Those who cite boilerplate language from job postings as reliable evidence for departments' motivation had better be good in the classroom or else archaeologists (or both, of course), since they obviously don't know how to evaluate written sources with sufficient care and skepticism.
Is there a decent place online where classicists can discuss the field and our place in it without resorting to insults? Genuine question. This is just sad. I thought we were doing better this year.
No offense to your plea, but all the neoliberals in the Democratic Party and the generally well-to-do, semi-privileged urbanites all thought we were doing better this year too, and that Obama's neoliberal presidency had cured the problems in this country. Except millions of Americans were struggling with severe poverty. In this same respect, Trump's election was also "just sad."
Point being that we obviously are not doing better this year, and certainly with respect to the so-called academic job market... #PonziScheme
Classics consists of precariat and privilege that mirrors the country as a whole, yes. But that's no reason not to try to be better than the country as a whole has shown itself to be.
It's entirely reasonable for people who have spent years pursuing a career in classics and who ultimately are unable to find full-time, non-contingent employment to be upset. These are generally very capable people whose time very well may have been better spent in other endeavors. From a career development perspective, one's twenties are important, and if they are consumed by an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to find a tenure track position in classics, much is lost.
1:28 says "[W]hat exactly is the definition of "merit"? Is it now something beyond an applicant's control? Connections? Wealth? Race? Gender? Pre-existing networks? (We used to call those "good ole boys' clubs.) Is it "promise"--another word used as prophasis to disguise ulterior motives? THAT upsets people. And rightly so."
Here, I think, is the problem. Every worry in this quote is valid. But I'm sure that everyone's personal experience is that not all, say, peer-reviewed articles are remotely equal. And half-way through any class I've ever taught, I had a pretty reliable sense of the potential of the students, not just in terms of my class, but projecting years ahead. So, one the one hand, I don't see how anyone can expect "merit" to be reducible to any kind of algorithm that can be applied to a CV. On the other hand, more subjective evaluations not only can but have been used as proxies for various kinds of discrimination. It don't think anyone has a remotely clear fix.
I agree that peer reviewed articles should not be the end-all be-all in hiring. After all, factors out of a candidates control can influence the number of articles on a CV; someone with a research post-doc may be able to hammer out several, whereas someone stuck as an adjunct teaching a 4-4 will usually be less productive.
Nonetheless, I do not think search committees should hire on "promise" alone, especially in this environment where there are so many proven scholars in terms of both teaching AND research. And publishing is still a very important way where one shows they have the drive and discipline to turn their "promise" into scholarship.
Also, much "promise" early in a career is based largely on the intuition of powerful people in the field. Often these intuitions are correct, but they can also be tainted by friendship, sympathy, flattery, sexual attraction, etc. The benefit of double-blind peer review, for all of its shortcomings, is that two strangers think the author has done good and useful work.
Which does take us back to the problem of prestigious R1s hiring people with zero peer-reviewed publications. It would have been normal in the 1990s, but today it does raise some red-flags.
" And half-way through any class I've ever taught, I had a pretty reliable sense of the potential of the students, not just in terms of my class, but projecting years ahead." To take your analogy a bit further and push back a little: we don't administer grades based on those feelings. We may know in our hearts that a good student had a bad day, or a lazy student got lucky, but we don't shape their futures accordingly, partly because we're aware that our own biases that we might not even be aware of might be influencing those feelings. We also don't grade on a single quiz. We look for a trajectory, multiple data points indicating how well a student has mastered material. In the case of the job market, a single great APA abstract is a quiz: it means little. Multiple APA abstracts, a record of good journal placements, a book contract, and a history of creative course design: that's what promise is. Not a gut feeling.
Not a bad thought if there's a concern about this (but, after all, everyone passed their own university's PhD general exams), but it would discriminate against people who already suffer interview anxiety. I can imagine someone who worries about sweaty palms, dry throat, and "blanking" on oral interview questions not having a good time with an on-the-spot exam. Maybe if they could take it beforehand (with a proctor, if they feel it's necessary) in the comfort of their own university. And to be fair, the exam should be in the person's primary language and, ideally, their main author. Asking someone who specializes in Euripides to translate Tacitus with elegance might be a little unrealistic.
The assumption here, though, is a little problematic: that there are applicants for jobs who would not do well on a translation exam. We went from talking about the necessity of peer-reviewed publications to questioning basic skills. These are not the same thing. I don't think we should go around assuming our fellow Classics PhDs from decent programs are inadequate and unqualified. Everyone has enough impostor syndrome as it is.
there are people out there teaching latin who dont know or follow the ’law of the penult’ to give just one example. i think the trick is to emphasize language proficiency more at the UG and grad level, especially as fewer and fewer people will have had intensive greek and latin in HS (as opposed to the st. grottlesex classicist of yore, who presumably could have passed today’s grad translation exams as a freshman).
Based on my personal experience as an undergraduate student, I'm definitely behind more rigorous UG advanced languages. If I believed in sending bright, interested students to grad school (which I'm not sure I do, unless there is a specific compelling reason), I would hold any interested student to a much higher standard than the causal major (usually a double-major with some "practical" degree and no interest in grad school). I would make it clear that they needed to demonstrate not only above-average but above-excellent language ability before I could whole-heartedly recommend them to any program. This might mean that all advanced language exams should be sight exams (or at least a large part of the grade should be from sight translation passages), because, as I've observed in my experience as a teacher and student, successful Greek and Latin students are naturally good at quasi-memorizing translations even without meaning to. Having heavily-weighted sight translations on exams would force the student who wants to shine to spend time on their own mastering vast quantities of vocabulary, which would pay great dividends in grad school! It also means that it will quickly become clear who can and can't hack it, i.e., who is already ready for the big leagues and who needs more practice translating with an instructor at hand to correct grammar mistakes before they can strike out on their own. One way to get at this is prose comp. Advanced Greek and Latin prose comp really force them to master morphology, syntax, and vocabulary.
2:52 more prose comp and more sight-reading (aka reading!) are exactly what i had in mind. you can definitely get through HS and college with a great head for memorization, and it seems to me that many do.
I appreciate the need for rigor, but isn't there some risk, in making an UG program effectively pre-professional, of driving away potential majors who might simply want to read Latin as undergrads and then do something else? As it is, there aren't all that many majors.
As someone who took four prose-comp classes (starting as an undergraduate) and taught Greek prose comp as 5th-year graduate student to 1st- and 2nd-year colleagues, I can say that in my experience the American market doesn't reward these skills.
I feel like I need to pitch in: those old philologists of yore perhaps had tremendous language skills, to which we cannot compare, but they didn't know much more. I think our field should strive to move beyond the 19th-c. paradigm instead of trying to bring it back with translation exams for prospective employees (geeez, I thought we all were happy to be done with examinations).
If I conflated several opinions into one, apologies, I don't have the patience to follow time stamps.
Agreed. The future, for better or worse, is that most UG courses will be taught as "Classical Studies" classes using translations. Its not hard to imagine a future where Latin and Greek become like Hittite and Aramaic, only taught at the graduate level.
I am not partial to such a future. But certainly classics professors must be much more than walking talking Greek and Latin dictionaries-cum-grammer books.
I tend to think that given institutions are, paradoxically, far too normative, even when they think they're being smart or responsibly innovative. Ideally, you'd want a plurality of theoretical approaches and interests (this applies, I think, even to outreach, service, publishing, advising, and various types of teaching). The longer I've paid attention to these things, the more it seems like most larger faculties have factions of folks who think they have the singular answer, yet this answer ultimately boils down to self-promotion in the guise of improving the field.
February 14, 2017 at 3:58 PM here: I'm aware of the problem of pre-professionalizing Classics programs; after all, most of our "business" in upper level language classes comes from students who are double-majors with something else as their primary major, or pre-professional, usually health-related. I was more thinking not of raising the bar for the grade (I'll probably still have the same standards for an A), but for raising the bar for a letter of recommendation for a grad school application. A mere "A" won't cut it; you needed to have demonstrated that if I had graded on a grad-school level rather than an undergrad level, you still would have gotten an A. I'd have to be creative at how I'd craft the exams to differentiate clearly between regular As and amazing As.
Having said that, I'll repeat that I'm not sure I believe in sending "promising" kids to grad school unless they are truly superlative in every way (not only wicked smart but outgoing, resourceful, and ruthlessly ambitious without coming across as arrogant) or are independently wealthy and don't mind spending a few years doing something for the heck of it (i.e., they don't need or expect a job at the end). There are probably a few other special circumstances I'd consider, but I'd really take it on a case-by-case basis.
After hearing some egregious mistakes at the APA (perpetuated by asst professors, no less) I can understand the thought behind having an exam. But that wouldn't fix the newest way to blunder shamefully: arguing for some profound intertextuality based on 2-3 common words, or yes, even just one.
..... Is this really what we are, this arrogant posturing? Anybody who thinks there isn't already more than enough pressure on job-seekers is simply cruel, we don't need to add an additional qualifying exam post-PhD. Furthermore, there is no point in debating a translation exam because it will never happen. When individual departments in the past have tried it, the whole field was so offended that it stopped: the APA will never do it. Furthermore, anybody who thinks that being a classicist is primarily about translation is either a second year graduate student or deadwood. And plenty of tenured professors make perfect fools of themselves in talks as well, so let's not get started with "kids these days."
To change the subject a bit from ghastly translation exams, anyone care to share your calculus for when/how to exit the field? I'm on year 3 of the job search, still holding on to a shred of hope. How long is too long for you?
I know someone who bounced around for 5 years and then got a TT at a top department. It's a tough question and it comes down to individual preference.
The piece of advice that I'd give is: it shouldn't be a sudden decision. Once you get the inkling, start crafting your exit narrative (for interviews, and frankly, for even casual self-presentation) and try to make contacts in the industries that you're thinking you might want to transition into.
1:33 PM, did you have a exit narrative ready, or were you pretty sure that if you kept bouncing around, something good would come? (not a sarcastic question -- 1st year on the market here, pretty sure it will work with 5-8 years of bouncing around if I kill myself, but not sure if I am ready to deal with it).
I'm in my second cycle now, and I'm only planning to do one more. I may or may not follow through on that plan, but I do want to get on with my life sooner rather than later.
After a couple of years on the market, I decided that the next would be my last try. TT job or alternative career. I had an adjunct gig with health insurance for the year, but I put research entirely on hold and spent all of my non teaching and job application time on preparing for my alternative career. When I inevitably heard crickets after the APA, I knew I was set on a new course.
In terms of picking an alternative career, my strategy was to do what I didn't do the first time around and look at what was in demand. Now the same unforgiving market forces that crushed me into the dirt as a Classicist enable me to make a shit ton of money doing a job I'm not remotely qualified to do.
"Now the same unforgiving market forces that crushed me into the dirt as a Classicist enable me to make a shit ton of money doing a job I'm not remotely qualified to do."
11:20pm here. Web development. I don't know what I'm doing most of the time, but it doesn't matter, because employers can't find anyone better to hire. There's no bar to entry, no education requirement or certification needed. You just need to be able to pass an interview process where a lot of your competition will simply not show up to interviews because they found a better job in the meantime.
Caveat lector, this is the situation in the US. Web developers everywhere else in the world are treated very differently.
That's an interesting point, but I think that what it suggests to me is that hiring and grading are different activities. When I grade, it is retrospective and student-centered. Hiring is forward-looking and fundamentally about the department's interests. To take an extreme example of the last point, if you are the objectively best candidate on the market, but you are a Homerist, my hypothetical department that already somehow has two Homerists rightly won't hire you. (Incidentally, I offer essentially this distinction as rhetorical advice to job seekers. Your orientation should NOT be towards proving that you were a fantastic graduate student; it should be towards explaining what value you will bring to an employer as an assistant professor.)
As for multiple data points, at the point of hiring you've got at least a short interview, a long one, letters of rec., and a dissertation. I'd suggest that that's more information than one would normally have before judging a peer in the field.
I very much agree that that leaves a lot of room for bias. But I think eliminating that possibility also means giving up some real insight into the candidates. Maybe that would be worthwhile, but it would definitely be a cost.
Anybody else hear that the Yale Greek job is probably a spousal hire and that the Princeton Greek job is probably going to someone who has had tenure for several years (in direct contradiction to the add)?
Princeton invited to campus visits candidates from every tier: starting from a PhD candidate to a tenured professor. Which Yale Greek job we're talking about? There was history and there was literature, right? And how come it's a spousal hire?
Open rank searches usually (with inevitable exceptions) almost always pick someone with a TT job (the open is "assistant to full", but they are usually not likely to hire and ABD or VAP.
It is sad when someone with a TT job gets another TT job, as this in fact reduces the number of TT jobs by one. The vacated TT job is likely to remain empty for several years and filled with an adjunct (best case scenario) and in some instances it might mean the termination of the tenure line, with the teaching assigned permanently to adjunct faculty. This is how the field goes extinct.
Limiting factors: (1) the deciding committee must meet, which may be a small search committee or the entire department. That means that all of their schedules must align. (2) The Dean and/or Provost must sign off on the hire. This can take upwards of a full week, depending on innumerable factors but including when the Dean/Provost gets the materials, and how concerned s/he is about the search.
In some instances, the department submits a ranked list of candidates to the Dean/Provost. The Dean/Provost might then rubber-stamp the choice or ask for clarification and justification from the department (more time). In other instances, the department may only submit evaluations of the three candidates and the Dean/Provost may take a very active hand in the selection with an eye to what s/he thinks the university as a whole needs (think increasing diversity or hiring a candidate with qualifications that help in some obscure ranking that the administration cares about).
Once all that is through, then an offer can be made.
It's even more frustrating when key members of the department refuse to meet on weekends or on government holidays in order to "protect [their] time." Yes, to these people a couple of hours on a weekend or secular holiday are worth more than deciding the fate of your entire life (and possibly the future of their department).
I work with two that I know for a fact think and act this way. I suspect 4-5 others of similar attitudes.
No, but it seems their grip was broken regardless. The department was finally able to make several new TT hires a couple years ago and also convert visiting faculty into tenure-track faculty. The tyrants in question have been banished to offices outside the Classics department.
Not entirely true: their grip has been broken somewhat, but they still have been allowed to play roles from which they should have been expressly forbidden after their department received its legendarily bad external review. But, more importantly, the result of that review was to fold Classics into Religion for three years and then reevaluate... which means that whoever gets this job might soon be facing the status quo ante bellum. And since certain administrators who allowed the chronic abuse of junior faculty over several years to occur are in positions of authority there it would be foolish to expect that a new assistant professor, especially one hired as a Latinist, who needs to be protected while working towards tenure will experience smooth sailing and not face any drawn daggers.
Moreover, there is also the danger of being trapped by the job, because if the new assistant professor thinks that he or she can go on the market again in a few years there is the danger of not having anyone who can write a reference letter of any value.
Some food for thought, for anyone who might receive an offer for that position.
Thank you, person who keeps track of dates for the rest of us disorganized slobs. CHS, since today is the last day of February, we're all looking forward to hearing from you!!
The practice here traditionally has been to wait several weeks: in part, so that the person who got the job has the chance to do update the wiki him- or herself, but more importantly, so that it will not be announced before he or she has had a chance to notify other search committees, not to mention colleagues and friends. It is therefore better to opt on the side of caution, and not to rush to post a name: 3-4 weeks from the time that one is certain the hiring has been made official should do.
If the University of Utah sent a "rejection email to first round candidates-over 200 applicants" on 01.11.17 (according to the wiki), but I only got a rejection today, does that mean I had at least made it to the second round? Would that explain the two-month limbo?
In general you will know if your application has advanced beyond the first round, and if you know nothing it probably hasn't. So the email we recently received from Utah doesn't mean anything, save that neither of us got that job. Speculation about the timing of emails is the road to madness.
With Utah, a rejection email was sent by the Chair to first round interviewees who did not make the shortlist (with the detail that 200 had applied). The boilerplate rejection letter is for all applicants once the hire has been finalized.
@10:28 PM - that makes more sense. The wording of the wiki made it sound like a first cut was made and it wasn't clear that was from the first round interviewees. Thank you.
Funny how some are battled over by depts and others adjunct and leave the field, and on paper there might not be much of a difference (to the naive outsider).
Don't talk about departments chasing candidates who have few credentials on paper! This discussion was had above about the person Chicago is chasing, and the Servii didn't like it even though no one was mentioned by name.
More that it’s frustrating when there are so few jobs and some people enjoy banquets while others starve.....this applies both to departments fighting over a single candidate and to people leaving one good TT job for another. And of course both depts and candidates should pursue their own interests. No one is blaming them, just lamenting the mess that the field is in.
So the point is not lack of qualifications...it’s that so many people are (over)qualified that it sometimes seems arbitrary who ‘succeeds’ and who doesn’t succeed/decides the leave the field.
It's also worth noting that academic fashions can change in abrupt and unpredictable ways, which means that every year one or two candidates are likely to become hot commodities simply because whatever they happen to be working on is suddenly the topic/problem/approach du jour.
And Williams College too. On a different note, has anyone heard anything about Brown and Yale post-docs (the ideology of writing and the Archaia one)? I don't really know at what point/stage rejections roll out.
One would expect Princeton ABDs to have less teaching on average than, say, Harvard or Yale ABDs...may not be true in the cases of those who get the jobs, though.
USC has reputation for poaching Princeton humanities faculty by hiring spouses (this is how raided the Princeton philosophy department about a decade ago).
The USC hire seems to be a post-doctoral fellow. Can you be a post-doc and not have submitted your dissertation? That would make it 2 ABD TT hire so far.
Probably not a new category; suffice it to say the situation with the ABD/post-doc is quite unusual, probably so much so that few will fall into again.
Fair enough -- it just seems like this person is more similar in certain respects (teaching experience, years post Ph.D.-enrollment) to a post-doc with degree in hand than to an ABD dissertating/teaching in residence. So there are 2 standard-issue ABDs who got TT jobs this year.
If what is usually a post-doctoral fellowship is held by someone who is ABD, how can that possibly be anything other than a doctoral fellowship? What am I missing?
As long as the ABD person has cleared all the red tape for the degree except for conferral (Why? Who knows...), I see no problem with calling the fellowship post-doctoral.
The 4 USC openings will have appealed to those with the two-body problem. Considering other (non-Princeton) spouses who are in the hunt this year, USC could end up with a pair of couples... Noah's ark?
I tried to post this a week ago, but it doesn't seem to have worked. The area of the website created for job postings has succumbed to spam, so I hope it is OK here. Please send questions to me (David Rohrbacher) at rohrbacher@ncf.edu.
VISITING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF CLASSICS NEW COLLEGE OF FLORIDA - SARASOTA, FL
New College of Florida, the nationally recognized honors college of the State University System of Florida, invites applications for a Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics for the academic year 2017-18, to replace faculty members going on leave. This position is contingent on final budgetary authorization.
Candidate will teach a 2/1/3 load. In the fall, the candidate will teach Elementary Greek I and a course in Roman or Greco-Roman civilization in translation. In the January interterm, the candidate will teach a small group tutorial in a subject of his or her choosing. In the spring, the candidate will teach Elementary Latin II, Advanced Latin, and a course in ancient sex or gender in translation.
Candidates should show demonstrated commitment to language teaching and enthusiasm about working in a small liberal arts college environment. Please fill out the application at New College HR site here: ncf.simplehire.com/applicants/Central?quickFind=51149
In addition, please send curriculum vitae, letter of application, one-paragraph descriptions of proposed Roman/Greco-Roman and sex/gender courses, and three letters of recommendation to classicssearch@ncf.edu. Review of files will begin immediately. We plan to SKYPE candidates in the month of April.
New College of Florida is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We encourage inquiries from candidates who will contribute to the cultural and ethnic diversity of our college.
Is affiliation worth not graduating? There's a non-stipendiary fellowship (yikes) at an esteemed university that offers their laborers just an affiliation and free dinners...
Seriously, as for the USC details, is there no one on here who isn't the least bit disturbed by the ethics of these practices? No one? No one want to talk about it?
Let’s hold our horses and see who the four hires all are. At this point speculation about the other 3 is all just that (unless you have information that’s not on the Wiki). If a couple or couples are hired, then yes, I am sure the jobless deplorables (yours truly included) will be outraged.
Certainly the way USC hired---with four potential positions, none of them devoted to a specific area, seems like it was designed to seek out spousal hires. In terms of the SC, the easiest way would be to break the search down, i.e. we want one Roman historian, one Greek historian, one Latin Lit, one Greek Lit. So not doing this was a conscious choice that made a great deal more work for the SC. There must be a reason.
Institutionally USC would like to vault itself into the realm of the Ivy League/Stanford. This means it needs to poach a lot of Ivy League faculty--like Princeton. Since USC is in a terrible neighborhood where people are routinely murdered, it needs something else to lure people away from the Ivy League. One thing the Ivy League is very bad at is spousal hires. There are exceptions, but most Ivies see themselves as above hiring "lagging" spouses. So there are a lot of Ivy League professors frustrated that they can't get their spouse a job. For a place like USC, a willingness to do hires two spouses as a set is a good way a raid an Ivy department: hire the junior partner as a means of poaching the senior.
Admittedly it is not 100% certain that this was the case with the recent USC hire. But it would be a plausible MO for USC.
I guess I don't find it particularly outraging, on the condition that the two persons hired are good for their level. What bothers me more are fake searches that still require a whole lot of files tailored for the school. Why take everyone's time, if the outcome is already decided...
I honestly believe it only makes your life harder, if only because of anonymous commentators who will always second guess your worth because of your partner.
C’mon guys, it sucks to have a two-body problem (and have anonymous deplorables second-guessing you if you are in fact competent or even amazing), but it also sucks not to get a job despite ‘doing everything right.’
One thing is certain: the request for unique, tailored job materials MUST STOP.
I don't care if it's an inside hire, a spousal hire, or what, but I can't publish a damn thing adjunction 4-4 and having to write, proofread, and stress over ten different versions of, for example, "evidence of teaching excellence"/"proposed courses"/"teaching philosophy"/"teaching evaluation summary"/etc. each tailored to research univ./liberal arts colleges/diversity statement included colleges/particular college with a particular course needs.
Of course inevitably I copy, paste, edit, rewrite, proofread, proofread again, etc. etc. etc. not only the teaching thing but the research thing, the letter, the diversity statement, etc. etc. etc. and then send it and realize in all that I spelled the name of the university wrong in one place. Several complete days of work (time squeezed in between doing a new prep and grading 40+ civ papers) completely wasted. And then, as last year, after doing this a dozen or more times, I get exactly zero SCS interviews, making it even harder to justify why I'm doing this instead of what I'm supposed to be doing (scholarship and teaching).
My older colleagues don't understand why I find the job market time so stressful and unproductive: "I remember that I just replaced the name of the institution on my letters and sent them out with the CV! Of course we had to mail everything back then!" chirps one of them cheerfully. They also don't understand why I don't get any interviews: "I know it was just bad luck last year! Next year's job market will be full of jobs for you!"
PLEASE FOR THE LOVE CAN THE FIRST-ROUND SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS STOP?
1:36pm, what is your problem? I don't begin to see the relevance of their marital status, and find it more than a bit creepy that you feel a need to get it right. If you knew the person at issue here at all, you would also know that she is *spectacularly* talented classicist, who fully merits a job.
That said, if, as seems likely, this turns out to be a spousal hire, then I think everyone should be upset about the way this was carried out - as w/ the several other closed hires this season - and to the extent possible there should a response from the SCS, etc. to departments that engage in unfair hiring practices (e.g., Chicago, Yale, basically every university in the UK...etc.). Perhaps folks could commit to not inviting faculty from such departments to give talks or might even refuse to consider letters of recommendation from them, until they commit themselves to even reasonably fair and transparent hiring practices.
But, in any case, I don't think it is reasonable to criticize the candidate at issue here, and I hope that the moderator steps in here if there are any more comments along the lines of 1:36pm. If it turns out that USC behaved badly that seems to me like a different issue altogether.
Maybe it would be useful to first discuss what we consider ‘unfair hiring practices.’ I for one am genuinely interested to see what other folks think is fair and what’s not, and to what extent we hold depts responsible for the unfairness (as opposed to, say, HR or the university rules generally).
If the SCS were serious about helping junior people, they would encourage standardized application process, like the college "common app." Every university having their own special snowflake tailoring requirements destroys everyone's falls. They would also find a serious way to crack down on closed hires. In absence of that -- because yeah right --, I have to admit there is some appeal in even an informal or individual commitment on the part of SC members not to consider letters of rec. from programs that engage in such practices.
I agree with you completely. An even stronger point, the Math disciplines ALREADY do this. So the comparadum is not undergraduate admissions but a faculty hiring procedure in another discipline.
HOWEVER. The SCS will not support such a move in the foreseeable future/current generation. The reasons as I seem them: the vast majority of those occupying positions of power in the SCS (and positions of non-power, for that matter) are from precisely the institutions being criticized here and the social groups who most benefit from the status quo. This is because election to those positions is based on notoriety/fame in those positions, which derives from the publications (which, in turn, are the direct result of the resources accorded by those positions rather than the intellect and ideas of Classics PhDs in general). By this I mean that any given Classics PhD in the current market would produce at reasonably similar levels given the same resources as those at privileged posts.
They will not change their modus operandi because (a) they benefit from it, (b) they cannot see that they benefit from it rather than from their own personal excellence, and (c), genuine self-reflection in this matter would morally inculpate them in ways that they either (i) are not interested in because they are psychopaths or (ii) do not wish to acknowledge to because they are not psychopaths. Sad to say, I know too many of them personally, of both groups.
I like the idea of a common application, but at least some of that kind of thing is in the hands of university HR, not individual departments.
Also, my sense (contra 9:46, though I haven't looked into this) is that the special snowflake application requirements aren't the special province of high end departments, and perhaps even the reverse is more true.
Could the SCS handle it? How about everyone files a set of documents with the SCS in early October: teaching statement, writing sample, sample evaluations, research statement, and a couple of cover letters (Research University, SLAC). Schools could access whatever documents they wanted through the SCS. This would save SO MUCH TIME for candidates. And if math departments are already doing it this way, don't blame the fact that our field doesn't do it on big, bad HR.
I'm skeptical of the common application plan. Perhaps it would work for those who work in one easily defined area of classics, but for the rest of us, it doesn't seem great. I also think it would be too limiting for departments, who ought to be able to get the sort of the information they want - say, e.g., that you need a hire who can teach in a certain interdisciplinary program. I'm much more worried about the apparent prevalence of nepotistic and closed hiring practices, which seems to be becoming appallingly common at high end departments. Perhaps it's the political climate, but despite not being affected one or another by this trend myself, I'm quite disturbed that the colleagues I know and respect at these institutions are ok with this kind of thing. I'm not a fan of the 'psychopath' hypothesis of 9:46pm, and would be interested in hearing a justification of sham searches, but as best as I can tell this trend indicates either a completely inadequate commitment to quite basic norms of fairness on the part of the offending faculties or, maybe more likely, a hubristic impression on their part that even before looking at applications, they already *know* who in the field is worth hiring. Either way, it's absurd and it's incumbent on the rest of us to make sure that faculty members from schools that engage in such practices are made aware that their behavior is unacceptable.
My guess is that those with the resources to do so are increasingly circling the wagons to protect their own in an otherwise nearly impossible job market. They probably have their own justifications that they use to live with themselves, but the growing incestuousness of a very small group of very lucky people is not good for the future of the field. English institutions have been particularly shameless this year.
If anyone was waiting for news from Brown about their post-doc: they've already invited people for the interviews. Also, for the future, can we also include all the post-docs that were advertised through the SCS in the jobs list?
We should all be careful when using Trump-like terms like *spectacularly* talented classicist (especially given all the calls for censorship on this site combined with exaggerated statements, muckraking, and the like). One might just as easily say, as with so many of us in this profession, †spectacularly† talented classicist.
We are all, for the most part, talented classicists. No need to drown out opposing views with graduate student like substitution of adverbs for substance.
I'm tempted to start a rumor that it's an inside hire AND a spousal hire AND that the person has a joint PhD from Harvard and Yale, just to discourage some of you from applying as well...
Inside spousal, Harvard-Yale grad who is working as a double-agent for another school that ultimately just wants to poach Princeton faculty. ITS RIGGED FOLKS.
4:44 p.m. here: It's not certain, but that sure looks like an attack on the two of us making pretty harmless jokes. If so, I'd just point out that in my experience, the biggest assholes (your word) I've met do not have a sense of humor and get upset at those who do. But if you were referring to someone else then you need to work at making sure that your online posts have a clear context.
The next time you see yourself in the mirror and git super pissed off because there's some "asshole" wearing your clothes in your house, you might pause to think, "Ya know, maybe the problem isn't the context but my interpretive apparatus."
1:59, 6:29 here. you are most welcome....if we can’t laugh, first at the absurdity of this whole thing, and second at ourselves for our (often justified) paranoia and frustration, we’re done for.
2:12 a.m., 4:44/9:51 here. I normally don't bother with internet flame wars -- evidence, though not absolute proof, that I might not be the asshole you think, but your post demonstrates such poor reading comprehension skills that I can't help myself. ("For your sake and your students', I can only hope that you are an archaeologist, not a philologist!," is what I would be writing right now if I were truly an asshole. But, being of gentler disposition, I am not stooping to that level.) So let me walk you through this, step by step: * Someone insightfully posted, "Princeton lecturer position ahoy (no teaching load specificed)! FVers, how many apps something like that will get?" I then made a joke -- perhaps not one demonstrating true wit, but clearly a joke, and an inoffensive one -- made mocking reference to FV's ongoing obsession with inside candidates, the advantages of those with degrees from elite institutions, and spousal hires. Topical humor, even if not qualifying as "wit"! * Soon thereafter 6:29 p.m. chimed in, building off my joke. * Later in the evening, the true villain in this affair, 9:04 p.m., became the next poster, with this: "You know, I always say, ‘People are like assholes: they're assholes.’ I think this applies here." Based on how FV’s discussions work, the most logical interpretation was that he/she was calling me and my comrade-in-witless-jokes, 6:29 p.m., an "asshole,” since the only other possibility, that someone else was intended, would require going back five posts. So 9:04 was either wrong to call the two of us assholes or wrong not to make clear that we were not the assholes. (“Phrasing!,” as a wise man once said.) * So, since the lectio facilior was that I was being called an asshole, I responded like the street-fighter I am, but diplomatically left open the possibility that I had missed 9:04's intended point – providing an opportunity for clarification, if one was needed. Not to mention that I shared some thoughts intended for 9:04's self-improvement, which was a caring and generous thing to do. * And then, as an epilogue, 1:23 a.m. posted the Carly Simon link, but that only applies if 9:04's insult was about someone else and I'm too self-absorbed to have realized it. Instead, I prefer to borrow some poker philosophy to explain my thinking: if someone has just been called an asshole, and you look around and don't see an asshole, you're the asshole.
Anyway, what matters is that 1:59 a.m. (and the silent majority) enjoyed the posts, showing greater discernment than certain other PhD's/ABD's.
Okay, enough of this: I actually have to work on that Princeton application, which I’ve just delayed starting by devoting fifteen minutes to trying to bring illumination to this dark corner of the internet.
5:05/5:07 is beautiful. Absolute theater of the absurd. How do you fish for an asshole? Make a generic statement, toss it into a crowd, and see who responds. Ding, ding, ding, asshole on the hook! Better watch out folks, this carp of assumptions is going to Princeton! Big roller coming through!
This whole argument is pretty pointless but I do appreciate that the "I can only hope that you are an archaeologist, not a philologist!" person above has been called out as the REAL asshole of all this. The rest of you are probably fine, if a bit touchy.
You're bringing back memories. I remember sitting on a balcony in Athens, years ago, with a bunch of Fellows from the American School at Athens whom I watched as they tore strips off each other: bullying, harassing, insulting, until there were tears. It shocked and disgusted me. (Isn't that hilarious?) I suspect the poisoning of the atmosphere here is down to one very unhappy person. Please find another outlet, or just talk to someone.
Apart from that, if someone could please respond to the poor Archaia supplicant, who keeps being ignored..? Personally, I have no insight. Sorry to hear they're still on tenterhooks.
It's probably a ClArch, right? We all know how they are.
Can we just take a moment to notice how 3:17 name-dropped the "Fellows from the American School at Athens"? Mr./Ms. Smooth, here! I can tell you, from the bottom of my heart, I hope your gracious to condescend to the strawmen of your imagination hasn't taken too much from that Princeton application. The world of success awaits you, Dear Childe!
General inquiry: I keep reading in the news about these "diseases of despair" afflicting those who are economically desperate and without hope of a better future, and I can't help but wonder if our field, despite our supposedly protective education, is going the same way. I at least drink more and am way more depressed and anxious than I would be if I had a stable, fulfilling professional life. Anybody else?
I'm definitely in the same boat, and dismayed that the feeling of being under a microscope hasn't abated at all since I finished the doctorate. Instead, I have to keep proving myself to new colleagues at temporary appointments and constantly worry that everything I've achieved won't be enough, no matter what I do. Landing a TT position would be great but would also mean 5 more years of relative uncertainty. The knowledge that I'm at least 6 years away from any kind of real stability is daunting to say the least, and definitely exacerbates my depression and anxiety.
Anyone have any details on the job at Trinity College in Conn.? The ad says the hire will teach G&R history courses out of the history department and courses in "the Greek and Latin language, as needed" out of the Classics department. What does "as needed" mean in terms of courses-per-term? Is the position not definitely full time?
The Trinity college application is ridiculous. They want a Roman historian who can teach Euripides at the upper level. The pickiness and specificity that has crept into the secondary market is astounding. The sad thing is, they will be able to find someone who perfectly fits their implausible specifications, and who is willing to work for 20,000 a year.
It would be interesting (and cruel) to set up a fake job that requires, like, 4-4 teaching Latin and Greek at all levels and a couple of other random specialized things, research in said areas, advising, curriculum development, university service, relocation to middle-of-nowhere, and pays 20k. Call it a VAP. And just see how many of us apply.
What if you required all that and offered, even better, free housing (studio apt near campus) and unlimited dining hall meals? No salary, per se, but what would you use a 20k salary on other than room and board? 3 hot meals a day...we can stipulate that the dining hall food is decent. I might apply.
A couple years ago there was a job at UNC Asheville that was like that. Except it was a 5-5 job and it wanted specialties in lit, arch, history, and art simultaneously.
If you want to follow through with your plan, call it a "postdoc" rather than a VAP. Or we could invent a new category: "para-doctoral classical studies internships". Yeah, that's the ticket.
The UNC Asheville ad from 2011 said "Applicants should be prepared to teach all undergraduate levels of Latin and Greek and a range of Classical civilization courses, especially history, as well as contribute ancient art and archaeology" and "The teaching load is four courses per semester." But my records only go back as far as 2009, when I migrated to a new email account. I didn't get that job, but I tried.
Yes, it is now time for those who can do so to start posting names on the wiki if the job is officially closed out -- although NOT if it is just at the "offer made" stage. You don't want to screw up the process of somebody accepting a job.
Modifying what 1:22 wrote, even if a job is 100% closed out, you don't post the name of the hire until 1) it has been announced in public, e.g. on the department's website, or 2) at least two weeks have passed. That delay is important, since people who get jobs should have the opportunity to inform any other programs to which they applied, not to mention friends and colleagues. So do the courteous thing here.
I'm 1:22, and yes, 1:09's advice is clearer and better. I personally don't think you have to wait two weeks after it is made public on a website, but it is better to err on the side of not doing gratuitous damage to someone's career.
I'm very curious about Yale 2, I was discouraged from applying there to avoid wasting my time (not that I stood a chance anyway). Care to share some info on that?
yale apparently had 4 (very) junior people and one very accomploshed senior person who was also a spouse. interesting to hear that it might not happen. did you hear a reason?
If by kosher you mean they already had (at least) two tenured folks in mind for the position and rather than just calling it an associate hire, they instead decided to waste everyone's time.
Or, let us no longer send our CVs New-Havenwards. Did they really waste everyone's time and loads of their own money, in two searches, to end up at what is in essence the status quo ante?
Really, is there anything firmer on the Yale info regarding inside hire (nameless on the wiki) and the dropping of the interdisciplinary job? Someone here clearly has the inside track. Meanwhile, I can't get my head around the utter futility of it all.
Thanks for that. But I dread to think of the junior candidates for the second job finding out here about its collapse - that would just compound the awfulness. Does anyone know if they've been informed? I suppose they'll be pretty damn bitter anyway!
The wiki says for the Wash U. job "Offer made and declined (word of mouth)" Is that really so, and, if it is, does anyone know whether they'll make another offer?
The spousal aspect to Yale 2 makes you wonder if it wasn't simply an offer quietly made and quietly declined. It'll be interesting to see if Princeton is involved. A failed fake search or a foiled failed fake search? Pure speculation, for purposes of fun only.
1,146 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 601 – 800 of 1146 Newer› Newest»Thirded re: Yale Classics. When something is both self-serving and boilerplate, hard to believe it.
Those who cite boilerplate language from job postings as reliable evidence for departments' motivation had better be good in the classroom or else archaeologists (or both, of course), since they obviously don't know how to evaluate written sources with sufficient care and skepticism.
Uhm, make that BRONZE AGE archaeologists -- for later periods archaeologists often need to analyze written sources.
Is there a decent place online where classicists can discuss the field and our place in it without resorting to insults? Genuine question. This is just sad. I thought we were doing better this year.
No offense to your plea, but all the neoliberals in the Democratic Party and the generally well-to-do, semi-privileged urbanites all thought we were doing better this year too, and that Obama's neoliberal presidency had cured the problems in this country. Except millions of Americans were struggling with severe poverty. In this same respect, Trump's election was also "just sad."
Point being that we obviously are not doing better this year, and certainly with respect to the so-called academic job market... #PonziScheme
Classics consists of precariat and privilege that mirrors the country as a whole, yes. But that's no reason not to try to be better than the country as a whole has shown itself to be.
It's entirely reasonable for people who have spent years pursuing a career in classics and who ultimately are unable to find full-time, non-contingent employment to be upset. These are generally very capable people whose time very well may have been better spent in other endeavors. From a career development perspective, one's twenties are important, and if they are consumed by an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to find a tenure track position in classics, much is lost.
1:28 says
"[W]hat exactly is the definition of "merit"? Is it now something beyond an applicant's control? Connections? Wealth? Race? Gender? Pre-existing networks? (We used to call those "good ole boys' clubs.) Is it "promise"--another word used as prophasis to disguise ulterior motives? THAT upsets people. And rightly so."
Here, I think, is the problem. Every worry in this quote is valid. But I'm sure that everyone's personal experience is that not all, say, peer-reviewed articles are remotely equal. And half-way through any class I've ever taught, I had a pretty reliable sense of the potential of the students, not just in terms of my class, but projecting years ahead. So, one the one hand, I don't see how anyone can expect "merit" to be reducible to any kind of algorithm that can be applied to a CV. On the other hand, more subjective evaluations not only can but have been used as proxies for various kinds of discrimination. It don't think anyone has a remotely clear fix.
I agree that peer reviewed articles should not be the end-all be-all in hiring. After all, factors out of a candidates control can influence the number of articles on a CV; someone with a research post-doc may be able to hammer out several, whereas someone stuck as an adjunct teaching a 4-4 will usually be less productive.
Nonetheless, I do not think search committees should hire on "promise" alone, especially in this environment where there are so many proven scholars in terms of both teaching AND research. And publishing is still a very important way where one shows they have the drive and discipline to turn their "promise" into scholarship.
Also, much "promise" early in a career is based largely on the intuition of powerful people in the field. Often these intuitions are correct, but they can also be tainted by friendship, sympathy, flattery, sexual attraction, etc. The benefit of double-blind peer review, for all of its shortcomings, is that two strangers think the author has done good and useful work.
Which does take us back to the problem of prestigious R1s hiring people with zero peer-reviewed publications. It would have been normal in the 1990s, but today it does raise some red-flags.
Sometimes I think SCs should administer a translation exam as part of the hiring process.
" And half-way through any class I've ever taught, I had a pretty reliable sense of the potential of the students, not just in terms of my class, but projecting years ahead." To take your analogy a bit further and push back a little: we don't administer grades based on those feelings. We may know in our hearts that a good student had a bad day, or a lazy student got lucky, but we don't shape their futures accordingly, partly because we're aware that our own biases that we might not even be aware of might be influencing those feelings. We also don't grade on a single quiz. We look for a trajectory, multiple data points indicating how well a student has mastered material. In the case of the job market, a single great APA abstract is a quiz: it means little. Multiple APA abstracts, a record of good journal placements, a book contract, and a history of creative course design: that's what promise is. Not a gut feeling.
"Sometimes I think SCs should administer a translation exam as part of the hiring process."
UNC-Asheville used to, at the APA, back in the mid-90s.
Not a bad thought if there's a concern about this (but, after all, everyone passed their own university's PhD general exams), but it would discriminate against people who already suffer interview anxiety. I can imagine someone who worries about sweaty palms, dry throat, and "blanking" on oral interview questions not having a good time with an on-the-spot exam. Maybe if they could take it beforehand (with a proctor, if they feel it's necessary) in the comfort of their own university. And to be fair, the exam should be in the person's primary language and, ideally, their main author. Asking someone who specializes in Euripides to translate Tacitus with elegance might be a little unrealistic.
The assumption here, though, is a little problematic: that there are applicants for jobs who would not do well on a translation exam. We went from talking about the necessity of peer-reviewed publications to questioning basic skills. These are not the same thing. I don't think we should go around assuming our fellow Classics PhDs from decent programs are inadequate and unqualified. Everyone has enough impostor syndrome as it is.
Amen. We're talking skill levels way higher than basic translation.
there are people out there teaching latin who dont know or follow the ’law of the penult’ to give just one example. i think the trick is to emphasize language proficiency more at the UG and grad level, especially as fewer and fewer people will have had intensive greek and latin in HS (as opposed to the st. grottlesex classicist of yore, who presumably could have passed today’s grad translation exams as a freshman).
Based on my personal experience as an undergraduate student, I'm definitely behind more rigorous UG advanced languages. If I believed in sending bright, interested students to grad school (which I'm not sure I do, unless there is a specific compelling reason), I would hold any interested student to a much higher standard than the causal major (usually a double-major with some "practical" degree and no interest in grad school). I would make it clear that they needed to demonstrate not only above-average but above-excellent language ability before I could whole-heartedly recommend them to any program. This might mean that all advanced language exams should be sight exams (or at least a large part of the grade should be from sight translation passages), because, as I've observed in my experience as a teacher and student, successful Greek and Latin students are naturally good at quasi-memorizing translations even without meaning to. Having heavily-weighted sight translations on exams would force the student who wants to shine to spend time on their own mastering vast quantities of vocabulary, which would pay great dividends in grad school! It also means that it will quickly become clear who can and can't hack it, i.e., who is already ready for the big leagues and who needs more practice translating with an instructor at hand to correct grammar mistakes before they can strike out on their own. One way to get at this is prose comp. Advanced Greek and Latin prose comp really force them to master morphology, syntax, and vocabulary.
2:52 more prose comp and more sight-reading (aka reading!) are exactly what i had in mind. you can definitely get through HS and college with a great head for memorization, and it seems to me that many do.
2:52 here
I appreciate the need for rigor, but isn't there some risk, in making an UG program effectively pre-professional, of driving away potential majors who might simply want to read Latin as undergrads and then do something else? As it is, there aren't all that many majors.
As someone who took four prose-comp classes (starting as an undergraduate) and taught Greek prose comp as 5th-year graduate student to 1st- and 2nd-year colleagues, I can say that in my experience the American market doesn't reward these skills.
I feel like I need to pitch in: those old philologists of yore perhaps had tremendous language skills, to which we cannot compare, but they didn't know much more. I think our field should strive to move beyond the 19th-c. paradigm instead of trying to bring it back with translation exams for prospective employees (geeez, I thought we all were happy to be done with examinations).
If I conflated several opinions into one, apologies, I don't have the patience to follow time stamps.
Agreed. The future, for better or worse, is that most UG courses will be taught as "Classical Studies" classes using translations. Its not hard to imagine a future where Latin and Greek become like Hittite and Aramaic, only taught at the graduate level.
I am not partial to such a future. But certainly classics professors must be much more than walking talking Greek and Latin dictionaries-cum-grammer books.
I tend to think that given institutions are, paradoxically, far too normative, even when they think they're being smart or responsibly innovative. Ideally, you'd want a plurality of theoretical approaches and interests (this applies, I think, even to outreach, service, publishing, advising, and various types of teaching). The longer I've paid attention to these things, the more it seems like most larger faculties have factions of folks who think they have the singular answer, yet this answer ultimately boils down to self-promotion in the guise of improving the field.
February 14, 2017 at 3:58 PM here: I'm aware of the problem of pre-professionalizing Classics programs; after all, most of our "business" in upper level language classes comes from students who are double-majors with something else as their primary major, or pre-professional, usually health-related. I was more thinking not of raising the bar for the grade (I'll probably still have the same standards for an A), but for raising the bar for a letter of recommendation for a grad school application. A mere "A" won't cut it; you needed to have demonstrated that if I had graded on a grad-school level rather than an undergrad level, you still would have gotten an A. I'd have to be creative at how I'd craft the exams to differentiate clearly between regular As and amazing As.
Having said that, I'll repeat that I'm not sure I believe in sending "promising" kids to grad school unless they are truly superlative in every way (not only wicked smart but outgoing, resourceful, and ruthlessly ambitious without coming across as arrogant) or are independently wealthy and don't mind spending a few years doing something for the heck of it (i.e., they don't need or expect a job at the end). There are probably a few other special circumstances I'd consider, but I'd really take it on a case-by-case basis.
After hearing some egregious mistakes at the APA (perpetuated by asst professors, no less) I can understand the thought behind having an exam. But that wouldn't fix the newest way to blunder shamefully: arguing for some profound intertextuality based on 2-3 common words, or yes, even just one.
..... Is this really what we are, this arrogant posturing? Anybody who thinks there isn't already more than enough pressure on job-seekers is simply cruel, we don't need to add an additional qualifying exam post-PhD. Furthermore, there is no point in debating a translation exam because it will never happen. When individual departments in the past have tried it, the whole field was so offended that it stopped: the APA will never do it. Furthermore, anybody who thinks that being a classicist is primarily about translation is either a second year graduate student or deadwood. And plenty of tenured professors make perfect fools of themselves in talks as well, so let's not get started with "kids these days."
To change the subject a bit from ghastly translation exams, anyone care to share your calculus for when/how to exit the field? I'm on year 3 of the job search, still holding on to a shred of hope. How long is too long for you?
I know someone who bounced around for 5 years and then got a TT at a top department. It's a tough question and it comes down to individual preference.
The piece of advice that I'd give is: it shouldn't be a sudden decision. Once you get the inkling, start crafting your exit narrative (for interviews, and frankly, for even casual self-presentation) and try to make contacts in the industries that you're thinking you might want to transition into.
1:33 PM, did you have a exit narrative ready, or were you pretty sure that if you kept bouncing around, something good would come? (not a sarcastic question -- 1st year on the market here, pretty sure it will work with 5-8 years of bouncing around if I kill myself, but not sure if I am ready to deal with it).
http://www.chronicle.com/article/From-Homer-to-High-Tech/238982
‘would i do a phd again? in a heartbeat.’
@1:12
I'm in my second cycle now, and I'm only planning to do one more. I may or may not follow through on that plan, but I do want to get on with my life sooner rather than later.
After a couple of years on the market, I decided that the next would be my last try. TT job or alternative career. I had an adjunct gig with health insurance for the year, but I put research entirely on hold and spent all of my non teaching and job application time on preparing for my alternative career. When I inevitably heard crickets after the APA, I knew I was set on a new course.
In terms of picking an alternative career, my strategy was to do what I didn't do the first time around and look at what was in demand. Now the same unforgiving market forces that crushed me into the dirt as a Classicist enable me to make a shit ton of money doing a job I'm not remotely qualified to do.
But Pres. Trump, I thought you told the American people you would only accept $1 per year in salary!
"Now the same unforgiving market forces that crushed me into the dirt as a Classicist enable me to make a shit ton of money doing a job I'm not remotely qualified to do."
Don't tease: what job are you doing?
11:20pm here. Web development. I don't know what I'm doing most of the time, but it doesn't matter, because employers can't find anyone better to hire. There's no bar to entry, no education requirement or certification needed. You just need to be able to pass an interview process where a lot of your competition will simply not show up to interviews because they found a better job in the meantime.
Caveat lector, this is the situation in the US. Web developers everywhere else in the world are treated very differently.
Re: February 13, 2017 at 1:58 PM
That's an interesting point, but I think that what it suggests to me is that hiring and grading are different activities. When I grade, it is retrospective and student-centered. Hiring is forward-looking and fundamentally about the department's interests. To take an extreme example of the last point, if you are the objectively best candidate on the market, but you are a Homerist, my hypothetical department that already somehow has two Homerists rightly won't hire you. (Incidentally, I offer essentially this distinction as rhetorical advice to job seekers. Your orientation should NOT be towards proving that you were a fantastic graduate student; it should be towards explaining what value you will bring to an employer as an assistant professor.)
As for multiple data points, at the point of hiring you've got at least a short interview, a long one, letters of rec., and a dissertation. I'd suggest that that's more information than one would normally have before judging a peer in the field.
I very much agree that that leaves a lot of room for bias. But I think eliminating that possibility also means giving up some real insight into the candidates. Maybe that would be worthwhile, but it would definitely be a cost.
Anybody else hear that the Yale Greek job is probably a spousal hire and that the Princeton Greek job is probably going to someone who has had tenure for several years (in direct contradiction to the add)?
The Yale thing definitely seems like a spousal hire.
Are the Princeton job talks online?
Princeton invited to campus visits candidates from every tier: starting from a PhD candidate to a tenured professor.
Which Yale Greek job we're talking about? There was history and there was literature, right? And how come it's a spousal hire?
Lit. One of the candidates is a spouse. So if he/she is hired, it will look a lot like a spousal hire.
Point is those on the bottom are tired of tenured faculty being in competition for JUNIOR positions (if the Princeton job is a junior position).
It was an open rank search. But sure, those on the bottom (including me) are tired of not having a good chance on the market.
Open rank searches usually (with inevitable exceptions) almost always pick someone with a TT job (the open is "assistant to full", but they are usually not likely to hire and ABD or VAP.
It is sad when someone with a TT job gets another TT job, as this in fact reduces the number of TT jobs by one. The vacated TT job is likely to remain empty for several years and filled with an adjunct (best case scenario) and in some instances it might mean the termination of the tenure line, with the teaching assigned permanently to adjunct faculty. This is how the field goes extinct.
In your experience, how long between last campus visit and initial offer issued?
Anywhere from one day to two weeks.
Limiting factors: (1) the deciding committee must meet, which may be a small search committee or the entire department. That means that all of their schedules must align. (2) The Dean and/or Provost must sign off on the hire. This can take upwards of a full week, depending on innumerable factors but including when the Dean/Provost gets the materials, and how concerned s/he is about the search.
In some instances, the department submits a ranked list of candidates to the Dean/Provost. The Dean/Provost might then rubber-stamp the choice or ask for clarification and justification from the department (more time). In other instances, the department may only submit evaluations of the three candidates and the Dean/Provost may take a very active hand in the selection with an eye to what s/he thinks the university as a whole needs (think increasing diversity or hiring a candidate with qualifications that help in some obscure ranking that the administration cares about).
Once all that is through, then an offer can be made.
Your mileage may vary.
An entire department meeting to discuss a hire sounds excruciating, or at least fraught with comic potential.
More like tragicomic.
It's even more frustrating when key members of the department refuse to meet on weekends or on government holidays in order to "protect [their] time." Yes, to these people a couple of hours on a weekend or secular holiday are worth more than deciding the fate of your entire life (and possibly the future of their department).
I work with two that I know for a fact think and act this way. I suspect 4-5 others of similar attitudes.
The best thing for this field would be a Highlander-style system of duels where the prize is tenure, loser's decapitation optional.
Isn't that what they had for years at Arizona before the two tyrants were finally deposed and ostracized?
Are the two tyrants now emerita/us?
No, but it seems their grip was broken regardless. The department was finally able to make several new TT hires a couple years ago and also convert visiting faculty into tenure-track faculty. The tyrants in question have been banished to offices outside the Classics department.
Not entirely true: their grip has been broken somewhat, but they still have been allowed to play roles from which they should have been expressly forbidden after their department received its legendarily bad external review. But, more importantly, the result of that review was to fold Classics into Religion for three years and then reevaluate... which means that whoever gets this job might soon be facing the status quo ante bellum. And since certain administrators who allowed the chronic abuse of junior faculty over several years to occur are in positions of authority there it would be foolish to expect that a new assistant professor, especially one hired as a Latinist, who needs to be protected while working towards tenure will experience smooth sailing and not face any drawn daggers.
Moreover, there is also the danger of being trapped by the job, because if the new assistant professor thinks that he or she can go on the market again in a few years there is the danger of not having anyone who can write a reference letter of any value.
Some food for thought, for anyone who might receive an offer for that position.
In this market, having more than one offer would be very lucky indeed.
When should we hear back from the Center for Hellenic Studies? Or have people already?
@9:17 AM:
CHS should notify "sometime during February." Like that's helpful.
While we're on the subject, what about ISAW?
@7:20 PM:
Likewise, ISAW says "late February/early March," so we're almost there.
Thank you, person who keeps track of dates for the rest of us disorganized slobs. CHS, since today is the last day of February, we're all looking forward to hearing from you!!
@6:49 AM & @9:17 AM:
CHS notifications are out.
So are Loeb notifications
Does anybody know if CQ sends out articles for review anonymously or not?
Another job season passes-
I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled...
@1:07 pm
Is that a new Sappho?
THESE FRAGMENTS WE SHALL SHORE UP AGAINST OUR RUIN...not!
Any chance we could get some more names for the Wiki, as opposed to just the rumor/word of mouth updates in red...
The practice here traditionally has been to wait several weeks: in part, so that the person who got the job has the chance to do update the wiki him- or herself, but more importantly, so that it will not be announced before he or she has had a chance to notify other search committees, not to mention colleagues and friends. It is therefore better to opt on the side of caution, and not to rush to post a name: 3-4 weeks from the time that one is certain the hiring has been made official should do.
Yeah, usually the names appear after a little while.
Well, in today's Twitter/Facebook age, I, for one, am getting bored and impatient. Any juicy bit of fama would be a nice distraction...
Arizona just announced the brave soul joining them in their Latin Lit. TT position. Let's pray to the gods above and below for them.
If the University of Utah sent a "rejection email to first round candidates-over 200 applicants" on 01.11.17 (according to the wiki), but I only got a rejection today, does that mean I had at least made it to the second round? Would that explain the two-month limbo?
In general you will know if your application has advanced beyond the first round, and if you know nothing it probably hasn't. So the email we recently received from Utah doesn't mean anything, save that neither of us got that job. Speculation about the timing of emails is the road to madness.
With Utah, a rejection email was sent by the Chair to first round interviewees who did not make the shortlist (with the detail that 200 had applied). The boilerplate rejection letter is for all applicants once the hire has been finalized.
@10:28 PM - that makes more sense. The wording of the wiki made it sound like a first cut was made and it wasn't clear that was from the first round interviewees. Thank you.
Anyone know what's going on with the ostensible candidate-battle between Brown and Chicago?
Funny how some are battled over by depts and others adjunct and leave the field, and on paper there might not be much of a difference (to the naive outsider).
Don't talk about departments chasing candidates who have few credentials on paper! This discussion was had above about the person Chicago is chasing, and the Servii didn't like it even though no one was mentioned by name.
More that it’s frustrating when there are so few jobs and some people enjoy banquets while others starve.....this applies both to departments fighting over a single candidate and to people leaving one good TT job for another. And of course both depts and candidates should pursue their own interests. No one is blaming them, just lamenting the mess that the field is in.
So the point is not lack of qualifications...it’s that so many people are (over)qualified that it sometimes seems arbitrary who ‘succeeds’ and who doesn’t succeed/decides the leave the field.
It's also worth noting that academic fashions can change in abrupt and unpredictable ways, which means that every year one or two candidates are likely to become hot commodities simply because whatever they happen to be working on is suddenly the topic/problem/approach du jour.
honest (not rhetorical) question: have any of the TT jobs gone to ABDs this year? none of the ones with names on the wiki seem to have.
Duke?
Thanks -- I was stupid to miss that!
The USC job as well - at least the one on the Placement tracker.
And Williams College too. On a different note, has anyone heard anything about Brown and Yale post-docs (the ideology of writing and the Archaia one)? I don't really know at what point/stage rejections roll out.
Good calls on USC and Williams. Given the way USC was written, I would have assumed (wrongly) that the person was a post-doc.
Yet another good year for Princeton ABDs.
One would expect Princeton ABDs to have less teaching on average than, say, Harvard or Yale ABDs...may not be true in the cases of those who get the jobs, though.
So did USC manage to pull in three senior hires then?
I'd be curious to see if USC managed to pull the partner of the ABD in question, a senior Greek historian from the same institution.
USC has reputation for poaching Princeton humanities faculty by hiring spouses (this is how raided the Princeton philosophy department about a decade ago).
The USC hire seems to be a post-doctoral fellow. Can you be a post-doc and not have submitted your dissertation? That would make it 2 ABD TT hire so far.
Well it's unusual, but the USC hire is and has been for awhile both ABD and a post-doc.
We may need a new category, then: ABDs who are not post-docs.
Probably not a new category; suffice it to say the situation with the ABD/post-doc is quite unusual, probably so much so that few will fall into again.
Fair enough -- it just seems like this person is more similar in certain respects (teaching experience, years post Ph.D.-enrollment) to a post-doc with degree in hand than to an ABD dissertating/teaching in residence. So there are 2 standard-issue ABDs who got TT jobs this year.
I know of at least one more though, so we should wait with the count!
If what is usually a post-doctoral fellowship is held by someone who is ABD, how can that possibly be anything other than a doctoral fellowship? What am I missing?
As long as the ABD person has cleared all the red tape for the degree except for conferral (Why? Who knows...), I see no problem with calling the fellowship post-doctoral.
The 4 USC openings will have appealed to those with the two-body problem. Considering other (non-Princeton) spouses who are in the hunt this year, USC could end up with a pair of couples... Noah's ark?
I tried to post this a week ago, but it doesn't seem to have worked. The area of the website created for job postings has succumbed to spam, so I hope it is OK here. Please send questions to me (David Rohrbacher) at rohrbacher@ncf.edu.
VISITING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF CLASSICS
NEW COLLEGE OF FLORIDA - SARASOTA, FL
New College of Florida, the nationally recognized honors college of the State University System of Florida, invites applications for a Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics for the academic year 2017-18, to replace faculty members going on leave. This position is contingent on final budgetary authorization.
Candidate will teach a 2/1/3 load. In the fall, the candidate will teach Elementary Greek I and a course in Roman or Greco-Roman civilization in translation. In the January interterm, the candidate will teach a small group tutorial in a subject of his or her choosing. In the spring, the candidate will teach Elementary Latin II, Advanced Latin, and a course in ancient sex or gender in translation.
Candidates should show demonstrated commitment to language teaching and enthusiasm about working in a small liberal arts college environment. Please fill out the application at New College HR site here: ncf.simplehire.com/applicants/Central?quickFind=51149
In addition, please send curriculum vitae, letter of application, one-paragraph descriptions of proposed Roman/Greco-Roman and sex/gender courses, and three letters of recommendation to classicssearch@ncf.edu. Review of files will begin immediately. We plan to SKYPE candidates in the month of April.
New College of Florida is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We encourage inquiries from candidates who will contribute to the cultural and ethnic diversity of our college.
Is affiliation worth not graduating? There's a non-stipendiary fellowship (yikes) at an esteemed university that offers their laborers just an affiliation and free dinners...
It seems like PhD in hand would trump that kind of affiliation. Now, if the dinners are good, though...:)
Another Archaia applicant here. Haven’t heard anything either.
Seriously, as for the USC details, is there no one on here who isn't the least bit disturbed by the ethics of these practices? No one? No one want to talk about it?
I would if I knew what you are referring to.
Let’s hold our horses and see who the four hires all are. At this point speculation about the other 3 is all just that (unless you have information that’s not on the Wiki). If a couple or couples are hired, then yes, I am sure the jobless deplorables (yours truly included) will be outraged.
(But yes, it’s outrageous).
Certainly the way USC hired---with four potential positions, none of them devoted to a specific area, seems like it was designed to seek out spousal hires. In terms of the SC, the easiest way would be to break the search down, i.e. we want one Roman historian, one Greek historian, one Latin Lit, one Greek Lit. So not doing this was a conscious choice that made a great deal more work for the SC. There must be a reason.
Institutionally USC would like to vault itself into the realm of the Ivy League/Stanford. This means it needs to poach a lot of Ivy League faculty--like Princeton. Since USC is in a terrible neighborhood where people are routinely murdered, it needs something else to lure people away from the Ivy League. One thing the Ivy League is very bad at is spousal hires. There are exceptions, but most Ivies see themselves as above hiring "lagging" spouses. So there are a lot of Ivy League professors frustrated that they can't get their spouse a job. For a place like USC, a willingness to do hires two spouses as a set is a good way a raid an Ivy department: hire the junior partner as a means of poaching the senior.
Admittedly it is not 100% certain that this was the case with the recent USC hire. But it would be a plausible MO for USC.
I guess I don't find it particularly outraging, on the condition that the two persons hired are good for their level. What bothers me more are fake searches that still require a whole lot of files tailored for the school. Why take everyone's time, if the outcome is already decided...
Singleton Ivy League profs had better batten down the hatches, as singleton jobless deplorables launch plan B... Fancy a coffee?
I honestly believe it only makes your life harder, if only because of anonymous commentators who will always second guess your worth because of your partner.
C’mon guys, it sucks to have a two-body problem (and have anonymous deplorables second-guessing you if you are in fact competent or even amazing), but it also sucks not to get a job despite ‘doing everything right.’
One thing is certain: the request for unique, tailored job materials MUST STOP.
I don't care if it's an inside hire, a spousal hire, or what, but I can't publish a damn thing adjunction 4-4 and having to write, proofread, and stress over ten different versions of, for example, "evidence of teaching excellence"/"proposed courses"/"teaching philosophy"/"teaching evaluation summary"/etc. each tailored to research univ./liberal arts colleges/diversity statement included colleges/particular college with a particular course needs.
Of course inevitably I copy, paste, edit, rewrite, proofread, proofread again, etc. etc. etc. not only the teaching thing but the research thing, the letter, the diversity statement, etc. etc. etc. and then send it and realize in all that I spelled the name of the university wrong in one place. Several complete days of work (time squeezed in between doing a new prep and grading 40+ civ papers) completely wasted. And then, as last year, after doing this a dozen or more times, I get exactly zero SCS interviews, making it even harder to justify why I'm doing this instead of what I'm supposed to be doing (scholarship and teaching).
My older colleagues don't understand why I find the job market time so stressful and unproductive: "I remember that I just replaced the name of the institution on my letters and sent them out with the CV! Of course we had to mail everything back then!" chirps one of them cheerfully. They also don't understand why I don't get any interviews: "I know it was just bad luck last year! Next year's job market will be full of jobs for you!"
PLEASE FOR THE LOVE CAN THE FIRST-ROUND SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS STOP?
autocorrect typo: "adjuncting 4-4"
PALUDEM SICCATE!
1:36pm, what is your problem? I don't begin to see the relevance of their marital status, and find it more than a bit creepy that you feel a need to get it right. If you knew the person at issue here at all, you would also know that she is *spectacularly* talented classicist, who fully merits a job.
That said, if, as seems likely, this turns out to be a spousal hire, then I think everyone should be upset about the way this was carried out - as w/ the several other closed hires this season - and to the extent possible there should a response from the SCS, etc. to departments that engage in unfair hiring practices (e.g., Chicago, Yale, basically every university in the UK...etc.). Perhaps folks could commit to not inviting faculty from such departments to give talks or might even refuse to consider letters of recommendation from them, until they commit themselves to even reasonably fair and transparent hiring practices.
But, in any case, I don't think it is reasonable to criticize the candidate at issue here, and I hope that the moderator steps in here if there are any more comments along the lines of 1:36pm. If it turns out that USC behaved badly that seems to me like a different issue altogether.
Maybe it would be useful to first discuss what we consider ‘unfair hiring practices.’ I for one am genuinely interested to see what other folks think is fair and what’s not, and to what extent we hold depts responsible for the unfairness (as opposed to, say, HR or the university rules generally).
@2:04
Thanks for the input, Princeton
Ugh, my post somehow didn't show up, so apologies if it magically appears twice later.
To 12:07: I agree, I also wish this weren't the case, tailoring so many files is a waste of time.
Servius here: We moderated two comments containing inappropriate discussion about the personal life of a colleague. We will continue to do so.
If the SCS were serious about helping junior people, they would encourage standardized application process, like the college "common app." Every university having their own special snowflake tailoring requirements destroys everyone's falls. They would also find a serious way to crack down on closed hires. In absence of that -- because yeah right --, I have to admit there is some appeal in even an informal or individual commitment on the part of SC members not to consider letters of rec. from programs that engage in such practices.
In response to March 21, 2017 at 3:42 PM
I agree with you completely. An even stronger point, the Math disciplines ALREADY do this. So the comparadum is not undergraduate admissions but a faculty hiring procedure in another discipline.
HOWEVER. The SCS will not support such a move in the foreseeable future/current generation. The reasons as I seem them: the vast majority of those occupying positions of power in the SCS (and positions of non-power, for that matter) are from precisely the institutions being criticized here and the social groups who most benefit from the status quo. This is because election to those positions is based on notoriety/fame in those positions, which derives from the publications (which, in turn, are the direct result of the resources accorded by those positions rather than the intellect and ideas of Classics PhDs in general). By this I mean that any given Classics PhD in the current market would produce at reasonably similar levels given the same resources as those at privileged posts.
They will not change their modus operandi because (a) they benefit from it, (b) they cannot see that they benefit from it rather than from their own personal excellence, and (c), genuine self-reflection in this matter would morally inculpate them in ways that they either (i) are not interested in because they are psychopaths or (ii) do not wish to acknowledge to because they are not psychopaths. Sad to say, I know too many of them personally, of both groups.
I like the idea of a common application, but at least some of that kind of thing is in the hands of university HR, not individual departments.
Also, my sense (contra 9:46, though I haven't looked into this) is that the special snowflake application requirements aren't the special province of high end departments, and perhaps even the reverse is more true.
Could the SCS handle it? How about everyone files a set of documents with the SCS in early October: teaching statement, writing sample, sample evaluations, research statement, and a couple of cover letters (Research University, SLAC). Schools could access whatever documents they wanted through the SCS. This would save SO MUCH TIME for candidates. And if math departments are already doing it this way, don't blame the fact that our field doesn't do it on big, bad HR.
I'm skeptical of the common application plan. Perhaps it would work for those who work in one easily defined area of classics, but for the rest of us, it doesn't seem great. I also think it would be too limiting for departments, who ought to be able to get the sort of the information they want - say, e.g., that you need a hire who can teach in a certain interdisciplinary program. I'm much more worried about the apparent prevalence of nepotistic and closed hiring practices, which seems to be becoming appallingly common at high end departments. Perhaps it's the political climate, but despite not being affected one or another by this trend myself, I'm quite disturbed that the colleagues I know and respect at these institutions are ok with this kind of thing. I'm not a fan of the 'psychopath' hypothesis of 9:46pm, and would be interested in hearing a justification of sham searches, but as best as I can tell this trend indicates either a completely inadequate commitment to quite basic norms of fairness on the part of the offending faculties or, maybe more likely, a hubristic impression on their part that even before looking at applications, they already *know* who in the field is worth hiring. Either way, it's absurd and it's incumbent on the rest of us to make sure that faculty members from schools that engage in such practices are made aware that their behavior is unacceptable.
My guess is that those with the resources to do so are increasingly circling the wagons to protect their own in an otherwise nearly impossible job market. They probably have their own justifications that they use to live with themselves, but the growing incestuousness of a very small group of very lucky people is not good for the future of the field. English institutions have been particularly shameless this year.
If anyone was waiting for news from Brown about their post-doc: they've already invited people for the interviews. Also, for the future, can we also include all the post-docs that were advertised through the SCS in the jobs list?
We should all be careful when using Trump-like terms like *spectacularly* talented classicist (especially given all the calls for censorship on this site combined with exaggerated statements, muckraking, and the like). One might just as easily say, as with so many of us in this profession, †spectacularly† talented classicist.
We are all, for the most part, talented classicists. No need to drown out opposing views with graduate student like substitution of adverbs for substance.
9:24
We know from above that a common app *exists* in math, not that it's universally accepted.
Princeton lecturer position ahoy (no teaching load specificed)! FVers, how many apps something like that will get?
I'm tempted to start a rumor that it's an inside hire AND a spousal hire AND that the person has a joint PhD from Harvard and Yale, just to discourage some of you from applying as well...
Inside spousal, Harvard-Yale grad who is working as a double-agent for another school that ultimately just wants to poach Princeton faculty. ITS RIGGED FOLKS.
You know, I always say, "People are like assholes: they're assholes." I think this applies here.
4:44 p.m. here:
It's not certain, but that sure looks like an attack on the two of us making pretty harmless jokes. If so, I'd just point out that in my experience, the biggest assholes (your word) I've met do not have a sense of humor and get upset at those who do. But if you were referring to someone else then you need to work at making sure that your online posts have a clear context.
Ahem. I believe this belongs here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZmCJUSC6g
The next time you see yourself in the mirror and git super pissed off because there's some "asshole" wearing your clothes in your house, you might pause to think, "Ya know, maybe the problem isn't the context but my interpretive apparatus."
Or, you know, you can be cool. Whatevs.
Dear 4.44 and 6.29 - Thank you for raising a laugh from this jaded old sceptic. Wit is a wonderful tonic.
Dear 9.51 - your post reads like something an asshole would write. Try for wit next time.
1:59, 6:29 here. you are most welcome....if we can’t laugh, first at the absurdity of this whole thing, and second at ourselves for our (often justified) paranoia and frustration, we’re done for.
Any news about Archaia? It’s still not on the wiki, although I bet a lot of us applied.
2:12 a.m.,
4:44/9:51 here. I normally don't bother with internet flame wars -- evidence, though not absolute proof, that I might not be the asshole you think, but your post demonstrates such poor reading comprehension skills that I can't help myself. ("For your sake and your students', I can only hope that you are an archaeologist, not a philologist!," is what I would be writing right now if I were truly an asshole. But, being of gentler disposition, I am not stooping to that level.) So let me walk you through this, step by step:
* Someone insightfully posted, "Princeton lecturer position ahoy (no teaching load specificed)! FVers, how many apps something like that will get?" I then made a joke -- perhaps not one demonstrating true wit, but clearly a joke, and an inoffensive one -- made mocking reference to FV's ongoing obsession with inside candidates, the advantages of those with degrees from elite institutions, and spousal hires. Topical humor, even if not qualifying as "wit"!
* Soon thereafter 6:29 p.m. chimed in, building off my joke.
* Later in the evening, the true villain in this affair, 9:04 p.m., became the next poster, with this: "You know, I always say, ‘People are like assholes: they're assholes.’ I think this applies here." Based on how FV’s discussions work, the most logical interpretation was that he/she was calling me and my comrade-in-witless-jokes, 6:29 p.m., an "asshole,” since the only other possibility, that someone else was intended, would require going back five posts. So 9:04 was either wrong to call the two of us assholes or wrong not to make clear that we were not the assholes. (“Phrasing!,” as a wise man once said.)
* So, since the lectio facilior was that I was being called an asshole, I responded like the street-fighter I am, but diplomatically left open the possibility that I had missed 9:04's intended point – providing an opportunity for clarification, if one was needed. Not to mention that I shared some thoughts intended for 9:04's self-improvement, which was a caring and generous thing to do.
* And then, as an epilogue, 1:23 a.m. posted the Carly Simon link, but that only applies if 9:04's insult was about someone else and I'm too self-absorbed to have realized it. Instead, I prefer to borrow some poker philosophy to explain my thinking: if someone has just been called an asshole, and you look around and don't see an asshole, you're the asshole.
Anyway, what matters is that 1:59 a.m. (and the silent majority) enjoyed the posts, showing greater discernment than certain other PhD's/ABD's.
Okay, enough of this: I actually have to work on that Princeton application, which I’ve just delayed starting by devoting fifteen minutes to trying to bring illumination to this dark corner of the internet.
(I see I should have proofed that better, but doing so would only have further delayed beginning my Princeton application.)
5:05/5:07 is beautiful. Absolute theater of the absurd. How do you fish for an asshole? Make a generic statement, toss it into a crowd, and see who responds. Ding, ding, ding, asshole on the hook! Better watch out folks, this carp of assumptions is going to Princeton! Big roller coming through!
This whole argument is pretty pointless but I do appreciate that the "I can only hope that you are an archaeologist, not a philologist!" person above has been called out as the REAL asshole of all this. The rest of you are probably fine, if a bit touchy.
You just made me snort my jack and coke. The cleanup made me lose 15 minutes off my Princeton application. [shakes tiny, Trump-sized fist]
You're bringing back memories. I remember sitting on a balcony in Athens, years ago, with a bunch of Fellows from the American School at Athens whom I watched as they tore strips off each other: bullying, harassing, insulting, until there were tears. It shocked and disgusted me. (Isn't that hilarious?) I suspect the poisoning of the atmosphere here is down to one very unhappy person. Please find another outlet, or just talk to someone.
Apart from that, if someone could please respond to the poor Archaia supplicant, who keeps being ignored..? Personally, I have no insight. Sorry to hear they're still on tenterhooks.
It's probably a ClArch, right? We all know how they are.
Can we just take a moment to notice how 3:17 name-dropped the "Fellows from the American School at Athens"? Mr./Ms. Smooth, here! I can tell you, from the bottom of my heart, I hope your gracious to condescend to the strawmen of your imagination hasn't taken too much from that Princeton application. The world of success awaits you, Dear Childe!
*graciousness
Chill out everybody.
General inquiry: I keep reading in the news about these "diseases of despair" afflicting those who are economically desperate and without hope of a better future, and I can't help but wonder if our field, despite our supposedly protective education, is going the same way. I at least drink more and am way more depressed and anxious than I would be if I had a stable, fulfilling professional life. Anybody else?
3.17 here. I have no interest in submitting any Princeton app. Have I been mistaken for the person who was being abused earlier? Sorry, if so.
@6:24
I'm definitely in the same boat, and dismayed that the feeling of being under a microscope hasn't abated at all since I finished the doctorate. Instead, I have to keep proving myself to new colleagues at temporary appointments and constantly worry that everything I've achieved won't be enough, no matter what I do. Landing a TT position would be great but would also mean 5 more years of relative uncertainty. The knowledge that I'm at least 6 years away from any kind of real stability is daunting to say the least, and definitely exacerbates my depression and anxiety.
I see the key to getting a job in the UK is to be working there already.
Anyone have any details on the job at Trinity College in Conn.? The ad says the hire will teach G&R history courses out of the history department and courses in "the Greek and Latin language, as needed" out of the Classics department. What does "as needed" mean in terms of courses-per-term? Is the position not definitely full time?
The Trinity college application is ridiculous. They want a Roman historian who can teach Euripides at the upper level. The pickiness and specificity that has crept into the secondary market is astounding. The sad thing is, they will be able to find someone who perfectly fits their implausible specifications, and who is willing to work for 20,000 a year.
It would be interesting (and cruel) to set up a fake job that requires, like, 4-4 teaching Latin and Greek at all levels and a couple of other random specialized things, research in said areas, advising, curriculum development, university service, relocation to middle-of-nowhere, and pays 20k. Call it a VAP. And just see how many of us apply.
What if you required all that and offered, even better, free housing (studio apt near campus) and unlimited dining hall meals? No salary, per se, but what would you use a 20k salary on other than room and board? 3 hot meals a day...we can stipulate that the dining hall food is decent. I might apply.
@2:17
A couple years ago there was a job at UNC Asheville that was like that. Except it was a 5-5 job and it wanted specialties in lit, arch, history, and art simultaneously.
If you want to follow through with your plan, call it a "postdoc" rather than a VAP. Or we could invent a new category: "para-doctoral classical studies internships". Yeah, that's the ticket.
‘post-doctoral opportunity.’
You know, I always say, "People are like assholes: they're assholes." I think this applies here.
Does anyone have the Asheville ad? Is it really that extreme? One for the ages...
The UNC Asheville ad from 2011 said "Applicants should be prepared to teach all undergraduate levels of Latin and Greek and a range of Classical civilization courses, especially history, as well as contribute ancient art and archaeology" and "The teaching load is four courses per semester." But my records only go back as far as 2009, when I migrated to a new email account. I didn't get that job, but I tried.
The name of the ND hire seems to be on Interfolio (for those of us who applied), but hasn’t reached the Wiki. Should that be added?
Yes, it is now time for those who can do so to start posting names on the wiki if the job is officially closed out -- although NOT if it is just at the "offer made" stage. You don't want to screw up the process of somebody accepting a job.
I haven't heard anything from the Archaia program either, but I think that by now they probably invited people for interviews.
2 (non-postdoc) ABDs still....please update so that we can admire those who beat the odds in more than one respect.
Modifying what 1:22 wrote, even if a job is 100% closed out, you don't post the name of the hire until 1) it has been announced in public, e.g. on the department's website, or 2) at least two weeks have passed. That delay is important, since people who get jobs should have the opportunity to inform any other programs to which they applied, not to mention friends and colleagues. So do the courteous thing here.
I'm 1:22, and yes, 1:09's advice is clearer and better. I personally don't think you have to wait two weeks after it is made public on a website, but it is better to err on the side of not doing gratuitous damage to someone's career.
Me again, just realized I mis-read 1:09. Listen to them, not me, as I obviously don't know what I'm doing....
So confirmed inside hires, posted on the wiki.
CSU Northridge
Yale
Bristol
Did I miss any?
Spousal hire at durham
watch for the 2nd yale hire. should be interesting in any case.
I'm very curious about Yale 2, I was discouraged from applying there to avoid wasting my time (not that I stood a chance anyway). Care to share some info on that?
One "inside hire" reads like departmental stealing.
I heard Yale 2 isn't happening.
yale apparently had 4 (very) junior people and one very accomploshed senior person who was also a spouse. interesting to hear that it might not happen. did you hear a reason?
it had all the hallmarks of a fake search
the plot thickens! why a fake search wouldn't be happening? also, it's better to hire no one than a junior?
Princeton search was probably a scamaroo as well, contrary to what the Princeton person was claiming above.
What happened with Texas Tech, anybody know?
who did pton hire? someone post once its kosher!
they only offered a position, the person hasn't accepted yet. for once it looks kosher.
If Yale 2 isn't happening, I hope the (junior) candidates didn't read it here first.
If by kosher you mean they already had (at least) two tenured folks in mind for the position and rather than just calling it an associate hire, they instead decided to waste everyone's time.
I suspect that's as kosher as it gets at powerful institutions. I wish I were wrong though.
pretty kosher for a historically SUPER goyishe place. drumroll....
I think Exeter did a good job with its two hires.
man tough year for yale. let us all send positive thoughts new haven-wards.
Or, let us no longer send our CVs New-Havenwards. Did they really waste everyone's time and loads of their own money, in two searches, to end up at what is in essence the status quo ante?
but im sure many delicious dinners were consumed and well-phrased niceties exchanged. so not all is lost!
Really, is there anything firmer on the Yale info regarding inside hire (nameless on the wiki) and the dropping of the interdisciplinary job? Someone here clearly has the inside track. Meanwhile, I can't get my head around the utter futility of it all.
a person already employed there got the TT job, yes, can confirm.
Thanks for that. But I dread to think of the junior candidates for the second job finding out here about its collapse - that would just compound the awfulness. Does anyone know if they've been informed? I suppose they'll be pretty damn bitter anyway!
What's the source of info about the Yale Classics and Humanities job being a failed search? I heard a junior person got it.
The wiki says for the Wash U. job "Offer made and declined (word of mouth)" Is that really so, and, if it is, does anyone know whether they'll make another offer?
9:49, you heard wrong. I just hope that junior person didn’t hear wrong too.....
The spousal aspect to Yale 2 makes you wonder if it wasn't simply an offer quietly made and quietly declined. It'll be interesting to see if Princeton is involved. A failed fake search or a foiled failed fake search? Pure speculation, for purposes of fun only.
Rumor has it that Princeton is trying to to poach an associate prof from Yale.
greek lit junior prof? interesting
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