"Am I the only one who suspects that this move from the AIA is an intentional one, to distance itself from an organization that it sees as out of touch, out of date, and generally inefficient? Archaeology as a field is much bigger than Classics, and so stepping away from the APA makes a kind of sense as the field of archaeology seeks to survive and even thrive even as many other academic disciplines are fading off into the past."
I think Speculative Fiction has just reached a new low.
Steal generalist positions? It's more like convince an archaeologist to help a classics department become more relevant. Soon you will all be generalists, if that. Good luck in the 21st century. The Victorians are calling. They want their discipline back.
"The Victorians are calling. They want their discipline back."
This would register as a harsher "burn" if I had the sense that you knew anything at all about the actual content of classical scholarship whether Victorian or contemporary.
Some Archaeologists harbor the fantasy that they are going to "win" their battle with philologists within the context of a generalized liquidation of humanities departments. This is what the resort to speculative fiction is about--imagining how this fantasy will play out.
Here's a dystopian take: in the future departments of "Archeology" imagined by the OP, ancient Mediterranean archaeologists, scattered at various schools by the ones or perhaps twos, will fervently tout ostensible linguistic credentials, along with the putative larger significance of the "Classical tradition"--literature, art, architecture, and other irrelevant frivolity--in order to guard a tiny bit of turf against more sophisticated anthro colleagues who would just as soon devote resources to Maya or Southeast Asian cultures.
It seems at least as likely as these triumphalist fantasies.
Sigh, I'll miss these types of pseudo-intellectual comments in the near future when we'll only get a peep or two from what remains of you living fossils.
Okay, then to put it more bluntly: I think you (not sure if one or more of you at this point) are deluding yourself by projecting your own personal experiences, hopes, and frustrations onto objective circumstances to which they are irrelevant. So good luck with that. See some of you next year.
Apologies to "June 1, 2013 at 8:26 AM," but Speculative Fiction here is actually completely 100% correct in asserting that Archaeology (or Archeology, if you prefer) is a MUCH BIGGER FIELD than Classics. So the AIA has a broader membership, a broader set of interests, and, unfortunately for the ancients, a broader appeal than the Classics. Classics 2.0 (or 2.014, if you prefer) is doing its best to change that. I'm hoping for good things out of that, speculative fiction or not, but you won't see me next year, because I won a small lottery and I won't be back in this rat-race for some time, if ever. In spite of the anonymous rancor you obviously feel toward me and many others, I do wish you a genuine good luck and excellent future. It's no less than we all deserve.
This reminds me of the National Geographic special where the "princess" hyena still thinks she's hot stuff in the pack after her mother gets mauled by a lion and dies. Wake up people. The defenders of Classics as presently construed and stubbornly fixated are disappearing. It's sad to see so many people not realizing this reality, strutting around like they're still BMOC. To pretend that our plight is just a general reflection of the plight of the humanities and not something more endemic to Classics is the true delusion. Good luck everyone. Remember, friends don't let friends get PhDs in Classics.
"I think you (not sure if one or more of you at this point) "
Yeah, it's tens of thousands of us vs. hundreds of you. Once the NEH, Loeb, etc. fade away, most of you will be lecturers in language departments at best or extinct. Blame the world all you want, but you should't have stubbornly pegged the discipline's future, whether by intent or inaction, onto a increasingly narrow demographic. I would say good luck but I know it's to little avail seeing that the discipline's leaders have been and are determined to go down with the ship rather than "compromise" themselves with a more inclusive and less elitist attitude.
We already know that hiring practices are close to pulling lottery balls out of the tumbler: pretty fucking random. It also seems that peer-review and the whole apparatus by which scholarship is judged worthy suffers from similar problems:
Super. The APA might as well employ haruspices and let them tell us which articles and books should be published, and who should get hired. The results would be more just and internally consistent, and my unemployment and lack of publications would be far easier to accept.
If I may create a temporary rupture in this puerile and ultimately inconsequential discussion, as I believe it would be the height of thoughtlessness for me to retain the following information rather than disseminate it to those might wish to utilize it, I feel it is incumbent upon me to note that the 2012-13 job-searching season has been graced with one more job, at the University of Arizona: www.uacareertrack.com/applicants/Central?quickFind=208391
Why the job announcement would have been posted on May 24 and after ten days still not be publicized through the APA or Famae Volent is a matter for conjecture. Presumably, even if there is the risk of infelicitous commentary (vel sim.), as has been wont to occur in the recent past in this very thread, the faculty there would surely wish to cast the widest net possible in order to be able to consider the best candidates still out there. But no matter – the problem of an inevitably small applicant pool has now been rectified. May this be to the benefit of one of you!
12:29 a.m., You might be right that it's an inside candidate. But then, Arizona probably knows that they can't advertise a new job without the rest of the field being reminded about how badly messed up things are there, so maybe they are doing a word-of-mouth search and hoping to avoid the spotlight.
"Really? Isn't it pretty common knowledge that AZ's whole dept. is going bye-bye?"
Now where will the poor, scattered by ones and twos, Neanderthal classical archaeologists go? The philologists sure showed them. Oh, wait, I forgot. Classical archaeologists have been on the forefront of dendrochronology, nautical archaeology, and other pursuits that might interest the anthropologists - no batteries or "classical tradition" required.
I know the ancients on here don't care since they're almost out the door, but I agree with the general analysis if not the tone. I've seen our future and it looks a lot like Arizona. To think that the future of classical archaeology depends on the ability hoisted on them to teach beginning languages and the classical tradition is laughable. I'm in a department with two archaeologists and I know they could each easily teach a dozen new courses but don't due to the traditional boundaries of the discipline and our "need" for them to teach courses within these boundaries. When the time comes, I'm sure they will gladly take a bit less advanced languages and more anthro and science courses.
Well, with Arizona it's not all about who studies what. Their upcoming collapse seems mainly due to the toxic and shockingly unprofessional behavior of a few senior faculty members.
You are correct, except you were a bit loose with your phrasing: it was not "a few," but just two, who have caused the department's downfall. It would be wrong to create the impression that the blame rests on other senior faculty.
Turns out that there are now TWO VAP positions in Classics at the UA. See the announcement here:
http://classics.arizona.edu/node/739
The link in the above url does not take you to the ads themselves, but if you search for postings in the "Classics" department, you ought to be able to find the listing. Happy applying!
Does anybody know where to find an updated list of journal rankings in Classics? I am applying to positions in comparative literature this coming season and I have been told that I need to explain where exactly my publication placement sits, since most SC-members for these positions won't be familiar with our field's journals. I tried using citation indices, but they are useless.
Those ERIH tables are crap. Nobody in their right mind thinks JHS and ZPE, to take but two examples, are in the same league. By that logic Chelsea and Tranmere Rovers are comparable. They play on the same pitch, but...
Anonymous 5:36, Could you please reveal (vaguely, if need be) what area(s) you work in? I'm curious to see if I have read you correctly.
In general, I think that if there are only three types of ranking then JHS and ZPE most certainly belong in the upper tier. Perhaps if there were 5+ tiers things might be different.
Agree that JHS and ZPE are both "top-tier," if our notion of tier is broad enough. But placing an article in JHS is much, much more difficult than placing one in ZPE. Looking at the list of journals, it seems too broad. JRS vs. MD? AJP vs. QUCC? Please. Powerball vs. church bingo.
Here's a thought that will blow some minds: I'd argue that ZPE is more important than JHS. Think about it. If JHS were to close shop tomorrow, it would be quite a loss, as it is the gold standard, but AJP, CP, Mnemosyne, REG, etc. etc. would still be there. But if ZPE were to stop publishing there is no comparable alternative (meaning, nowhere for new literary texts and fragments, documentary papyri, both Greek AND Latin inscriptions, and synthetic studies thereof). Thus JHS may have the greater prestige, but ZPE is irreplaceable.
Yeah, getting something in ZPE is easy--except for the part where you have to train for years as a papyrologist or epigrapher and then get access to a text and have something original and true to say about about it. In JHS and JRS if you're well connected you can published an article that should be called "Applying the narrow and jaundiced viewpoint of me and my friends to the same old stuff." But that's only the occasional clunker--most of what's in those two is great. And if you don't appreciate MD, well, there's something going on here and you don't know what is it, do you, Mr Jones?
Anyone who thinks ZPE is not highly selective, or that it is easy to get in there, simply does not know a thing about it. For one thing, ZPE publishes in all scholarly languages, meaning that there are far more scholars than just those of us who write in English submitting their work. So yes, it comes out 4-5 times a year, but it also has important scholarship from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc. The stuff written in English probably boils down to roughly the equivalent of a JHS volume, though I'm not about to count pages to see if I am right. (I'm taking a break from real research to write this post. Trying to figure out which towering scholar in a particular field is right about something. I think I'm going to side with the nice American over the jerky Parisian.)
Whatever can 2:48 by "In JHS and JRS if you're well connected you can..."? Everybody knows these are blind reviews which stand only on their merits! I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you!!
[Dividing into two posts because of space limitations]
Since there has been some speculation here regarding the future of the University of Arizona’s Department of Classics (UADC), in particular whether it is “going bye-bye,” it seems that those of you out there – and the field in general – deserve an update on UADC’s current situation and future prospects, especially since UADC has just had an external review that will likely have serious consequences. I was also thinking that I might write a little something about the two jobs that have just been posted, but anyone who does not know why these jobs are so unappealing can simply search for what was written by “Wyatt Earp” earlier in this thread, which will provide a good idea of why all junior faculty leave for other jobs as soon as they are able. And anyway, at this point (mid-June) no one is going to not apply to Arizona even if he/she knows how messed up a place it is. For now, what matters, especially given UADC’s former prominence in the field, is the update, since the external review ought to be a game-changer.
The beauty of an external review is that it brings in respected scholars from outside of the university – i.e., scholars who have no fear of damaging their careers by speaking truth to power – and has them give a thorough, objective assessment of both the good and the bad, and the report is given to the provost, not the dean. (Particularly important in this case, as the Arizona dean is largely responsible for this mess.) To their great credit, the three classicists, combined with some University of Arizona faculty and others from the community, conducted a thorough investigation, and issued a report that almost certainly places the blame for the department’s demise precisely where it belongs: the two senior faculty members alluded to by “Wyatt Earp.” Unfortunately, outside of the administration and the reviewers no one knows for sure, since in a serious departure from the normal external review process, the report has not been released after several months, with no explanation given. The guidelines of the Board of Regents state that faculty and even students are supposed to get the final report, and making this even more egregious is that the University of Arizona is a public institution, and thus the report is a public document that any citizen may access.
Sadly, this is not the only way that the usual external review process was corrupted: * external reviews are preceded by a preliminary report for the outside committee in which the faculty jointly assess their department themselves and reach a consensus position on important matters, but the dean unwisely permitted one of the two senior faculty creating the dysfunction to be put in charge of writing this report without proper oversight, which meant that he/she wrote it almost entirely on his/her own and failed to convey the views of the majority of his/her colleagues; * right after an external review committee’s report is completed and submitted the faculty are required to prepare a response for the administration, but if such a response has even been written in this case, it was prepared by the acting chair without input from the rest of the faculty (possibly excepting those two senior professors who had his ear); * the preliminary report contained several demonstrably misleading statements (a euphemism); * and, the review committee’s schedule was arranged in such a way that untenured faculty had minimal access to the committee and their ability to voice their concerns was inhibited – which, I strongly suspect, was no accident. Nonetheless, there is good reason to believe that the external review committee’s report shows the true nature of UADC’s problems, despite the obvious attempts to hide these problems. Perhaps a too-candid assessment is the reason why the administration has been ignoring the Board of Regents’ crystal-clear guidelines and failed to release the report after all these months?
Even though the contents of the report remain unknown, some of the report’s effects are already known or rumored. There will have to be yet another (the fourth!) acting chair running UADC this coming academic year, since the last one finished his brief tenure last month. The more important news (well, rumor, but apparently a reliable one) is that this acting chair would be a caretaker while a committee decides how to take apart UADC and reconstitute it as some sort of Mediterranean studies program. This would only be (somewhat) good news if UADC were being closed specifically so that the two senior faculty could finally be fired. (It is my understanding that tenure does not protect one if one’s department is shuttered.) But if these two are kept, and can continue to cause serious damage to the careers of others and make the department a deeply unpleasant place for colleagues of all ranks (as well as staff/employees, including that undergraduate employee who was forced to tears by one of these professors, as “Wyatt Earp” wrote), this will all have been for nothing.
So that is where things stand now. UADC is not expected to last for more than another year, but there will still be a classics presence at Arizona, especially since the strong archaeology and ancient history programs elsewhere at the university require it. Now, normally the reaction in the field to news of a department’s likely or impending closure would be to write angry letters and put together petitions, but the fact is that UADC has become such a truly dysfunctional department, and this has had so severe an impact on the quality of its graduate program and undergraduate teaching, that the provost has to do something. I am cautiously optimistic that a few years down the road things will be better, but in the short term – especially the coming year – there is little reason to think that things will not continue to be very ugly. And, to bring things back around to the recent postings (ring composition!), there is simply no way that this will not impact whoever gets the two VAP positions.
I, for another, think this pissing contest over JRS and ZPE is stupid. Better comparison: scoring an article in CW in 2013 is harder than scoring an article in JHS in 1993.
And these statistics in a field that is actually growing, with more and more outlets for publication. How many new journals have opened up in Classics in the past 20 years? 3?
(It is my understanding that tenure does not protect one if one’s department is shuttered.)
This is generally not true if there is another logical disciplinary place for the faculty member to be housed after such a closure. This is to prevent administrators from making bogus reorganizations, the sole purpose of which is to remove tenured faculty. In this case, if other Classics colleagues were to move to the new Mediterranean Studies department (proving that it is a logical place to move Classicists), the dismissed Classicists could sue the bejeezus out of the university and would almost certainly win.
I haven't really been following the situation at UA, but it seems to me that a total reorganization of this sort is a sign of major administrative failure over the last decades if its intent is merely to rein in two senior faculty. There are more direct and less drastic ways to do so, although the posting above gives some indication that all of their misbehavior has been to some extent supported by former chairs/heads and the dean.
In other words, if the resulting Med. Studies dept. will be a better, stronger unit for other reasons, then by all means it should be done. If it's just to stop two faculty from running amok, someone should have been able to stop them by some other means.
These UACD comments strike me as crossing way over the line when it comes to the "no names" policy of the blog. Not too hard to figure out, exactly, the people being gossiped about. Nor, for that matter, is it hard to figure out who the "whistle blower" of the department is.
To the dude/dudette posting at 2:47, Your comment regarding the "whistle blower" shows that you really don't know much about the situation. I don't mean that harshly or critically. I just mean that you should not be so quick to assume that there is a single person with the reason and knowledge to write on this subject. In truth, there are a half dozen people, if not more, who might do so.
So since the 2012/13 Placement Service has come to an end, it seems appropriate to complain, here and now, about the new PS policy of gauging archaeologists:
"If you are currently an AIA member, and you plan to enroll with the APA Placement Service in 2013-2014, you will have to pay the higher, non-member fee (USD $55.00) to enroll. The APA Member's fee to utilize the Placement Service is USD $20.00, and you must pay dues for 2013 before the end of June if you wish to register for the Service in July."
Best of all is the warm and inclusive language that follows this nasty news:
"The APA welcomes all students of the ancient world, and its members advance the study of the classical antiquity in all its aspects."
Huh? Didn't you just bitch-slap half of the people you want to buy your service, PS?
The AIA chose to pull out of the placement service to concentrate on their own independent service. Presumably the partnership previously included a financial contribution by AIA that now goes away. So it is perfectly logical for APA to charge AIA members at the non-member rate, since the APA service is no longer receiving funding from AIA. And I say this as an archaeologist.
Why *did* the AIA divorce the APA like this? Do they think that classical archaeologists are going to find fewer and fewer jobs in Classics departments? What's the logic behind the move?
Oh, I'm not sure I'd completely blame the AIA. Word is that this was precipitated by repeated demonstrations of incompetence over the years at the Placement Service's highest levels, and the failure of the APA to make some obviously needed changes. An unfortunate overreaction, but the APA -- and especially those senior classicists defending the status quo -- deserve a good measure of the blame.
That said, charging archaeologists extra money is shameful. But this isn't the only way I know of that the APA has grubbed for money in rather unfortunate ways.
That said, charging archaeologists extra money is shameful. But this isn't the only way I know of that the APA has grubbed for money in rather unfortunate ways.
An earlier commenter had this right. The Placement service is subsidized out of membership dues paid to the professional organization you belong to. When it was a joint service, some of the subsidy came from AIA dues and some from APA dues. Access at a reduced rate to the joint placement service was one of the "benefits" that you got by paying your membership dues to the AIA or the APA.
After the divorce, the AIA dues part of the subsidy went away, so there's less money to run the service, but the service's fixed costs haven't changed: same office, same number of employees, etc. So either you have to charge both AIA and APA members somewhat more than before, or you charge APA members the same as before and charge AIA members a good deal more.
Given that the AIA has stopped contributing funds to the service but the APA hasn't, I can't see how you could think it's fair to charge AIA members no more than APA members. That would be asking APA dues payers to subsidize AIA placement while exempting AIA dues payers from subsidizing APA placement.
I don't blame the AIA for wanting out of the service, which is genuinely terrible for a variety of well-known reasons, but they have screwed job seekers who want access to the APA service. You might consider asking the relevant AIA authorities what they propose to do with the portion of your dues that used to go to the joint service.
You might consider asking the relevant AIA authorities what they propose to do with the portion of your dues that used to go to the joint service.
I might, instead, ask the APA authorities what they propose to do with all the money that AIA and APA members have given to support the Placement Service (according to your interpretation) over the years. I'd have thought the massive institutional fees for subscribing to the Placement Service would more than cover the minimal costs of running the service - hiring a few hotel rooms and using a very rudimentary database system (and that, only recently). I suspect that part of the AIA's reason for leaving was the fact that they think they can do the same service better for less money. As I understand it, that's why there's no additional subscription fee to join their service. Of course, their less-than-a-quarter-million members will probably feel the sting of having to run their own service now...
Someone up above mentioned the diverse interests and fields of AIA members, and I thought that was probably relevant. But they could also have mentioned that there may or may not be a slight difference in sheer numbers between the two clubs. I failed in my googling to find published numbers for APA membership, but the AIA is such a pedestrian institute that they even include this information on their website, further popularizing what should be, by all accounts, an exclusive society.
I am getting ready to interview for a highly selective high school--Greek and writing course. I am prepping for the question: what kind of technique do you use or know of (to keep the kids in)? any suggestions? resources that can help me come up with something half decent? many thanks.
Hmmm. I sense a strange disturbance in the Force this evening. Could an annus horribilis be coming to a close? Let's hope for a better one ahead, where ta cheirona ou nika.
Oh, and ave atque glube, amice. Good luck with those husks.
If I had been willing to squelch my natural “pluck” and remain servile, to lose my wonderful relationship while I moved, alone, from one Midwestern town where I didn’t know a single goddamned person to the next, to withstand (or even enjoy) departmental politics and conferencing, then academia would have “suited” me fine. I am coming to terms with the fact that those sacrifices weren’t worth it—but that is my journey to take, and my conclusion to reach.
Has anyone else been getting a lot more telemarketing calls (frequently explicitly job-related) since going on the market? I'm thinking at least one, possibly many, of these institutions are selling our information to third parties.
I believe they most certainly are. I go almost exclusively by my middle name so there really is no place they can get my first name unless the DMV or passport folks are selling info (doubtful).
1,279 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 1201 – 1279 of 1279"Am I the only one who suspects that this move from the AIA is an intentional one, to distance itself from an organization that it sees as out of touch, out of date, and generally inefficient? Archaeology as a field is much bigger than Classics, and so stepping away from the APA makes a kind of sense as the field of archaeology seeks to survive and even thrive even as many other academic disciplines are fading off into the past."
I think Speculative Fiction has just reached a new low.
Steal generalist positions? It's more like convince an archaeologist to help a classics department become more relevant. Soon you will all be generalists, if that. Good luck in the 21st century. The Victorians are calling. They want their discipline back.
"The Victorians are calling. They want their discipline back."
This would register as a harsher "burn" if I had the sense that you knew anything at all about the actual content of classical scholarship whether Victorian or contemporary.
Some Archaeologists harbor the fantasy that they are going to "win" their battle with philologists within the context of a generalized liquidation of humanities departments. This is what the resort to speculative fiction is about--imagining how this fantasy will play out.
Here's a dystopian take: in the future departments of "Archeology" imagined by the OP, ancient Mediterranean archaeologists, scattered at various schools by the ones or perhaps twos, will fervently tout ostensible linguistic credentials, along with the putative larger significance of the "Classical tradition"--literature, art, architecture, and other irrelevant frivolity--in order to guard a tiny bit of turf against more sophisticated anthro colleagues who would just as soon devote resources to Maya or Southeast Asian cultures.
It seems at least as likely as these triumphalist fantasies.
Sigh, I'll miss these types of pseudo-intellectual comments in the near future when we'll only get a peep or two from what remains of you living fossils.
Okay, then to put it more bluntly: I think you (not sure if one or more of you at this point) are deluding yourself by projecting your own personal experiences, hopes, and frustrations onto objective circumstances to which they are irrelevant. So good luck with that. See some of you next year.
Apologies to "June 1, 2013 at 8:26 AM," but Speculative Fiction here is actually completely 100% correct in asserting that Archaeology (or Archeology, if you prefer) is a MUCH BIGGER FIELD than Classics. So the AIA has a broader membership, a broader set of interests, and, unfortunately for the ancients, a broader appeal than the Classics. Classics 2.0 (or 2.014, if you prefer) is doing its best to change that. I'm hoping for good things out of that, speculative fiction or not, but you won't see me next year, because I won a small lottery and I won't be back in this rat-race for some time, if ever. In spite of the anonymous rancor you obviously feel toward me and many others, I do wish you a genuine good luck and excellent future. It's no less than we all deserve.
This reminds me of the National Geographic special where the "princess" hyena still thinks she's hot stuff in the pack after her mother gets mauled by a lion and dies. Wake up people. The defenders of Classics as presently construed and stubbornly fixated are disappearing. It's sad to see so many people not realizing this reality, strutting around like they're still BMOC. To pretend that our plight is just a general reflection of the plight of the humanities and not something more endemic to Classics is the true delusion. Good luck everyone. Remember, friends don't let friends get PhDs in Classics.
"I think you (not sure if one or more of you at this point) "
Yeah, it's tens of thousands of us vs. hundreds of you. Once the NEH, Loeb, etc. fade away, most of you will be lecturers in language departments at best or extinct. Blame the world all you want, but you should't have stubbornly pegged the discipline's future, whether by intent or inaction, onto a increasingly narrow demographic. I would say good luck but I know it's to little avail seeing that the discipline's leaders have been and are determined to go down with the ship rather than "compromise" themselves with a more inclusive and less elitist attitude.
We already know that hiring practices are close to pulling lottery balls out of the tumbler: pretty fucking random. It also seems that peer-review and the whole apparatus by which scholarship is judged worthy suffers from similar problems:
http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2013/05/from-variety-of-sources-i-have-learned.html
Super. The APA might as well employ haruspices and let them tell us which articles and books should be published, and who should get hired. The results would be more just and internally consistent, and my unemployment and lack of publications would be far easier to accept.
If I may create a temporary rupture in this puerile and ultimately inconsequential discussion, as I believe it would be the height of thoughtlessness for me to retain the following information rather than disseminate it to those might wish to utilize it, I feel it is incumbent upon me to note that the 2012-13 job-searching season has been graced with one more job, at the University of Arizona: www.uacareertrack.com/applicants/Central?quickFind=208391
Why the job announcement would have been posted on May 24 and after ten days still not be publicized through the APA or Famae Volent is a matter for conjecture. Presumably, even if there is the risk of infelicitous commentary (vel sim.), as has been wont to occur in the recent past in this very thread, the faculty there would surely wish to cast the widest net possible in order to be able to consider the best candidates still out there. But no matter – the problem of an inevitably small applicant pool has now been rectified. May this be to the benefit of one of you!
We don't. And stop calling us "Shirley."
Re: AZ. Any word on whether the department's hands are tied by the administration?
an unadvertised search this late in the cycle? there has to be an insider. a look at their website reveals several possibilities.
Really? Isn't it pretty common knowledge that AZ's whole dept. is going bye-bye?
12:29 a.m.,
You might be right that it's an inside candidate. But then, Arizona probably knows that they can't advertise a new job without the rest of the field being reminded about how badly messed up things are there, so maybe they are doing a word-of-mouth search and hoping to avoid the spotlight.
"Really? Isn't it pretty common knowledge that AZ's whole dept. is going bye-bye?"
Now where will the poor, scattered by ones and twos, Neanderthal classical archaeologists go? The philologists sure showed them. Oh, wait, I forgot. Classical archaeologists have been on the forefront of dendrochronology, nautical archaeology, and other pursuits that might interest the anthropologists - no batteries or "classical tradition" required.
I know the ancients on here don't care since they're almost out the door, but I agree with the general analysis if not the tone. I've seen our future and it looks a lot like Arizona. To think that the future of classical archaeology depends on the ability hoisted on them to teach beginning languages and the classical tradition is laughable. I'm in a department with two archaeologists and I know they could each easily teach a dozen new courses but don't due to the traditional boundaries of the discipline and our "need" for them to teach courses within these boundaries. When the time comes, I'm sure they will gladly take a bit less advanced languages and more anthro and science courses.
Well, with Arizona it's not all about who studies what. Their upcoming collapse seems mainly due to the toxic and shockingly unprofessional behavior of a few senior faculty members.
You are correct, except you were a bit loose with your phrasing: it was not "a few," but just two, who have caused the department's downfall. It would be wrong to create the impression that the blame rests on other senior faculty.
Dear haters (vel sim.),
Turns out that there are now TWO VAP positions in Classics at the UA. See the announcement here:
http://classics.arizona.edu/node/739
The link in the above url does not take you to the ads themselves, but if you search for postings in the "Classics" department, you ought to be able to find the listing. Happy applying!
- The Management
Am I the only one who misses the cutting edge presentation of the APA website?
Why do I keep hitting 'refresh'?
Any news on the job at U Blah blah blah I give up.
Does anybody know where to find an updated list of journal rankings in Classics? I am applying to positions in comparative literature this coming season and I have been told that I need to explain where exactly my publication placement sits, since most SC-members for these positions won't be familiar with our field's journals. I tried using citation indices, but they are useless.
The European Science Foundation does a ranking of humanities journals by field into three grades (INT-1, INT-2, NAT).
https://www2.esf.org/asp/ERIH/Foreword/search.asp
Those ERIH tables are crap. Nobody in their right mind thinks JHS and ZPE, to take but two examples, are in the same league. By that logic Chelsea and Tranmere Rovers are comparable. They play on the same pitch, but...
Anonymous 5:36,
Could you please reveal (vaguely, if need be) what area(s) you work in? I'm curious to see if I have read you correctly.
In general, I think that if there are only three types of ranking then JHS and ZPE most certainly belong in the upper tier. Perhaps if there were 5+ tiers things might be different.
HAHAHAHA. You are all pathetic. No one cares about ANY of the publications. Have you talked to ANY real people in the last few decades.
Fuck you,
Guy or Female Guy
Agree that JHS and ZPE are both "top-tier," if our notion of tier is broad enough. But placing an article in JHS is much, much more difficult than placing one in ZPE. Looking at the list of journals, it seems too broad. JRS vs. MD? AJP vs. QUCC? Please. Powerball vs. church bingo.
AJP? Are you kidding? Perhaps you meant CP?
AJP and CP are roughly equivalent as far as prestige and acceptance rates go.
What are the acceptance rates at AJP and CP?
All I know is that in the past decade or so articles rejected (with good reason) by journals with less "prestige" have been happily published by AJP.
The APA Committee on the Status of Women and Minority Groups does a periodic Journals Report; the last one for which I have a url is 2007
http://apaclassics.org/images/uploads/documents/2007JournalSurveyTable.pdf
and here is 2002
http://apaclassics.org/images/uploads/documents/2002_journtable.pdf
Here's a thought that will blow some minds: I'd argue that ZPE is more important than JHS. Think about it. If JHS were to close shop tomorrow, it would be quite a loss, as it is the gold standard, but AJP, CP, Mnemosyne, REG, etc. etc. would still be there. But if ZPE were to stop publishing there is no comparable alternative (meaning, nowhere for new literary texts and fragments, documentary papyri, both Greek AND Latin inscriptions, and synthetic studies thereof). Thus JHS may have the greater prestige, but ZPE is irreplaceable.
Yeah, getting something in ZPE is easy--except for the part where you have to train for years as a papyrologist or epigrapher and then get access to a text and have something original and true to say about about it. In JHS and JRS if you're well connected you can published an article that should be called "Applying the narrow and jaundiced viewpoint of me and my friends to the same old stuff." But that's only the occasional clunker--most of what's in those two is great. And if you don't appreciate MD, well, there's something going on here and you don't know what is it, do you, Mr Jones?
Well said, Anonymous 2:48.
Anyone who thinks ZPE is not highly selective, or that it is easy to get in there, simply does not know a thing about it. For one thing, ZPE publishes in all scholarly languages, meaning that there are far more scholars than just those of us who write in English submitting their work. So yes, it comes out 4-5 times a year, but it also has important scholarship from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc. The stuff written in English probably boils down to roughly the equivalent of a JHS volume, though I'm not about to count pages to see if I am right. (I'm taking a break from real research to write this post. Trying to figure out which towering scholar in a particular field is right about something. I think I'm going to side with the nice American over the jerky Parisian.)
Whatever can 2:48 by "In JHS and JRS if you're well connected you can..."? Everybody knows these are blind reviews which stand only on their merits! I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you!!
[Dividing into two posts because of space limitations]
Since there has been some speculation here regarding the future of the University of Arizona’s Department of Classics (UADC), in particular whether it is “going bye-bye,” it seems that those of you out there – and the field in general – deserve an update on UADC’s current situation and future prospects, especially since UADC has just had an external review that will likely have serious consequences. I was also thinking that I might write a little something about the two jobs that have just been posted, but anyone who does not know why these jobs are so unappealing can simply search for what was written by “Wyatt Earp” earlier in this thread, which will provide a good idea of why all junior faculty leave for other jobs as soon as they are able. And anyway, at this point (mid-June) no one is going to not apply to Arizona even if he/she knows how messed up a place it is. For now, what matters, especially given UADC’s former prominence in the field, is the update, since the external review ought to be a game-changer.
The beauty of an external review is that it brings in respected scholars from outside of the university – i.e., scholars who have no fear of damaging their careers by speaking truth to power – and has them give a thorough, objective assessment of both the good and the bad, and the report is given to the provost, not the dean. (Particularly important in this case, as the Arizona dean is largely responsible for this mess.) To their great credit, the three classicists, combined with some University of Arizona faculty and others from the community, conducted a thorough investigation, and issued a report that almost certainly places the blame for the department’s demise precisely where it belongs: the two senior faculty members alluded to by “Wyatt Earp.” Unfortunately, outside of the administration and the reviewers no one knows for sure, since in a serious departure from the normal external review process, the report has not been released after several months, with no explanation given. The guidelines of the Board of Regents state that faculty and even students are supposed to get the final report, and making this even more egregious is that the University of Arizona is a public institution, and thus the report is a public document that any citizen may access.
Sadly, this is not the only way that the usual external review process was corrupted:
* external reviews are preceded by a preliminary report for the outside committee in which the faculty jointly assess their department themselves and reach a consensus position on important matters, but the dean unwisely permitted one of the two senior faculty creating the dysfunction to be put in charge of writing this report without proper oversight, which meant that he/she wrote it almost entirely on his/her own and failed to convey the views of the majority of his/her colleagues;
* right after an external review committee’s report is completed and submitted the faculty are required to prepare a response for the administration, but if such a response has even been written in this case, it was prepared by the acting chair without input from the rest of the faculty (possibly excepting those two senior professors who had his ear);
* the preliminary report contained several demonstrably misleading statements (a euphemism);
* and, the review committee’s schedule was arranged in such a way that untenured faculty had minimal access to the committee and their ability to voice their concerns was inhibited – which, I strongly suspect, was no accident.
Nonetheless, there is good reason to believe that the external review committee’s report shows the true nature of UADC’s problems, despite the obvious attempts to hide these problems. Perhaps a too-candid assessment is the reason why the administration has been ignoring the Board of Regents’ crystal-clear guidelines and failed to release the report after all these months?
Even though the contents of the report remain unknown, some of the report’s effects are already known or rumored. There will have to be yet another (the fourth!) acting chair running UADC this coming academic year, since the last one finished his brief tenure last month. The more important news (well, rumor, but apparently a reliable one) is that this acting chair would be a caretaker while a committee decides how to take apart UADC and reconstitute it as some sort of Mediterranean studies program. This would only be (somewhat) good news if UADC were being closed specifically so that the two senior faculty could finally be fired. (It is my understanding that tenure does not protect one if one’s department is shuttered.) But if these two are kept, and can continue to cause serious damage to the careers of others and make the department a deeply unpleasant place for colleagues of all ranks (as well as staff/employees, including that undergraduate employee who was forced to tears by one of these professors, as “Wyatt Earp” wrote), this will all have been for nothing.
So that is where things stand now. UADC is not expected to last for more than another year, but there will still be a classics presence at Arizona, especially since the strong archaeology and ancient history programs elsewhere at the university require it. Now, normally the reaction in the field to news of a department’s likely or impending closure would be to write angry letters and put together petitions, but the fact is that UADC has become such a truly dysfunctional department, and this has had so severe an impact on the quality of its graduate program and undergraduate teaching, that the provost has to do something. I am cautiously optimistic that a few years down the road things will be better, but in the short term – especially the coming year – there is little reason to think that things will not continue to be very ugly. And, to bring things back around to the recent postings (ring composition!), there is simply no way that this will not impact whoever gets the two VAP positions.
I, for one, have no job lined up for next year and am still not applying for those Arizona jobs.
Better to just leave the field than deal with that shithole.
I, for another, think this pissing contest over JRS and ZPE is stupid. Better comparison: scoring an article in CW in 2013 is harder than scoring an article in JHS in 1993.
It's hard out there for a pimp:
http://www.voxeu.org/article/publication-lags-and-young-economists-research-output
And these statistics in a field that is actually growing, with more and more outlets for publication. How many new journals have opened up in Classics in the past 20 years? 3?
Thanks, boomers, for nothing.
Why in the world would we need new journals when there is already way too much getting into print than should be?
^ Says the person who was hired, and who "earned" tenure in the good old days, obviously.
Idiot.
(It is my understanding that tenure does not protect one if one’s department is shuttered.)
This is generally not true if there is another logical disciplinary place for the faculty member to be housed after such a closure. This is to prevent administrators from making bogus reorganizations, the sole purpose of which is to remove tenured faculty. In this case, if other Classics colleagues were to move to the new Mediterranean Studies department (proving that it is a logical place to move Classicists), the dismissed Classicists could sue the bejeezus out of the university and would almost certainly win.
I haven't really been following the situation at UA, but it seems to me that a total reorganization of this sort is a sign of major administrative failure over the last decades if its intent is merely to rein in two senior faculty. There are more direct and less drastic ways to do so, although the posting above gives some indication that all of their misbehavior has been to some extent supported by former chairs/heads and the dean.
In other words, if the resulting Med. Studies dept. will be a better, stronger unit for other reasons, then by all means it should be done. If it's just to stop two faculty from running amok, someone should have been able to stop them by some other means.
It's also possible that the rampant dysfunction is the perfect excuse to close a department the administration already wanted to close.
FYI, I hear that one of the three full professors has recently retired, and so in terms of senior faculty it is just down to those other two.
These UACD comments strike me as crossing way over the line when it comes to the "no names" policy of the blog. Not too hard to figure out, exactly, the people being gossiped about. Nor, for that matter, is it hard to figure out who the "whistle blower" of the department is.
STFU, everybody.
To the dude/dudette posting at 2:47,
Your comment regarding the "whistle blower" shows that you really don't know much about the situation. I don't mean that harshly or critically. I just mean that you should not be so quick to assume that there is a single person with the reason and knowledge to write on this subject. In truth, there are a half dozen people, if not more, who might do so.
Speaking of STFU, any updates on their job? I haven't heard anything.
STFU is right.
do we realize how dumb all of this is?
the 'haves' got theirs and the rest of us got the shaft.
merit is almost meaningless. the brave new world of academia. i am going to Hong Kong or perhaps to Moscow to seek asylum.
One time I thought I was going to write in this box but then I said no thank you.
So since the 2012/13 Placement Service has come to an end, it seems appropriate to complain, here and now, about the new PS policy of gauging archaeologists:
"If you are currently an AIA member, and you plan to enroll with the APA Placement Service in 2013-2014, you will have to pay the higher, non-member fee (USD $55.00) to enroll. The APA Member's fee to utilize the Placement Service is USD $20.00, and you must pay dues for 2013 before the end of June if you wish to register for the Service in July."
Best of all is the warm and inclusive language that follows this nasty news:
"The APA welcomes all students of the ancient world, and its members advance the study of the classical antiquity in all its aspects."
Huh? Didn't you just bitch-slap half of the people you want to buy your service, PS?
The AIA chose to pull out of the placement service to concentrate on their own independent service. Presumably the partnership previously included a financial contribution by AIA that now goes away. So it is perfectly logical for APA to charge AIA members at the non-member rate, since the APA service is no longer receiving funding from AIA. And I say this as an archaeologist.
AIA is the villain here for the break-up of the joint service.
AIA members should write to Elizabeth Bartman in order to complain about this circumstance.
addresses at archaeological.org
Why *did* the AIA divorce the APA like this? Do they think that classical archaeologists are going to find fewer and fewer jobs in Classics departments? What's the logic behind the move?
Oh, I'm not sure I'd completely blame the AIA. Word is that this was precipitated by repeated demonstrations of incompetence over the years at the Placement Service's highest levels, and the failure of the APA to make some obviously needed changes. An unfortunate overreaction, but the APA -- and especially those senior classicists defending the status quo -- deserve a good measure of the blame.
That said, charging archaeologists extra money is shameful. But this isn't the only way I know of that the APA has grubbed for money in rather unfortunate ways.
That said, charging archaeologists extra money is shameful. But this isn't the only way I know of that the APA has grubbed for money in rather unfortunate ways.
An earlier commenter had this right. The Placement service is subsidized out of membership dues paid to the professional organization you belong to. When it was a joint service, some of the subsidy came from AIA dues and some from APA dues. Access at a reduced rate to the joint placement service was one of the "benefits" that you got by paying your membership dues to the AIA or the APA.
After the divorce, the AIA dues part of the subsidy went away, so there's less money to run the service, but the service's fixed costs haven't changed: same office, same number of employees, etc. So either you have to charge both AIA and APA members somewhat more than before, or you charge APA members the same as before and charge AIA members a good deal more.
Given that the AIA has stopped contributing funds to the service but the APA hasn't, I can't see how you could think it's fair to charge AIA members no more than APA members. That would be asking APA dues payers to subsidize AIA placement while exempting AIA dues payers from subsidizing APA placement.
I don't blame the AIA for wanting out of the service, which is genuinely terrible for a variety of well-known reasons, but they have screwed job seekers who want access to the APA service. You might consider asking the relevant AIA authorities what they propose to do with the portion of your dues that used to go to the joint service.
You might consider asking the relevant AIA authorities what they propose to do with the portion of your dues that used to go to the joint service.
I might, instead, ask the APA authorities what they propose to do with all the money that AIA and APA members have given to support the Placement Service (according to your interpretation) over the years. I'd have thought the massive institutional fees for subscribing to the Placement Service would more than cover the minimal costs of running the service - hiring a few hotel rooms and using a very rudimentary database system (and that, only recently). I suspect that part of the AIA's reason for leaving was the fact that they think they can do the same service better for less money. As I understand it, that's why there's no additional subscription fee to join their service. Of course, their less-than-a-quarter-million members will probably feel the sting of having to run their own service now...
Someone up above mentioned the diverse interests and fields of AIA members, and I thought that was probably relevant. But they could also have mentioned that there may or may not be a slight difference in sheer numbers between the two clubs. I failed in my googling to find published numbers for APA membership, but the AIA is such a pedestrian institute that they even include this information on their website, further popularizing what should be, by all accounts, an exclusive society.
Anyone know what's up with the Program Committee? Don't we usually hear about abstracts after their June meeting?
My confirmation email said they'd notify by mid-July.
has ANU already offered the job? anybody?
It's mid-July, APA...
I wish people would name the names of the senior faculty as Arizona.
I am getting ready to interview for a highly selective high school--Greek and writing course. I am prepping for the question: what kind of technique do you use or know of (to keep the kids in)? any suggestions? resources that can help me come up with something half decent? many thanks.
Academia, where "Senior Scholar" is just another name for "Bully," especially in Classics.
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-You-Gotta-Be-So-Mean-/140469/
That article is hilarious. Shouldn't they have let someone who's received a *real* negative review take a crack at writing something like that?
Still no word from STFU. Why are they so fucking tight-lipped? Oh, right.
If any of you other fuckers who got cast into the outer darkness this year still read this, I hope you're doing ok.
Try antidepressants if you haven't yet. I still don't have a job or a future, but I don't care about it as much.
I have been cast out. I have no insurance, so can't afford the meds. My answer is Old Grand Dad, in quantity. A plague on the Classics world.
Hmmm. I sense a strange disturbance in the Force this evening. Could an annus horribilis be coming to a close? Let's hope for a better one ahead, where ta cheirona ou nika.
Oh, and ave atque glube, amice. Good luck with those husks.
Oh fuck, it's starting all over again
If I had been willing to squelch my natural “pluck” and remain servile, to lose my wonderful relationship while I moved, alone, from one Midwestern town where I didn’t know a single goddamned person to the next, to withstand (or even enjoy) departmental politics and conferencing, then academia would have “suited” me fine. I am coming to terms with the fact that those sacrifices weren’t worth it—but that is my journey to take, and my conclusion to reach.
http://pankisseskafka.com/2013/07/27/please-stop-saying-not-everyone-is-suited-for-academia/
Has anyone else been getting a lot more telemarketing calls (frequently explicitly job-related) since going on the market? I'm thinking at least one, possibly many, of these institutions are selling our information to third parties.
I believe they most certainly are. I go almost exclusively by my middle name so there really is no place they can get my first name unless the DMV or passport folks are selling info (doubtful).
That's the APA's new placement service.
It's more likely that the dossier services that you use are selling your information.
Or the NSA.
Lots of jobs for the new season are being advertised. Shouldn't we have a new venue in which to complain? I hear that seven is the magic number.
Great post. i love it
https://slotopia.blogspot.com/
Post a Comment