I fear it's a small minority, but many thanks to the classicists who recognize the unhealthy status quo in classical studies right now and stood up to the "colonialists" who are propagating an unsustainable tradition. Perhaps there is hope for us after all.
"It hardly seems fair, then, to blame philologists for the disgraceful incivility that you see on display on this website."
So some philologists who think that archaeologists are *ok* absolves the many assholes who are overtly intolerant? Even the jesting, I propose, is just the tip of an ugly iceberg that runs deep in many philologists, belying their ignorance. I understand that the internet is not reality, but I believe it frees people to say what's truly on their minds. Even with the excuse of job stress in a bad economy, this place and classics as a discipline is really scaring the shit out of me. It's like waking up and realizing that you're holding a gun at a Sarah Palin rally.
I understand that the internet is not reality, but I believe it frees people to say what's truly on their minds.
1) How many people? Really? And do they have jobs? And are they good jobs?
2) How many are just trying to get a rise out of you?
Go ahead, blow off some steam if you like. But on the internet isn't that basically emotional masturbation? Maybe good for you but certainly messy for all.
Aren't there other blogs out there where assholes can blow off steam? Or gyms? Do really need for this to be a place where people who break their eggs on the small end (or roll their toilet paper from the bottom) are in faux mortal combat with those who break them on the big end (roll from the top up). When trolls take over, this will stop being a place where you can get information that can help you get a job, because all the helpful people will stay away (many already do). Is there even the slightest possibility than any good will ever come from someone claiming that bigenders or smallenders and smarterer or more usefuler or more longsuffering, or that Billy hit me first, or that Suzie's being muh-uh-uh-ean to me Mommy?
12.41 has a point. There are more important matters at stake than the endless, pointless Clarchs vs Philologists debate. Like, the small matter of our continued careers. May I suggest you take it outside at the next APA/AIA? I know a nice parking lot out the back of the Marriott. It's Philly, no-one will notice.
Jobs? What jobs? Heck, I say we go out with a bang before we get shunted off for scraps in the Dept of Random Languages, Dept of History, and Dept of Anthropology.
Apropos of this, a colleague of mine made an argument the other day that I found thought-provoking. She said that she wondered whether maybe the time had come to consider obviating this whole problem by just removing classical archaeology from the academy. After all, her reasoning went, the university is a place of intellectual endeavor, while (according to her) classical archaeology is best categorized as a species of manual labor. Not that it isn't important, she said—far from it! In fact, we all need roofers, farm workers, cleaners, etc. But as a matter of course, her argument goes, we do not reserve faculty positions for roofers, and if there were for example positions for roofers in Colleges of Architecture they'd have many of the same conflicts that you see in Classics. I'm still not sure what I think of this, but I just thought I'd throw it out there. Could it be that it was a mistake to treat classical archaeology as an academic subject in the first place?
Seriously, why are these malcontents even aligned with a discipline whose tenets are peripheral at best to their self-proclaimed interests? They want to leave but they can't, right? Not our problem, despite their accusations that classics somehow stunted their marketability as archaeologists. This whole thing disgusts me.
Stop riling up the archys. We know that the system favors us, isn't that enough? Just nod and feign empathy once in a while and keep the status quo. Stop feeding their persecution complex.
RE: Rome Prize apps. From my understanding, the jury meets at the APA/AIA and finalists are usually contacted a couple of weeks later. I would say that phone calls to finalists would have been made either last week or this week. Interviews usually take place in early Feb. If you don't hear by the end of this week, my guess would be that it's too late. Then again, things may have changed...
@ Anon. 8:16, I vowed not to give in to the trolls trying to get a rise out of people here. But give me a break. Really. Go back to your bridge and let's have a civil discussion here, can we please? Perhaps it's time to end the "anonymity" of this list?
I for one would welcome making FV a forums-only thing. The philologist vs. archaeologists pissing contest could have it's own unending thread. With SMILEYS! Which would be the only new thing in the whole discussion.
Let's everyone band together and attack a common enemy: The Roanoke College Dept. of History. They screwed us, and now they're winning the war of opinion in the Chronicle Fora:
Tigertree (at least the person posting as Tigertree on the Chronicle site), your long comment was awesome. And the fact that people can't see the validity of your very reasonable and not at all hysterical case reveals an alarmingly low ethical standard among our peers. Hope things work out for you.
It's nice to see that the new semester has begun, everyone is back to campus, and wasting time again on FV!
I don't want to start the archaeologists/philologists madness again. As a philologist, however, who happens to like a lot of archaeologists, I can't help point out that a large amount of scholarship throughout the humanities is now heavily influence by marxist/materialist assumptions. To assume (in 2011) that people who study literature do not like material culture is simply ridiculous. For at least the past ten years, the easiest formula to publish on literature was to write something/anything about the material realites of the text. William Fitzgerald's The World of the Epigram is just one, excellent (as in it's a good book) example.
The tension these days (I doubt know how it was in the past) exists because there are not enough jobs for all of the philologists and archaeologists in the world. I wish there were, and I wish all of you archaeologists out there the best of luck, though I will be somewhat disappointed if I don't find a job myself.
Yeah, I'd like to add to Tigertree- that was an extremely well reasoned response. I think part of the opposition at the chronicle is that no-one cares until it happens to them. Part of it seems to be an obtuse refusal to acknowledge that part of the ethics of our field dictate that everyone be given an equal chance at a job. Even if someone really impressed the search committee at the AHA, someone else selected for that round should be given the same chance to impress them. Apparently this is a hard concept to understand. I also don't agree with the "sit down and shut up, you can't change anything" policy that is ingrained in so many academics and given out freely as advice on every injustice in the field, big and small. Thanks for standing up for all of us so eloquently. I'm truly sorry you got such a crappy and short-sighted response.
from experience with the Rome Prize in the past, if you don't hear by the end of January (i.e. this week), then you are not being interviewed the first week of Feb as a finalist and will instead get a polite rejection in March or April when they announce the winners. No contact happens before this if you are not a finalist, even though your application is no longer in the running (a fact that annoyed me at the time).
Since this whole philologists vs. archaeologists argument has gotten way too tedious, I thought I'd raise another perennially popular topic: the irrational fear so many exhibit over so-called inside candidates. I refer to those who think that if a junior sort is already at a place conducting a search then the fix is in, and everyone else who applies is being treated unethically and wasting their time. Inevitably, a few wiser heads will then point out how silly that is, giving various reasons. Well, let me share my current situation, as further proof that the "inside candidate" is often a creature more to be pitied than feared.
I'm right now in a department with clear need for VAP help next year, and even though position was supposed to be renewable I was advised to apply. (The reasons for this are either perfectly innocent or quite sketchy -- an argument could be made for either.) For reasons that I won't go into, it has been clear for some time that the chair and the chair's one ally in the department wish to get rid of me; I'll just note that these reasons have nothing to do with my abilities and everything to do with who my friends in the department are. So, the search committee is headed by someone who has been openly hostile to me (not to mention all other junior faculty in recent years), and has rather cleverly found a way to fix the search so that I'm not chosen.
Now, if one of those people obsessed with ferreting out inside candidates were to look at my department's website and read the job description, he/she would probably be here screaming about how the fix is in. Well, it is, and it's to ensure that I'm not rehired. So people really do need to think twice before going crazy over the existence of inside candidates.
By the way, don't worry about me -- I have no doubt that I'll be fine. I find the situation more amusing than anything else. And the way I'm being treated is already well known to Human Resources and by now possibly even the dean. So I may well get the last laugh. To quote Obi Wan, "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
I have certainly seen many cases like yours. I think a better name for these people are "internal" candidates: doesn't have the same ring (or the same implications) as "insider" candidate. Because, as you state, internal candidates are rarely a shoe-in for the job, and more often than not, someone is trying to get rid of them.
Indeed, Insider, I have been in your position. I was a VAP at a SLAC when a tenure-track line came up. While I got an APA interview and an "on-campus," a senior colleague told me that the chair had made an effort to craft the job description so as to exclude me as a viable candidate. It turned out that a person who had been a VAP there a year or two before me was really the "inside" candidate, who was in the end hired. You just never know.
As someone who held several VAPS before landing a TT, and has now served on a few search committees (in classics and as 'outside member" for some other depts), I can say that the fear OF the "inside candidate" is very rarely justified. Indeed, being the so-called "inside candidate" is all too often the kiss of death. It's usually not even that the dept. dislikes the VAP they've got or that the VAP in question has fallen short in any definable way. it seems just to be a powerful lure of the unknown--"we can do better than good ol' so-and-so, look at all these bright shiny new CVs out there to choose from!" I've seen this on several search committees myself and was told by colleagues that it was what sunk my own application for a TT at a place I'd been a VAP. I've tried arguing against this "let's try a new one" attitude and for the person who has demonstrated her/his ability to work at this place, with these students, but it is just almost never successful.
This seems to be particularly true for making the leap from VAP to TT. Sure, it happens -- but my impression is for every time it does happen, there are many, many more when the VAP is almost automatically excluded from serious consideration for the TT.
Take a VAP to get experience and network a bit. Never take one because there is an implicit or explicit possibility of it becoming permanent. I think it's fine for a chair to throw in the possibility at the end, but I personally despise anyone who leads with it in making an offer. It's irresponsible for any faculty member to do this when the chances of it happening are one in ten-thousand for the reasons just stated. So unless you have naked pictures of a dean/chair, you're sleeping with him/her, etc., don't do it.
Who are these mysterious people who think that VAPs automatically get the TT jobs? Everyone I've ever spoken to has been reasonable enough to recognize that being a VAP in a TT-hiring department can easily go either way. Usually "insider" fear/rage is directed at actually blatantly insider searches, like that Canadian University that shall remain unnamed, and the ridiculous job adverts that read, "please do Greek and Latin, oh, and also speak Czech" Yes, I know the difference between 'internal' candidate and 'insider' candidate, but do most of us really mix up the two?
If the VAP is a viable candidate (i.e. wasn't hired as favor to a buddy, who happens to be his/her advisor, or as a stopgap measure), I always root for the person to get the job. We wring our hands about fit but somehow prefer the mysterious and new over a qualified, proven individual under our noses.
As for inside candidates, I think more schools should be given the option of making the position permanent sans search with the approval of the dean/provost. Not only will this get rid of the charade, but it will provide more balance by providing some incentive to look harder at the proven insider, negating some of the new-must-be-better phenomenon. One might say a search is more fair, but if a department is motivated, it can easily circumvent a truly open search as we've abundantly seen.
Being a VAP at an institute that is doing a search is no easy gig. A year is a long time to screw up and, I'm sure you'll agree, screwing up tends to be more memorable than doing your job competently or even doing it well.
So I've been a VAP at two institutions that were simultaneously doing searches. Didn't get hired in the first case (I was told that I was an "alternate"), but did get the job at the second place.
The difference was NOT that I was only an "internal" candidate in the former case and a nefarious "inside" candidate in the latter. Rather, it came down to self-presentation, experience, and performance.
In the case of the first job, I was fresh out, inexperienced, naive, and prone to saying/doing stupid things. Like talking about how the self-entitled nature of second-tier SLAC students meant that my pedagogical approach wasn't fully appreciated. (Note: this is not what I said nor meant, but how it was understood and reasonably so.)
In the case of the second job, I had much more teaching experience, more and better research (actual publication), and -- perhaps most importantly -- I knew how NOT to shoot myself in the foot constantly. (Which is not to say that I performed perfectly, but at least I focused on the positives and behaved like a mature and collegial professional.) Being at a sane institution helps in these respects. So does mild flirting on the job market with other institutions.
Finally, in the course of the successful VAPship, at no time was I a shoo-in for the job. Multiple candidates were brought in and taken quite seriously. I had to do everything that they did. Did I have an advantage? Certainly. I knew not to say some of the things that the other candidates did say. I had more insight into the dept and its needs. I could demonstrate on a daily basis my affability and value. Did that make me an "inside" candidate? Not in my opinion, but I may be biased.
Why buy the cow when you're getting its milk for (almost) free? VAPs should be chosen with the long term in mind. Pick the one that will make you most employable on the open market the following year, not one that *might* land you job at the same place. Even if it means moving to bumble!@#$ and thousands of miles from you SO, you do it because it's short term and you have your eyes on the bigger prize.
Pick the one that will make you most employable on the open market the following year
Umm, I know that you're only trying to be helpful, but this advice is laughable. As though most of us can *choose* a VAP. As far as I can tell, most of us are struggling even to get an interview, let alone pick the most career-oriented opportunity. Even some of my superstar friends are interview-less. My advice, find a SO with a better career and stick to them like a fly on shit, cause we're screwed.
As long as we're throwing people under the bus, I say we call out the we-have-it-better-in-our-own-department historians and you revolting Latinists who have a soft spot for archaeologists.
This place is great. I show it to students aspiring to enter academia and it sends them straight to business or law school. There are the pesky few who think their brilliance will overcome the odds. I'm still working on those.
How sad should I be that I still haven't heard back from the places that interviewed me at the APA? There aren't any updates on the wiki, but that means very little to me at this point. Is it getting too late to hold onto that last scrap of hope for follow-ups to the APA interviews that I thought went very well?
To anonymous 3:41 p.m.: Don't give up hope from your APA interviews yet. Some places have extremely convoluted rules about how the search committee's short list has to be approved by other committees and/or deans, and remember this is just the end of the second week of class at a lot of places. It's not at all impossible that some search committee has only now--or not even yet!--turned in its recommendation for on-campus visits to the next step up.
And even past these next few weeks, don't give up until you get the rejection letter. There are cases where the first three candidates don't work out for one reason or another and a fourth candidate gets brought to campus very late (I know of several such in the last few years ). That person wouldn't hear back about the campus interview until probably late Feb. or even early March.
Furman was still interviewing first round candidates (via phone/skype) this week, and does not expect to announce their short list before next Friday. So that's at least one school. I don't know how many others there are.
"Sure, it happens -- but my impression is for every time it does happen [the VAP gets the TT], there are many, many more when the VAP is almost automatically excluded from serious consideration for the TT."
So VAPs gets the TT 10 to 20% of the time? I think this is a little off. A lot off. A VAP who's a good fit has an advantage; one who's not does not.
In response to Anonymous 8:55:--"A VAP who's a good fit has an advantage":
Well, I can only say, after sitting on a good many search committees now, that that's not the case. It should be, but it is not. In my experience, search committees have a strong bias against the current VAP (or someone who's been a VAP there in the past five years or so). Don't know why, and I'm very troubled by it. I've been the one person on the search committee arguing that proven ability to work here with us, taking on extra responsibilities, being a good colleague, etc. should work for the VAP, only to be voted down by other committee members several times. And various conversations with colleagues at other institutions indicate this is a pretty common pattern. The VAP usually has a real uphill battle to get the TT.
Another reason for anti-VAP bias in a TT search is that VAPs are often not hired in a national search. Those that were hired off the Spring market, for example, didn't have to fully compete for the position. Many times they are hired only on the basis of a phone interview -- no campus visit, job talk, teaching demo, etc.
So you have a somewhat artificial/canned job talk or teaching segment vs. one year of actually proving that you can do it, yet the former is somehow a better indicator of productivity? I'm not arguing about the bias against VAPs, but the inane logic behind it.
Inside candidates: A quick look at last year's wiki suggest that nine people got jobs where they were already teaching. It would take more work to find inside candidates who didn't get the job; I see two on the list (both people where I know the story, one of whom got a much better job), but it'd be easy to miss people.
Inside candidates: A quick look at last year's wiki suggest that nine people got jobs where they were already teaching.
Of these internal (not inside) candidates:
3 got the adjunct/VAP/lecturer position he/she already had. Sometimes, keeping your temporary person on for another year is easy: why waste time training someone new?
1 did not get the "job" he/she already had: he/she got hired as a VAP by his/her degree granting institution. Not really the same thing.
1 was not the first choice for that job. He/she was at least 2nd choice, but maybe even 3rd! or 4th!
That leaves 4 people who got TTs where they already had VAPs who *might* have been first choice for that job (but who knows! Maybe they were all 2nd/3rd/4th choice!).
Such is life. Apply for all the jobs. Not even Zeus knows whom the SC will choose. (And, more importantly, neither does the SC.)
"That leaves 4 people who got TTs where they already had VAPs who *might* have been first choice for that job (but who knows! Maybe they were all 2nd/3rd/4th choice!)."
I see five, not four, TT jobs, where I know about the search, that went to inside candidates. One was not a first choice, but is probably pretty happy about having a TT job.
The discussion was not "are you happy to get a TT, even as the 2nd/3rd/4th choice?" because the answer is always "hell, yes!!" The discussion was, "Is the internal candidate always/usually a shoe-in? Are we all doomed? Should we just give up now?" The answer is: we have 4 internal candidates who were *possibly* shoe-ins for TTs, not 9. Not that this will change anyone's opinion about the unfairness of life, but I thought it important to point out that most of those 9 were not to be feared.
So we don't think that a 4 (or 5) out of 9 acceptance rate for VAPs to TT is really high? We really assume that VAPs have just as small a shot as the other 80+ (or 200+) applicants for the jobs? When 4 out of 9 got the job? That's what these numbers mean to us? Argh...I SO wish I had concentrated more in that stats class!
"The discussion was, "Is the internal candidate always/usually a shoe-in? Are we all doomed? Should we just give up now?"
No, the comment which I was specifically refuting was the claim that for every inside candidate who gets a job, there are many many more who do not get the job, i.e. a claim that the inside candidate gets the job 10-20% of the time. I've shown that this year's wiki suggest that that claim is wrong.
Doomed? Only in this sense: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmTln3Fojas
"So we don't think that a 4 (or 5) out of 9 acceptance rate for VAPs to TT is really high? When 4 out of 9 got the job?"
No, you're reading it wrong. 9 is the number of people who (apparently) got jobs where they were teaching. 5 were TT, some were visiting, and someone else claimed some were at their own grad program.
No stats were given about how many inside candidates there might have been.
Brace yourselves. Another classics department is about to be shut down at R1 state school. In rationalizing the decision, the dean said, "We would all like to have a British Lit department as well, but in these difficult economic times, we must make choices." Bring on the facebook pages and petitions to no avail.
Georgetown 1 year? Didn't they have a 1-year last year? I'm not one to complain (!), but doesn't it seem like a huge waste of money for schools to post searches for 1-year people year after year, instead of just hiring a multi-year VAP or even creating a long-term lectureship? I keep hearing how horrible the economic conditions are, but Classics programs (and the administrations that tolerate them) seem unconcerned, unaffected, or, perhaps more likely, so far out of touch that they keep doing things the way they have for the past 50 years.
So which R1 is supposedly cutting Classics? Is this a dissolution of the whole department, a suspension of certain degree programs, a trimming of staff, what?
If by Rumor/Onion, you mean Inside Higher Ed article then yes: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/02/01/howard_university_spares_philosophy_and_african_studies_the_axe_but_guts_or_changes_71_others
Uhhh...some of us don't spend our days trolling (that's how I spelled it, on purpose) the internet looking for news about how the discipline is collapsing, because we're too busy working in our field. We do occasionally stop by the famae board to see what people are complaining about lately, and where the new jobs are popping up. Sorry for not knowing that Howard's having some problems.
But was it really so hard for someone to post a link to the article from Inside HigherEd? I was under an impression that one of the points of this board was to make the job-search and classics experience in general more open and tolerable. So why are so many people dedicated to subverting even this lonely beacon of hope?
I know a very senior science professor at Howard University and every time we see each other he goes on and on about what a massively messed up and corrupt (yes, corrupt) place Howard is. And they don't even get anything close to proper funding in the sciences. So if Howard cancels Classics that it by no means a bellweather for the rest of the field, unfortunate though it may be.
"Doesn't it seem like a huge waste of money for schools to post searches for 1-year people year after year, instead of just hiring a multi-year VAP or even creating a long-term lectureship? I keep hearing how horrible the economic conditions are, but Classics programs (and the administrations that tolerate them) seem unconcerned, unaffected, or, perhaps more likely, so far out of touch that they keep doing things the way they have for the past 50 years."
I gotta say, 6;52, this shows a complete lack of understanding about how the funding of positions comes about. Individual departments don't get to DECIDE whether they'll have a one-year, a multi-year VAP, a permanent lectureship, or a TT -- would that they did!!!!
What happens, in every college or university I've ever had any info. on (and what with academic parents and siblings, academic spouse, and self, that's quite a few), is that every dept. that wants any kind of position at all puts in a request to some part of their administration. It might be a dean, it might be a sub-dean, it might be a committee -- but depts. put in *requests*. The requests are either denied (most likely), funded as requested (least likely), or downgraded a step or two and partially funded.
So I would be not the least bit surprised if the classics dept. at Georgetown had asked for a new TT line, or at the very least for a new multi-year VAP, last year, and the administration responded by funding a one-year last year; and then funding another one-year this year. Why? because it costs a heck of a lot of money to create a new position and to fund it for several years. Not just salary -- there are benefits and FICA and so on that have to be budgeted in. An administration often has some discretionary funding in a given year, and they'll say "Okay, classics [or whoever] can have an extra person this year -- and then IF there is money again next year, we'll let them have another one-year. If next year's budget is tighter, then we won't."
Also, one-years are often sabbatical replacements. Where I teach, there is NO guarantee that any dept. will be given a sabbatical replacement; we are often just asked to suck it up and cover the classes as best we can while a colleague is on sabbatical. So even if the dept. is certain that two colleagues are going on sabbatical in two consecutive years, the request for a replacement has to be put through the system in each of those years, separately, is decided on separately, and comes out of a different fiscal year's budget. Does any dept. I've ever heard of like that system? No, we hate it. Would it be better for our students to have continuity? Yes, of course it would. Is there anything we can do to change this financial structure? Not a d**n thing. Here (at a SLAC) the ultimate control of the purse strings lies with the trustees. In a lot of state schools, it lies with the legislature (good luck with that). Nowhere that I've ever heard of does it lie with individual departments.
Bottom line -- don't blame departments for readvertising a one-year year after year after year. Of course no dept. would prefer to do it that way. But depts. don't get to choose.
I hope I'm posting this in the correct place (mods, please feel free to move).
I'm a socio-cultural anthropologist at a SLAC with some research expectations and I'm hoping to get some information about classics. I've done some probing online at places like the Chronicle, but I need something more specific to classics. Believe it or not, I'm one of the few advocates for classics outside of the department. Due to a certain administrative role I hold, I'm in a position to help the long term future of this department. In particular, there is a strong push to combine classics with our existing German, Russian, et al. department. Other than saving some nominal administrative expenses, my instincts tell me that it's not a great long term idea. I've heard the basic arguments about the unique contributions of classics to western thought. Why should classics not be thrown in with our greater-European language department? I'm afraid it's not enough to say Latin and Greek are different as dead languages.
One other issue I'm trying to wrap my mind around is the argument that the department studies every facet of Mediterranean antiquity, so it deserves to stand alone. We have five tenured faculty members with one teaching archeology half the time. Our classical historian is in History. Why does the one faculty member only teach archeology half-time? In anthropology, we rarely, if ever, require our archeologists to teach on the socio-cultural side. The answers I've gotten back from our classics faculty have been largely unhelpful. The classics homepage boldly proclaims that the department studies every facet of classics (language, literature, history, archeology, medicine, law, etc.) but 90% of its FTEs seems devoted to language and literature. Surely this is ideological rather than practical? We periodically have lecturers as well come in and cover sabbaticals and whatnot. As far as I know, they always teach the beginning languages. Could someone explain to me this curious phenomenon in terms that an outsider could grasp?Any "amunitition" you could give me to fire at the vultures would be much appreciated.
Sadly, as an archaeologist, I'd have to say that the situation you're describing is pretty common at smaller Classics departments - archaeology is just a side-benefit that some faculty might have to be inconvenienced to offer on occasion. The real "meat" of classics is in the languages and the literature. Or so the argument goes in many of our Classics circles. In many such cases, I cannot see any strong justification for keeping a separate Classics program - languages and literature is exactly what German and French and Italian and Russian and Japanese and all the other foreign languages also offer. So why not join the languages with the languages with the languages? Honestly, in your situation, it doesn't sound as if the Classics faculty would suffer very much if they were folded into a languages division (though they might lose numbers in the long run, I would think). After all, even a language department can occasionally offer a semester-long course in the cultural history of the people/places represented by the language offered.
Institutions that have a bit more money, a few more faculty, and larger Classics programs as a result, can more often hire full-time archaeologists and art historians (who often work in other departments), and these are the places that can more fully justify the preservation of a separate Classics program. But faculty interested mainly in Latin and Greek would have to push hard to add and maintain an interest in archaeology even in these departments, or they also run the risks that your Classics department seems ti be facing.
That said, I'd also have to add that it seems as if your Classics Department has dropped the ball a bit in making a case for their ongoing independence as a separate program. There are a lot of great classicists out there who are mainly interested in the languages and literature, but who are also more than willing to give archaeology, cultural history, and even anthropological perspectives a fair shake in their departments, because they know that all of these can add a great deal to our knowledge of the classical world. I'm hoping that your department is in the minority in devoting 10% or less of the total departmental offerings to things other than language and literature, but I'm not especially optimistic about that.
There is more involved in the question of whether or not to move a Classics faculty and program into a Modern Language one. First, we do teach languages and culture very differently. Modern languages teach grammar and syntax over several years, because they must concentrate also on spoken communication skills. In Classics, we teach the grammar/syntax in one year, then go right into reading and analyzing literature. Also, at least in my university, the modern language profs are busy developing courses such as "Business Spanish" and "Medical Spanish," geared to specific jobs students seek after graduation, rather than teaching Spanish literature. Of course, if a Classics department, like my own, also offers courses on ancient history and culture in translation, that would be another difference with the offerings in Modern Languages. Second, the type of scholarship done in Classics and that done in Modern Languages differs as well, because classicists need to work with so many more languages and take into account vast bibliographies (Homer, Vergil, etc.) The APA has a statement on its website about scholarship in Classics. You'd need to have different rubrics for assessing faculty performance in that respect, which isn't impossible but often makes for disgruntled faculty. I teach in a liberal arts school that used to have a combined "Modern and Classical Languages" department that in the mid 1990s split out into 2 separate departments, an improved situation for both.
"Also, at least in my university, the modern language profs are busy developing courses such as "Business Spanish" and "Medical Spanish," geared to specific jobs students seek after graduation, rather than teaching Spanish literature."
Isn't this what we're aiming to do with medical terminology and ancient law classes?
"Second, the type of scholarship done in Classics and that done in Modern Languages differs as well, because classicists need to work with so many more languages and take into account vast bibliographies (Homer, Vergil, etc.)"
This statement is pretty typical of the entitled attitude of classicists who think classics is so special. no wonder we're facing hard times ....
I am friends with a Spanish literature scholar whose research profile, languages read, scholarly bibliography is quite a bit more vast than most classicists I know who work on a narrowly defined author, so I don't think you can plead classics needs to stand alone because its practitioners know more languages?! what b.s.
I'm hoping that your department is in the minority in devoting 10% or less of the total departmental offerings to things other than language and literature, but I'm not especially optimistic about that.
Depending on the conscience and honesty of a department, really anything can be taught. It just might not be taught well or with any thought of how it fits in to the overall program. We're sometimes too desperate for bodies to fill seats to care whether they learn about the Trojan War or Alexander in a amateurish fashion that would make the History Channel blush. Most of us would be hesitant to throw dedicated field archaeologists to the head of a Latin class despite training in the language, but we seem more than willing to throw classicists in front of any "civ" class despite little to no formal training in that particular subject matter.
So one way to look at it is not just what classes are offered, but what specialities faculty have published on (don't look at CVs as it's quite ridiculous what many classicists claim specialities in). What you'll find is something similar to your SLAC. ~10% FTE devoted to archaeology. Sometimes you get a rare department like Michigan or Penn with more, but this is offset by a number of programs with leass than 10%. Check out the departments and dig a little. Publications don't lie. Most archaeology periodicals have "archaeology" in their title.
At anon February 3, 2011 5:10 PM (and others who nod in silent agreement when reading that post):
It sounds to me as if we have the impression that Spanish professors stand around trying to figure out how to use the language classes to get people jobs. And as if we honestly believe that French language instruction is limited to speaking and reading the language well. But that is simply not the case. There are entire modern language programs dedicated to the exact sorts of things that we do in courses that focus on the analysis of ancient literature and culture. Any serious French or Spanish major or grad student has had a number of courses in literary criticism, linguistics, language education (ever heard of that in a Classics course?), conversation, culture, history, etc. etc. Let's not give ourselves the impression that what we do with Greek and Latin literature is really so very different from what serious modern language programs do. Or can we safely argue that because there are fewer of us, we are by definition better than the "competition"? That's a fail-safe way to guarantee that our claim to have something to offer students will be ignored.
What we do DOES matter a great deal, but it matters in ways that are similar to the ways that a number of other RELATED disciplines also matter. Our subject matter differs, and if we do enough history and archaeology and art history along with our languages and literature, then we can indeed make the case that we do these things in ways that make us significantly different. If we just go around tooting our horns and bragging that Greek and Latin are complex, difficult, and obscure, and that these are good things, we're not going to convince most administrations that we deserve even as many faculty as we already have. And losing more positions would be (and continues to be) disastrous.
I think we need to all chip in to buy our archaeologist friends masks, capes, tights, and a cool looking "A" to put on their chest. It is plain that only their superpowers can save our backwards little world!
They can't save our world when the people in charge shaping programs and making line requests are stuck in the 19th century. Plus I doubt the one "archaeologist," if there is even one, could save most departments even if they were cloned from Sue Alcock and Ian Morris. Most classicists would resent the Malcock, as it is.
Let's not forget that many modern language programs are going down as well. At my university, few profs in modern languages publish much at all, and teach mostly core language classes (beginning and intermediate) , never teaching lit or god forbid, literary criticism. Students know that taking Spanish will look good on their medical school applications and that is why they take it. The smarter students take Latin for the same reason.
I've worked as a classicist in a foreign languages department. In many ways classicists are low-maintenance, while filling needs that the modern languages cannot. In the former case, we need less equipment (listening programs, computers to play videos and movies, etc etc). In the latter, latin and greek appeal to a different type of student- those more inclined to literary analysis than learning how to ask for a loaf of bread, and those who need to fulfil a language requirement but are too nervous or anxious or unwilling to deal with a spoken component. That said, we benefit foreign language departments more than they benefit us, because unless there is some component where the Uni lets you have civilization/history/mythology classes as 'humanities', the trajectory is towards getting chopped to the bone and stuck in an endless cycle of 101, 201, etc.
Elitism? At my university, the Classics department is high functioning, while Modern Languages is dysfunctional. We are leaders in student research, we contribute heavily to the Honors Program, we win national fellowships. Let's not brush every classics department with the same stroke. There are many strong Classics Departments, the faculty in which are attracting students and teaching a wide array of courses.
Why does the one faculty member only teach archeology half-time? In anthropology, we rarely, if ever, require our archeologists to teach on the socio-cultural side.
I know some of my colleagues will vehemently disagree with me, but it's a case of the tail wagging the dog. As you know better than I do, lines are granted when a case can be made for how indispensible and critical a position is for running your program. But the central tenet of classics is the illumination of antiquity through the use of texts. We're basically a logocentric discipline unlike anthro.
So a classics department can never have too many literature/philology/language people. But as we know, it's difficult to make an argument to a dean about needing a third, or fourth, or fifth Latinist, no matter what the program requirements dictate. Requests don't adequately explain how this line will put a classics department over the top when it's difficult enough to justify the existence of the two other Latinists in a modern culture increasingly out of tune with classics.
So, yes, a stronger argument can me made to hire someone who does something different, more conducive to cross-pollination with anthro, or Near Eastern studies, or physics, or whatever. But to get to the heart of the matter, classics doesn't really want or see a need for these people. They're outliers as long as they don't help further the basic logocentric mission. Archaeology can help with this, but you don't need a full FTE to basically dig/survey with a trowel/prism in one hand and Pausanius in the other. It's enough for a department to splash on their homepage how they use every major means to study antiquity. Unlike in anthro, GIS, paleoethnobotany, ethnoarchaeology, geomorphology, etc. are largely considered marginally useful for classics. Read some of the posts on here that denigrate these well-established subdisciplines of archaeology. Besides, hiring an archaeophilologist is a neat way of getting another half-time classicist as a bonus. This is why your SLAC has a half-time classical archaeologist.
Combining classics with German is like combining Williamsburg and Virgina Beach because they're towns, near each other, and full of gun-toting conservatives. Don't you want to continue visiting yesteryear and the place full of quaint concepts and people dressed funny? Yeah, and we should save Williamsburg as well.
I'm getting so sick of these "you're all so elitist" jibes. We're constantly asked to justify our discipline, and then when we discuss why classics is unique, has a niche in a modern university, and deserves to be taught, we're suddenly elitists looking down on everyone else? Talk about being between Sylla and Charybdis... oh, no, wait, that phrase probably brands me a snob, too.
I'm curious to know how our Anthropologist/Administrator might react to the interesting series of comments their original post inspired. I can imagine that some of this might look rather absurd to an outsider.
I'd have to say that the situation you're describing is pretty common at smaller Classics departments.
I would hardly call five tenured faculty members a smaller department. It's pretty average or even "medium" for classics. Small is two or three. I would call five to seven medium and anything more large.
"At my university, few profs in modern languages publish much at all, and teach mostly core language classes (beginning and intermediate) , never teaching lit or god forbid, literary criticism."
And what do you think we'll be teaching once we're combined with language departments and get whittled down to one or two classicists?
"Students know that taking Spanish will look good on their medical school applications and that is why they take it. The smarter students take Latin for the same reason."
No, the former are smarter because it's the fastest growing language in this country. What are the latter going to do? Pass inscriptions between patient and doctor? I don't recall "Latin" being listed by any doctors on insurance lists. But I'm sure the "smarter" doctors with a vague recollection of Latin from taking it years before their residencies will be golden once the lost legions of Augustus cross the Rio Grande.
In an attempt to counter the rampant pessimism that permeates this blog, I just want to mention the Garden Weasel. It's a great tool that saves your back and cleans up in a jif. Four rotating tines thoroughly till the soil, but leave plants and vegetables completely unharmed. So, if you're into gardening like I am, then you'll love the Garden Weasel.
What's different about Classics is that we study dead languages. If you want to check a Spanish translation, you can always fly over to Spain and have the Real Academia de la Lengua verify your diction and syntax. We re-construct ancient language and culture (material and otherwise) wholesale. That is the fundamental difference.
If a Classics department were to be combined with any other department, it should be History (though that would be a disaster, too, since History departments are not used to teaching languages). Perhaps, it's time to consider departments of Ancient Studies or something like that? We could annex ancient history, parts of Chinese studies (the old part of course), and anyone else interested in studying pre-Modern cultures. Of course, this would present other challenges; but it would allow us to retain our identity as scholars of antiquity while also incorporating the post-modern discovery that non-Western cultures are also worth studying. The trick would be retaining what is unique to each separate ancient culture.
Well, we would either have to lie, be blind, or stay mute to convey otherwise. I'm a terrible liar, I can clearly see where we're headed, and I'm an academic so I obviously can't shut up.
"What's different about Classics is that we study dead languages."
The SLAC admin has already heard this one. S/he clearly stated, "I'm afraid it's not enough to say Latin and Greek are different as dead languages."
I like your second suggestion though of a Department of Ancient Studies. We would likely need a more euphemistic name since "ancient" often has a negative connotation among the masses. Department of Pre-modern studies?
Just wanted to give the FINGER to search committees who fail to respond to your emails. I know they read this stuff so it makes me feel better at this moment of helplessness.
For those of you who will try to sound all "mature" and explain how they have their reasons, blah, blah, blah. Yes, I know all this, but I just need to vent and wanted to shout out in the digital wilderness, "Bastards, just cut me loose."
(Man, you people behave so odiously even when we have a guest? Sheesh. How about some dignity and decorum?)
Mysterious Anthropologist Administrator, If you have not been scared away, I'll try to give you a short, helpful, and non-elitist answer. If your small classics dept. is devoting 90% of its energies to language and literature then the problem is with the faculty. I'm speculating here, but probably they're all literature sorts who only publish on literature, and when they have to make a new hire they hire some like them rather than filling a gap. If so this is self-serving and hurts the department. A healthy classics department will also offer a good number of civilization courses -- from the basic Greek Civ and Roman Civ to sexier topics like Roman army, women and family, religion and magic, ancient medicine, etc. Perhaps that historian covers some such topics, but a classics dept. needs to as well, and these courses will draw plenty of non-majors.
It is such courses that argue for classicists being kept in their own departments. If these people really just care about various ways of repackaging literature then they're hurting themselves and hurting the field. And if they're not smart enough to see that they should be forced to.
What exactly is here? What point in time are you referring to? The goody-goody-gumdrops 50s when it was a WASP's world and even a Catholic president had never been elected? When the humanities had yet to feel the brunt of the Sputnik revolution and the technologies gained from a world war? When just about every university and college had a large and thriving classics department? Well, I don't think we're ever going back there even with a hot tub time machine.
Or are you talking about now? The shitehole that we're presently in? If so, you're obviously being facetious are highly delusional.
I work in a combined language department. It was combined a few years before I arrived, and it was done for the dual purpose of saving administrative costs and providing intellectual "synergy" (their words, not mine). The savings realized from the amalgamation turned out to be much lower than expected--the bulk of them from the reduction of one administrative assistant position (no great savings resulted from combining copier contracts, printing letterhead, reducing to a single fax machine/number, and it turned out that the other admin. asst. position that was supposed to be phased out was deemed necessary by a workload that didn't drop as much as expected). The intellectual synergies are mostly pretty superficial and certainly have not produced "interdisciplinary" scholarship (even among the modern language faculty), which was one of the stated goals.
This is a department, by the way, where everyone gets along reasonably well and most of the faculty in each program are happy to acknowledge the value of what those in other programs do, both in terms of scholarship and teaching. In fact, that is perhaps the greatest benefit to the various faculty members. Before the amalgamation there was a fair amount of jostling among the modern languages as enrollments were shifting from French to Spanish and German and Russian enrollments were simply plummeting.
Another benefit from the perspective of the administration is that it reduced the number of language-related direct reports to the dean from three to one. This has meant that instead of having to balance three competing claims, the dean forces the faculty to prioritize. No requests for a Germanist, a Hispanist, and a Hellenist at the same time, for instance; only one is allowed in a given hiring cycle. From the faculty perspective, this is problematic because it does not acknowledge that there are often simultaneous needs in the various programs.
The amalgamation also complicates requests for sabbatical and leave replacements. The English department can often replace two faculty in different subdisciplines, each of whom is gone for half of a year, with one lecturer. One person is unlikely to be able to replace a Russian professor and an Italian professor. The result? No replacement at all (none are guaranteed for anyone, but if the right package can be put together, the dean will often approve one--very difficult to do in languages).
But despite the personal amity that prevails in the department and the general atmosphere of respect, the feeling among the classicists is that it has not been good for us. The modern language folks acknowledge that it has not been entirely good for them either, but the drop in nasty in-fighting has been useful for them. There has occasionally been talk of splitting again, but the modern language people absolutely do not want classics to go. They feel there is safety in numbers. A combined language department has enough faculty to be as large as many other departments, though not as large as English, History, or other big social science and humanities departments. They also realize that in terms of other numbers--enrollments, in other words--classics produces an outsize number and floats the departmental boat to a large degree.
(contd) But classics is not an intellectual fit with the modern languages, despite some overlaps. Not because we're better than them or our discipline is inherently more awesome than theirs. It's just that our modern language colleagues all share a very similar training, orientations toward teaching, goals for student outcomes (a big deal for a state school), rhetoric about relevance, and so on. Again and again policies and practices end up having two separate versions: one for them, and one for us. These involve placement of incoming high school students, accreditation for teacher preparation, use of student fees for supporting the language lab, goals for coverage of material at various levels of language courses, guidelines for undergraduate honors theses, requirements concerning study abroad experiences, major requirements, descriptions of publication requirements for tenure and promotion, etc. etc.
This is done with very little rancor and something is usually worked out in the end, but it's often not ideal for either side of the divide. And every exception (and they usually are written in as exceptions for classics) is a reminder of how ill-fitting the classics program is amidst the modern languages. One result of this, by the way, is that despite a pretty constant request by the classicists to hire a full-time classical archaeologist, there has been no movement on this front because it would be a bad fit in a languages department and hence would be a luxury (again, the administration's reasons).
Is it an impossible situation? No. But what advantages it does hold are not particularly compelling.
There is more to be said about the differences between classics and the modern languages programs, but suffice it to say that they are very different animals. Even if a great deal of our courses are devoted to language and literature, we look nothing like our fellows, and our majors graduate with very different preparations and experiences--the most important being that our majors graduate with far more history, philosophy, art history, archaeology (non-classical in our case), and so on than the typical modern language student does. Yes, we teach our languages differently, and these differences exist at all language levels, but this is only one small part of the divergence.
I'm not going to respond in any serious way to the various characterizations of classics in the university as a failing discipline. But anyone who thinks that classics needs to follow the lead of modern languages should take a close look at how those disciplines are faring in the bulk of institutions of higher ed in this country.
Yeah, it's not great for classicists, but it sounds like everyone else is happy. I think most administrators could live with these results.
So what's our compelling argument? That we can't teach archaeology anymore in a language department? Why wasn't this more holistic approach to antiquity taken years before the merger? Why should a language department care about this now, especially since all of the classics majors' non-language needs are basically getting met outside the department. I'm sure Art History will happily take the archaeology line and would have a much better argument for getting one at this point.
From what I see, not only do these mergers rarely get undone, if it's being proposed, it's already too late. I think the lesson is for us to get our heads out of our asses and demonstrate definitively to administrators that we're more than just Greek and Latin. We're obviously not doing this by having 90% of a department's FTEs filled by philologists and offering an Alexander class once in a while by a Hellenistic hobbyist.
Just as people are making the argument that there are well-balanced and thoughful classics programs out there, I want to point out that not all classical archaeologists are classicists who get a bit dirty once in a while trying to find Homer through coins and sculpture (though this is apparently the best/quickest way to land a permanent job). Many of us have quite extensive training in numerous archaeological subdisciplines thanks to rigourous fieldwork and coursework outside of classics. In fact, many of the archaeological advances over the years (C dating, dendrochronology, surface survey, nautical archaeology, remote sensing) were pioneered or outright invented by classical archaeologists.
Yeah, it's tough at times being a classical archaeologists in the States (and I know many classicists are tired of hearing this on here), but I'm always hopeful something will work out in the end. We seem doomed to toil for years and years in obscurity and VAPs trying to make it. We're just not a very good fit in most disciplines as presently construed in North America. The present situation that dictates that we receive the great majority of the same training as philologists in order to land a job in classics really puts the onus on the individual to strike out on their own and bone up on the methods and theories that anthropological archaeologists learn in a due course.
As for a solution, I have no idea. At this point, balancing employability with striving to be the best archaeologist seem diametrically opposed to each other. I wish it weren't, but something has to give with this dichotomy between the centrality of material culture and the centrality of texts.
Thank you for bringing some sense and balanced argumentation to this blog. I hope that the Anthro Admin will pay heed to your opinions, which are marked by neither chauvinism nor invective, unlike much of what ends up here.
How many faculty did you have pre-merger and what's it at now? I'm guessing the savings come down the road when retiring classicists aren't replaced.
Me again:
Savings have not come from classicists' not being replaced. As I said, the merger took place before my arrival, so I'm a "replacement" classicist. Savings have come from the loss of other language faculty (seriously, look at enrollments in German sometime, or Russian, or Portuguese, or just about anything aside from Spanish). Those savings have been somewhat eroded by new hires in Spanish and Italian. Those savings will probably be further eroded if tenure lines Arabic or other "booming" languages are added. The scare quotes are intended: Arabic (and Chinese, and a few other languages) is booming by percentage increase at the intro level, but not at the intermediate and upper levels, and in absolute numbers we're still talking very low figures.
A number of places still haven't contacted people for campus flyouts, at least according to the wiki. It's now four weeks after the APA. Is it normal for some schools to take this long?
Yeah, it's not great for classicists, but it sounds like everyone else is happy. I think most administrators could live with these results.
Administrators who care about lowering their number of direct reports? Yes. But the specific benefits that rationalized the merger have never panned out.
To be sure, other benefits have emerged. The primary one is that large enrollments in classics created a buffer allowing some of the lower-enrolled languages not to be badgered constantly about numbers (in the same way that Classics has for decades used classical civ enrollments to cover low enrollments in Greek).
So what's our compelling argument?
It may not be compelling to you, but after being in this environment for quite a while, I'm quite convinced that the disciplinary profiles of classics and the modern languages--despite both being tied to the teaching of the language themselves--are simply more dissimilar than similar.
There are lots of weird mergers in the world of higher ed. You can put sociology and anthropology together. You can put English as a Second Language in with English or Education or Linguistics or Languages. You can put Religious Studies in with Philosophy or with History (as at one institution I'm familiar with) or Classics. But the more disparate the basic look and feel of the disciplines, the more likely it is that such a merger will attain very little aside from saving on printing multiple kinds of letterhead and reducing direct reports to administrators.
Why wasn't this more holistic approach to antiquity taken years before the merger?
I arrived post-merger. Can't speak to that in this case, but I'm pretty sure that if the previous deans had allowed more than a few classicists on campus at any given time there would likely have been more holistic approaches.
Why should a language department care about this now, especially since all of the classics majors' non-language needs are basically getting met outside the department. I'm sure Art History will happily take the archaeology line and would have a much better argument for getting one at this point.
Anyone who thinks that large numbers of Art History departments are going to be hiring classical archaeologists in the coming years is simply not facing the reality: at most places, Art History is as threatened as Classics. In some more so, in some less. Art History here would never conceive of asking for a classical archaeologist at this point and would most certainly not get one.
From what I see, not only do these mergers rarely get undone, if it's being proposed, it's already too late.
They do sometimes get undone. I can think of one recent example, and Classics seems to be continuing to thrive as a result at that institution. But your general point is right: this is a rarity. But they can more frequently be prevented or, if not prevented, done in such a way that the process can be sure to allow the various merged entities to retain more of their individual characteristics.
I think the lesson is for us to get our heads out of our asses and demonstrate definitively to administrators that we're more than just Greek and Latin.
I don't think you're taking into account is how little many administrators would give a damn even if you could demonstrate it to them. Or how few of the administrators who would give a damn could do much about it anyway.
But I'm being drawn into all those big debates here that I'd prefer to stay out of. I simply wanted to give one perspective on the prospect of language department mergers, and so I think I'll bow out now and go back to lurking quietly in the background.
Best of luck to all of you in the process of on-campus interviews and the like, and my best wishes to the far too many good recent PhDs who came away with too little or nothing from the awful job market.
"A number of places still haven't contacted people for campus flyouts, at least according to the wiki. It's now four weeks after the APA. Is it normal for some schools to take this long?"
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's "not normal" or to assume (as the previous reply to this question did) that it means lines have been yanked. Some places just take a LONG time.
But another point -- there's always the possibility that the people who got called for on-campus interviews don't post to this wiki. Not everyone does. So the fact that the wiki doesn't show interviews scheduled at a particular place is NOT proof that interviews haven't yet been scheduled; it's only proof that interviews haven't been scheduled *with a candidate who conscientiously updates the wiki*.
"[T]he best recourse is to solve the problem ourselves, taking matters into our own hands, as it were. To that end, I have recently founded an organization, Academic Opportunities Unlimited (AOU). Our motto is 'We can’t guarantee you’ll get the job, but we can guarantee an opening.'
AOU is elegant in its simplicity, rebalancing an artificially skewed market. One of the effects of the job crisis is an aging professoriate. Since the 1970s, the scales have tipped heavily AARP-ward: while only 17 percent of faculty were 50 or over in 1969, a bloated 52% had crossed that divide by 1998. It is no doubt worse now, and strangling the air supply of potential new professors.
AOU would work to remedy this bias against youth. It would, through a rigorous screening process, pinpoint faculty who are clogging positions and select them for hits, or 'extra-academic retirement' (EAR). While this might raise qualms from the more liberal-minded among us, we would argue that it is more humane, both to potential faculty who otherwise have been shunted aside and to those languishing in the holding pattern of a withered career, than our current system. The retirement would be efficient and quick, and strictly limited to those who, as the saying goes, have their best years long behind them."
I would guess that the humanities would be the most bloated due to financial insecurity and no cushy industry/consulting jobs to slide into near retirement. Attending the APA already feels like an AARP conference. A large number of the mid-career people I know, who are already few in number from the dire 80s market, only show up for committee work.
I don't envy the job you have. I can provide some insights as a former "half-time" classical archaeologist at a SLAC who has moved on since to a "full-time" archaeology position at a R1.
Each place can be quite different. I admire some of the responses on here, but they're full of anecdotes and likely of dubious help. If your classics faculty draw a good number of students, this can play in their favor like one poster mentioned. I find it doubtful, however, that many traditional, "logocentric" classics programs could do the heavy lifting in a language department. Latin doesn't draw the same as most modern languages and Greek fairs even worse.
My suggestion is to talk with your classical archaeologist. Try to gain his/her confidence. In my former position, I was hesistant to convey my inner feelings to anyone, but I would have done so in confidence to someone like you.
I don't wish to get into the tired arguments about archaeology's role in classics, but where it can be useful is in determining the health of a department. Archaeology is a bellwether of sorts in classics. It's the easiest way for classics to collaborate with the social sciences and hard sciences. The support that your classical archaeologist receives from the department and the value his/her research holds for archaeology in general is a surefire way of determining whether the department is functioning at a high level.
To test the latter position, check if one of your department's archaeologists knows the classical archaeologist's research. If not, which is already a bad sign, have one of them discretely get to know their work. I hate to say it, but hiring an archaeologist in the old mould, one who is not active in the field and has little chance of expanding the reach of the department, happens much too often in classics. Why? There are myriad reasons, but it often breaks down in the search process and the way in which we train our archaeologists in grad school. I'll leave it at that.
I'm sure Art History will happily take the archaeology line
When I talk to art historians (in different subfields) about archaeologists their contempt makes the philologists' comments here look like a valentine's card. I'm sure it's not always the case, but people who are into the Vienna School or postmodernism generally have much more in common with literary types than with serious archaeologists. Remember that art history departments are not composed of classical art historians alone--if they were they would probably be more sympathetic to old world archaeology.
Departments of premodern studies may be the future but not in the short-term. Non-classical areas (China, India, etc.) could never grow properly - as they need to from their currently embryonic state - from within amorphous and untried departments composed at least partly of classicists who already have a strong institutional history. Personally, I think it would be better to keep individual ancient studies departments like Classics separate but bring them together at another level through well-funded interdisciplinary bodies (Centers, programs, and the like). I suspect the money is out there for those in the administration who are enterprising, charming, dedicated, and thoughtful enough to go get it.
I think neither a typical art history nor classics department really want an archaeologist that an anthropologist can respect. It's not so much who they are as what they're not both in terms of research and teaching. But most classics department would happily take an "archaeology-lite" line, someone who fits in the culture and happily teaches Latin and Greek. In the same way, there is no way an art history department passes up a line for a person that studies vase painting or architecture. So if they're motivated enough, they can play the game as well as classics and plead for a line to fill this vital role, then turn around and get the same old traditional scholar in their own image.
Judging the health of a small Classics Department solely by how happy its archaeologist is would be like judging an archaeologist by how much classical literature he knows. Classics Departments need connections to other departments, but they can be art, anthropology, philosophy, religion, history, Comp. Lit., Women's Studies,etc. Picking one of these as the sine qua non at a small place makes no sense.
Classics unable to compete with other languages? You don't get out much. In many places, Classics has long been doing better than French, German, and Slavic, both because people's interest in those languages is fading while Latin is on a slight upswing, and because many Classics Department started offering Civ courses 30-40 years ago. Spanish is another story.
That conservative, Heritage Foundation, whacky-talk-show guy whose name was just given on this place that does not give names is in no way "a **typical**, established classicist." Calling him one suggests the poster is not so good at evaluating evidence--you know, the thing superior anthropological types are supposed to be better at.
Anon. 11:10, I think you're absolutely correct. Anon 11:02 obviously missed the point and has the reading comprehension of a six-year-old.
Anon 11:02, nowhere did anyone suggest you judge the health of a department by how happy someone is. Can you point this out? Yeah, and I'm sure Latin is doing better than Sanskrit as well? Any evidence for "classics has long been doing better than French, German?" If you mean enrollment, this is totally false. And when did civ get thrown in as proof that Latin and Greek do better than other languages? How does this make sense, even if you throw in all the German related art, history, philosophy, etc. classes?
If you leftist loonies could think outside your PC bubble once in a while, you would see that Fears is just saying what everyone with half a brain is thinking but is afraid to say.
Does the anthro admin have to dig any deeper than read some of these posts to get an idea of what ails classics? Heck, one poster even went after anthro...nice. Yeah, it's exaggerated due to the angst inducing job market, but I see very few posts on here that are too far off the mainstream of classics.
Could some one of you explain precisely (and without bizarre remarks about masturbatory fantasies) exactly what it is that you find so objectionable in the NPR interview linked above? I read it over and it seemed to me that it was quite superficial, as such an interview must be, but that what it stated was all fairly self-evident, even to the level of "well, duh." What got up you people's noses? Was it that he dared to use the word "genius" connected with the Greeks?
Btw, I am a "leftie," to use a previous poster's terms. I am very, very far left in my politics. But I just don't get what's so objectionable about that interview.
(In case it matters--don't know why it would-- I'm tenured in a small classics dept at a SLAC, where 2 1/2 classicists (we've got one joint appt. with history) teach both languages at all levels, civ courses, myth courses, gender/sexuality in antiquity courses, ancient theatre courses, survey of G/R art and architecture courses, and our college's required freshman seminar. We all have to teach all of those; we don't have the luxury of specialization. If we ever got another line or if we're replacing someone who's here we'd be quite happy to hire an archaeologist but it would have to be an archaeologist who could teach both languages at all levels -- that's not snobbery or elitism, it's just the reality of how a very small department has to work if it's going to keep a program with majors and minors going.)
11:48 a.m. said: "Anon 11:02, nowhere did anyone suggest you judge the health of a department by how happy someone is. Can you point this out? "
That was my summary of this recommendation :
"My suggestion is to talk with your classical archaeologist. ... Archaeology is a bellwether of sorts in classics. It's the easiest way for classics to collaborate with the social sciences and hard sciences. The support that your classical archaeologist receives from the department and the value his/her research holds for archaeology in general is a surefire way of determining whether the department is functioning at a high level."
My shorthand may not have been clear, but I was assuming that the questioner would not do an in-depth analysis of whether the archaeologist is being supported well, but would just ask him/her, and that the answer would depend on whether or not they were happy with how they were treated, and would not be a very reliable "bellweather." I've met very few archaeologists who think they are a being treated as well as they should be treated--even when they were sitting on top of the world (or a huge pile of money). They are just a subset, I suppose, of the many classicists in all fields who think the world should revolve around them and are outraged that it does not.
Anon 1:32, if you're a liberal, I'm Newt Gingrich. And if you're complaining about having all these civ/archaeology/non-language classes to teach, why don't you just hire an archaeologist or historian to teach them? Sounds like there's plenty to keep this person busy. Then the 2 1/2 of you can teach what you've been trained best to do, lang-lit, and the archy/historian can do the same. Now there's a novel idea!
Anon 2:12, I am a liberal. I have voted for every liberal and/or progressive candidate I've ever had a chance to vote for. I have never voted for a Republican. I notice that you don't respond to my question about what annoyed you in the radio broadcast -- you just throw me out of the fold by saying "you're not a liberal." Okay, whatever. Keep your mind nicely closed around those easy assumptions.
On your second question -- If I held the purse-strings, I'd love to create a couple of new lines and use one of them to hire an archaeologist/art historian. But there's no money for another line, and there won't be for the foreseeable future. The budget is tight around here, and we're not going to get any more faculty in classics.
With our 2 1/2 people, the reason we need each of us to be able to teach both languages at all levels (this is obvious to anyone who's ever taught at a SLAC) is that language classes are taught more frequently than civ. classes. They HAVE to be, or there'd BE no languages. You can't offer 1st semester Latin and then wait 2 years to offer 2nd semester Latin.
Our civ courses (using that term to mean everything other than language) are on a very complicated 2 or 3-year rotation schedule. The most frequently any of them get taught is every other year. So for our dept. to continue, we all have to be able to teach the languages.
And, btw, I was NOT complaining. I love teaching civ. and history courses and I've won several awards for doing so. I was trying to respond to the bitter complaints that many have posted here about small depts. that expect archaeologists to be able to teach the languages. Apparently a lot of archaeologists consider that unfair or unreasonable -- my point was that in a small LAC, that's just how things work. Anyone we hired would have to be able to teach the languages and all our other courses as well. Things are different, obviously, in a dept. of 8 or 10 or 15 faculty members. But In a very small dept. in a very small LAC, that's just how it is.
It's obvious that nothing will change until the grim reaper is at the door. Logocentric classics departments with fewer than five faculty members should be thrown into a language department. Why not? I don't buy the we're-the-healthy-thriving-languages-and-would-just-be-sharing-our-awesomeness-to-keep-the-plebeian-languages-afloat arguments. It's delusional for 95% of the cases out there. Administrators, downsize away.
Why are we even debating this? Screw the archaeologists. We don't need them and I'd rather take our chances in a language department than hear this incessant drivel. If you don't want to play by our rules and teach languages, get lost. These things were set generations ago. The more we acquiesce to these ingrates, the more they complain and demand. This IS classics. If you don't like it, go to the neanderthals in anthro.
"February 6, 2011 3:45 PM Anonymous said... Why are we even debating this? Screw the archaeologists. We don't need them and I'd rather take our chances in a language department than hear this incessant drivel. If you don't want to play by our rules and teach languages, get lost. These things were set generations ago. The more we acquiesce to these ingrates, the more they complain and demand. This IS classics. If you don't like it, go to the neanderthals in anthro."
Here are a few of your points: 1) Screw the archaeologists. 2) If you don't want to play by our rules and teach languages, get lost. 3) These things were set generations ago. 4) This IS classics. If you don't like it, go to the neanderthals in anthro.
I'd like to think that you speak only for a small section of classicists when you write these things (which are more or less terrifying on their own, but also echo much more terrifying ideas and refrains from particularly shameful moments in human history).
A number of posters have been harping incessantly about the "archaeologists" who "whine" whenever they're asked to teach languages, and the other (or same) archaeologists who are never satisfied with anything. I have never met these straw-man archaeologists, but let's assume for the sake of the argument that they do exist, and that they really object to having to teach languages at SLACs. In my opinion, those archaeologists, whether real or imagined, really shouldn't be shooting for jobs in small departments with limited offerings. Because in those contexts they will absolutely be asked to teach the occasional language course or even full language sequences. That is the expectation in many small departments in our field. That is not the case, however, in medium or large departments, where there are more than enough people with language specializations to prevent the need for someone who is not so specialized to pick up those language classes.
I am under the impression that a small department is far more likely to hire and have on faculty three language/literature specialists and then ask them to occasionally non-language courses than they are to hire an archaeologist as the #3 faculty member and ask that person to carry a heavy language load. A small department that prefers to focus exclusively on classical languages and literature is unlikely to need or want an archaeologist. Similarly, a small department that wants to offer more extensive courses in the ancient world might very well consider having two languages/literature people and hiring in an archaeologist, for the simple reason that two faculty members can very realistically teach the full range of language courses in a small department each year. In this situation, the archaeologist might occasionally have to pick up a year-long language sequence, but their main offerings would be in ancient history, archaeology, mythology, etc. Again, there's no reason why such an archaeologist should complain about the opportunity to do languages and everything else, it seems to me that that's the sort of thing that classical archaeologists went into classical archaeology for in the first place.
On the other hand, putting the imaginary complaining archaeologist back on the shelf, it is not infrequently the case that a small classics department would rather stick with the old curriculum, with its heavy language-and-literature focus, than bring in a new person with a different perspective. "After all," they reason, "why change something that has worked for 130 years?" These are the departments that administrative types are starting to re-evaluate, and they're honestly trying to figure out why those three Classics professors have their own department, when, from the outside, it sure looks as if they're doing the same thing as the professors in the language department. I'm pretty sure that hiring an archaeologist is not the solution for these departments. But I am also pretty sure that the model needs to be re-evaluated, then rebuilt, in a new way, to maintain (or rediscover) the relevance of a field that many observers would readily agree has lost its way.
"February 6, 2011 3:45 PM Anonymous said... Why are we even debating this? Screw the archaeologists. We don't need them and I'd rather take our chances in a language department than hear this incessant drivel. If you don't want to play by our rules and teach languages, get lost. These things were set generations ago. The more we acquiesce to these ingrates, the more they complain and demand. This IS classics. If you don't like it, go to the neanderthals in anthro."
Here are a few of your points: 1) Screw the archaeologists. 2) If you don't want to play by our rules and teach languages, get lost. 3) These things were set generations ago. 4) This IS classics. If you don't like it, go to the neanderthals in anthro.
I'd like to think that you speak only for a small section of classicists when you write these things (which are more or less terrifying on their own, but also echo much more terrifying ideas and refrains from particularly shameful moments in human history)."
I forgot to include among those refrains this little gem: 4b) The more we acquiesce to these ingrates, the more they complain and demand.
Reread your post, 2/6 3:45pm, it's pretty fascinating stuff, in a bad way.
"two faculty members can very realistically teach the full range of language courses in a small department each year."
Well . . . not so sure about that, not if the dept. wants to offer ANY other courses at all.
1st year Latin = two courses 1st year Greek = two courses 2nd year Latin = two courses 2nd year Greek = two courses upper level Latin = two courses (bundling 3rd and 4th yr together) upper level Greek = two courses
I see twelve courses a year. On a 3-3 teaching load that is every single course available for two faculty members. And most SLACs have Core or Distribution requirements that depts. also have to factor in. If you want your department to offer ANY civ/culture courses (and I don't know any classics department that doesn't), you need more people, or you have to figure some way to offer fewer language courses. At my SLAC, with 3 classicists. we teach all our upper-level languages as unpaid overloads, meaning we really have a four-three load rather than the three-two we have on paper. Even so it's a very tight squeeze to get even the bare minimum of classes covered.
"for the simple reason that two faculty members can very realistically teach the full range of LANGUAGE courses in a small department each year"
12 courses (by your count) split between 2 faculty on 3-3 loads = break even. Assuming they're both on 3-3, which is often not the case, especially in smaller departments, where 4-4 is quite common. So I think the point stands.
"12 courses (by your count) split between 2 faculty on 3-3 loads = break even. Assuming they're both on 3-3, which is often not the case, especially in smaller departments, where 4-4 is quite common. So I think the point stands."
No, you've missed my point. As I specifically said, on a 3-3 load, two faculty can cover all the language courses ONLY IF they teach nothing else at all -- no myth, no art history, no civ classes, no freshman seminars or distribution classes.
Perhaps there are 2-person depts. out there that do indeed teach ONLY languages, but I've never encountered one. In every SLAC I know, the classes that keep the dean's good will are the high-enrollment civ classes that "serve the college" by filling distribution requirements.
The math isn't that difficult. If you are only able to schedule 12 classes a year, you can't do a full offering of both languages and offer civ courses. You must either have another faculty member (for 18 courses a year), or offer more courses off-book as unpaid overloads, or offer one of the languages only on an every-other year basis (which is REALLY tricky).
And, assuming you have a third classicist (as we do here), it makes no sense at all to me to insist that 2 faculty members teach NOTHING BUT languages and that one teach nothing but civ, history and archaeology. That's a recipe for burn-out all around. Are there really any classicists under the age of 75 who would want to teach only language classes, never a single civ class? I've never met any such person, either when I was in grad school back in the early 90s or since. In small depts., everyone needs to be able to teach the whole range of courses (languages and civ). I would never have considered that a controversial statement before I started reading this remarkably testy and touchy blog, which I think I will now stop reading.
1. Can't we just ignore the outrageous posts, posturing, ridiculous demands for "proof," etc.? Just scroll through. Easy as that. I would rather that we all have the opportunity to speak our minds and have some "drivel" than having the polite conversations of little consequence we have at the APA.
2. I'm a Hellenist, so please don't jumpt down my throat, but shouldn't we be asking whether a department of two should even be offering the full complement of languages courses to the advanced level? Or even the beginning sequence every year? That's ridiculous with two. Why not offer Beginning Latin+Intermediate Greek every year followed by Beginning Greek+Intermediate Latin? Advanced courses can be offered on a year by year basis based on some exceptional students wanting to continue on to grad school. For those nervous about offering the beginning sequences every other year and risking students getting a late jump on things, can't this be filled with an intensive course during the summer?
3. Why not bring in VAPs to teach the beginning sequences? Yeah, it's money for the college, but how much does it cost to have someone teach part-time? Honestly, finding good beginning language instructors should be the easiest task in Classics and I'm sure there are plenty of recent grads who would jump at the opportunity, even at $2500/course. You don't know what you'll get in a civ course when you bring in someone from the outside, but how much deviation can you get from H&Q and Wheelock?
Dear Hellenist, A free tip for the market. If you ever have any intention of getting a job at a SLAC don't tell them 90% of what you just wrote. If you think enrollments are an issue at large unis multiply that many times over for small depts at SLACs. If you want the languages to be a success at a SLAC, especially Greek, you need permanent faculty teaching them at all levels every year - that's just how it works in small campus communities where personal relationships, word-of-mouth and consistency of expectation are crucial. Now if you want the languages to be be replaced with a wholly in-translation curriculum that's a different story, but it's not the premise we've been discussing. AnotherSLACprof
Those of us whose SLACs are located out in the boonies (and there are lots of those, some of them very good SLACs indeed) do not have the option of finding VAPs to teach on a course-by-course basis. Believe me, there's no one living in this small (under 20,000 inhabitants) town who can teach Greek or Latin as an adjunct. The nearest major university with grad students in classics is over six hours away by car. It's not possible for an adjunct to commute here for one or two courses, so the only way we can hire temporary help is by asking someone to pack up their bags and move here for a year. To do that, we have to offer them enough of a salary to live on. And our administration has been quite clear, in conversations with out dept, that there's no money, zero, zip, for a full-time VAP for us in the college's budget.
Offering languages only every other year is the quickest way to kill a program. Don't go there.
Few places have enough enrollment/faculty to offer intermediate languages, so many small depts omit them. That makes 4 set courses each semester, not 6. On a teaching load of 3-3, that leaves 1 non-language course per prof per semester, or 4 non-language offerings per year.
That is by far the most common solution I've seen. It is true that some schools have decided to offer the intro languages every other year. Others have "cut" the upper level languages and offer them as independent studies (i.e., unpaid work for devout faculty members- bless their hearts!).
All of these options exist, but the first step in downsizing is usually to omit the intermediate and make intro intensive.
I think I've missed your point only so far as you've missed mine: the whole point of what I wrote above about two faculty teaching the full range of language courses in a small department was that adding a third faculty member would greatly increase the flexibility of the department in specifically non-language areas. Adding an archaeologist or an historian would be an example of how to do this, and if that archaeologist/historian could also teach the languages, so much the better. So you basically agree with what I've said, which is that departments should NOT keep hiring more of the same people that they already have on the faculty, but should instead try to diversify after they've covered the basics, so that they'll be able to better justify their existence to administrative types (again, as you've already suggested, by offering classes like civ). But I guess you're not even reading this, so I am just typing in the wind...
There is no way that the great majority of two-person departments hires anyone but a philologist for a full third appointment.
People, let's stop talking about ideal scenarios and outliers - two-person departments, language departments where Latin carries the day. We're happy for you; it simply does not apply to most of us. It's certainly not helping the SUNY Albany and MSU type departments out there, not the classics department at anthro admin's institution.
Okay, so if hiring yet another philologist isn't the issue at SLACs or at Harvard or Michigan etc. (which seem to be doing fine) that should probably have been pointed out at the start of this rather heated and overlong discussion (which began, oh, about 93 iterations of FV ago). People have pointed this out before - to no avail - but if everyone on here thinks the argument about hiring applies to *their* institution they're going to take it personally, even if it doesn't in fact apply, whether they're an archaeologist or philologist.
"Honestly, finding good beginning language instructors should be the easiest task in Classics and I'm sure there are plenty of recent grads who would jump at the opportunity, even at $2500/course. You don't know what you'll get in a civ course when you bring in someone from the outside, but how much deviation can you get from H&Q and Wheelock?"
As someone who's been in this game for over 30 years now (counting grad school) I can definitely tell you that you can get a LOT of "deviation" in how the basic grammar is presented and taught. A bad or unprepared or just very green language teacher can hamstring an entire cohort of language students. If their first-year instruction is sub-standard, they can almost never catch up and the after-effects carry on through the next three years of study (and that's quite aside from the ones who drop in droves that first year because with they find the badly taught first-year class confusing, incomprehensible, frustrating, etc. )
For which reasons, here at yet another SLAC, we would hire an adjunct to teach a civ course (if ever the Dean offered us money for an adjunct that is, which isn't goiong to happen in this lifetime) but we would never consider handing our first-year language classes off to an adjunct.
I know I would move to Montana to teach a beginning/intermediate language sequence. It would be much easier as well living off of $10000 or whatever I would get paid that year. It would allow me to continue my career. I have a dozen friends about to come out or recently out who would take such a job as well. And we're not green teachers either. Almost all of us have taught Greek, Latin, or both while in grad school. Throw me in front of a civ class, and then I would feel sorry for the students. I've had plenty of experience with lecturers teaching the first couple years of Greek or Latin. Half the time, they were better teachers and more dedicated than any tenured prof they threw in kicking and screaming. For the advanced languages, yes. I found tenured profs to be a mixed bag for intro languages.
It's somewhat to those of us who are tenured professors at small schools and who willingly and eagerly teach languages at all levels to assume that we have to be forced, "kicking and screaming," to teach the intro languages.
It's depressing that so few people on this blog seem to be able to imagine that there are tenured professors who love teaching -- teaching languages, literature, culture, the whole range -- and are good at it. And yet I know many such, mostly but by no means all at SLACs.
I'm counting four jobs offered, as of today, with no notes on any of the jobs on our list. Is it pretty typical that candidates will only add their job-specific info when they've accepted or rejected an offer? I can see how someone might not want to share that info immediately, as it could have an effect on the negotiation process.
As for the "there are more candidates than jobs" argument... well, this is all fields in academia and some professional ones--see lawyers R us. Classics ratios (candidates to positions) are not that bad compared to some like English or religion and let's not even talk about positions for all those Juilliard grads in cello (seriously two positions a year if they're lucky for many, many candidates). Look, it's not great this year but we could have it worse. We do need to reimagine ourselves and I think that means we stop whining about the cuts we face since we often have lots of faculty serving a small major pool. Let's just get over ourselves a little and get some perspective. We should be demanding positions for all departments and pushing the admin to funnel most of those donations toward increasing faculty than adding yet another climbing wall/latte, cyber cafe in the new school of business...
Herbert A. Millington Chair - Search Committee 412A Clarkson Hall Whitson University College Hill, MA 34109
Dear Professor Millington,
Thank you for your letter of March 16. After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me an assistant professor position in your department.
This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising field of candidates it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.
Despite Whitson's outstanding qualifications and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs at this time. Therefore, I will assume the position of assistant professor in your department this August. I look forward to seeing you then.
Of course this could be another one of those years where a few people get multiple offers, like Scarlet at the barbecue (while she's still pining for Ashley), and the whole system has to wait for them to decide, which takes longer than your think because people with more than one offer can negotiate better and for a longer time.
The Waiting, with Eddie Vedder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK7Bks4XbD4
It could very well be as I've noticed that a certain candidate who gummed up the works several years ago is back on the market. I know of at least two other highly qualified junior candidates in TT positions who are yearning for greener pastures for some reason (and getting plenty of love back).
I know of a couple of jobs that have been offered and one that has been accepted, but the individuals involved have not yet revealed the information, so I don't feel that I can. But they are different people, at least, not one person with multiple offers. I also have heard that some places are delayed, like Furman, for whatever reason.
Someone commented on this above, I think, but what's the potential harm in posting that a job has been offered, with no further details than that? I am having trouble figuring out how this would hurt me, if I were so lucky as to be in a position with one or more offers on the table. Can anyone explain?
Furman sent out at least one campus invite yesterday (and I assume they actually sent out all campus invites). I didn't get one, nor did I get a notice of not getting one.
I'm on a search committee. Our third candidate is arriving this week. Then we'll have to meet, compare notes, and decide to whom to offer the position. No way an offer will go out for at least another week.
I know it SEEMS late, but it really isn't. This is very, very early in the season for offers.
Isn't it maybe just a little bit kind of late for people who were interviewed at the APA and still haven't heard anything from those places? Lateness is probably relative, but from where I'm sitting, 6 weeks without any information seems like a long time.
According to the chart, classics offerings have only declined 4.7% in the last 35 years (compared to 17.6% in German and 17% in Romance langs, even 10% in history). Not sure how that correlates to number of free-standing depts, though.
LOL, talk about statistical incompetence! That study actually shows that the number of classics programs has declined by 22% (from 21.5% to 16.8% of 4-year colleges), or roughly the same as the overall decline in Romance language/literature programs. German programs have actually taken a 40% whack, but still, Classics is near the very top in terms of an actual percentage decline (aside from Home Economics and Secretarial programs!).
"The University of 10-Hour-Drive-To-Nearest-City, Montana, invites applications for a part time (limited benefits) position in Classical Everything. Successful applicant must be able to teach Greek and Latin at all levels, Archaeology and History of the Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to late antiquity, Greek and Roman literature in translation, Classical Mythology, Gender in the Ancient World, Freshman Writing,and our 'Great Books' survey. Knowledge of area outside Mediterranean (such as Egypt or Near East) a strong plus. Teaching load is 5/5, compensation $15,000. Please send graduate transcripts, three letters of recommendation, cover letter, CV, teaching statement, research statement, list of all classes taught, syllabi, and credit card statements to: Prof. Ugotta B. Kiddingme, Second Mud-Hut on the Left, 10-Hour-Drive-To-Nearest-City, MT."
And before anyone says it... yes, I have a bad attitude.
To be fair, the position at UNH is for an lecturer, I believe. All universities have pay scales for different ranks. It could be that the university would not fund a VAP rank position, and all the department could get is a lecturer rank. Please keep in mind that departments may be constrained and not simply evil.
1,431 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 801 – 1000 of 1431 Newer› Newest»I fear it's a small minority, but many thanks to the classicists who recognize the unhealthy status quo in classical studies right now and stood up to the "colonialists" who are propagating an unsustainable tradition. Perhaps there is hope for us after all.
Nurse Ratched? Anyone? Help?
"It hardly seems fair, then, to blame philologists for the disgraceful incivility that you see on display on this website."
So some philologists who think that archaeologists are *ok* absolves the many assholes who are overtly intolerant? Even the jesting, I propose, is just the tip of an ugly iceberg that runs deep in many philologists, belying their ignorance. I understand that the internet is not reality, but I believe it frees people to say what's truly on their minds. Even with the excuse of job stress in a bad economy, this place and classics as a discipline is really scaring the shit out of me. It's like waking up and realizing that you're holding a gun at a Sarah Palin rally.
I understand that the internet is not reality, but I believe it frees people to say what's truly on their minds.
1) How many people? Really? And do they have jobs? And are they good jobs?
2) How many are just trying to get a rise out of you?
Go ahead, blow off some steam if you like. But on the internet isn't that basically emotional masturbation? Maybe good for you but certainly messy for all.
So, hmm, Roanoke, yeah?
Probably took a look at FV and decided a lawsuit was preferable to even interviewing us. Can't blame 'em.
Aren't there other blogs out there where assholes can blow off steam? Or gyms? Do really need for this to be a place where people who break their eggs on the small end (or roll their toilet paper from the bottom) are in faux mortal combat with those who break them on the big end (roll from the top up). When trolls take over, this will stop being a place where you can get information that can help you get a job, because all the helpful people will stay away (many already do). Is there even the slightest possibility than any good will ever come from someone claiming that bigenders or smallenders and smarterer or more usefuler or more longsuffering, or that Billy hit me first, or that Suzie's being muh-uh-uh-ean to me Mommy?
Kettle, meet pot.
12.41 has a point. There are more important matters at stake than the endless, pointless Clarchs vs Philologists debate. Like, the small matter of our continued careers. May I suggest you take it outside at the next APA/AIA? I know a nice parking lot out the back of the Marriott. It's Philly, no-one will notice.
Ha! A real fisticuffs battle between a philologist and an archaeologist? Seriously? Anyone taking bets in that "match"?
Jobs? What jobs? Heck, I say we go out with a bang before we get shunted off for scraps in the Dept of Random Languages, Dept of History, and Dept of Anthropology.
A real fisticuffs battle between a philologist and an archaeologist?
I see we've reached the internet fantasy portion of proceedings. A new low for FV? Come on guys, I have faith you can do worse...
The only way an archaeologist would beat a philologist at anything is if an orgy or drinking contest ensued.
Apropos of this, a colleague of mine made an argument the other day that I found thought-provoking. She said that she wondered whether maybe the time had come to consider obviating this whole problem by just removing classical archaeology from the academy. After all, her reasoning went, the university is a place of intellectual endeavor, while (according to her) classical archaeology is best categorized as a species of manual labor. Not that it isn't important, she said—far from it! In fact, we all need roofers, farm workers, cleaners, etc. But as a matter of course, her argument goes, we do not reserve faculty positions for roofers, and if there were for example positions for roofers in Colleges of Architecture they'd have many of the same conflicts that you see in Classics. I'm still not sure what I think of this, but I just thought I'd throw it out there. Could it be that it was a mistake to treat classical archaeology as an academic subject in the first place?
Seriously, why are these malcontents even aligned with a discipline whose tenets are peripheral at best to their self-proclaimed interests? They want to leave but they can't, right? Not our problem, despite their accusations that classics somehow stunted their marketability as archaeologists. This whole thing disgusts me.
Does anyone know what the time line is for Rome prize applications?
Stop riling up the archys. We know that the system favors us, isn't that enough? Just nod and feign empathy once in a while and keep the status quo. Stop feeding their persecution complex.
RE: Rome Prize apps. From my understanding, the jury meets at the APA/AIA and finalists are usually contacted a couple of weeks later. I would say that phone calls to finalists would have been made either last week or this week. Interviews usually take place in early Feb. If you don't hear by the end of this week, my guess would be that it's too late. Then again, things may have changed...
@ Anon. 8:16, I vowed not to give in to the trolls trying to get a rise out of people here. But give me a break. Really. Go back to your bridge and let's have a civil discussion here, can we please? Perhaps it's time to end the "anonymity" of this list?
I think we need to take all of this Archy vs. Phily Sturm und Drang and direct it in more fruitful directions.
I suggest we coordinate a letter-writing campaign, and Chronicle Forum posting flurry against ........
Roanoke College.
They completely screwed a number of us, and they are currently winning the
Chronicle Forum Wars
I for one would welcome making FV a forums-only thing. The philologist vs. archaeologists pissing contest could have it's own unending thread. With SMILEYS! Which would be the only new thing in the whole discussion.
Let's everyone band together and attack a common enemy: The Roanoke College Dept. of History. They screwed us, and now they're winning the war of opinion in the Chronicle Fora:
Here!
You're a towel!
Tigertree (at least the person posting as Tigertree on the Chronicle site), your long comment was awesome. And the fact that people can't see the validity of your very reasonable and not at all hysterical case reveals an alarmingly low ethical standard among our peers. Hope things work out for you.
It's nice to see that the new semester has begun, everyone is back to campus, and wasting time again on FV!
I don't want to start the archaeologists/philologists madness again. As a philologist, however, who happens to like a lot of archaeologists, I can't help point out that a large amount of scholarship throughout the humanities is now heavily influence by marxist/materialist assumptions. To assume (in 2011) that people who study literature do not like material culture is simply ridiculous. For at least the past ten years, the easiest formula to publish on literature was to write something/anything about the material realites of the text. William Fitzgerald's The World of the Epigram is just one, excellent (as in it's a good book) example.
The tension these days (I doubt know how it was in the past) exists because there are not enough jobs for all of the philologists and archaeologists in the world. I wish there were, and I wish all of you archaeologists out there the best of luck, though I will be somewhat disappointed if I don't find a job myself.
Yeah, I'd like to add to Tigertree- that was an extremely well reasoned response. I think part of the opposition at the chronicle is that no-one cares until it happens to them. Part of it seems to be an obtuse refusal to acknowledge that part of the ethics of our field dictate that everyone be given an equal chance at a job. Even if someone really impressed the search committee at the AHA, someone else selected for that round should be given the same chance to impress them. Apparently this is a hard concept to understand. I also don't agree with the "sit down and shut up, you can't change anything" policy that is ingrained in so many academics and given out freely as advice on every injustice in the field, big and small. Thanks for standing up for all of us so eloquently. I'm truly sorry you got such a crappy and short-sighted response.
from experience with the Rome Prize in the past, if you don't hear by the end of January (i.e. this week), then you are not being interviewed the first week of Feb as a finalist and will instead get a polite rejection in March or April when they announce the winners. No contact happens before this if you are not a finalist, even though your application is no longer in the running (a fact that annoyed me at the time).
Re: Roanoke
Welcome to your future, historians. Archaeologists, I'm sure you will get the same red carpet treatment in anthro.
Since this whole philologists vs. archaeologists argument has gotten way too tedious, I thought I'd raise another perennially popular topic: the irrational fear so many exhibit over so-called inside candidates. I refer to those who think that if a junior sort is already at a place conducting a search then the fix is in, and everyone else who applies is being treated unethically and wasting their time. Inevitably, a few wiser heads will then point out how silly that is, giving various reasons. Well, let me share my current situation, as further proof that the "inside candidate" is often a creature more to be pitied than feared.
I'm right now in a department with clear need for VAP help next year, and even though position was supposed to be renewable I was advised to apply. (The reasons for this are either perfectly innocent or quite sketchy -- an argument could be made for either.) For reasons that I won't go into, it has been clear for some time that the chair and the chair's one ally in the department wish to get rid of me; I'll just note that these reasons have nothing to do with my abilities and everything to do with who my friends in the department are. So, the search committee is headed by someone who has been openly hostile to me (not to mention all other junior faculty in recent years), and has rather cleverly found a way to fix the search so that I'm not chosen.
Now, if one of those people obsessed with ferreting out inside candidates were to look at my department's website and read the job description, he/she would probably be here screaming about how the fix is in. Well, it is, and it's to ensure that I'm not rehired. So people really do need to think twice before going crazy over the existence of inside candidates.
By the way, don't worry about me -- I have no doubt that I'll be fine. I find the situation more amusing than anything else. And the way I'm being treated is already well known to Human Resources and by now possibly even the dean. So I may well get the last laugh. To quote Obi Wan, "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
Insider:
I have certainly seen many cases like yours. I think a better name for these people are "internal" candidates: doesn't have the same ring (or the same implications) as "insider" candidate. Because, as you state, internal candidates are rarely a shoe-in for the job, and more often than not, someone is trying to get rid of them.
Indeed, Insider, I have been in your position. I was a VAP at a SLAC when a tenure-track line came up. While I got an APA interview and an "on-campus," a senior colleague told me that the chair had made an effort to craft the job description so as to exclude me as a viable candidate. It turned out that a person who had been a VAP there a year or two before me was really the "inside" candidate, who was in the end hired. You just never know.
You're a trowel!
As someone who held several VAPS before landing a TT, and has now served on a few search committees (in classics and as 'outside member" for some other depts), I can say that the fear OF the "inside candidate" is very rarely justified. Indeed, being the so-called "inside candidate" is all too often the kiss of death. It's usually not even that the dept. dislikes the VAP they've got or that the VAP in question has fallen short in any definable way. it seems just to be a powerful lure of the unknown--"we can do better than good ol' so-and-so, look at all these bright shiny new CVs out there to choose from!" I've seen this on several search committees myself and was told by colleagues that it was what sunk my own application for a TT at a place I'd been a VAP. I've tried arguing against this "let's try a new one" attitude and for the person who has demonstrated her/his ability to work at this place, with these students, but it is just almost never successful.
This seems to be particularly true for making the leap from VAP to TT. Sure, it happens -- but my impression is for every time it does happen, there are many, many more when the VAP is almost automatically excluded from serious consideration for the TT.
Take a VAP to get experience and network a bit. Never take one because there is an implicit or explicit possibility of it becoming permanent. I think it's fine for a chair to throw in the possibility at the end, but I personally despise anyone who leads with it in making an offer. It's irresponsible for any faculty member to do this when the chances of it happening are one in ten-thousand for the reasons just stated. So unless you have naked pictures of a dean/chair, you're sleeping with him/her, etc., don't do it.
Who are these mysterious people who think that VAPs automatically get the TT jobs? Everyone I've ever spoken to has been reasonable enough to recognize that being a VAP in a TT-hiring department can easily go either way. Usually "insider" fear/rage is directed at actually blatantly insider searches, like that Canadian University that shall remain unnamed, and the ridiculous job adverts that read, "please do Greek and Latin, oh, and also speak Czech" Yes, I know the difference between 'internal' candidate and 'insider' candidate, but do most of us really mix up the two?
If the VAP is a viable candidate (i.e. wasn't hired as favor to a buddy, who happens to be his/her advisor, or as a stopgap measure), I always root for the person to get the job. We wring our hands about fit but somehow prefer the mysterious and new over a qualified, proven individual under our noses.
As for inside candidates, I think more schools should be given the option of making the position permanent sans search with the approval of the dean/provost. Not only will this get rid of the charade, but it will provide more balance by providing some incentive to look harder at the proven insider, negating some of the new-must-be-better phenomenon. One might say a search is more fair, but if a department is motivated, it can easily circumvent a truly open search as we've abundantly seen.
Being a VAP at an institute that is doing a search is no easy gig. A year is a long time to screw up and, I'm sure you'll agree, screwing up tends to be more memorable than doing your job competently or even doing it well.
So I've been a VAP at two institutions that were simultaneously doing searches. Didn't get hired in the first case (I was told that I was an "alternate"), but did get the job at the second place.
The difference was NOT that I was only an "internal" candidate in the former case and a nefarious "inside" candidate in the latter. Rather, it came down to self-presentation, experience, and performance.
In the case of the first job, I was fresh out, inexperienced, naive, and prone to saying/doing stupid things. Like talking about how the self-entitled nature of second-tier SLAC students meant that my pedagogical approach wasn't fully appreciated. (Note: this is not what I said nor meant, but how it was understood and reasonably so.)
In the case of the second job, I had much more teaching experience, more and better research (actual publication), and -- perhaps most importantly -- I knew how NOT to shoot myself in the foot constantly. (Which is not to say that I performed perfectly, but at least I focused on the positives and behaved like a mature and collegial professional.) Being at a sane institution helps in these respects. So does mild flirting on the job market with other institutions.
Finally, in the course of the successful VAPship, at no time was I a shoo-in for the job. Multiple candidates were brought in and taken quite seriously. I had to do everything that they did. Did I have an advantage? Certainly. I knew not to say some of the things that the other candidates did say. I had more insight into the dept and its needs. I could demonstrate on a daily basis my affability and value. Did that make me an "inside" candidate? Not in my opinion, but I may be biased.
Thanks to those who answered my question about the Rome Prize. Hope wanes, but knowing is better than not knowing.
Why buy the cow when you're getting its milk for (almost) free? VAPs should be chosen with the long term in mind. Pick the one that will make you most employable on the open market the following year, not one that *might* land you job at the same place. Even if it means moving to bumble!@#$ and thousands of miles from you SO, you do it because it's short term and you have your eyes on the bigger prize.
Pick the one that will make you most employable on the open market the following year
Umm, I know that you're only trying to be helpful, but this advice is laughable. As though most of us can *choose* a VAP. As far as I can tell, most of us are struggling even to get an interview, let alone pick the most career-oriented opportunity. Even some of my superstar friends are interview-less. My advice, find a SO with a better career and stick to them like a fly on shit, cause we're screwed.
It's what we ALL get for making an unfortunate career choice (but especially for you whiny classical archaeologists).
As long as we're throwing people under the bus, I say we call out the we-have-it-better-in-our-own-department historians and you revolting Latinists who have a soft spot for archaeologists.
Yeah! And those linguists! Why are the Indo-Europeanists hogging all the jobs? That's what I wanna know.
This place is great. I show it to students aspiring to enter academia and it sends them straight to business or law school. There are the pesky few who think their brilliance will overcome the odds. I'm still working on those.
How sad should I be that I still haven't heard back from the places that interviewed me at the APA? There aren't any updates on the wiki, but that means very little to me at this point. Is it getting too late to hold onto that last scrap of hope for follow-ups to the APA interviews that I thought went very well?
To anonymous 3:41 p.m.: Don't give up hope from your APA interviews yet. Some places have extremely convoluted rules about how the search committee's short list has to be approved by other committees and/or deans, and remember this is just the end of the second week of class at a lot of places. It's not at all impossible that some search committee has only now--or not even yet!--turned in its recommendation for on-campus visits to the next step up.
And even past these next few weeks, don't give up until you get the rejection letter. There are cases where the first three candidates don't work out for one reason or another and a fourth candidate gets brought to campus very late (I know of several such in the last few years ). That person wouldn't hear back about the campus interview until probably late Feb. or even early March.
Furman was still interviewing first round candidates (via phone/skype) this week, and does not expect to announce their short list before next Friday. So that's at least one school. I don't know how many others there are.
"Sure, it happens -- but my impression is for every time it does happen [the VAP gets the TT], there are many, many more when the VAP is almost automatically excluded from serious consideration for the TT."
So VAPs gets the TT 10 to 20% of the time? I think this is a little off. A lot off. A VAP who's a good fit has an advantage; one who's not does not.
In response to Anonymous 8:55:--"A VAP who's a good fit has an advantage":
Well, I can only say, after sitting on a good many search committees now, that that's not the case. It should be, but it is not. In my experience, search committees have a strong bias against the current VAP (or someone who's been a VAP there in the past five years or so). Don't know why, and I'm very troubled by it. I've been the one person on the search committee arguing that proven ability to work here with us, taking on extra responsibilities, being a good colleague, etc. should work for the VAP, only to be voted down by other committee members several times. And various conversations with colleagues at other institutions indicate this is a pretty common pattern. The VAP usually has a real uphill battle to get the TT.
Another reason for anti-VAP bias in a TT search is that VAPs are often not hired in a national search. Those that were hired off the Spring market, for example, didn't have to fully compete for the position. Many times they are hired only on the basis of a phone interview -- no campus visit, job talk, teaching demo, etc.
So you have a somewhat artificial/canned job talk or teaching segment vs. one year of actually proving that you can do it, yet the former is somehow a better indicator of productivity? I'm not arguing about the bias against VAPs, but the inane logic behind it.
Inside candidates: A quick look at last year's wiki suggest that nine people got jobs where they were already teaching. It would take more work to find inside candidates who didn't get the job; I see two on the list (both people where I know the story, one of whom got a much better job), but it'd be easy to miss people.
Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Anon. 8:18. Forfty percent of all people know that.
Any word on the Vassar fellowship?
Inside candidates: A quick look at last year's wiki suggest that nine people got jobs where they were already teaching.
Of these internal (not inside) candidates:
3 got the adjunct/VAP/lecturer position he/she already had. Sometimes, keeping your temporary person on for another year is easy: why waste time training someone new?
1 did not get the "job" he/she already had: he/she got hired as a VAP by his/her degree granting institution. Not really the same thing.
1 was not the first choice for that job. He/she was at least 2nd choice, but maybe even 3rd! or 4th!
That leaves 4 people who got TTs where they already had VAPs who *might* have been first choice for that job (but who knows! Maybe they were all 2nd/3rd/4th choice!).
Such is life. Apply for all the jobs. Not even Zeus knows whom the SC will choose. (And, more importantly, neither does the SC.)
Any word on the University of Mississippi position?
"That leaves 4 people who got TTs where they already had VAPs who *might* have been first choice for that job (but who knows! Maybe they were all 2nd/3rd/4th choice!)."
I see five, not four, TT jobs, where I know about the search, that went to inside candidates. One was not a first choice, but is probably pretty happy about having a TT job.
5-4=1! Problem solved!
The discussion was not "are you happy to get a TT, even as the 2nd/3rd/4th choice?" because the answer is always "hell, yes!!" The discussion was, "Is the internal candidate always/usually a shoe-in? Are we all doomed? Should we just give up now?" The answer is: we have 4 internal candidates who were *possibly* shoe-ins for TTs, not 9. Not that this will change anyone's opinion about the unfairness of life, but I thought it important to point out that most of those 9 were not to be feared.
So we don't think that a 4 (or 5) out of 9 acceptance rate for VAPs to TT is really high? We really assume that VAPs have just as small a shot as the other 80+ (or 200+) applicants for the jobs? When 4 out of 9 got the job? That's what these numbers mean to us? Argh...I SO wish I had concentrated more in that stats class!
"The discussion was, "Is the internal candidate always/usually a shoe-in? Are we all doomed? Should we just give up now?"
No, the comment which I was specifically refuting was the claim that for every inside candidate who gets a job, there are many many more who do not get the job, i.e. a claim that the inside candidate gets the job 10-20% of the time. I've shown that this year's wiki suggest that that claim is wrong.
Doomed? Only in this sense:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmTln3Fojas
"So we don't think that a 4 (or 5) out of 9 acceptance rate for VAPs to TT is really high? When 4 out of 9 got the job?"
No, you're reading it wrong. 9 is the number of people who (apparently) got jobs where they were teaching. 5 were TT, some were visiting, and someone else claimed some were at their own grad program.
No stats were given about how many inside candidates there might have been.
So do we no longer get early edition emails from RP?
Brace yourselves. Another classics department is about to be shut down at R1 state school. In rationalizing the decision, the dean said, "We would all like to have a British Lit department as well, but in these difficult economic times, we must make choices." Bring on the facebook pages and petitions to no avail.
I won't believe it until you say which university is doing the cutting. Fess up or shut up.
I'm not the OP, but who made you moderator and God? Fess up or shut up. Who are you, the Terminator? LMAO
Anyone heard anything about the Georgetown 1yr yet?
I'm not the OP, but who made you moderator and God?
You must be new here.
Georgetown 1 year? Didn't they have a 1-year last year? I'm not one to complain (!), but doesn't it seem like a huge waste of money for schools to post searches for 1-year people year after year, instead of just hiring a multi-year VAP or even creating a long-term lectureship? I keep hearing how horrible the economic conditions are, but Classics programs (and the administrations that tolerate them) seem unconcerned, unaffected, or, perhaps more likely, so far out of touch that they keep doing things the way they have for the past 50 years.
So which R1 is supposedly cutting Classics? Is this a dissolution of the whole department, a suspension of certain degree programs, a trimming of staff, what?
Agreed. If we're going to have a rumor, let's have a rumor -- not a rumor about there being a rumor.
Methinks I smell an Onion article. Prove me wrong, children, prove me wrong.
You're obviously the "fess up or shut up" poster judging by your bossy tone but you sure don't know much for being God.
I will terminate you, children!
If by Rumor/Onion, you mean Inside Higher Ed article then yes: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/02/01/howard_university_spares_philosophy_and_african_studies_the_axe_but_guts_or_changes_71_others
So Classics, it was nice working with you!
Uh... Who hasn't heard about this by now?
Uhhh...some of us don't spend our days trolling (that's how I spelled it, on purpose) the internet looking for news about how the discipline is collapsing, because we're too busy working in our field. We do occasionally stop by the famae board to see what people are complaining about lately, and where the new jobs are popping up. Sorry for not knowing that Howard's having some problems.
But was it really so hard for someone to post a link to the article from Inside HigherEd? I was under an impression that one of the points of this board was to make the job-search and classics experience in general more open and tolerable. So why are so many people dedicated to subverting even this lonely beacon of hope?
Howard is private. Anon 3:57pm specifically claimed to know about the situation at a state school.
I know a very senior science professor at Howard University and every time we see each other he goes on and on about what a massively messed up and corrupt (yes, corrupt) place Howard is. And they don't even get anything close to proper funding in the sciences. So if Howard cancels Classics that it by no means a bellweather for the rest of the field, unfortunate though it may be.
Anonymus at 6:52 said, re Georgetown's 1-year:
"Doesn't it seem like a huge waste of money for schools to post searches for 1-year people year after year, instead of just hiring a multi-year VAP or even creating a long-term lectureship? I keep hearing how horrible the economic conditions are, but Classics programs (and the administrations that tolerate them) seem unconcerned, unaffected, or, perhaps more likely, so far out of touch that they keep doing things the way they have for the past 50 years."
I gotta say, 6;52, this shows a complete lack of understanding about how the funding of positions comes about. Individual departments don't get to DECIDE whether they'll have a one-year, a multi-year VAP, a permanent lectureship, or a TT -- would that they did!!!!
What happens, in every college or university I've ever had any info. on (and what with academic parents and siblings, academic spouse, and self, that's quite a few), is that every dept. that wants any kind of position at all puts in a request to some part of their administration. It might be a dean, it might be a sub-dean, it might be a committee -- but depts. put in *requests*. The requests are either denied (most likely), funded as requested (least likely), or downgraded a step or two and partially funded.
So I would be not the least bit surprised if the classics dept. at Georgetown had asked for a new TT line, or at the very least for a new multi-year VAP, last year, and the administration responded by funding a one-year last year; and then funding another one-year this year. Why? because it costs a heck of a lot of money to create a new position and to fund it for several years. Not just salary -- there are benefits and FICA and so on that have to be budgeted in. An administration often has some discretionary funding in a given year, and they'll say "Okay, classics [or whoever] can have an extra person this year -- and then IF there is money again next year, we'll let them have another one-year. If next year's budget is tighter, then we won't."
Also, one-years are often sabbatical replacements. Where I teach, there is NO guarantee that any dept. will be given a sabbatical replacement; we are often just asked to suck it up and cover the classes as best we can while a colleague is on sabbatical. So even if the dept. is certain that two colleagues are going on sabbatical in two consecutive years, the request for a replacement has to be put through the system in each of those years, separately, is decided on separately, and comes out of a different fiscal year's budget. Does any dept. I've ever heard of like that system? No, we hate it. Would it be better for our students to have continuity? Yes, of course it would. Is there anything we can do to change this financial structure? Not a d**n thing. Here (at a SLAC) the ultimate control of the purse strings lies with the trustees. In a lot of state schools, it lies with the legislature (good luck with that). Nowhere that I've ever heard of does it lie with individual departments.
Bottom line -- don't blame departments for readvertising a one-year year after year after year. Of course no dept. would prefer to do it that way. But depts. don't get to choose.
I hope I'm posting this in the correct place (mods, please feel free to move).
I'm a socio-cultural anthropologist at a SLAC with some research expectations and I'm hoping to get some information about classics. I've done some probing online at places like the Chronicle, but I need something more specific to classics. Believe it or not, I'm one of the few advocates for classics outside of the department. Due to a certain administrative role I hold, I'm in a position to help the long term future of this department. In particular, there is a strong push to combine classics with our existing German, Russian, et al. department. Other than saving some nominal administrative expenses, my instincts tell me that it's not a great long term idea. I've heard the basic arguments about the unique contributions of classics to western thought. Why should classics not be thrown in with our greater-European language department? I'm afraid it's not enough to say Latin and Greek are different as dead languages.
One other issue I'm trying to wrap my mind around is the argument that the department studies every facet of Mediterranean antiquity, so it deserves to stand alone. We have five tenured faculty members with one teaching archeology half the time. Our classical historian is in History. Why does the one faculty member only teach archeology half-time? In anthropology, we rarely, if ever, require our archeologists to teach on the socio-cultural side. The answers I've gotten back from our classics faculty have been largely unhelpful. The classics homepage boldly proclaims that the department studies every facet of classics (language, literature, history, archeology, medicine, law, etc.) but 90% of its FTEs seems devoted to language and literature. Surely this is ideological rather than practical? We periodically have lecturers as well come in and cover sabbaticals and whatnot. As far as I know, they always teach the beginning languages. Could someone explain to me this curious phenomenon in terms that an outsider could grasp?Any "amunitition" you could give me to fire at the vultures would be much appreciated.
Sadly, as an archaeologist, I'd have to say that the situation you're describing is pretty common at smaller Classics departments - archaeology is just a side-benefit that some faculty might have to be inconvenienced to offer on occasion. The real "meat" of classics is in the languages and the literature. Or so the argument goes in many of our Classics circles. In many such cases, I cannot see any strong justification for keeping a separate Classics program - languages and literature is exactly what German and French and Italian and Russian and Japanese and all the other foreign languages also offer. So why not join the languages with the languages with the languages? Honestly, in your situation, it doesn't sound as if the Classics faculty would suffer very much if they were folded into a languages division (though they might lose numbers in the long run, I would think). After all, even a language department can occasionally offer a semester-long course in the cultural history of the people/places represented by the language offered.
Institutions that have a bit more money, a few more faculty, and larger Classics programs as a result, can more often hire full-time archaeologists and art historians (who often work in other departments), and these are the places that can more fully justify the preservation of a separate Classics program. But faculty interested mainly in Latin and Greek would have to push hard to add and maintain an interest in archaeology even in these departments, or they also run the risks that your Classics department seems ti be facing.
(continuing from 4:24)
That said, I'd also have to add that it seems as if your Classics Department has dropped the ball a bit in making a case for their ongoing independence as a separate program. There are a lot of great classicists out there who are mainly interested in the languages and literature, but who are also more than willing to give archaeology, cultural history, and even anthropological perspectives a fair shake in their departments, because they know that all of these can add a great deal to our knowledge of the classical world. I'm hoping that your department is in the minority in devoting 10% or less of the total departmental offerings to things other than language and literature, but I'm not especially optimistic about that.
There is more involved in the question of whether or not to move a Classics faculty and program into a Modern Language one. First, we do teach languages and culture very differently. Modern languages teach grammar and syntax over several years, because they must concentrate also on spoken communication skills. In Classics, we teach the grammar/syntax in one year, then go right into reading and analyzing literature. Also, at least in my university, the modern language profs are busy developing courses such as "Business Spanish" and "Medical Spanish," geared to specific jobs students seek after graduation, rather than teaching Spanish literature. Of course, if a Classics department, like my own, also offers courses on ancient history and culture in translation, that would be another difference with the offerings in Modern Languages. Second, the type of scholarship done in Classics and that done in Modern Languages differs as well, because classicists need to work with so many more languages and take into account vast bibliographies (Homer, Vergil, etc.) The APA has a statement on its website about scholarship in Classics. You'd need to have different rubrics for assessing faculty performance in that respect, which isn't impossible but often makes for disgruntled faculty. I teach in a liberal arts school that used to have a combined "Modern and Classical Languages" department that in the mid 1990s split out into 2 separate departments, an improved situation for both.
"Also, at least in my university, the modern language profs are busy developing courses such as "Business Spanish" and "Medical Spanish," geared to specific jobs students seek after graduation, rather than teaching Spanish literature."
Isn't this what we're aiming to do with medical terminology and ancient law classes?
"Second, the type of scholarship done in Classics and that done in Modern Languages differs as well, because classicists need to work with so many more languages and take into account vast bibliographies (Homer, Vergil, etc.)"
This statement is pretty typical of the entitled attitude of classicists who think classics is so special. no wonder we're facing hard times ....
I am friends with a Spanish literature scholar whose research profile, languages read, scholarly bibliography is quite a bit more vast than most classicists I know who work on a narrowly defined author, so I don't think you can plead classics needs to stand alone because its practitioners know more languages?! what b.s.
I'm hoping that your department is in the minority in devoting 10% or less of the total departmental offerings to things other than language and literature, but I'm not especially optimistic about that.
Depending on the conscience and honesty of a department, really anything can be taught. It just might not be taught well or with any thought of how it fits in to the overall program. We're sometimes too desperate for bodies to fill seats to care whether they learn about the Trojan War or Alexander in a amateurish fashion that would make the History Channel blush. Most of us would be hesitant to throw dedicated field archaeologists to the head of a Latin class despite training in the language, but we seem more than willing to throw classicists in front of any "civ" class despite little to no formal training in that particular subject matter.
So one way to look at it is not just what classes are offered, but what specialities faculty have published on (don't look at CVs as it's quite ridiculous what many classicists claim specialities in). What you'll find is something similar to your SLAC. ~10% FTE devoted to archaeology. Sometimes you get a rare department like Michigan or Penn with more, but this is offset by a number of programs with leass than 10%. Check out the departments and dig a little. Publications don't lie. Most archaeology periodicals have "archaeology" in their title.
How about we've been around forever and classics (probably) was one of your founding departments?
We're so going down...
At anon February 3, 2011 5:10 PM (and others who nod in silent agreement when reading that post):
It sounds to me as if we have the impression that Spanish professors stand around trying to figure out how to use the language classes to get people jobs. And as if we honestly believe that French language instruction is limited to speaking and reading the language well. But that is simply not the case. There are entire modern language programs dedicated to the exact sorts of things that we do in courses that focus on the analysis of ancient literature and culture. Any serious French or Spanish major or grad student has had a number of courses in literary criticism, linguistics, language education (ever heard of that in a Classics course?), conversation, culture, history, etc. etc. Let's not give ourselves the impression that what we do with Greek and Latin literature is really so very different from what serious modern language programs do. Or can we safely argue that because there are fewer of us, we are by definition better than the "competition"? That's a fail-safe way to guarantee that our claim to have something to offer students will be ignored.
What we do DOES matter a great deal, but it matters in ways that are similar to the ways that a number of other RELATED disciplines also matter. Our subject matter differs, and if we do enough history and archaeology and art history along with our languages and literature, then we can indeed make the case that we do these things in ways that make us significantly different. If we just go around tooting our horns and bragging that Greek and Latin are complex, difficult, and obscure, and that these are good things, we're not going to convince most administrations that we deserve even as many faculty as we already have. And losing more positions would be (and continues to be) disastrous.
I think we need to all chip in to buy our archaeologist friends masks, capes, tights, and a cool looking "A" to put on their chest. It is plain that only their superpowers can save our backwards little world!
I'll go set up a PayPal account now.......
They can't save our world when the people in charge shaping programs and making line requests are stuck in the 19th century. Plus I doubt the one "archaeologist," if there is even one, could save most departments even if they were cloned from Sue Alcock and Ian Morris. Most classicists would resent the Malcock, as it is.
The Malcock is one foul fowl.
Let's not forget that many modern language programs are going down as well. At my university, few profs in modern languages publish much at all, and teach mostly core language classes (beginning and intermediate) , never teaching lit or god forbid, literary criticism. Students know that taking Spanish will look good on their medical school applications and that is why they take it. The smarter students take Latin for the same reason.
I've worked as a classicist in a foreign languages department. In many ways classicists are low-maintenance, while filling needs that the modern languages cannot. In the former case, we need less equipment (listening programs, computers to play videos and movies, etc etc). In the latter, latin and greek appeal to a different type of student- those more inclined to literary analysis than learning how to ask for a loaf of bread, and those who need to fulfil a language requirement but are too nervous or anxious or unwilling to deal with a spoken component. That said, we benefit foreign language departments more than they benefit us, because unless there is some component where the Uni lets you have civilization/history/mythology classes as 'humanities', the trajectory is towards getting chopped to the bone and stuck in an endless cycle of 101, 201, etc.
Guys, I don't think we're helping. The elitism oozing up to the surface here is nauseating.
"Surely this is ideological rather than practical?"
Someone hand our visitor a cigar.
Elitism? At my university, the Classics department is high functioning, while Modern Languages is dysfunctional. We are leaders in student research, we contribute heavily to the Honors Program, we win national fellowships. Let's not brush every classics department with the same stroke. There are many strong Classics Departments, the faculty in which are attracting students and teaching a wide array of courses.
Why does the one faculty member only teach archeology half-time? In anthropology, we rarely, if ever, require our archeologists to teach on the socio-cultural side.
I know some of my colleagues will vehemently disagree with me, but it's a case of the tail wagging the dog. As you know better than I do, lines are granted when a case can be made for how indispensible and critical a position is for running your program. But the central tenet of classics is the illumination of antiquity through the use of texts. We're basically a logocentric discipline unlike anthro.
So a classics department can never have too many literature/philology/language people. But as we know, it's difficult to make an argument to a dean about needing a third, or fourth, or fifth Latinist, no matter what the program requirements dictate. Requests don't adequately explain how this line will put a classics department over the top when it's difficult enough to justify the existence of the two other Latinists in a modern culture increasingly out of tune with classics.
So, yes, a stronger argument can me made to hire someone who does something different, more conducive to cross-pollination with anthro, or Near Eastern studies, or physics, or whatever. But to get to the heart of the matter, classics doesn't really want or see a need for these people. They're outliers as long as they don't help further the basic logocentric mission. Archaeology can help with this, but you don't need a full FTE to basically dig/survey with a trowel/prism in one hand and Pausanius in the other. It's enough for a department to splash on their homepage how they use every major means to study antiquity. Unlike in anthro, GIS, paleoethnobotany, ethnoarchaeology, geomorphology, etc. are largely considered marginally useful for classics. Read some of the posts on here that denigrate these well-established subdisciplines of archaeology. Besides, hiring an archaeophilologist is a neat way of getting another half-time classicist as a bonus. This is why your SLAC has a half-time classical archaeologist.
Combining classics with German is like combining Williamsburg and Virgina Beach because they're towns, near each other, and full of gun-toting conservatives. Don't you want to continue visiting yesteryear and the place full of quaint concepts and people dressed funny? Yeah, and we should save Williamsburg as well.
You archaeologists are assholes, but funny as hell. I'll give you that. Now pass the bong and condom.
"This is why your SLAC has a half-time classical archaeologist."
Half-time to us, but I'm sure half-assed to most anthropologists.
I'm getting so sick of these "you're all so elitist" jibes. We're constantly asked to justify our discipline, and then when we discuss why classics is unique, has a niche in a modern university, and deserves to be taught, we're suddenly elitists looking down on everyone else? Talk about being between Sylla and Charybdis... oh, no, wait, that phrase probably brands me a snob, too.
Not necessarily, but I'm guessing you specialize in Greek drama?
I'm curious to know how our Anthropologist/Administrator might react to the interesting series of comments their original post inspired. I can imagine that some of this might look rather absurd to an outsider.
Yeah, I'm sure the classics department will have a barrel of laughs when the administrator asks, "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"
I'd have to say that the situation you're describing is pretty common at smaller Classics departments.
I would hardly call five tenured faculty members a smaller department. It's pretty average or even "medium" for classics. Small is two or three. I would call five to seven medium and anything more large.
"At my university, few profs in modern languages publish much at all, and teach mostly core language classes (beginning and intermediate) , never teaching lit or god forbid, literary criticism."
And what do you think we'll be teaching once we're combined with language departments and get whittled down to one or two classicists?
"Students know that taking Spanish will look good on their medical school applications and that is why they take it. The smarter students take Latin for the same reason."
No, the former are smarter because it's the fastest growing language in this country. What are the latter going to do? Pass inscriptions between patient and doctor? I don't recall "Latin" being listed by any doctors on insurance lists. But I'm sure the "smarter" doctors with a vague recollection of Latin from taking it years before their residencies will be golden once the lost legions of Augustus cross the Rio Grande.
In an attempt to counter the rampant pessimism that permeates this blog, I just want to mention the Garden Weasel. It's a great tool that saves your back and cleans up in a jif. Four rotating tines thoroughly till the soil, but leave plants and vegetables completely unharmed. So, if you're into gardening like I am, then you'll love the Garden Weasel.
Everyone knows the Garden Weasel sucks. Get the Garden Malcock. It gets no respect by its peers but it can win a MacArthur prize.
What's different about Classics is that we study dead languages. If you want to check a Spanish translation, you can always fly over to Spain and have the Real Academia de la Lengua verify your diction and syntax. We re-construct ancient language and culture (material and otherwise) wholesale. That is the fundamental difference.
If a Classics department were to be combined with any other department, it should be History (though that would be a disaster, too, since History departments are not used to teaching languages). Perhaps, it's time to consider departments of Ancient Studies or something like that? We could annex ancient history, parts of Chinese studies (the old part of course), and anyone else interested in studying pre-Modern cultures. Of course, this would present other challenges; but it would allow us to retain our identity as scholars of antiquity while also incorporating the post-modern discovery that non-Western cultures are also worth studying. The trick would be retaining what is unique to each separate ancient culture.
rampant pessimism that permeates this blog
Well, we would either have to lie, be blind, or stay mute to convey otherwise. I'm a terrible liar, I can clearly see where we're headed, and I'm an academic so I obviously can't shut up.
"What's different about Classics is that we study dead languages."
The SLAC admin has already heard this one. S/he clearly stated, "I'm afraid it's not enough to say Latin and Greek are different as dead languages."
I like your second suggestion though of a Department of Ancient Studies. We would likely need a more euphemistic name since "ancient" often has a negative connotation among the masses. Department of Pre-modern studies?
while also incorporating the post-modern discovery that non-Western cultures are also worth studying.
Um, isn't this counter to our we're-unique-and-special-and-smarter arguments? I say we stick with what got us here.
Just wanted to give the FINGER to search committees who fail to respond to your emails. I know they read this stuff so it makes me feel better at this moment of helplessness.
For those of you who will try to sound all "mature" and explain how they have their reasons, blah, blah, blah. Yes, I know all this, but I just need to vent and wanted to shout out in the digital wilderness, "Bastards, just cut me loose."
Welcome to the classics job market, grasshopper.
(Man, you people behave so odiously even when we have a guest? Sheesh. How about some dignity and decorum?)
Mysterious Anthropologist Administrator,
If you have not been scared away, I'll try to give you a short, helpful, and non-elitist answer. If your small classics dept. is devoting 90% of its energies to language and literature then the problem is with the faculty. I'm speculating here, but probably they're all literature sorts who only publish on literature, and when they have to make a new hire they hire some like them rather than filling a gap. If so this is self-serving and hurts the department. A healthy classics department will also offer a good number of civilization courses -- from the basic Greek Civ and Roman Civ to sexier topics like Roman army, women and family, religion and magic, ancient medicine, etc. Perhaps that historian covers some such topics, but a classics dept. needs to as well, and these courses will draw plenty of non-majors.
It is such courses that argue for classicists being kept in their own departments. If these people really just care about various ways of repackaging literature then they're hurting themselves and hurting the field. And if they're not smart enough to see that they should be forced to.
"I say we stick with what got us here."
What exactly is here? What point in time are you referring to? The goody-goody-gumdrops 50s when it was a WASP's world and even a Catholic president had never been elected? When the humanities had yet to feel the brunt of the Sputnik revolution and the technologies gained from a world war? When just about every university and college had a large and thriving classics department? Well, I don't think we're ever going back there even with a hot tub time machine.
Or are you talking about now? The shitehole that we're presently in? If so, you're obviously being facetious are highly delusional.
I work in a combined language department. It was combined a few years before I arrived, and it was done for the dual purpose of saving administrative costs and providing intellectual "synergy" (their words, not mine). The savings realized from the amalgamation turned out to be much lower than expected--the bulk of them from the reduction of one administrative assistant position (no great savings resulted from combining copier contracts, printing letterhead, reducing to a single fax machine/number, and it turned out that the other admin. asst. position that was supposed to be phased out was deemed necessary by a workload that didn't drop as much as expected). The intellectual synergies are mostly pretty superficial and certainly have not produced "interdisciplinary" scholarship (even among the modern language faculty), which was one of the stated goals.
This is a department, by the way, where everyone gets along reasonably well and most of the faculty in each program are happy to acknowledge the value of what those in other programs do, both in terms of scholarship and teaching. In fact, that is perhaps the greatest benefit to the various faculty members. Before the amalgamation there was a fair amount of jostling among the modern languages as enrollments were shifting from French to Spanish and German and Russian enrollments were simply plummeting.
Another benefit from the perspective of the administration is that it reduced the number of language-related direct reports to the dean from three to one. This has meant that instead of having to balance three competing claims, the dean forces the faculty to prioritize. No requests for a Germanist, a Hispanist, and a Hellenist at the same time, for instance; only one is allowed in a given hiring cycle. From the faculty perspective, this is problematic because it does not acknowledge that there are often simultaneous needs in the various programs.
The amalgamation also complicates requests for sabbatical and leave replacements. The English department can often replace two faculty in different subdisciplines, each of whom is gone for half of a year, with one lecturer. One person is unlikely to be able to replace a Russian professor and an Italian professor. The result? No replacement at all (none are guaranteed for anyone, but if the right package can be put together, the dean will often approve one--very difficult to do in languages).
But despite the personal amity that prevails in the department and the general atmosphere of respect, the feeling among the classicists is that it has not been good for us. The modern language folks acknowledge that it has not been entirely good for them either, but the drop in nasty in-fighting has been useful for them. There has occasionally been talk of splitting again, but the modern language people absolutely do not want classics to go. They feel there is safety in numbers. A combined language department has enough faculty to be as large as many other departments, though not as large as English, History, or other big social science and humanities departments. They also realize that in terms of other numbers--enrollments, in other words--classics produces an outsize number and floats the departmental boat to a large degree.
(cont)
(contd)
But classics is not an intellectual fit with the modern languages, despite some overlaps. Not because we're better than them or our discipline is inherently more awesome than theirs. It's just that our modern language colleagues all share a very similar training, orientations toward teaching, goals for student outcomes (a big deal for a state school), rhetoric about relevance, and so on. Again and again policies and practices end up having two separate versions: one for them, and one for us. These involve placement of incoming high school students, accreditation for teacher preparation, use of student fees for supporting the language lab, goals for coverage of material at various levels of language courses, guidelines for undergraduate honors theses, requirements concerning study abroad experiences, major requirements, descriptions of publication requirements for tenure and promotion, etc. etc.
This is done with very little rancor and something is usually worked out in the end, but it's often not ideal for either side of the divide. And every exception (and they usually are written in as exceptions for classics) is a reminder of how ill-fitting the classics program is amidst the modern languages.
One result of this, by the way, is that despite a pretty constant request by the classicists to hire a full-time classical archaeologist, there has been no movement on this front because it would be a bad fit in a languages department and hence would be a luxury (again, the administration's reasons).
Is it an impossible situation? No. But what advantages it does hold are not particularly compelling.
There is more to be said about the differences between classics and the modern languages programs, but suffice it to say that they are very different animals. Even if a great deal of our courses are devoted to language and literature, we look nothing like our fellows, and our majors graduate with very different preparations and experiences--the most important being that our majors graduate with far more history, philosophy, art history, archaeology (non-classical in our case), and so on than the typical modern language student does. Yes, we teach our languages differently, and these differences exist at all language levels, but this is only one small part of the divergence.
I'm not going to respond in any serious way to the various characterizations of classics in the university as a failing discipline. But anyone who thinks that classics needs to follow the lead of modern languages should take a close look at how those disciplines are faring in the bulk of institutions of higher ed in this country.
How many faculty did you have pre-merger and what's it at now? I'm guessing the savings come down the road when retiring classicists aren't replaced.
Yeah, it's not great for classicists, but it sounds like everyone else is happy. I think most administrators could live with these results.
So what's our compelling argument? That we can't teach archaeology anymore in a language department? Why wasn't this more holistic approach to antiquity taken years before the merger? Why should a language department care about this now, especially since all of the classics majors' non-language needs are basically getting met outside the department. I'm sure Art History will happily take the archaeology line and would have a much better argument for getting one at this point.
From what I see, not only do these mergers rarely get undone, if it's being proposed, it's already too late. I think the lesson is for us to get our heads out of our asses and demonstrate definitively to administrators that we're more than just Greek and Latin. We're obviously not doing this by having 90% of a department's FTEs filled by philologists and offering an Alexander class once in a while by a Hellenistic hobbyist.
Just as people are making the argument that there are well-balanced and thoughful classics programs out there, I want to point out that not all classical archaeologists are classicists who get a bit dirty once in a while trying to find Homer through coins and sculpture (though this is apparently the best/quickest way to land a permanent job). Many of us have quite extensive training in numerous archaeological subdisciplines thanks to rigourous fieldwork and coursework outside of classics. In fact, many of the archaeological advances over the years (C dating, dendrochronology, surface survey, nautical archaeology, remote sensing) were pioneered or outright invented by classical archaeologists.
Yeah, it's tough at times being a classical archaeologists in the States (and I know many classicists are tired of hearing this on here), but I'm always hopeful something will work out in the end. We seem doomed to toil for years and years in obscurity and VAPs trying to make it. We're just not a very good fit in most disciplines as presently construed in North America. The present situation that dictates that we receive the great majority of the same training as philologists in order to land a job in classics really puts the onus on the individual to strike out on their own and bone up on the methods and theories that anthropological archaeologists learn in a due course.
As for a solution, I have no idea. At this point, balancing employability with striving to be the best archaeologist seem diametrically opposed to each other. I wish it weren't, but something has to give with this dichotomy between the centrality of material culture and the centrality of texts.
Dear Anon February 4, 2011 10:45 PM,
Thank you for bringing some sense and balanced argumentation to this blog. I hope that the Anthro Admin will pay heed to your opinions, which are marked by neither chauvinism nor invective, unlike much of what ends up here.
How many faculty did you have pre-merger and what's it at now? I'm guessing the savings come down the road when retiring classicists aren't replaced.
Me again:
Savings have not come from classicists' not being replaced. As I said, the merger took place before my arrival, so I'm a "replacement" classicist. Savings have come from the loss of other language faculty (seriously, look at enrollments in German sometime, or Russian, or Portuguese, or just about anything aside from Spanish). Those savings have been somewhat eroded by new hires in Spanish and Italian. Those savings will probably be further eroded if tenure lines Arabic or other "booming" languages are added. The scare quotes are intended: Arabic (and Chinese, and a few other languages) is booming by percentage increase at the intro level, but not at the intermediate and upper levels, and in absolute numbers we're still talking very low figures.
A number of places still haven't contacted people for campus flyouts, at least according to the wiki. It's now four weeks after the APA. Is it normal for some schools to take this long?
No, it's not normal unless something is up, like the line getting yanked.
Yeah, it's not great for classicists, but it sounds like everyone else is happy. I think most administrators could live with these results.
Administrators who care about lowering their number of direct reports? Yes. But the specific benefits that rationalized the merger have never panned out.
To be sure, other benefits have emerged. The primary one is that large enrollments in classics created a buffer allowing some of the lower-enrolled languages not to be badgered constantly about numbers (in the same way that Classics has for decades used classical civ enrollments to cover low enrollments in Greek).
So what's our compelling argument?
It may not be compelling to you, but after being in this environment for quite a while, I'm quite convinced that the disciplinary profiles of classics and the modern languages--despite both being tied to the teaching of the language themselves--are simply more dissimilar than similar.
There are lots of weird mergers in the world of higher ed. You can put sociology and anthropology together. You can put English as a Second Language in with English or Education or Linguistics or Languages. You can put Religious Studies in with Philosophy or with History (as at one institution I'm familiar with) or Classics. But the more disparate the basic look and feel of the disciplines, the more likely it is that such a merger will attain very little aside from saving on printing multiple kinds of letterhead and reducing direct reports to administrators.
Why wasn't this more holistic approach to antiquity taken years before the merger?
I arrived post-merger. Can't speak to that in this case, but I'm pretty sure that if the previous deans had allowed more than a few classicists on campus at any given time there would likely have been more holistic approaches.
Why should a language department care about this now, especially since all of the classics majors' non-language needs are basically getting met outside the department. I'm sure Art History will happily take the archaeology line and would have a much better argument for getting one at this point.
Anyone who thinks that large numbers of Art History departments are going to be hiring classical archaeologists in the coming years is simply not facing the reality: at most places, Art History is as threatened as Classics. In some more so, in some less. Art History here would never conceive of asking for a classical archaeologist at this point and would most certainly not get one.
From what I see, not only do these mergers rarely get undone, if it's being proposed, it's already too late.
They do sometimes get undone. I can think of one recent example, and Classics seems to be continuing to thrive as a result at that institution. But your general point is right: this is a rarity. But they can more frequently be prevented or, if not prevented, done in such a way that the process can be sure to allow the various merged entities to retain more of their individual characteristics.
I think the lesson is for us to get our heads out of our asses and demonstrate definitively to administrators that we're more than just Greek and Latin.
I don't think you're taking into account is how little many administrators would give a damn even if you could demonstrate it to them. Or how few of the administrators who would give a damn could do much about it anyway.
But I'm being drawn into all those big debates here that I'd prefer to stay out of. I simply wanted to give one perspective on the prospect of language department mergers, and so I think I'll bow out now and go back to lurking quietly in the background.
Best of luck to all of you in the process of on-campus interviews and the like, and my best wishes to the far too many good recent PhDs who came away with too little or nothing from the awful job market.
"A number of places still haven't contacted people for campus flyouts, at least according to the wiki. It's now four weeks after the APA. Is it normal for some schools to take this long?"
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's "not normal" or to assume (as the previous reply to this question did) that it means lines have been yanked. Some places just take a LONG time.
But another point -- there's always the possibility that the people who got called for on-campus interviews don't post to this wiki. Not everyone does. So the fact that the wiki doesn't show interviews scheduled at a particular place is NOT proof that interviews haven't yet been scheduled; it's only proof that interviews haven't been scheduled *with a candidate who conscientiously updates the wiki*.
The Classics List quotes Inside Higher Ed satire:
IHE 2/1/11:
"Solving the Academic Job Crisis"
"[T]he best recourse is to solve the problem ourselves, taking matters into our own hands, as it were. To that end, I have recently founded an organization, Academic Opportunities Unlimited (AOU). Our motto is 'We can’t guarantee you’ll get the job, but we can guarantee an opening.'
AOU is elegant in its simplicity, rebalancing an artificially skewed market. One of the effects of the job crisis is an aging professoriate. Since the 1970s, the scales have tipped heavily AARP-ward: while only 17 percent of faculty were 50 or over in 1969, a bloated 52% had crossed that divide by 1998. It is no doubt worse now, and strangling the air supply of potential new professors.
AOU would work to remedy this bias against youth. It would, through a rigorous screening process, pinpoint faculty who are clogging positions and select them for hits, or 'extra-academic retirement' (EAR). While this might raise qualms from the more liberal-minded among us, we would argue that it is more humane, both to potential faculty who otherwise have been shunted aside and to those languishing in the holding pattern of a withered career, than our current system. The retirement would be efficient and quick, and strictly limited to those who, as the saying goes, have their best years long behind them."
More:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/02/01/williams_creative_solution_to_faculty_hiring_crisis_involving_unvoluntary_retirements
I would guess that the humanities would be the most bloated due to financial insecurity and no cushy industry/consulting jobs to slide into near retirement. Attending the APA already feels like an AARP conference. A large number of the mid-career people I know, who are already few in number from the dire 80s market, only show up for committee work.
To the anthro admin:
I don't envy the job you have. I can provide some insights as a former "half-time" classical archaeologist at a SLAC who has moved on since to a "full-time" archaeology position at a R1.
Each place can be quite different. I admire some of the responses on here, but they're full of anecdotes and likely of dubious help. If your classics faculty draw a good number of students, this can play in their favor like one poster mentioned. I find it doubtful, however, that many traditional, "logocentric" classics programs could do the heavy lifting in a language department. Latin doesn't draw the same as most modern languages and Greek fairs even worse.
My suggestion is to talk with your classical archaeologist. Try to gain his/her confidence. In my former position, I was hesistant to convey my inner feelings to anyone, but I would have done so in confidence to someone like you.
I don't wish to get into the tired arguments about archaeology's role in classics, but where it can be useful is in determining the health of a department. Archaeology is a bellwether of sorts in classics. It's the easiest way for classics to collaborate with the social sciences and hard sciences. The support that your classical archaeologist receives from the department and the value his/her research holds for archaeology in general is a surefire way of determining whether the department is functioning at a high level.
To test the latter position, check if one of your department's archaeologists knows the classical archaeologist's research. If not, which is already a bad sign, have one of them discretely get to know their work. I hate to say it, but hiring an archaeologist in the old mould, one who is not active in the field and has little chance of expanding the reach of the department, happens much too often in classics. Why? There are myriad reasons, but it often breaks down in the search process and the way in which we train our archaeologists in grad school. I'll leave it at that.
Good luck!
I'm sure Art History will happily take the archaeology line
When I talk to art historians (in different subfields) about archaeologists their contempt makes the philologists' comments here look like a valentine's card. I'm sure it's not always the case, but people who are into the Vienna School or postmodernism generally have much more in common with literary types than with serious archaeologists. Remember that art history departments are not composed of classical art historians alone--if they were they would probably be more sympathetic to old world archaeology.
Departments of premodern studies may be the future but not in the short-term. Non-classical areas (China, India, etc.) could never grow properly - as they need to from their currently embryonic state - from within amorphous and untried departments composed at least partly of classicists who already have a strong institutional history. Personally, I think it would be better to keep individual ancient studies departments like Classics separate but bring them together at another level through well-funded interdisciplinary bodies (Centers, programs, and the like). I suspect the money is out there for those in the administration who are enterprising, charming, dedicated, and thoughtful enough to go get it.
I think neither a typical art history nor classics department really want an archaeologist that an anthropologist can respect. It's not so much who they are as what they're not both in terms of research and teaching. But most classics department would happily take an "archaeology-lite" line, someone who fits in the culture and happily teaches Latin and Greek. In the same way, there is no way an art history department passes up a line for a person that studies vase painting or architecture. So if they're motivated enough, they can play the game as well as classics and plead for a line to fill this vital role, then turn around and get the same old traditional scholar in their own image.
While constructive, this dialogue sure is sobering, if not depressing.
I think much of this should be required reading for young classicists and university administrators.
You want to get into the heart of a typical, established classicist? Read this NPR transcript of Prof. J. Rufus Fears at Different-Meanings-Of-Democracy-For-West-Middle-East.
egads. when i launch my revolution, i definitely *do not* want this guy with his masturbatory fantasies about Greek democracy to be on my side.
Judging the health of a small Classics Department solely by how happy its archaeologist is would be like judging an archaeologist by how much classical literature he knows. Classics Departments need connections to other departments, but they can be art, anthropology, philosophy, religion, history, Comp. Lit., Women's Studies,etc. Picking one of these as the sine qua non at a small place makes no sense.
Classics unable to compete with other languages? You don't get out much. In many places, Classics has long been doing better than French, German, and Slavic, both because people's interest in those languages is fading while Latin is on a slight upswing, and because many Classics Department started offering Civ courses 30-40 years ago. Spanish is another story.
That conservative, Heritage Foundation, whacky-talk-show guy whose name was just given on this place that does not give names is in no way "a **typical**, established classicist." Calling him one suggests the poster is not so good at evaluating evidence--you know, the thing superior anthropological types are supposed to be better at.
Egads, this person is a chaired professor at a flagship state school and has pretty much ever honor thrown at him? Only in classics...
Anon. 11:10, I think you're absolutely correct. Anon 11:02 obviously missed the point and has the reading comprehension of a six-year-old.
Anon 11:02, nowhere did anyone suggest you judge the health of a department by how happy someone is. Can you point this out? Yeah, and I'm sure Latin is doing better than Sanskrit as well? Any evidence for "classics has long been doing better than French, German?" If you mean enrollment, this is totally false. And when did civ get thrown in as proof that Latin and Greek do better than other languages? How does this make sense, even if you throw in all the German related art, history, philosophy, etc. classes?
If you leftist loonies could think outside your PC bubble once in a while, you would see that Fears is just saying what everyone with half a brain is thinking but is afraid to say.
Does the anthro admin have to dig any deeper than read some of these posts to get an idea of what ails classics? Heck, one poster even went after anthro...nice. Yeah, it's exaggerated due to the angst inducing job market, but I see very few posts on here that are too far off the mainstream of classics.
Egads is right. would this department be prospering anywhere outside the Bible Belt?
Could some one of you explain precisely (and without bizarre remarks about masturbatory fantasies) exactly what it is that you find so objectionable in the NPR interview linked above? I read it over and it seemed to me that it was quite superficial, as such an interview must be, but that what it stated was all fairly self-evident, even to the level of "well, duh." What got up you people's noses? Was it that he dared to use the word "genius" connected with the Greeks?
Btw, I am a "leftie," to use a previous poster's terms. I am very, very far left in my politics. But I just don't get what's so objectionable about that interview.
(In case it matters--don't know why it would-- I'm tenured in a small classics dept at a SLAC, where 2 1/2 classicists (we've got one joint appt. with history) teach both languages at all levels, civ courses, myth courses, gender/sexuality in antiquity courses, ancient theatre courses, survey of G/R art and architecture courses, and our college's required freshman seminar. We all have to teach all of those; we don't have the luxury of specialization. If we ever got another line or if we're replacing someone who's here we'd be quite happy to hire an archaeologist but it would have to be an archaeologist who could teach both languages at all levels -- that's not snobbery or elitism, it's just the reality of how a very small department has to work if it's going to keep a program with majors and minors going.)
11:48 a.m. said:
"Anon 11:02, nowhere did anyone suggest you judge the health of a department by how happy someone is. Can you point this out? "
That was my summary of this recommendation :
"My suggestion is to talk with your classical archaeologist. ... Archaeology is a bellwether of sorts in classics. It's the easiest way for classics to collaborate with the social sciences and hard sciences. The support that your classical archaeologist receives from the department and the value his/her research holds for archaeology in general is a surefire way of determining whether the department is functioning at a high level."
My shorthand may not have been clear, but I was assuming that the questioner would not do an in-depth analysis of whether the archaeologist is being supported well, but would just ask him/her, and that the answer would depend on whether or not they were happy with how they were treated, and would not be a very reliable "bellweather." I've met very few archaeologists who think they are a being treated as well as they should be treated--even when they were sitting on top of the world (or a huge pile of money). They are just a subset, I suppose, of the many classicists in all fields who think the world should revolve around them and are outraged that it does not.
Yup, a bandaid isn't going to fix this.
I change my mind. Put your 4 1/2 classicists into your German department. And I'm a Latinist. A dirty ape Latinist judging by previous comments.
Anon 1:32, if you're a liberal, I'm Newt Gingrich. And if you're complaining about having all these civ/archaeology/non-language classes to teach, why don't you just hire an archaeologist or historian to teach them? Sounds like there's plenty to keep this person busy. Then the 2 1/2 of you can teach what you've been trained best to do, lang-lit, and the archy/historian can do the same. Now there's a novel idea!
Anon 2:12, I am a liberal. I have voted for every liberal and/or progressive candidate I've ever had a chance to vote for. I have never voted for a Republican. I notice that you don't respond to my question about what annoyed you in the radio broadcast -- you just throw me out of the fold by saying "you're not a liberal." Okay, whatever. Keep your mind nicely closed around those easy assumptions.
On your second question -- If I held the purse-strings, I'd love to create a couple of new lines and use one of them to hire an archaeologist/art historian. But there's no money for another line, and there won't be for the foreseeable future. The budget is tight around here, and we're not going to get any more faculty in classics.
With our 2 1/2 people, the reason we need each of us to be able to teach both languages at all levels (this is obvious to anyone who's ever taught at a SLAC) is that language classes are taught more frequently than civ. classes. They HAVE to be, or there'd BE no languages. You can't offer 1st semester Latin and then wait 2 years to offer 2nd semester Latin.
Our civ courses (using that term to mean everything other than language) are on a very complicated 2 or 3-year rotation schedule. The most frequently any of them get taught is every other year. So for our dept. to continue, we all have to be able to teach the languages.
And, btw, I was NOT complaining. I love teaching civ. and history courses and I've won several awards for doing so. I was trying to respond to the bitter complaints that many have posted here about small depts. that expect archaeologists to be able to teach the languages. Apparently a lot of archaeologists consider that unfair or unreasonable -- my point was that in a small LAC, that's just how things work. Anyone we hired would have to be able to teach the languages and all our other courses as well. Things are different, obviously, in a dept. of 8 or 10 or 15 faculty members. But In a very small dept. in a very small LAC, that's just how it is.
It's obvious that nothing will change until the grim reaper is at the door. Logocentric classics departments with fewer than five faculty members should be thrown into a language department. Why not? I don't buy the we're-the-healthy-thriving-languages-and-would-just-be-sharing-our-awesomeness-to-keep-the-plebeian-languages-afloat arguments. It's delusional for 95% of the cases out there. Administrators, downsize away.
Why are we even debating this? Screw the archaeologists. We don't need them and I'd rather take our chances in a language department than hear this incessant drivel. If you don't want to play by our rules and teach languages, get lost. These things were set generations ago. The more we acquiesce to these ingrates, the more they complain and demand. This IS classics. If you don't like it, go to the neanderthals in anthro.
"February 6, 2011 3:45 PM Anonymous said...
Why are we even debating this? Screw the archaeologists. We don't need them and I'd rather take our chances in a language department than hear this incessant drivel. If you don't want to play by our rules and teach languages, get lost. These things were set generations ago. The more we acquiesce to these ingrates, the more they complain and demand. This IS classics. If you don't like it, go to the neanderthals in anthro."
Here are a few of your points: 1) Screw the archaeologists. 2) If you don't want to play by our rules and teach languages, get lost. 3) These things were set generations ago. 4) This IS classics. If you don't like it, go to the neanderthals in anthro.
I'd like to think that you speak only for a small section of classicists when you write these things (which are more or less terrifying on their own, but also echo much more terrifying ideas and refrains from particularly shameful moments in human history).
A number of posters have been harping incessantly about the "archaeologists" who "whine" whenever they're asked to teach languages, and the other (or same) archaeologists who are never satisfied with anything. I have never met these straw-man archaeologists, but let's assume for the sake of the argument that they do exist, and that they really object to having to teach languages at SLACs. In my opinion, those archaeologists, whether real or imagined, really shouldn't be shooting for jobs in small departments with limited offerings. Because in those contexts they will absolutely be asked to teach the occasional language course or even full language sequences. That is the expectation in many small departments in our field. That is not the case, however, in medium or large departments, where there are more than enough people with language specializations to prevent the need for someone who is not so specialized to pick up those language classes.
I am under the impression that a small department is far more likely to hire and have on faculty three language/literature specialists and then ask them to occasionally non-language courses than they are to hire an archaeologist as the #3 faculty member and ask that person to carry a heavy language load. A small department that prefers to focus exclusively on classical languages and literature is unlikely to need or want an archaeologist. Similarly, a small department that wants to offer more extensive courses in the ancient world might very well consider having two languages/literature people and hiring in an archaeologist, for the simple reason that two faculty members can very realistically teach the full range of language courses in a small department each year. In this situation, the archaeologist might occasionally have to pick up a year-long language sequence, but their main offerings would be in ancient history, archaeology, mythology, etc. Again, there's no reason why such an archaeologist should complain about the opportunity to do languages and everything else, it seems to me that that's the sort of thing that classical archaeologists went into classical archaeology for in the first place.
On the other hand, putting the imaginary complaining archaeologist back on the shelf, it is not infrequently the case that a small classics department would rather stick with the old curriculum, with its heavy language-and-literature focus, than bring in a new person with a different perspective. "After all," they reason, "why change something that has worked for 130 years?" These are the departments that administrative types are starting to re-evaluate, and they're honestly trying to figure out why those three Classics professors have their own department, when, from the outside, it sure looks as if they're doing the same thing as the professors in the language department. I'm pretty sure that hiring an archaeologist is not the solution for these departments. But I am also pretty sure that the model needs to be re-evaluated, then rebuilt, in a new way, to maintain (or rediscover) the relevance of a field that many observers would readily agree has lost its way.
Feb 6, 2:11 again:
"February 6, 2011 3:45 PM Anonymous said...
Why are we even debating this? Screw the archaeologists. We don't need them and I'd rather take our chances in a language department than hear this incessant drivel. If you don't want to play by our rules and teach languages, get lost. These things were set generations ago. The more we acquiesce to these ingrates, the more they complain and demand. This IS classics. If you don't like it, go to the neanderthals in anthro."
Here are a few of your points: 1) Screw the archaeologists. 2) If you don't want to play by our rules and teach languages, get lost. 3) These things were set generations ago. 4) This IS classics. If you don't like it, go to the neanderthals in anthro.
I'd like to think that you speak only for a small section of classicists when you write these things (which are more or less terrifying on their own, but also echo much more terrifying ideas and refrains from particularly shameful moments in human history)."
I forgot to include among those refrains this little gem: 4b) The more we acquiesce to these ingrates, the more they complain and demand.
Reread your post, 2/6 3:45pm, it's pretty fascinating stuff, in a bad way.
Anonymous 4:51 said:
"two faculty members can very realistically teach the full range of language courses in a small department each year."
Well . . . not so sure about that, not if the dept. wants to offer ANY other courses at all.
1st year Latin = two courses
1st year Greek = two courses
2nd year Latin = two courses
2nd year Greek = two courses
upper level Latin = two courses
(bundling 3rd and 4th yr together)
upper level Greek = two courses
I see twelve courses a year. On a 3-3 teaching load that is every single course available for two faculty members. And most SLACs have Core or Distribution requirements that depts. also have to factor in. If you want your department to offer ANY civ/culture courses (and I don't know any classics department that doesn't), you need more people, or you have to figure some way to offer fewer language courses. At my SLAC, with 3 classicists. we teach all our upper-level languages as unpaid overloads, meaning we really have a four-three load rather than the three-two we have on paper. Even so it's a very tight squeeze to get even the bare minimum of classes covered.
"for the simple reason that two faculty members can very realistically teach the full range of LANGUAGE courses in a small department each year"
12 courses (by your count) split between 2 faculty on 3-3 loads = break even. Assuming they're both on 3-3, which is often not the case, especially in smaller departments, where 4-4 is quite common. So I think the point stands.
"12 courses (by your count) split between 2 faculty on 3-3 loads = break even. Assuming they're both on 3-3, which is often not the case, especially in smaller departments, where 4-4 is quite common. So I think the point stands."
No, you've missed my point. As I specifically said, on a 3-3 load, two faculty can cover all the language courses ONLY IF they teach nothing else at all -- no myth, no art history, no civ classes, no freshman seminars or distribution classes.
Perhaps there are 2-person depts. out there that do indeed teach ONLY languages, but I've never encountered one. In every SLAC I know, the classes that keep the dean's good will are the high-enrollment civ classes that "serve the college" by filling distribution requirements.
The math isn't that difficult. If you are only able to schedule 12 classes a year, you can't do a full offering of both languages and offer civ courses. You must either have another faculty member (for 18 courses a year), or offer more courses off-book as unpaid overloads, or offer one of the languages only on an every-other year basis (which is REALLY tricky).
And, assuming you have a third classicist (as we do here), it makes no sense at all to me to insist that 2 faculty members teach NOTHING BUT languages and that one teach nothing but civ, history and archaeology. That's a recipe for burn-out all around. Are there really any classicists under the age of 75 who would want to teach only language classes, never a single civ class? I've never met any such person, either when I was in grad school back in the early 90s or since. In small depts., everyone needs to be able to teach the whole range of courses (languages and civ). I would never have considered that a controversial statement before I started reading this remarkably testy and touchy blog, which I think I will now stop reading.
Couple points:
1. Can't we just ignore the outrageous posts, posturing, ridiculous demands for "proof," etc.? Just scroll through. Easy as that. I would rather that we all have the opportunity to speak our minds and have some "drivel" than having the polite conversations of little consequence we have at the APA.
2. I'm a Hellenist, so please don't jumpt down my throat, but shouldn't we be asking whether a department of two should even be offering the full complement of languages courses to the advanced level? Or even the beginning sequence every year? That's ridiculous with two. Why not offer Beginning Latin+Intermediate Greek every year followed by Beginning Greek+Intermediate Latin? Advanced courses can be offered on a year by year basis based on some exceptional students wanting to continue on to grad school. For those nervous about offering the beginning sequences every other year and risking students getting a late jump on things, can't this be filled with an intensive course during the summer?
3. Why not bring in VAPs to teach the beginning sequences? Yeah, it's money for the college, but how much does it cost to have someone teach part-time? Honestly, finding good beginning language instructors should be the easiest task in Classics and I'm sure there are plenty of recent grads who would jump at the opportunity, even at $2500/course. You don't know what you'll get in a civ course when you bring in someone from the outside, but how much deviation can you get from H&Q and Wheelock?
Dear Hellenist,
A free tip for the market. If you ever have any intention of getting a job at a SLAC don't tell them 90% of what you just wrote. If you think enrollments are an issue at large unis multiply that many times over for small depts at SLACs. If you want the languages to be a success at a SLAC, especially Greek, you need permanent faculty teaching them at all levels every year - that's just how it works in small campus communities where personal relationships, word-of-mouth and consistency of expectation are crucial. Now if you want the languages to be be replaced with a wholly in-translation curriculum that's a different story, but it's not the premise we've been discussing.
AnotherSLACprof
Another tip to the Hellenist:
Those of us whose SLACs are located out in the boonies (and there are lots of those, some of them very good SLACs indeed) do not have the option of finding VAPs to teach on a course-by-course basis. Believe me, there's no one living in this small (under 20,000 inhabitants) town who can teach Greek or Latin as an adjunct. The nearest major university with grad students in classics is over six hours away by car. It's not possible for an adjunct to commute here for one or two courses, so the only way we can hire temporary help is by asking someone to pack up their bags and move here for a year. To do that, we have to offer them enough of a salary to live on. And our administration has been quite clear, in conversations with out dept, that there's no money, zero, zip, for a full-time VAP for us in the college's budget.
Offering languages only every other year is the quickest way to kill a program. Don't go there.
Few places have enough enrollment/faculty to offer intermediate languages, so many small depts omit them. That makes 4 set courses each semester, not 6. On a teaching load of 3-3, that leaves 1 non-language course per prof per semester, or 4 non-language offerings per year.
That is by far the most common solution I've seen. It is true that some schools have decided to offer the intro languages every other year. Others have "cut" the upper level languages and offer them as independent studies (i.e., unpaid work for devout faculty members- bless their hearts!).
All of these options exist, but the first step in downsizing is usually to omit the intermediate and make intro intensive.
@anon. February 6, 2011 5:54 PM:
I think I've missed your point only so far as you've missed mine: the whole point of what I wrote above about two faculty teaching the full range of language courses in a small department was that adding a third faculty member would greatly increase the flexibility of the department in specifically non-language areas. Adding an archaeologist or an historian would be an example of how to do this, and if that archaeologist/historian could also teach the languages, so much the better. So you basically agree with what I've said, which is that departments should NOT keep hiring more of the same people that they already have on the faculty, but should instead try to diversify after they've covered the basics, so that they'll be able to better justify their existence to administrative types (again, as you've already suggested, by offering classes like civ). But I guess you're not even reading this, so I am just typing in the wind...
There is no way that the great majority of two-person departments hires anyone but a philologist for a full third appointment.
People, let's stop talking about ideal scenarios and outliers - two-person departments, language departments where Latin carries the day. We're happy for you; it simply does not apply to most of us. It's certainly not helping the SUNY Albany and MSU type departments out there, not the classics department at anthro admin's institution.
Okay, so if hiring yet another philologist isn't the issue at SLACs or at Harvard or Michigan etc. (which seem to be doing fine) that should probably have been pointed out at the start of this rather heated and overlong discussion (which began, oh, about 93 iterations of FV ago). People have pointed this out before - to no avail - but if everyone on here thinks the argument about hiring applies to *their* institution they're going to take it personally, even if it doesn't in fact apply, whether they're an archaeologist or philologist.
Garden Weasel anyone? Anyone?
Just a comment to "Hellenist" who said:
"Honestly, finding good beginning language instructors should be the easiest task in Classics and I'm sure there are plenty of recent grads who would jump at the opportunity, even at $2500/course. You don't know what you'll get in a civ course when you bring in someone from the outside, but how much deviation can you get from H&Q and Wheelock?"
As someone who's been in this game for over 30 years now (counting grad school) I can definitely tell you that you can get a LOT of "deviation" in how the basic grammar is presented and taught. A bad or unprepared or just very green language teacher can hamstring an entire cohort of language students. If their first-year instruction is sub-standard, they can almost never catch up and the after-effects carry on through the next three years of study (and that's quite aside from the ones who drop in droves that first year because with they find the badly taught first-year class confusing, incomprehensible, frustrating, etc. )
For which reasons, here at yet another SLAC, we would hire an adjunct to teach a civ course (if ever the Dean offered us money for an adjunct that is, which isn't goiong to happen in this lifetime) but we would never consider handing our first-year language classes off to an adjunct.
I know I would move to Montana to teach a beginning/intermediate language sequence. It would be much easier as well living off of $10000 or whatever I would get paid that year. It would allow me to continue my career. I have a dozen friends about to come out or recently out who would take such a job as well. And we're not green teachers either. Almost all of us have taught Greek, Latin, or both while in grad school. Throw me in front of a civ class, and then I would feel sorry for the students. I've had plenty of experience with lecturers teaching the first couple years of Greek or Latin. Half the time, they were better teachers and more dedicated than any tenured prof they threw in kicking and screaming. For the advanced languages, yes. I found tenured profs to be a mixed bag for intro languages.
It's somewhat to those of us who are tenured professors at small schools and who willingly and eagerly teach languages at all levels to assume that we have to be forced, "kicking and screaming," to teach the intro languages.
It's depressing that so few people on this blog seem to be able to imagine that there are tenured professors who love teaching -- teaching languages, literature, culture, the whole range -- and are good at it. And yet I know many such, mostly but by no means all at SLACs.
Hmm, the mysterious disappearing word. "It is somewhat to those of us" should have read "It is somewhat insulting to those of us . . . " Sorry.
Damn, I'm out of popcorn.
Let's start a new fight!
At least 3 positions have been offered. Which ones? C'mon, offerees- spill the beans!!
I admit I don't see how this question could lead to a fight, but I'm sure someone will find a way.
I have heard through the grapevine that two of the jobs offered are one-year positions . . . I have no idea about the mysterious third job offer.
I'm counting four jobs offered, as of today, with no notes on any of the jobs on our list. Is it pretty typical that candidates will only add their job-specific info when they've accepted or rejected an offer? I can see how someone might not want to share that info immediately, as it could have an effect on the negotiation process.
I'm counting four jobs offered
Doh! Math skills! 2x1=2. I'm a little (a lot) ashamed of myself.
I can see how someone might not want to share that info immediately, as it could have an effect on the negotiation process.
Good point. I hadn't thought of that.
As for the "there are more candidates than jobs" argument... well, this is all fields in academia and some professional ones--see lawyers R us. Classics ratios (candidates to positions) are not that bad compared to some like English or religion and let's not even talk about positions for all those Juilliard grads in cello (seriously two positions a year if they're lucky for many, many candidates). Look, it's not great this year but we could have it worse. We do need to reimagine ourselves and I think that means we stop whining about the cuts we face since we often have lots of faculty serving a small major pool. Let's just get over ourselves a little and get some perspective. We should be demanding positions for all departments and pushing the admin to funnel most of those donations toward increasing faculty than adding yet another climbing wall/latte, cyber cafe in the new school of business...
http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/rumor/doku.php?id=rejection
Herbert A. Millington
Chair - Search Committee
412A Clarkson Hall
Whitson University
College Hill, MA 34109
Dear Professor Millington,
Thank you for your letter of March 16. After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me an assistant professor position in your department.
This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising field of candidates it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.
Despite Whitson's outstanding qualifications and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs at this time. Therefore, I will assume the position of assistant professor in your department this August. I look forward to seeing you then.
Best of luck in rejecting future applicants.
Sincerely,
Chris L. Jensen
Cal State Sacramento ancient history = filled. Gee, I wonder how much work those poor sobs had to do to complete that search.
Radio silence.
yeah....It's an awkward silence, too....like when Stewie told Brian that the latter didn't have a soul.
Of course this could be another one of those years where a few people get multiple offers, like Scarlet at the barbecue (while she's still pining for Ashley), and the whole system has to wait for them to decide, which takes longer than your think because people with more than one offer can negotiate better and for a longer time.
The Waiting, with Eddie Vedder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK7Bks4XbD4
It could very well be as I've noticed that a certain candidate who gummed up the works several years ago is back on the market. I know of at least two other highly qualified junior candidates in TT positions who are yearning for greener pastures for some reason (and getting plenty of love back).
I know of a couple of jobs that have been offered and one that has been accepted, but the individuals involved have not yet revealed the information, so I don't feel that I can. But they are different people, at least, not one person with multiple offers. I also have heard that some places are delayed, like Furman, for whatever reason.
Someone commented on this above, I think, but what's the potential harm in posting that a job has been offered, with no further details than that? I am having trouble figuring out how this would hurt me, if I were so lucky as to be in a position with one or more offers on the table. Can anyone explain?
Furman sent out at least one campus invite yesterday (and I assume they actually sent out all campus invites). I didn't get one, nor did I get a notice of not getting one.
I'm on a search committee. Our third candidate is arriving this week. Then we'll have to meet, compare notes, and decide to whom to offer the position. No way an offer will go out for at least another week.
I know it SEEMS late, but it really isn't. This is very, very early in the season for offers.
Isn't it maybe just a little bit kind of late for people who were interviewed at the APA and still haven't heard anything from those places? Lateness is probably relative, but from where I'm sitting, 6 weeks without any information seems like a long time.
Silver lining?
http://chronicle.com/article/Fastest-Declining-Academic/126360/
According to the chart, classics offerings have only declined 4.7% in the last 35 years (compared to 17.6% in German and 17% in Romance langs, even 10% in history). Not sure how that correlates to number of free-standing depts, though.
But surely it's something (marginally) positive?
LOL, talk about statistical incompetence! That study actually shows that the number of classics programs has declined by 22% (from 21.5% to 16.8% of 4-year colleges), or roughly the same as the overall decline in Romance language/literature programs. German programs have actually taken a 40% whack, but still, Classics is near the very top in terms of an actual percentage decline (aside from Home Economics and Secretarial programs!).
This is also not "the last 35 years" but for the 35 years ending in 2006.
Must be a pencil-neck philologist. In addition to sexing and boozing around, we archys take stats and can divide when necessary.
Yes, there's a huge market in Classics for oversexed hungover statisticians right now. Good luck with that.
I see Roanoke made an offer. Big surprise.
...oversexed (what could this possibly mean)? ...hungover (is this what the Irish call brunch)??
Ooooh job listings!
"The University of 10-Hour-Drive-To-Nearest-City, Montana, invites applications for a part time (limited benefits) position in Classical Everything. Successful applicant must be able to teach Greek and Latin at all levels, Archaeology and History of the Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to late antiquity, Greek and Roman literature in translation, Classical Mythology, Gender in the Ancient World, Freshman Writing,and our 'Great Books' survey. Knowledge of area outside Mediterranean (such as Egypt or Near East) a strong plus. Teaching load is 5/5, compensation $15,000. Please send graduate transcripts, three letters of recommendation, cover letter, CV, teaching statement, research statement, list of all classes taught, syllabi, and credit card statements to: Prof. Ugotta B. Kiddingme, Second Mud-Hut on the Left, 10-Hour-Drive-To-Nearest-City, MT."
And before anyone says it... yes, I have a bad attitude.
Shame on University of New Hampshire? $34,000 for a 1-year, 3-3? Hmmm, it has the added bonus of "benefits".
To be fair, the position at UNH is for an lecturer, I believe. All universities have pay scales for different ranks. It could be that the university would not fund a VAP rank position, and all the department could get is a lecturer rank. Please keep in mind that departments may be constrained and not simply evil.
Correction: "for *a* lecturer."
Ok, since the department is "constrained", I guess it's only fair that I constrain my living standards to accommodate a slave wage.
Also, do not forget to submit your "three letters of reverence to: Prof. Stephen Trzaskoma,..."
Post a Comment