in stone and we don't need to just "work with what we have" as some of you have suggested.
"Surely these topics could fall under the rubric of classics and be more relevant today than pastoralism in Hesiod and Vergil."
Ooh, look, somebody's inventing ridiculous classes that nobody teaches in order to discredit a discipline! I want to play, too!
Here's mine:
"Surely a class on Greek tragedy would be more relevant than a course entitled 'Three Identical Loom Weights that I Catalogued Last Summer.'"
How did I do?
There aren't that many Classics depts getting shut down. And we are in the same boat as the rest of the humanities. You have to look at things proportionally. Sure, a history dept is going to be bigger than a Classics dept, but it's trying to cover all of world history pretty patchily. That's a pretty big ask and they're not being given the resources to do that. There'll be some increased funding for China and S. Asia studies, maybe some more local regional interests too (S. America), but the rest of world history is just as shafted as Classics. The same goes for English. Go talk to a medievalist or modernist in a language or art history dept. We really are in the same boat, I promise. Now Chemistry's a completely different ballgame, but last I remember that wasn't in the Humanities. To think that anthropology is the panacaea for our ills is preposterous. To study almost ANY humanities subject is increasingly seen as self-indulgent, useless, soft, career-threatening, time-wasting, old-fashioned. Tack on some anthropology and all you've got is mutton dressed as lamb. It doesn't get to the heart of the problem at all.
"History, English, Art History, etc. aren't getting shut down like Classics."
What are some examples of Classics departments getting shut down? And how does this picture account for the University of Miami--the nation's youngest Classics department, as we learned from the November issue of the Placement Bulletin--which was started from scratch just 2 (or so) short years ago and is growing (and being grown) rapidly? I'm not sure I've seen any evidence that Classics isn't at least as healthy (relatively speaking) as other humanities departments these days.
Anon 8:02, your post blows my mind.
Especially this:
"It seems to me that the main problem is that plenty of people in other departments can do what you do, albeit with different data."
The same is true for you. That different data? It's called French, Russian, or Chinese rather than Latin or Greek.
I don't think that anyone denies that there are students who want to read Vergil in Latin or Thucydides in Greek, but let's be honest, there aren't flocks of them. That does not reduce the importance of those who do want to, but there just aren't flocks. And I have taught a course on Roman topography, and it drew more students than the intermediate Latin course I taught that same semester.
I am an archaeologist. I teach history classes. I teach civ classes. I teach language classes. I like them all. Anyone who wants to push the other subfields out is shooting himself in the foot. I am frustrated by the lack of equity that (I believe) I see sometimes-- for archaeologists on the job market especially-- but, come on, this kind of "my area is the only thing anyone is REALLY interested and your subfield is really something that any other department could cover" attitude is silly, bogus, and counterproductive for everyone.
Good lord.
This is appalling.
I followed this site last year, and I thought I'd stop by to see what was going on.
Guess I picked a bad night to do so.
I had some very nice conversations at the meetings this year, and it reminded me that Classicists as a whole are pretty nice people. Stressful situations always exacerbate minor tensions, and you all are dealing with a terribly stressful market this year.
I hope you all end up with very nice jobs. Best of luck on the market, and for those of you finishing your degrees, best of luck with the dissertation.
It seems to me that the main problem is that plenty of people in other departments can do what you do, albeit with different data. Generally, only people in Classics can teach Latin and Greek. That makes it mainly a language department, because the only reason to be in it, rather than somewhere else, is because of the linguistic component of our discipline. Otherwise, you might as well just be in an Anthro or History department. If an undergrad wants to study history, primarily, he or she will major in History. He or she will only be a Classics major if his or her interest in the languages is great enough, if, that is he or she wants to be able to read Thucydides in the original language for a paper on Pericles, rather than in translation. People come to Classics departments primarily for the languages, not for learning historical methods (they can do that in History) or how to take part in an archaeological dig (for which they can go to a field school and/or take classes in an Anthro department). The only thing which brings them specifically to Classics is the languages, which is why those are the emphasis of every Classics department. If you change that, its not a department any more: its a "track" or subfield or whatever you want to call it within History or Anthro or Romance Languages or whatever your preferred, non-Latin and Greek, focus is.
I never knew the philologist's argument for the hierarchy in classics, but this made it pretty clear. In essence, historians and archaeologists are lucky that philologists throw them a token bone here and there, because language is king.
For what's it's worth, I do disagree with the statement that students gravitate to classics to study the languages, especially in the 21st century. I would argue that most are lured in from taking the large gateway courses, watching the history channel, or even Xena. If I'm wrong, we really don't have a future if our hopes hinge on students licking their chops to wade through Wheelock and Hansen/Quinn.
"That makes it mainly a language department, because the only reason to be in it, rather than somewhere else, is because of the linguistic component of our discipline. Otherwise, you might as well just be in an Anthro or History department."
If it's just a langauge department, why not just combine Classics with Spanish, French, and German if it's just a language department? Am I missing something here? Surely a few token civ/history/archaeology courses and faculty doesn't justify its existence as a separate department? I've heard the argument that their nature as dead languages requires a separate department, but I still don't buy it. Why not just have a separate major or program within a general language department? The colleagues I have in South America and Asia are mystified how a classics department exists independently, and I can see why.
To be honest with you, I'm a 38 year old latinist and I would most definitely rather meet the board of trustees of the AIA than the APA. Call me a sell-out, but give me Harrison Ford, not Theodor Mommsen. mrrrrow
Yes, I sometimes think it is odd that it is not more often part of another language department (it actually is, in schools that don't have Classics but still want to offer Latin and Greek), but I think it is wonderful that it usually is not, and I also think it is wonderful that there are historians and archaeologists in Classics departments. Why it is that way has to do with the history of college education, which used be heavily based in Classical Philology. Whether it can stay that way has a great deal to do with whether it can reshape itself into the first truly interdisciplinary department. That will almost certainly involve bringing more people with a non-language approach into our departments. And I think I see that trend starting to emerge. Five out of the six hires that have happened at my department since my arrival were either archaeologists or historians, though the historians were still pretty language oriented because the History department has Ancient Historians of its own; all but one of these was either a new hire or a hire to replace a retired, oldschool philologist. That is anecdotal, it is true, but there were also an extremely large number of American Philological Association based searches this year that specifically asked for people with expertise in material culture, at the same time as they asked for a Latin prose research focus, for example. I think this is great, which brings me to my real point: the posting above was completely misunderstood, and I apologize if I was unclear. It was partly sarcastic (which does not come across well in type, without intonation, I am afraid), and was largely meant as an explanation of why there are so many philologists in most departments (because they, unlike the Historians and Archaeologists, have nowhere else to peddle their wares), rather than a plea to have fewer realia people in Classics departments. I am simply saying that this hostility that seems directed at philologists, as if we took all of your jobs, is rather depressing, when, as we see it, we like having you in our language departments, we even let you teach some of our language courses (though you seem rather upset that we would want to teach non-language courses, when the deans won't let us hire enough of you to teach them all for us: "Why do you need an historian? The History department has hundreds of them!") just so that we can justify hiring you into the Classics department instead of letting the History department take you off and pay you more to teach everything you want to teach and nothing you don't. But please, don't grudge us "Vergil's Cosmogony" (though I myself would probably be better qualified to teach, and more interested in teaching, "Toilets and Baths at Baiae." At least I know what toilets and baths are, and where Baiae is). It is interesting to some people. And no other department will let us teach anything there, let alone a class like that. We will teach something maggoty but seat filling like Myth or (shudder!) Etymology (which I have yet to hear one of the realia people mention teaching; if you think myth is bad...) just to make up for it. Pax?
To all involved in the recent discussions, take heart in knowing that you've illuminated some important issues concerning the future of classics that were unclear to me in the past. I honestly thank you all.
I just started grad school, but THANK GOD I jumped from a BA in classics to a Ph.D. program in anthro. I've saved this page and will send it to all my classical archaeology friends thinking about grad school.
Exactly. French studies require the knowledge of French, so Classics requires the knowledge of Greek and Latin. Unlike French, not everyone has to have a generally equal mastery of the languages, since you can't simultaneously be expected to be an archaeologist, a philosopher, and a palaeographer. We already build that flexibility into Classics in a way the modern languages do not (you'd look pretty stupid in a French dept if you didn't speak French). But the language classes we teach (except for the most advanced) aren't designed to produce one thing or the other, they're designed to make students good at reading texts (any texts) in the ancient languages. As it happens they tend to be literary texts because that's about the only thing we can get even five students to read. Imagine the even greater emptiness of language classes if we taught disproportionately more Mycenaean, Latin inscriptions or Augustinian sermons (excepting schools where the last would be a major draw...). It's not that those subjects aren't worthwhile, it's that we're having enough problems as it is filling language classes on Homer and Vergil. The archaeologists' solution - let's ditch the languages - would make us look as stupid as the Frenchless French dept. The best compromises, as mentioned in several earlier posts, involve a healthy balance of large lecture classes and small seminars IN ALL SUBFIELDS. Some institutions are simply better than others at making that happen.
This seems reasonable to me. There may indeed be a few archaeologists and historians out there who think we should ditch the languages (and it seems they all hang out here). Well, this one historian certainly doesn't, and I suspect that very few of my material culture/historically-minded colleagues would either. I love Latin and Greek, and want to see them both flourish.
But, it is a question of equity. I teach six classes per year. Four of those are lecture classes, two are language classes. My "literary" colleagues teach six classes per year. Generally 4, often 5, are language classes, and 2, often 1, are lecture classes. I teach all ranges of both languages, as do they.
Two things: at my school we don't have scan-trons. I give two-hour, sit down and scribble as fast as you can, essay exams. I assign two research papers in each of my lecture classes. In my upper-level classes the final paper is generally between 15-20 pages. I average around 50 students for my lower-level lectures, 20 for my upper-level lecture/seminars. So, many papers, many exams.
As importantly, crafting a lecture takes a huge amount of work. For every hour of lecture I give I spend about 10 hours preparing (revising, fiddling with power-point, rethinking old points, etc.). And I am an experienced lecturer! Reading Cicero or Vergil or Livy with a small group of students does not require anywhere near the amount of preparation time. As somebody mentioned above, language classes need to be small because they require active learning on the part of the student. Active learning generally means less preparatory work on the teacher's part. Our language skills and knowledge of the text can carry us through most literary classes. They just can, and we all know it. In my experience beginning languages actually take a bit more prep time than reading courses, but not as much as lecture courses.
I think you all can see where I am going with this... Again, I value the work my lit/lang colleagues do. I value the languages themselves, and I enjoy teaching them. We have a remarkable discipline that demands a great deal of us all. Much more than most other disciplines, which is probably why we are all so cranky here.
So, if we agree that we need archaeology, civ and history classes for enrollment purposes, and that those are, generally speaking, best taught by historians and archaeologists, what is the lesson learned here?
Ditch the languages? Not at all. But the lit/lang folks need to be sharing the burden more than they are currently doing. If you can only convince 5 students to take your upper-level Propertius class, then you should think about offering that as an independent study and design a course in translation that will get some serious numbers. Let's call it "How to win Girlfriends, Boyfriends, and Lovers: from the Campus Martius to the South Quad". Still in your area of interest, broad enough to attract a good crew of students, and, perhaps most importantly, can act as a gateway drug towards filling up that Propertius class a couple years down the line!
The only way to get the languages off the ground is to offer exciting, well-designed courses in translation that will then convince students to take a dip in Latin or Greek. Our old model of waiting for the students who had Latin and maybe Greek in HS is failing.
We ALL need to do this, archaeologists, historians and literarians alike. One of my jobs, besides teaching a set of well-constructed history classes, is piquing the interest of a few students such that they decide that reading Thucydides in the original is a worthy goal.
So, the "boutique" (small-enrollment, special author) language courses should be taken off the FTE class credit. Offer them, of course, to the students who can and want to take them, but do it as an extra, until the time comes when they can actually be filled up by a reasonable number of bodies. This means I will have to offer an upper-level Thucydides class every now and then gratis. And that is OK. But, and here is the big "but", the lit/lang folks must replace those small, boutique classes with some seriously good lecture/seminar classes in order to draw students into the field and, ultimately, take the languages. This will make the teaching load more equitable across the discipline, and correct the job-market so that we start to hire folks who can actually offer enrollment-boosting, curriculum-enhancing classes, in addition to the middle- and upper-level language classes we can all teach.
And here I stop, as I need to run off to lecture!
Finally, some constructive comments. This sounds quite reasonable to me, and I will do my best to push the trend towards this sort of curricular design wherever I teach. Now, can we leave off the vitriol and get back to a collegial, friendly discussion before we lose more future colleagues to other departments?
WDNTFF said: "So, the "boutique" (small-enrollment, special author) language courses should be taken off the FTE class credit. Offer them, of course, to the students who can and want to take them, but do it as an extra, until the time comes when they can actually be filled up by a reasonable number of bodies."
Schools already track this - it's called 'minimum enrollments'. If you want to reset minimums from c. 7 to 10, to c. 30, you'll wreak havoc in all sorts of departments and advanced classes. Universities were never designed only to teach classes that appeal to the broad masses. The principle of the humanities is to teach all sorts of things, in all sorts of ways, including large and small classes. I suspect you of being an engineer, WDNTFF, with your argument that large enrollment should be the determiner of class existence. Bah. I wave my paw in your direction.
If you can only convince 5 students to take your upper-level Propertius class, then you should think about offering that as an independent study and design a course in translation that will get some serious numbers.
If this is a department offering more language courses than are needed to support a languages major, that seems fine. But if by doing this you're reducing upper-level language courses to a point at which majors can't count on getting in a timely manner the courses they need to graduate, that seems like a problem.
Honestly, I don't know how many institutions offer more language courses than necessary to support a languages major. Maybe more than I realize. But I think you have to have at least one intermediate and one senior level course per term, per language, and you'd be better off having two of them as often as you can, so that you're not losing students to scheduling conflicts.
I want to reiterate what some earlier posters have already indicated. This dismissal of the languages as independent study in favor of larger classes (at most institutions) would push elite departments to retain, if not maximize, their philological spine. Elite departments would see themselves as the only places able to sustain serious language study.
Further, you can't train any strong numbers in the languages through independent study. There needs to be a visible program that offers small classes - that's what that kind of student wants and if they can't get it they'll simply go elsewhere. It sounds as if individuals bitter about inequitable loads (understandable) are consequently blind to the disciplinary and institutional needs for diversity. Does that mean philologists shouldn't teach large lecture classes? No, of course they should. It does mean, however, that it'd be a mistake to take small language classes off the FTE. I'm happy teaching one or two large lecture classes a year. But I've got to be left enough classes to build a visible language program, with no restriction on enrollment for those years when there just aren't so many kids in intermediate Greek.
Does anyone else find it ironic that a bunch of people who can't find jobs are busy drawing up blueprints for a complete restructuring of their discipline, including plans to put half their would-be colleagues in front of a firing squad?
Speaking as someone who also can't find a job (and not a member of the vast philologist conspiracy) -- it seems a bit comical.
To be honest with you, I'm a 38 year old latinist and I would most definitely rather meet the board of trustees of the AIA than the APA. Call me a sell-out, but give me Harrison Ford, not Theodor Mommsen. mrrrrow
I'm also a 38-year-old Latinist, and just want everyone to know that I didn't write this post.
Oh, thank goodness for that clarification. I thought the anonymous 38 year old Latinist was a different anonymous 38 year old Latinist?!
Ack - there are TWO 38-year-old Latinists on the job market? I have a few more years to endure, then.
Does anyone else find it bad form that Swarthmore made campus invites for their TT position before the application deadline had been reached? And that they decided to interview a few people at the APA who had only applied for the TT when they were still receiving applicantions? Sorry, but that is uncool.
Yeah, I didn't apply for either of their positions, but that whole setup seems like it was really poorly handled. Basically the ad in the December issue said if you already applied for the 'possible one-year leave replacement,' you would be considered for the tenure-track. It sort of reminded me of a daily double on Jeopardy...you thought you were going to be answering a question on "generalist VAP for 200," and then it turned out to be a "tenure-track poetry" question on which you could wager your entire future. And too bad for those non-poetry people who applied for the generalist 1-year, since (as I've heard through the grapevine) the 1-year hire will be selected from the shortlist of people they interviewed at the APA (for a poetry position). But it may not have been the SCs fault.
It is really odd. I know a Latinist who applied for the one year who was interviewed at the APA and Hellenist who only applied for the TT who was interviewed. Sc fault or not, it really is confusing. It would have been nice for those who weren't getting their apps in by the APA to know they shouldn't bother.
Anonymous said...
Does anyone else find it ironic that a bunch of people who can't find jobs are busy drawing up blueprints for a complete restructuring of their discipline, including plans to put half their would-be colleagues in front of a firing squad?
Thank you for stating it so well. Yes, I find it hilarious.
It is a stressful job year, so we should cut everyone here a little slack and maybe laughter is the answer.
On the other hand, regarding the specific individuals attacking their philological brethren:
What department would want this sort of vitriol, arrogance, and astounding ignorance in a new colleague? Do you (singular or plural) seriously think that this sort of antagonism to your own field and potential colleagues doesn't come through in interviews? (And I know that you think you're right and everyone else is wrong-- but this is yet another case where you don't know everything when you are viewing departments from the outside. I know, I know-- I don't know what you do or don't know. Fair enough. But what has been stated on this blog --and corrected or commented on by many cooler heads-- is often simply uninformed. No matter how well connected you think you are, you just don't know it all. Have a little humility. Seriously. It will help.)
The assumption of great wrongs committed by a conspiring philology class against an oppressed yet more noble band of non-philology miracle scholars has gone well past the point of pathological. Clearly nothing will assuage this anger, up to and including the aforementioned firing squad and overthrow of the illegitimate philological overlords in all departments across the land.
Give me a break.
And now whoever updated the wiki about getting a Swarthmore call-back on 1/12 has withdrawn that info...What the heck is going on?!
Well, here is at least one non-philology person you have to worry about. This is my first time contributing to this thread, but the real second-tier status given to classicists who are not primarly philologists by trade, and so easily dismissed by some, resonates with me. I'm choosing a museum job in Baltimore over another VAP as a civ serf. I know many if not most will miss me in classics, but I've seen a glimmer of hope from some rational philologists that this trend is not good for the discipline. Pax and good luck on the leaky ship.
Apparently, no one is supposed to know that Swarthmore's search is screwy. Whoever removed the info from the wiki--shame on you. It's bad enough that the department has conducted the search so poorly, but another thing entirely to try to hide it like that. Makes one suspicious that the search is one of these "fixed" searches the crazies here are always moaning about.
The problem that's becoming apparent with FV and the wiki is that SCs are now savvy to their existence. The wiki in particular democratized the process somewhat and they are now trying to reverse this.
The problem that's becoming apparent with FV and the wiki is that SCs are now savvy to their existence. The wiki in particular democratized the process somewhat and they are now trying to reverse this.
How do you mean? With the wiki especially. I'm curious.
The problem that's becoming apparent with FV and the wiki is that SCs are now savvy to their existence. The wiki in particular democratized the process somewhat and they are now trying to reverse this.
I am on an SC, and I have to disagree. I think both the wiki and FV have encouraged us on the hiring side to be more mindful of good communication practices, where possible. In fact, I have updated the wiki myself in order to communicate with our applicant pool. Normally we aren't allowed to send out "Dear John" letters until the search is completely finished. I hated this as a candidate. Now, the blog and the wiki let me signal to those unsuccessful in getting APA interviews, and now campus interviews, where they stand. I think the system, for all its faults, is an improvement over the bad old days when I was job-hunting.
The last couple of days haven't been this place's finest hour, of course, but some good might come of it all. Even I, a decrepit/textually-minded, long-toothed silverback, think some honest, no-holds-barred critiques of the field can be healthy.
Best wishes to all of you,
A very humbled SC member
Dear UCLA Classics Faculty,
It looks like Rome is burning in your backyard.
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/2009/jan/26/emucla-can-learn-uscs-path-prestigeem/
I especially like the little illustration with such fictitious books as Stuff Old White Men Cared About and classes called Extinct Peoples & Ideas. http://128.97.251.217:8080/img/photos/2009/01/26/090126.vp.bromberg2_t820.jpg
I'm not celebrating this undergraduate mentality by any means, but this is the reality at even top schools such as UCLA, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
Daily Bruin
Illustration
I'm not celebrating this undergraduate mentality by any means, but this is the reality at even top schools such as UCLA, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
Schools that have top grad programs in classics do not tend to be the same as schools with top undergrad programs in classics. Try not to conflate the two. I believe Holy Cross with its student body of 2400 or so has as many if not more classics majors than schools with 25-50,000 students. And these students(and students like them from similar schools) are far more likely to go to grad school in the field.
From the Daily Bruin article: "In upholding a strict liberal-arts philosophy, UCLA has lost sight of the fact that a main point in higher learning is to give students practical skills they can use in their careers after college."
- poldy
That sentence struck me as well. I didn't realize UCLA was a trade school.
So the model is that SLACs train classics undergrads and R-1s train them for graduate school? Can there be a Department of Classics without undergrads or very few for that matter? Can anyone think of an example of this? I think schools like Berkeley, Stanford, Michigan, Chicago, Harvard, Princeton, etc. all have strong undergrad programs, no? I'm just full of questions today, but I honestly would appreciate some concrete answers.
UMich has a strong undergrad program, yes.
Can Speak For Michigan
For some reason SOBHA is convinced I am a UCLA faculty member (I'm decidedly not...the last time I was in LA was when I was applying to grad schools, many years ago), and I think his polemic is directed at me. Honestly, though, I'm not sure one undergraduate columnist's take on the rise in college rankings of a perceived rival school is much by way of support for this "adapt or perish" alarm he is raising.
The columnist's lack of understanding for the point of a liberal arts education, his incessant emphasis on "practicality" and "real-world knowledge" certainly provide an excellent example of the mentality of students who would never come near a Classics course if given a choice. This statement, in particular, is illustrative:
"In reality, their [USC's] ascent up the collegiate rankings is derived from a structural approach that is vastly different, and in many ways more practical, than the expansive liberal arts mentality we have here."
To begin with, this illustrates that our columnist hasn't really examined the basis for many college rankings. They usually give fairly high marks for such measures as "alumni giving," graduation rates, average SAT scores, faculty:student ratios, class sizes, number of classes taught by full-time faculty, etc. So schools with more money (like USC) can buy their way ahead in the rankings by hiring more faculty, thus reducing class sizes; with fewer non-professional graduate programs and thus fewer TAs, they have more FTF in charge of classes; as private schools, they tend to have higher graduation rates (the student feels more pressure to graduate fast); they often have higher SAT scores because they can be more selective, not being compelled to accept the top X% from any high school in the state. Finally, and most importantly, since they are more expensive, the alumni more often come from the wealthier classes, and thus can afford to give more money very soon after graduation; this, one of the most heavily weighted measures, always privileges private schools over state ones. None of this, as should be clear, has anything to do with a "more practical" approach rather than an "expansive [read: "in my opinion, pointless"] liberal arts mentality."
I am sorry, SOBHA, but being "practical" will never be an argument in favor of studying Classics, whether history, archaeology, or languages. You can design neat courses, and try your best to make them relevant, but no one who cannot see the "practicality" of a rounded education will be convinced, and they will go right on pushing to have all Humanities GE requirements removed from the curriculum until no one takes our classes any more but the frivolous or the majors (who will be the same, from the perspective of people like your columnist). Someone in an earlier post mentioned Greek Warfare as a course that will look snazzier than plain old Greek history. Why is this more relevant? Al Qaeda doesn't use a hoplite phalanx for their attacks. Another suggestion was "Foreigners in Byzantium." Why is this more relevant than a more general course on the Byzantine Empire? Because you can correlate the "foreigners" issue to "relevant" (read: modern) debates about immigration? Given all these complaints about philologists teaching history when it's not really what they've been trained in, I wonder why a degree in ancient history qualifies a person to talk about issues that would surely be better handled by modern historians. The more you make Classics about the modern day, and try to twist it into something "practical," the more you lose sight of the diversity that Ancient Studies brings to the table, and make it just another iteration of whatever the current discourse happens to be. If you wanted to teach something that people like this columnist find "practical," I am afraid ancient history was the wrong track.
Well, no matter what anyone believes is right and how idiotic this columnist is, I hope someone has some solutions for a pardigm that is no longer working for the humanities. Yes, we are in the same boat, but I think classics is in steerage and in the most danger of drowning. You can close your eyes and pretend it's not happening, but I, for one, am not as convinced as some about the health of classics in the 21st century. Some good suggestions have been made here. Hopefully we retain this spirit of constant renewal and not the smug complacency I sense in some people. My 2 cents.
Just in case anyone is interested, I speak as a faculty member of 16 years in lower tier R-1 institution who has seen five classicists retire and only one get replaced. We're now down to three including me, a sad state for a founding department in the university that is no longer independent, no longer offers a MA, and is in danger of losing Greek. We started a civ concentration, but it never really took off, not with only a handful of us left.
The phenomenon that "Concerned Philologist" describes is a common one for Classics departments and, let's be honest here, is only going to get more common.
If "crisis" is "opportunity", then the current economic crisis is inevitably going to be seen as opportunity for administrators to axe more classicists. They will do it. Lines will not be replaced, junior folks will not be offered tenure, and all will be asked to "sacrifice" for the greater good.
If the discipline is going to survive then we had better start asking some hard questions. If some of those questions then lead to difficult-to-hear answers, well, better to start the conversation while we are here, rather than as we pull espressos together at Sweetwaters.
The phenomenon that "Concerned Philologist" describes is a common one for Classics departments and, let's be honest here, is only going to get more common.
It is not just Classics, though, and I think people forget this. Anthropology departments have also gone under the ax with faculty rolled into other departments. Same with many modern languages including Arabic, Hebrew, even Spanish and French. It isn't unknown for History departments to not renew tenure lines for anything pre-16th century. What people here want to label as a Classics problem, is not a classics problem only and all the historians and archaeologists who want to feel immune need to wake up to reality. The study of the ancient and medieval worlds in general are endangered and it isn't because of the focus on languages.
Speaking as a new TT guy with some experience with classics inside and outside this country, I must disagree somewhat with what has been said above. As sad as the state of classics is in this country, it is surprisingly good compared to what I have seen in other (including European) countries, and also compared to how other "white" humanities disciplines (e.g. German, French, etc.) have been doing here. At my current school and others I have been to, classics is winning praises from admins (yes, this is true!) for its high Student credit-hour ratios, and from undergrads for the serious commitment of its professors to their welfare. Classics is doing badly in those places where professors hate each other and their students, but this is only to be expected (though I don't want to say that the above poster belongs to such a dept.). All it takes is for one or two profs to unite the faculty and the students behind them. Of course, the fate of classics is tied to that of the humanities in general, which may not be in such a good shape now, but within humanities, I would say classics has dodged a lot of bullets successfully.
I'm glad you have a rosy outlook, but I think it's preposterous to say, we're doing terrible, but they're doing even worse outside the country?! I can't speak for the concerned philologist, but I would venture to guess that the correct assumption is that it's a relatively amiable department, not the other way around. This person gave stats - lower-tier R-1, 7 to 3 faculty members in 16 years (if I'm doing the math correct), loss of department and graduate program. The best evidence we have for the vigor of classics is, "we get praise from the admins," and "students say they love us?" Outside the top ten grad programs and elite SLACs, where we all pretty much got our degrees, how is classics doing? How's it doing in the not-quite-elite programs - U-Washington, Washington-St. Louis, UCLA, Wisconsin, Cincinnati, etc. How about the next tier? Oregon, Ohio State, etc. How about the teaching oriented state schools? Cal State, CUNY, etc. Finally, how's it doing in high school. By these measures, we are NOT doing better than 50 years ago, no matter what token "victories" we win here and there.
oh dear, the "tiers" in the previous comment made me flinch. - poldy
Especially since OSU places better than all those programs supposedly ahead of it on that list...
I think those "tiers" refer not to the graduate programs but to the overall "rank" of the schools themselves, as far as undergraduate education is concerned. I can see Oregon and OSU being comparable there, whereas they are incomparable as far as graduate education in Classics goes.
And let's not even start talking about their football programs...
If we're gonna have rankings, let's rank what's truly important: institutions' catering services.
Well, first place is easy:
Cornell
Yes, they are not only caterers but highly trained assassins.
how is classics doing? How's it doing in the not-quite-elite programs - U-Washington, Washington-St. Louis, UCLA, Wisconsin, Cincinnati, etc.
Well, I can't speak about all of these places, but U. of Washington has an extremely healthy undergraduate Classics program.
how is classics doing? How's it doing in the not-quite-elite programs - U-Washington, Washington-St. Louis, UCLA, Wisconsin, Cincinnati, etc.
Well, I can't speak about all of these places, but U. of Washington has an extremely healthy undergraduate Classics program.
Same with Wash. U. And they even got to expand by adding a tenure-track position last year.
Surely the APA keeps track of "health" statistics: how many departments closed (if any), ditto how many opened, how many new lines, lines not replaced, etc.
If they're not, they should be, ASAP.
I am fairly certain they keep track of new tenure lines. I think they note if a line is new when they publish who got what position each year.
I think they note if a line is new when they publish who got what position each year.
Yeah, it's in bold italics, I think, in the list of jobs published every June.
True, but there's no 'state of the state' report, is there? something handy that people could look at to see overall growth, changes, etc. AFAIK you have to count those lines yourself, if you want to see changes.
Yes, a discussion my colleagues and I have had for some time now usually centers around the need for a professional state of things 'white paper' to be commissioned jointly by the APA and the AIA to assess the state of Classics and Classical Archaeology in N. American higher ed. Not just a patting on the back white paper, but a serious look at the state of programs (in all types of institutions), curricular issues for both ug and grad students, placement issues, statistical info on placement, research breakdowns, grant breakdowns - the works. I guess we think this is worthwhile in the spirit of not just disciplinary self-awareness but also the (naive) hope that such a study might help make some inroads on correctives to some of the issues our discipline faces. Would that the upper crust of our professional organizations thought about these issues... since they are mostly insulated from such concerns, it would take a lot to get them on board, but their collective auctoritas might help make such a study happen.
That's the thing I find most ludicrous about some of the rosy statments here. It's typically made by people recently graduated from or currently affiliated with the elite programs. Someone rightfully pointed out that we should be figuring out what's happening in high school and teaching universities like the Cal State system. Yet, very few of us know and the few posts by people likely saddled with 3-3 or 4-4 loads on top of way too many responsibilites to find time to post here are largely ignored by statements like, "Well, Bigshot U is doing great! We just erected a statue of Cicero on our lawn!"
I am one of those who posted a rosy statement above, and have to make some rebuttals here. First of all, excuse me but it is patently ridiculous to compare the state of classical education today to what it was 50 years ago - this is like comparing what classical music was 50 years ago vs. what it is now. We live in a different world, with more, stronger rivals - and only a loony like VDH (sorry for the distraction, but had to put it here!) would decry the rise of these rivals, who have very good reasons to be with us here, and will hopefully flourish in the coming years, together with us. But that said, I suspect that the absolute numbers of faculty slots and programs in classics have actually increased dramatically in the last half century (mostly because university education has had an explosive growth in the same period, of course).
Now comparatively speaking, the ratio of classics to other fields has plummeted in the last century or so, of course, again because of the healthy growth in a myriad other fields. The time is past when future leaders of the West devoted most of their school years to translating Shakespeare into Euripedian trimeters (as they did in Britain 150 years ago), and we should welcome that change.
Now let me tell you that I have gone through a variety of places including a SLAC, big state school, and a small state school in my career. It so happens that classics has been competing vigorously with other fields in all of them. In one school where I was, we were in danger of losing classics adjunct, the only faculty who regularly taught Greek and Latin, in a period of budge crisis. But student and faculty support saved this adjunct, while other adjuncts in economics and biology all lost their positions. In two other schools I have been to, within the past decade classics was about to be eliminated entirely - but student and faculty support again saved these programs.
My experience is limited, to be sure, but it is actually in big R-1 institutions where classics has been enshrined for centuries that I have seen the worst cases of apathy and internal bickering eating away at the strength of the programs. I agree that faculty just get too complacent and lazy in some of these places (not all, I must add). But in lesser institutions I have personally seen more reason to hope - to be sure only if you are ready to work hard, understand and cooperate with other disciplines, and make the case for your own. If you expect to be just given a plum position without trying to justify what you are doing in the overall university environment, you have no place in this field.
Our dining hall just announced the "Gladiator Burger" on their menu, so we're obviously doing well. We're not even an elite program. Hopefully, we can parlay this into a $5,000/year adjunct position where the person only has to run the classics club, network with the local community, go on field trips, make the Gladiator Day parade float, organize the Cicero-athon, and juggle gladdii for new student orientation week! We hope one day to erect a statue of Vergil in our quad, then we'll really be big time! Princeford watch out!
I blame the Alexander movie for destroying the momentum from Gladiator. Stupid Oliver Stone.
I blame the Alexander movie for destroying the momentum from Gladiator.
Wasn't there a movie about 300 Corinthians?... or Thessalians maybe?... I don't remember, it must have flown under everyone's radar.
That 300 Plataeans movie totally rocked.
I thought it was 300 Thespians, or was it Lesbians?
Now I remember! It was 300 Dalmatians. Such a cute and cuddly movie.
~ ~ ~ in the voice of Ben Stein ~ ~ ~
Baylor?
Baylor?
Baylor?
(also a little intertextual - see post #1)
We know there are less jobs this year due to the economy, but from a job-by-job standpoint, how's the economy affecting what institutions can offer to their chosen candidate? Start-up funds, course releases, etc. I know, I know, I have no offers in hand, but I need to think about something else. One can hope, no?
but I need to think about something else.
You could ponder the difference between "less" and "few," if you are bored.
You could ponder the difference between "less" and "few," if you are bored.
Or how about "several" and "few"?
(Please, God, let the next post NOT be a disquisition on the differences between several, less, and few. One would hope we learned our lesson from the Mommsen discussion.)
Well, that was all vaguely amusing (the sinking ship discussion and the anti-philology rant).
But no one seems to want to open up the most explosive issue of them all: the field is obviously training too many PhDs.
This year, as we all know from the nice email from Ms. Plonski, there were 370+ registered with the Placement Service. Yes, that number is slightly meaningless, since it include many senior people who either were applying for senior positions, or "testing the waters." So, let's take at least 100-150 out of the picture.
That's better. We all know that several "generalist" (I am starting to despise that fig leaf) positions attract well over 100 applicants. Who forgets last year, when, where was it again, USC? said that they had about 150? or was it higher again, applicants for their position.
As we all know well, the total number of searches, including senior positions, that interviewed in Philly was 55. While pithy phrases such as "do the math" are somewhat irksome, it really does come down to this.
Even in a bad year, where there would be a strong disincentive for people still in graduate school to force themselves to finish early and get on the market, we still had many a search that had over 100 applicants or near it for a single position (at least from what I remember from a few rejection letters I received).
There are clearly too many graduate students in classics. The seniors need to buck up and do the hard thing: take in less people.
As many people here already note, Classics, as a field, is hardly growing. For every Miami, there are other places that are shedding lines, not adding them. The imbalance between supply and demand is now resulting in this extremely stressful ranting, and many people who find themselves at the end of the line, with no job in sight.
I know, I know. There will now be a torrent of responses saying "Reducing graduate enrollments and graduate programs would be the real death knell of the field." Would it really?
I think not. But this massive oversupply is going to create a large group of irate and disappointed people with an axe to grind against the field. Most will slink off, but think of the wasted time and talent, that could have been put to productive use elsewhere, but was taken in by the false assurances of faculty that while the competition is fierce, there would be a job somewhere for you.
And certain programs are much greater villains in this piece than others. I'll let you now continue your internecine warfare, figuring out which places I'm referring to…
Interesting points and certainly worth discussing, Anon 9:44; a post in the Chronicle just came out saying something similar, but with regard to the humanities generally:
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01/2009013001c.htm
We know there are less jobs this year due to the economy
Well, we could ponder the difference between "less" and "few," but we could also ponder the difference between "due to" and "because of."
(ducks)
You mean less and fewer...several and few.
There are clearly too many graduate students in classics. The seniors need to buck up and do the hard thing: take in less people.
Well, departments want them because they need them to teach for them, because they don't have enough faculty to teach all those beginning Latin courses and myth discussion sections.
Sometimes I think that the real problem is created by the departments that have atrocious placement records but still admit students—maybe if a graduate program can't reliably get jobs for its graduates, it shouldn't be in business. Then instead of teaching grad courses the faculty could cover the courses that grad students would otherwise be teaching.
On the other hand, do the students really not know that they're going to schools with an atrocious placement record? Are they really being tricked by faculty? Ultimately, as long as there is full disclosure about the dismal job prospects, shouldn't people be free to choose whatever ambition they want, even if it's probably all in vain?
In any case, I strongly agree that it would be better if fewer Classics Ph.D.s were produced. I'm just not really sure how to get there.
We also need to rethink our advising system. Instead of the apprenticeship model where our advisors try to create little clones or encourage us to work on marginalia, we have a market driven advising system whereby we start training our PhDs to teach what departments actually need taught and so increase enrollments and makes us more valuable to universities as a whole which might encourage less contraction.
we have a market driven advising system whereby we start training our PhDs to teach what departments actually need taught and so increase enrollments and makes us more valuable to universities as a whole which might encourage less contraction.
We do train PhDs to teach what departments actually want taught - they're called historians and archaeologists.
ducking
You mean less and fewer...several and few.
I wrote "less" and "few" due to me alluding to a fellow pedant above. But maybe I shouldn't of done that. ;)
Instead of the apprenticeship model where our advisors try to create little clones or encourage us to work on marginalia, we have a market driven advising system whereby we start training our PhDs to teach what departments actually need taught and so increase enrollments and makes us more valuable to universities as a whole which might encourage less contraction.
Nobody will go to graduate school to be trained in how to teach Etymology or Myth or Ancient History in Ten Weeks. People go to graduate school in order to become professional students of things that they find interesting. Making graduate school even more boring and stupid than it already is doesn't help anything.
Well, I guess it might drive down the number of Ph.D.s we produce. So there's that, at least.
Sometimes I think that the real problem is created by the departments that have atrocious placement records but still admit students—maybe if a graduate program can't reliably get jobs for its graduates, it shouldn't be in business.
Maybe so. At my institution it is not entirely our choice. Faculty would probably prefer to have a much smaller graduate program but we have to keep graduate enrollments up (and growing every year!) to satisfy higher powers up the chain. When History and English have 100 graduate students (MA and PhD), we look bad if we only have 10. Explaining that our particular field shouldn't be training more PhDs and that there is no way they can all get jobs at the end doesn't really work. It is a big problem and I wish it were as easy as simply not producing as many PhDs.
Faculty would probably prefer to have a much smaller graduate program but we have to keep graduate enrollments up (and growing every year!) to satisfy higher powers up the chain.
That hadn't even occurred to me.
OK, I've decided that the glut of Ph.D.s is really the responsibility of the people pursuing Ph.D.s. It's widely known that job prospects in Classics are poor, and yet people keep rolling the dice. Departments that have poor placement aren't forcing students to enter their graduate programs; rather, students are going there because they've decided that they want so much to go to graduate school that they're willing to do it in a program that may well not be able to put them into jobs.
Then, every year, there's great surprise and consternation about how few jobs and how many candidates there are, and how that means that the system is diseased, the discipline dying, etc. (The economic collapse this year actually means it's one of those rare occasions on which one could actually be justified in being surprised at the job to candidate ratio.) But every year the candidates competing for those jobs are all people who knew when they started out on their studies that, when they finished, they'd be competing against a lot of people for a few jobs.
1. Myth is the largest class at most departments. It out-enrolls history and archaeology easily.
2. Do we really think that the intricacies of a Hellenistc fragment is "exciting"? Being market driven means broadly trained, not "myth machines." Anyone should be able to teach myth be they literature, MC (mostly art history types) or historians because myth touches almost every aspect of our field. A philologist should not be able to get a PhD having taken no history or MC classes (and maybe TAd for one?) any more than a historian or MC person should be able to go out having not taught a beginning language. Study whatever you want for your diss but we need to make sure that the coursework component of our degrees enables us to understand the range of the field and be active in it instead of whining about how there aren't any jobs for our particularly narrow sub-field. If departments need TAs, then we should use the opportunity to get those TAs decent training. Only people who head to large and/or elite programs will only ever teach their specialty. These are not the target programs for people outside of a handful of graduate programs. What is so wrong with broadly-trained with strengths in 3 or 4 areas with a research focus on one or two others instead of what happens more and more--narrowly trained with strength only in that specialization.
Do we really think that the intricacies of a Hellenistc fragment is "exciting"?
Well, you know. Depends on the fragment.
A philologist should not be able to get a PhD having taken no history or MC classes (and maybe TAd for one?) any more than a historian or MC person should be able to go out having not taught a beginning language.
I totally agree. I didn't realize that there were programs out there that would let you skate on this.
Just as a side note, I'm entertained to see that ancient history has been elevated to "crowd-pleaser" status, when in fact history is widely regarded as boring and pointless. I mean, for the love of God, the use of the phrase "ancient history" to mean "something that no longer matters" (e.g., "Don't sweat it; it's ancient history") is a pretty clear expression of the popular view.
1. Myth is the largest class at most departments. It out-enrolls history and archaeology easily.
Well, often not by much if at all. Also, we're leveraging myth about as far as it can go. On the other hand, we're not doing history and archaeology justice. Outside the truly elite schools, one typically only gets general introductory surveys. If you don't think more history and archaeology will "sell" you obviously haven't got the memo that there's a History Channel on tv, but nary a sign of a Philology Channel.
A philologist should not be able to get a PhD having taken no history or MC classes (and maybe TAd for one?) any more than a historian or MC person should be able to go out having not taught a beginning language.
Absolutely agreed, but take note that any historian or MC person that comes out of a classics based program will know the languages. Philologists vastly outnumber historians/archaeologists in academia combined AND the vast majority have very little experience with history/archaeology. This combination is egregious and deadly for the discipline. But we'll then get back to the argument that philologists can't graduate in a timely manner if they haven't taken their full complement of advanced language/lit classes.
If you don't think more history and archaeology will "sell" you obviously haven't got the memo that there's a History Channel on tv, but nary a sign of a Philology Channel.
1). Last I checked, the "History Channel" was basically the "Notable Wars and Battles Channel." Not exactly an argument for the popularity of history in general. In fact, my memory is that at first they tried all different kinds of history, but that over time they moved to all Luftwaffe all the time, because nobody wanted to hear about anything else.
Oh, and there's also the ever-popular "What Was Jesus Really Like" show, which we can always use more of.
2). Your "History Channel" point also seems to be an argument for teaching "Intro to Celebrities," "Intro to Porn," and "Intro to Classic NFL Games." Which would no doubt get good enrollments, I grant you.
"Intro to Celebrities," "Intro to Porn," and "Intro to Classic NFL Games."
Isn't this actually some of what we already teach? Intro to ancient celebrities, intro to ancient porn, intro to ancient games?
Can't wait for the Philology Channel to start broadcasting. LMAO.
"But we'll then get back to the argument that philologists can't graduate in a timely manner if they haven't taken their full complement of advanced language/lit classes."
Well, an introductory geomorphology class would be helping my research a lot more than the advanced Latin morphology class and the YEARS of Lang/Lit courses I took in grad school. Yet the latter does little to aid with my teaching. If I can do this, surely the philologists out there can forego one or two advanced courses - e.g. "Stagecraft of Seneca" - to take introductory courses in history/archaeology, a small investment that will serve them, and the discipline, quite well.
If you don't think more history and archaeology will "sell" you obviously haven't got the memo that there's a History Channel on tv, but nary a sign of a Philology Channel.
We have a number of real historians in our department who teach real history classes. We even have an art and archaeology class taught by a real art historian (NOTE: the historians make up half our classics department; the art historian is in the art.art history dept). Myth triples their enrollments every term regardless which one of the small number of philologists teach it. In fact, some of the historians teach it and they get higher enrollments in myth than in the history classes.
Also, did you know that many of the History Channel shows on the the Greco-Roman world are actually on myth/religion? There is a 10-part myth series coming out on HC this spring, in fact. The false division between history, MC and lit needs to go away. It is not useful and even hurtful to the field.
I didn't realize that there were programs out there that would let you skate on this.
My grad program had a 2-history course requirement but they let people cover it by taking a seminar on Thucydides or Tacitus or another ancient historian. So, you would be able to do a philology course on an ancient historian as a "history" credit.
Well, for what's it's worth, I can name 50 classical historians/archaeologists off the top of my head who have made appearances on the history channel - gladiators, werewolves, architecture, etc. I don't know of one classical philologist who's made an appearance.
To add to the evidence where the imbalance lies, I know of many archaeologists and historians who would feel equally comfortable or at least competent enough to present at the APA. In fact, many of them have. Not counting the APA/AIA joint colloquium, I don't know many philologists who've even attended an AIA session let alone competent enough to present something on the other side of the aisle.
General question: are all "literature" people by default philologists? It seems a rather arbitrary division especially for people who work on the ancient historians but tend more toward historiography. There are also people who work with literature (epic and tragedy, maybe) but who do social history or history of political thought. The division of literature from history doesn't sit well many times for people who do work of literature but do from a more contextualized or historical perspective.
And, yes, there are quite a number in this particular mold who have been on TV. But does a TV appearance denote anything? I know how people get picked for these things. It is often through recommendation and so like recommends like.
Further, ancient historians and MC people should feel comfortable presenting at the APA. The APA always has more than just philology (Numismatics, anyone? History panels?). The AIA is actually far more limited in its scope though not geography.
"The AIA is actually far more limited in its scope though not geography."
Yikes, I see now where the problem is.
Seriously, Harrison Ford wanted to join the APA first but we rejected him because of his classical language skills - take that. Why does it matter anyway? He's just a stupid celebrity who caters to the masses. We care about the people who matter - the 5000 out there who can parse amo and decline anthropos, not the silly rest of the world that wants to actually study oi anthropoi.
are all "literature" people by default philologists?
This is just a result of final exhausted acquiescence in some archaeologists' division of the world into "archaeology" "history" and "philology." Never mind that only a handful of people who study texts would call themselves "philologists" anymore. Using the term "classical philologist" is exactly like calling the whole English Department "English philologists."
I use the term "literary Classicist" to describe literary Classicists, "ancient historian" to describe ancient historians, and "Classical archaeologist" to describe Classical archaeologists. However, here at least this is certain to cause a Class Nine freak-out, apparently because it is taken to suggest that anyone not a literary Classicist is a less legitimate member of a Classics department than a Classical archaeologist, who has Classic in his/her adjective but not in his/her noun.
I use the term "literary Classicist" to describe literary Classicists, "ancient historian" to describe ancient historians, and "Classical archaeologist" to describe Classical archaeologists. However, here at least this is certain to cause a Class Nine freak-out, apparently because it is taken to suggest that anyone not a literary Classicist is a less legitimate member of a Classics department than a Classical archaeologist, who has Classic in his/her adjective but not in his/her noun.
I like it! And I'm an archaeologist. Who had a spat last year on FV with a... literary Classicist... who insisted that the proper term for someone who specializes in language and literature was just Classicist, leaving the rest of us out in the cold.
I like it. Classical archaeologist, ancient historian, literary Classicist. All Classicists. Thanks, Anon. 4:01.
All Classicists
Or, Classist?
Just out of curiosity, do all of your departments actually let MC people or even grad students in general teach beginning language courses?
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