I just came here to get some job updates, and now the train is well and truly off the tracks (posts some creepy FB meme of the King of Pop snacking on some popcorn).
I am an archaeologist, and while my PhD program did not require that you take any courses in the ancient languages, it does so because it generally only admits people who've already done 4-5 years of each language from BA/MA study when entering the program. Moreover it was understood that once you were ABD you'd be working on your languages on your own or through the various intensive summer sessions to stay fresh. So while I'm not going to be writing any articles on prepositions in Euripides or intertextuality in Lucan, I can read and understand the languages quite easily, along with the scholarship, and incorporate textual sources into my research when relevant.
Throughout my MA and PhD and even since then, I've watched philologists occasionally attempt to incorporate archaeological material into their work and it can be woefully bad. Not always, but I'm often shocked that people who study the language of Greece and Rome often know very little about the actual places and their physical remains.
Some perspective on Concordia, which was asked about above (mid-career Canadian here, not at Concordia): there seems to be an internal HR requirement there that the VAP be re-advertised even when there is already someone in place (it can be renewed for up to 3 years in total, and was re-advertised in past years when the person in post was eventually renewed). More pertinently for American applicants, though, it is true (as has been noted above) that it is virtually impossible for a non-Canadian applicant to get a Canadian VAP, as the effort involved in doing the paperwork is not worth it for such a short-term position (tenure-track postings are a different matter, as the recently-hired faculty at e.g. McGill and UBC will indicate). I will say that this is equally true of American (and nowadays, UK) temporary jobs - aside from the really rich places, people without the existing right to work don't really get a look in. On the other hand, there are special rules regarding hiring postdocs in Canada (basically there is no need to do a labour market assessment as there is for TT/VAP jobs), so those are a better shot for non-Canadians.
Philologists are also horrible at history. At my institution (a top 5) the philology students, though they can sight translate Pindar and Thucydides, are often embarrassingly ignorant of ANY historical context to their texts and have zero understanding of modern historiographical approaches to the sources they study. The Classics Dept has to have their PhD students take 100-level history courses on Greece and Rome just so they can have a basic understanding of things.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to *all* philologists here, but enough that it’s often jarring to meet a philologist who can put context behind Cicero’s speeches.
Ancient historians probably balance the beam the best out of the concentrations we are discussing, since they need to have command of whatever languages they work in as well as the archaeological record to create an informed narrative. At least, that is, if they do 'proper' history. (Cue outrage over the perpetuation of a stereotype of historical studies).
But hey, philologists, archaeologists, and historians should all band together, to relentlessly mock people who study reception.
LA has the advantage that they can still be called Classics in that they still teach us about the ancient world. Reception, on the other hand, is really another discipline posing as Classics. i.e. the use of Classical authors in American political speeches is really Poli Sci masquerading as Classics just so someone can say they are 'interdisciplinary.'
@9:06PM, maybe we're at the same school. The majority of philologists definitely don't know any history at my institution. For instance, not knowing that there was actually a civil war prior to the one between Caesar and Pompey, or another thing we call the "Social War"--and that they both have a bearing on Cicero and all late Republican literature. Or that knowing something about Neronian policy might help you understand Neronian literature.
I'm constantly being asked basic questions about historical details by these philologists, but I never have to ask them any textual questions (yet), because we are expected to have the same linguistic training as them, pass the same exams, teach the same classes...
Don't get me started on the archaeologists masquerading as classicists. @8:33PM: my question to you would be-- you may know the know languages, but can you teach them? I know some who can and some who can't.
Not to derail this respectful conversation bashing philologists vs. historians vs. archaeologists, but there is no world where UNC is a "top 5" Classics program.
Do generalist positions usually go to those in a certain discipline or is it really dependent on fit? Do historians make better generalists because they have broader training?
"Not to derail this respectful conversation bashing philologists vs. historians vs. archaeologists, but there is no world where UNC is a "top 5" Classics program."
"@11:41 LOL my thought also"
Measure your dicks elsewhere - you people can't even 'rank' Cincinnati correctly. A plague on both your houses.
Any kind of ranking is doomed to fail for Classics. I think that we all have a good understanding of what are the top 10-12 schools, which UNC is surely within. Is it a “top 5” ? Who knows. It depends what you’re speciality happens to be. Generally speaking, I think most would place UNC in the lower top 10, but surely within the top 10. I think you’re splitting hairs here to actually get upset about someone else viewing a top program as being slightly *more top* than you might see it. It’s rather obnoxious.
“Oh, you own a Ferrari? That’s not one of the top 5 car manufacturers! The top 5 are Rolls Royce, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, and McLaren.”
Not sure that it's trolling to point out when people are being elitist assholes in their attitude toward the public institutions in the upper ranks of Classics PhD programs. Whine all you want, but Cincinnati, at least, continues to eat everyone's lunch. Not only do their students get jobs, one of their faculty just snagged a nice one.
Did anyone say anything about an immediate permanent replacement? If a line isn't approved for a TT search they'll likely have a VAP for a year to fill the gap. I would imagine, though, that since Cincinnati has a successful department that the departing faculty member will be replaced with another permanent hire if not this coming cycle then the next one.
Honestly Cincinnati will likely continue to eat our lunch. The departing faculty member, while I'm sure they're great, was not the source of influence in that department. No doubt everyone will continue to lose out to Cincinnati grads for some years to come.
I don’t understand why people find it warranted to constantly beat up on Public institutions. Publics have produced more TT folks this year than the Ivies. Michigan, UNC, Berkeley, and of course Cincinnati have a combined greater # of successful job candidates than the 7 Ivies that produce PhDs.
..it might be time to rethink the (outdated) viewpoint that Ivies produce superior academics. In fact many Ivy dept hires over the past 10-12 years only confirm the market’s preference for those from “public Ivies” if you will.
Yeah! Let's get those names so that we can stalk these people and figure out why they got the job that someone else so clearly deserved. Is it because they were an inside candidate, which could mean anything from they attended any school in that state for their BA, MA, or PhD? Their heavy of an advisor threatened the school with some kind of nonspecific abuse? Because of their race, gender, socioeconomic status? Did Eidolon somehow do it? Is it because they went to a Top-5? Is it because they DIDN'T go to a Top-5? Obviously they won't have deserved it, so let's get to figuring out what really happened.
People beat up on public institutions because they are elitist assholes and it is their natural inclination to do so. Nevermind that that most of the faculty at public institutions like Berkeley, UCLA, Washington, Michigan, Cincinnati, UT Austin, UNC, UVA, or wherever have degrees from the same schools as people at Ivies or other fancy private universities. It's not like these departments are filled with slack-jawed morons with PhDs from Obscurity U. You'd think that the overeducated people who populate our field could easily grasp this, yet here we are. Elitist privilege is a helluva drug.
@2:57 again, sorry, I forgot to include MCGA, people with jobs are eating our lunch, white men have it harder in academia than anyone else, the volunteer Servii aren't doing their jobs and are stifling free speech that no one is willing to put their name to, etc.
Lol to the idea that departures get replaced automatically. Especially at public schools. Maybe in the old days.
May 4, 2018 at 11:44 AM
Here's a pretty good illustration of the fundamental confusion experienced by some number of us regarding Cincinnati and a small handful of other "state schools." See, Cincinnati absolutely *WILL* replace a departing archaeologist within a year or two. History proves this. They'll also replace a departing historian or philologist. If you've ever applied for one of these jobs (there have been several in the past few years), maybe the reason you weren't even considered is that you talked down to a group of real scholars about their hapless program in a podunk Midwestern burg. Seriously. Read the history of Cincinnati's Classics program - I guess anyone doing classical archaeology will already know about this - or have a look at their dedicated Classics library sometime. Read about their endowments. To echo what was said pages ago, people with a PhD in Classics really should know about the history of the field and how the academic job market works (and on both sides of the pond, just to piss everyone off). For all our capacity for research and critical analysis, we sure are narrow minded and short sighted.
4:37 is spot on. Cincinnati, at least for those of us in archaeology, is a top program with a long history of excellence. It's one of those places that you apply to along with the typical Ivies and par-Ivies not because it's a "safe" school (does such a thing even exist for PhDs?) or because you can breeze through the program, but because it's just as good as most of the other places one might apply to study Classical archaeology. The training is rigorous (just take a look at the department's handbook for grad students online) and at the end of the day the department places its students.
4:37, I think you are way off base in interpreting the 11:44 comment as somehow a dig at Cincinnati let alone an expression of the poster's arrogance. It is rather an assertion of the reality that tenure lines do not automatically hang around after departures, retirements, or deaths. This is especially true at public schools not because public schools are not as good--that has nothing whatsoever to do with it--but because they are by definition more subject to unpredictable funding streams and other external pressures. That said, since Kotsonas was only there for a few years, it seems unlikely that his position will be deemed somehow unnecessary. Not much has changed in the overall landscape of the academy since he was hired.
If someone gets a campus visit invite, but cannot afford to pay up front (SC offered reimbursement to come later), what is the appropriate protocol? Do you tell the SC the truth about your limited finances? And if you do so will this hurt your chances?
In re the system: it probably does not hurt you. The department or school will find some way to foot the bill. If they can't or won't, then it is a dramatically broken university and getting the job there will negatively impact your health and life in the long- or even short-term.
In re the department: there's no telling. Not being able to pay upfront will mark you as outside the norm. Whether anyone notices, cares, or makes decisions based on it -- even subconsciously -- will be up to who they are as individuals. There's no knowing about that in advance. It's possible -- perhaps less so, but still possible -- that some might even raise their opinion of you because you'd be diversifying their pool according to class. Most likely, anyone who finds out would just be mildly annoyed the stinginess of their own university and the problems it was causing with their applicant pool -- NOT annoyed with you.
Because Classicists are horrible (and academics in general are horrible), if I were you, I'd ask a better-off friend to lend you money till the reimbursement comes. Obviously it's for a good cause and you will pay them back.
..it’s a shame that campus visits are even a thing at this late stage of the game. I mean, May is a very hectic month and undergrads will be gone from campus by the time the visit happens and many faculty will also be gone. Making a teaching presentation and/or job talk a rather stale event to be a part of. Add to this that the very short notice between invite and event makes all airline costs extremely high ($2,200 is the lowest I can find) and the nearest airport is more than a hour away into the countryside, thereby necessitating a rental car and hotel. It’s such a mess.
I think that I’ll have to either apply for a new credit card or go and get a car title loan to fund this. I’m far too scared to cause any ripples among the SC at this stage by being a “problem” candidate, whether they find fault in me personally for it or not. :/
I wish you the best of luck in acquiring the funds that you need to make your campus visit! One would hope that SCs are not entirely oblivious to the fact that travel and accommodation is not cheap and that covering it upfront is a burden for job candidates, especially when one must book things very soon beforehand. Of course, this is the field where I've often heard oblivious senior faculty tell PhD students and young professors to "tap into your savings" or "get an advance from your parents" to cover costs associated with job or conference travel when it is expressed that such expenses are often onerous. Since, you know, everyone in the field has a nice pile of money saved up or rich parents to fall back on.
Cincinnati is outstanding for archaeology, solid enough for philology, and rather lackluster for history (though they do have three people working on historiography). They could really use a senior historian or two who works on bread-and-butter areas.
Getting back to the issue of beating up on other people who got jobs we might have wanted, no one has complained yet about jobs unfairly going to people who got their degrees in the same geographical region. Look at Haverford's hire, who has a degree from Penn. If we're going to attack people for all the other advantages complained about on FV, shouldn't we go after those with the nerve to apply for jobs at places close enough to their grad institutions that the faculty might know each other? (I feel sort of proud for coming up with a previously unheard gripe in FV's final weeks. It's sort of like discovering an animal unknown to science in the depths of the ocean or Vietnam's jungles.)
Sorry, @7:12, I think you're too late. There was some complaining a few months ago about how Southern schools tend to hire people from the South because they don't trust that non-Southerners will stick around long enough to get attacked by a palmetto bug and whether or not this is unfair. Don't give up hope, though. There's gotta be SOMETHING.
As someone who works at a public institution, I think 11:44 is right that the time when positions were automatically replaced is long gone. And that has nothing to do with the prestige of a program or its success; in the past that may have been good enough, but not anymore. Lines turn into adjunct posts quickly as Deans give the precious TT lines to non-humanities fields. The idea — frequently voiced on FB —that a departure at School X means a line in that specialty is woefully out of date.
@4:56. Is it impossible to take the train? Amtrak is sometimes a good deal, depending on where you are going. You might consider a 10-12 hour train ride vs. a 90(ish) minute flight? I know its not ideal, but I hope that it might help.
^^ I'll second 7:39. Amtrak is quite reasonable and even if you'll have a long train ride, it's far, far more comfortable than flying so it makes up for it. You're actually treated like a human being and not a criminal or cattle. Also, Amtrak tends to goes to far more smaller, sometimes out-of-the-way places than airlines do.
@4:56 PM, $2200 (for the flight alone) is not a small amount of money, and I would not hesitate to email the search committee first to let them know that the flight is going to cost that much (I did that with my fly out, and my flight was only $1000) and second to check to see if, given how expensive it will be, it would be possible to have at least the flight directly bought by the university. Even if it isn't their standard practice, sometimes there are ways for departments to cover these sorts of things. I realize that you don't want to come off as a difficult candidate, but as someone who has been on both sides of a search I think it is a fine thing to at least ask about.
I'm searching for solutions to a problem, and I'm hoping someone on here might have an idea. My small college currently has a long-term adjunct whom we'd really like to put on the TT. Our problem is that, while our numbers are OK, we don't quite have the dire, outstanding need in terms of enrollment that would convince our provost to create a line. I'm looking for a creative solution to this (maybe figure out a way to create a shared line with another department?). I thought perhaps folks on here would know of examples of ways that departments solved similar problems. Any help is appreciated.
Could said person be connected to a wider campus initiative or cluster hire? Could the case be made that they’ll add new high enrollling classes due to their specialty? Can they be a joint appointment w another dept?
Is there some sort of administrative program they could manage part time? I'm not sure what sorts of programs you offer, but I've had friends get their positions elevated by having a partial appointment in programs like study abroad, in fellowships/scholarships (basically managing fulbright apps and the like), in the writing center, and in first year acclimation. For whatever reason admins seem to like adding to the admin more than to faculty. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@1:29 PM: No, 6:51 AM is not asking "how to hire an inside candidate." They're asking about strategies to create a TT line that doesn't currently exist. I can't understand how you could think it is a bad thing to try to create a new TT classics job - who do you think your enemy is?
I would suggest 6:51 would be better off trying this question in the CHE forums, where they will find more potential respondents with some knowledge of how line creation actually works and fewer knee-jerk accusations of bad faith.
I know I'm late to this particular party, but when the person above said they were at a 'top-5' program, my first thought was "I bet people at about 12 programs consider themselves top-5." (Mine wasn't even top-12, for the record.)
8:07 AM: worth noting that most of the comments were helpful, only one was half-teasingly negative.
Also, you're correct this is about creating a new line from scratch. But part of what causes bitterness on the part of candidates is that they are often kept totally in the dark about situations like this. There's often no way that the person crawling out of bed at 5AM to tailor her/his teaching statement before the baby wakes up, before adjuncting duties begin, could know that this is a new line for a particular person vs. a regular, actually open position. Or else s/he would spend that hour sleeping. It's the getting jerked around to support an charade that irks people, not that there's an "enemy."
@1:33–it’s not clear from the original post, but my guess is that this dept doesn’t intend to run a full search, but convert this job from contingent to TT. I know of at least one institution (an R1) where this has happened recently and a new TT line was created specifically for the current VAP.
1:33 here: sure, that could also happen, and I doubt anyone on here would object. (Although I'm sure that's just begging for Rabid-2018-FV to come prove me wrong.....) Its searches under false pretenses, not internal promotion, that gets people. Not some sense that a lucky adjunct/vap is an enemy.
I'm looking for some honest feedback here. I am feeling exceptionally shitty given how this job year has gone. This is my first year with PhD in hand on the market.
Last year, as ABD, I had 2 T-T interviews, 1 of which saw the 1st interview be a paid campus visit and 1 VAP interview. This year (so far) I have had 4 T-T interviews and 3 VAP interviews. All of them are currently dead in the water. There remains 5-6 late-game VAPs that have not closed applications yet.
How bad is it that I never get asked to have a campus visit? I feel that most interviews go well and that there seems to be a good vibe between myself and the SC, but they shut the door in my face after the interview and I'm left feeling as if something I said or didn't say must account for continual rejection.
How many 1st round interviews are normal before you get a campus visit invite?
Without giving too much personal info away, I have my PhD from a top-10, I have a good number of publications, fellowships, etc.. and am a sitting VAP at a no-name SLAC.
Buck the fuck up kiddo. With 4 (!) TT interviews and 3 VAP interviews in your first year with PhD in hand you are doing just fine. Damn sight better than I've ever done.
A friend of mine used to turn the record audio function in his phone on when about to enter an interview and then play it back later to see with some distance how he really answered questions and so on. He said it was brutal, but effective to see what he really sounded like. Perhaps doing some things like this and practice interviews with some peers and mentors will help give you that extra edge to get you to the next stage.
I used an inelegant and totally unscientific method to judge when I should be "up" for a job. (This is in no way to say that just TIME is enough to make one deserving of a TT job, or that if you wait long enough it will happen just because you were in line first. Neither is true. It was just the way I looked at it to give myself some perspective.)
Every TT job interviews about 10-12 people in the first round, and then 3-4 campus-visits. So I would need 10-12 first round interviews and 3-4 campus visits before all of the other eligible people had been hired and it was my "turn."
Of course this is total bullshit and that's not the reasoning or logic for how the market works. My method makes no sense at all. But it worked out almost exactly like that for me-- the numbers were right!
Here are some more personal statistics to throw into the mix for you, 8:29: I was on the job market for 5 years. In those 5 years, I applied for 138 jobs (83 T-T), had 25 interviews (15 T-T), 7 campus visits (6 T-T), and 1 T-T job offer. For 2 of those 5 years I had few interviews and no campus visits. I was lucky that my personal circumstances made it possible for me to stay on the market for that long, so I am definitely not encouraging people to "just hang in there" unless they are able to and want to. On the flip side, I had friends who got T-T jobs while ABD. In the years I was on the market, I didn't perceive any patterns I would label as "normal" - every year was wildly different in terms of available jobs, timeline, and my own experiences.
Managed to obtain a TT job, after years of frustration.
And I agree that, having far more failure than my one success, there is no advice to give. The market is variegated and capricious. What gets you on campus at one place might make you toxic at another. What we have today is less a market than a lottery; I was lucky to finally get a winning ticket.
I recall once, after two years on the market, giving advice to an ABD about to go to her first SCS interview. An uncharitable person might say I mansplained. She landed a TT job that cycle, while I washed out, going on to further years in VAP hell.
Nothing is guaranteed. I think the best solution is be the best teacher and scholar you can be, and be ready to endure a succession of professional humiliations, financial setbacks and vast personal despair.
@10:45 you sound like a really great colleague who definitely would not come off as arrogant or condescending to junior scholars.
As someone who has had interviews (yes, it's plural) every interview is different so if you would be so kind as to unlock the golden door to the mysteries of the Classics job market for us that would be much appreciated.
What's up with these jobs that have recently been added on the wiki but were never advertised through the SCS? Ashland and Idaho are the main ones. They're TT searches; why wouldn't they advertise through the SCS? It's a bummer to not even have seen the ads in time. I realize you can't count on the placement service for everything, but still...
I got more selective about applications each year, which probably accounts for why I received fewer interview requests as time went on. The one TT interview/visit/offer I received was just a stroke of extreme luck (I just happen to be a really excellent fit for this particular job...plus who knows what happened behind the scenes with other top candidates).
For some it might be a numbers game, for others it's just waiting and hoping that the stars align.
@5:06pm, yeah, it's annoying, but some places want to avoid the PITA that is the SCS Placement Service. Things have improved A LOT since I was first on the market, but a lot of institutions decided they weren't being well served so they've gone to other lists. H-net was always useful for the occasional outlier (https://www.h-net.org/jobs) and I found the Chronicle job alerts to be reasonably useful back in the olden days. I think they've tried to improve that service recently by making it more comprehensive, but I haven't been actively on the market recently so I don't know how effective it is. For archaeologists, the AIA still has a really comprehensive list, but occasional grant opportunities and university positions sometimes popped up on the European Association of Archaeologists page (there's a list of links there now, too). If you can stomach a move overseas, jobs.ac.uk lists positions associated in some way with the UK (so Commonwealthy, maybe?) that don't necessarily pop up in the usual places in the US. Then there are all the other lists, like Liverpool and the WCC and probably a whole bunch I don't know about.
Looking back on several years of actively pursuing gainful employment, I can't say that the breadth of my search for open jobs really helped me very much. I ended up with traditional jobs that were advertised in the traditional ways, after applying for far too many jobs and interviewing for far too many jobs. I would probably find an accurate statistical analysis of my approach to be completely depressing, but the numbers are in the realm of the portrait given by 9:29, above.
Congrats to 10:45 who has been offered every TT job s/he has interviewed for, that's great. Statistically, of course, we all know that this can't happen to everyone, or even to most everyone, or even to a significant proportion of applicants. Jobs are offered to the outliers, in a statistical sense, so don't take peoples' refusal to accept your anecdotal experience as Gospel as a personal attack on your ability to offer meaningful job interview advice. The simple reality is that departments interview around 10-12 candidates for each job, and only 1 or 2 of those candidates will be offered the job. We cannot possibly collect enough meaningful data on each individual job to determine whether your Jedi Interview Technique landed you multiple offers and a 100% Kill Rate. But congratulations on having a job, that's a great accomplishment! And who knows, maybe your scoffed-down advice has actually been helpful to some of us out here, so thank you for taking the time to share your experiences.
Yeah, I know about the other sources for UK jobs and about h-net, which I checked routinely until the end (so I thought) of the t-t season, but it never occurred to me that a big American research university would conduct a t-t hire for an ancient historian without advertising to what is still the main professional organization for ancient historians (I guess I should rejoin the AAH...). I'm not exactly heartbroken or anything but it seems weird. Greater vigilance next year!
Can anyone shed any light on the standard "Salary is competitive, includes health insurance, and will be dependent upon candidate’s experience and credentials"? Do 'experience and credentials' mean that you have your PhD in hand or does it mean you automatically make more if you went to a 'better' school? Are you supposed to negotiate salary for a one year VAP?
In my experience on both sides of the process, it would be hard to negotiate a salary for a visiting position but it is entirely possible to negotiate things like conference funding/research funding, etc. Soft $$ things.
Experience and credentials for us usually means: PhD in hand, any previous years of teaching experience, etc. For us it does not mean anything about where you went to school.
I'd be happy for others to chime in here and adjust the scale below, but it seems like "salary is competitive" means:
45-50K at non-flagship state school or low-endowed private school 50-55K at a flagship state school or medium-endowed private school 55-60K at a well-endowed private school 60K+ elite SLAC or R1
Of course for state schools you can look up the publicly accessible salary databases.
You can always negotiate. ABD people will be given less (credentials), if they are allowed to take the position at all. People with one or two VAPs under their belt (experience) can use their previous salary to negotiate for a better starting pay. Occasionally you will be told there is "no room" on salary - if you had a higher paying previous position, you can still bring that to the table, and if they absolutely will not move on salary then you can negotiate for "soft" money.
It largely depends on the institution that you'll be VAP-ing at. If you happen to be the lucky fellow who got the Dartmouth VAP, then sure. If you're VAP-ing at a smaller, obscure SLAC that is not awfully-well funded, I'd avoid asking.
I believe that it's not wholly unreasonable to ask, but don't expect too much in return. At best, they may offer $500 to help go towards moving; don't expect anything really great.
...But, asking won't hurt and don't wait for them to offer you extra money. Best of luck.
It's reasonable to ask about money for moving expenses. I had a 1-year VAP at a SLAC and they offered $2000 without me asking. Don't they write it off their taxes anyway?
@9:35, the new tax code means that you will be taxed on any moving funds you receive this year as if they were part of your salary. Thanks, Trump! Super looking forward to that.
I’m not 100%, but can one no longer use moving expenses as a deduction? If you can, just be sure that you report the “costs” of your move as an equal or higher amount than whatever the stipend you may receive happens to be, and it cancels out any effects on your taxable income.
I’m just glad that I’m no longer a PhD student having to claim my graduate stipend and tuition remission scholarship as fucking income (easily a combined $50,000 that never touches your bank account) under the new tax rules. There has to be a sneaky way for Depts to get grad students’ tuition paid without it being processed as “income” for them. I mean, if CEOs and Wall Street douches can figure out ways to minimize their tax burden, tenured profs should have no problem in figuring this out.
I believe the taxation of waivers and remission didn't make it into the final version of the odious tax bill. It was in the House version but not the Senate version, and it did not make it into the reconciled bill that was sent to President Pussygrabber to sign.
That said, I have no doubt that right-wingers will think up some new, cruel way to punish graduate students. These people hate education, and especially anyone associated with the university system. Right-wing morons believe universities exist to indoctrinate students and turn them into Marxists, when in reality most of the professoriate is made up of pseudo-woke liberals of the Donna Zuckerberg variety.
If conservatives have come to "hate education" it's only because liberals have too often behaved in hate-worthy ways. If you are not aware of that way of looking at things then you do not get a well-balanced supply of news from both left and right.
2:20 here again. Maybe 1:57 was being sarcastic. Now I can't tell.
Anyway, I was coming back here to say that when it comes to moving expenses, it used to be that you were moving for a job of at least a year in length to deduct them, which is one of many reasons these 9-month, 9-paycheck contracts some of us are on is insidious. No idea if that has changed with the new bill.
Re the deductibility of moving expenses -- job-related expenses are no longer deductible. Period. Even if you have enough to itemize (a threshold which will be much harder to meet now), you can no longer deduct ANY "employee business expenses." No deductions for travel to conferences; no deductions for books or supplies; no deductions for any expenses at all that you incur related to a job. If you're self-employed, you can still deduct expenses for your own business, but not any expenses that you incur as an employee of anyone else.
Sorry, folks. I was stunned by this myself, as someone whose research requires a lot of travel to archives, and who has deducted those expenses for years now. But no more. Employee business expenses were among a whole group of miscellaneous deductions that went away.
One work around for the end of deductions: if you make money freelance writing, tutoring, or are paid honoraria outside of your regular employment, you now run a business entitled "Your Name, Freelance Classicist Esq." You can then deduct reasonable business expenses related to research (i.e. conference travel, since going to the SCS is relevant to your work as writer/tutor/speaker) against this income. The only catch is your business has to be profitable, otherwise it is not a business (so if you made 500 dollars tutoring, you could only deduct 499 dollars of SCS expenses). It is a bit of a pain to do the taxes, but can be a way of preserving the deductions the GOP tax bill ripped away from those of us in the 99%.
4:18 (and anyone else), In my opinion, you shouldn't be able to deduct your expenses for travel to archives, or similar activities. Philosophically, deductions behind ANY business-related expenses -- corporate level or individual -- is that we as tax-payers collectively take a hit by letting someone else pay less in taxes AS AN INVESTMENT ON FUTURE PRODUCTIVITY. If we could get, say, a $100,000 from a business now for taxing some expenses they had growing their business or $1,000,000 in a few years after they've grown, the choice is obvious. Same with an individual, which is why self-employed people deducting their expenses -- as I myself have done, in an unrelated area -- makes sense for us tax-payers on the whole. But you, or I, or any other academic employed by a university does not offer greater economic growth through travel to, say, the National Museum in Athens to look at sculptures, or the archives of the BBAW to study the history of German "Wissenschaft," or the American Numismatic Society to look at coins for a study of Messalina on Claudian coins, etc. Same goes for conferences, which do not grow the economy. So if you are no longer able to deduct your archival trips or conference travel that is a GOOD thing for American tax-payers collectively.
5:26 here. I hit "submit" too soon, and didn't notice that my second sentence was left unfinished. It should begin "Philosophically, I believe that the reason behind deducting ANY"
FSU: I only have news that is now several weeks old, but what I heard was that the candidate who got the offer also had an offer from UCLA and wanted a spousal hire. UCLA was unwilling to make a spousal hire, but FSU was trying to make it work. So probably they are still negotiating complicated details?
Is there just the one campus invite for the Idaho job? I know that some people don’t update the Wiki, but as a recent Skypee who did not receive notice a few days ago for a campus invite, I’m a bit worried.
Idaho used a rather odd practice of having rounds of “cuts” for applicants up until the 1st round interview stage, so it’s plausible that they’re doing an unconventional method (campus invite one at a time?) for round two.
...I’m likely grasping at straws here, I know, but I’m losing my mind as this was the very last job I had in the works.
For some VAPs it is not uncommon to have only one campus visit; the candidate is either acceptable, and therefore hired, or unacceptable, at which point they invite a second candidate. Cannot say if that is what is happening here.
FSU current candidate was UCLA's second choice candidate; this might also have held things up. I have heard that both FSU candidate and partner have now accepted FSU job.
4:57 -- The only catch with setting oneself up as a business and deducting travel, research expenses, books, etc. that way is that you cannot then *also* use any travel funding your institution provides for the same trip. You can't say "I'm going to the SCS as part of my duties as a VAP at X. Univ. and using the $500 (or whatever) they give me to help with that trip" and also, for the same trip, say "I'm going to this conference as a freelance small business owner." It's either an "employee business expense" or it isn't. So one would have to figure very carefully, ahead of time, whether the potential tax savings would be greater than the amount of travel money provided by your institution (if you have one).
For me, and I suspect for most academics, this will all be moot. There is no way my spouse and I will ever break the $24,000 standard deduction threshold. And of course the higher "standard deduction" is largely smoke and mirrors in terms of tax savings for most of us, since the personal exemptions have disappeared. The net result in my case will be that we will pay several thousand dollars a year more in taxes than we did with personal exemptions and itemized deductions.
Never mind... I didn't scroll ALL THE WAY down. Well, it's several thousand miles from where he was long expected to head, but not a surprise that he left.
Likely that Princeton will have a senior hire for Greek History next year; they just brought on an ABD this year to replace Champlin’s Roman History position when he retired. Doubtful that they’d be willing to have two junior historians in there; that would make attracting grad students problematic.
@3:54, I do not think this reflects on the junior scholar's record at all. She's a very well qualified and respected scholar in her own right. Sometimes family responsibilities have to be negotiated, and that is part of life. Don't be a troll about it.
@5:41pm: correct. Said person may have an excellent pedigree and publications, etc., but if your partner is not a senior academic... then you have no power to negotiate "family responsibilities". Thank you for pointing out the inequality. Not to mention that these are precisely the types of relationships that aren't supposed to happen, according to university rules.
Some of us don't/can't apply for jobs in certain areas because of our partners or families. Others get fancy jobs negotiated by a more powerful senior 'mentor.'
As a first-time poster, I would also like to thank the founders and moderators. I've not done well on this market, and it has helped to have unofficial information about the progress of job searches, and especially to know that others are in the same situation. I suspect that the nastiness is coming from a relatively small group. Hopefully there is some way to keep this space going without giving in to the trolls.
As someone who’s been reading this space for many many years (and still not settled but thankfully still “in the game”), I can also attest how useful it has been. Unfortunately it has also proven to be deeply damaging psychologically. One thing I’ve learned over the years, though, is that there are far more good people in Classics than I once thought. Unfortunately the screaming of the trolls sometimes drowns out the sane voices. But take it from me - focus on building real relationships with real people, and take the anonymous comments with a gigantic grain of salt. It’s tough out there, but the vast majority of your colleagues understand this and are sympathetic. Good luck everybody!
As a several time SC member, I would also like to give my appreciation to the FV staff. FV started right around the time I got my TT job, and it was a great resource for me as a candidate. It's also been helpful as a SC member. I admit when I'm on a search I check it every so often to make sure that my department hasn't become the subject of debate or anger (happy it hasn't--we truly want to run searches that are as fair and humane as possible). I've also learned quite a bit about what helps makes candidates lives a little easier, things my department can do when searching that don't cost us anything but helps candidates, and other concerns candidates have. I will be on another TT search in two years, and I know that I will miss having access to candidate perspectives. I have several colleagues at other schools who likewise use FV when they're on searches, and I know they shall miss it as well.
It is unfortunate that there are not more options for honest dialogue between SCs and candidates. I recommend (as others have) that, in the absence of FV, we find a way to make use of the job-related fora at the Chronicle. I am active regularly there, as are many of my colleagues.
I know that this sentiment doesn't really help disappointed candidates, but I'll say it anyway. The most recent two searches I've been on have been incredibly humbling experiences. My SC typically interviewed a dozen+ candidates, and in both recent searches we left the SCS with the same impression: that all, or the vast majority, of the candidates we interviewed would be incredible additions to our department. There were no "duds", only scholars that all of us would have been happy and proud to work with. In all these cases there was nothing really that candidates could improve upon. We just had to pick one excellent candidate from a stack of apps from equally excellent candidates, and we did.
Nearly 4,000 posts this season. Let’s ask ourselves how many of those were deleted? 40, tops, I’d guess. So are we really going to eradicate the only ( and widely-known/used ) forum for us all on account of <1% of the posts being shameful??
Not just "shameful," but in some cases even legally actionable, if the comments were not made anonymously.
You're right about the relatively small number of harmful posts, but how does one calculate the true harm caused someone when they are accused of having a mental illness, or are said to have gotten their job because of their minority status rather than their academic credentials, or are the subject to more personal criticisms, etc.?
This is why we REALLY need to switch over to a forum system in which people have to register before posting. And that could still be anonymous, because we're all clever enough to figure out how to use an anonymous Gmail account to do so, but at least there would be some measure of control. And this year proved that control is needed.
How is any of this legally actionable? To say that SC's in Classics take racial/ethnic/gender identity into consideration is to state the obvious.
Accusations of mental illness are a different case, but look how many people have said that about our (notoriously litigious) President, and how many have been sued?
If you really don't know the legal distinction to be made between saying in public "Pres. Trump is mentally ill" and saying that about a private citizen then it's a damn good thing you chose our field instead of going to law school.
Goldwater won a lawsuit against a magazine. Trump was once a candidate, not president.
In an article titled "The Unconscious of a Conservative," Fact Magazine reported in 1964 that 1,189 psychiatrists believed Goldwater to be "psychologically unfit to be president." Goldwater went on to sue the magazine for libel — and won.
So has anyone come up with a plan for the continuation of FV? I think that to let it die would be a tremendous waste and detrimental to scholars on the job market and the field more broadly. The sheer number of posts this cycle ought to count for something, and as others have pointed out the number of posts deleted by comparison is minuscule.
The field needs FV, in my estimation. Letting FV die only to have Eidolon or something similar fill the gap and police the conversation is not acceptable.
Agree that FV should go on. If the present moderators don't want to keep up with it, they should pass the job on. As others have pointed out, the number of comments indicates the number of people who rely on this resource. Some have suggested that the amount of negativity has also increased, but I would guess that's related to an increase in usership which is due (1) to this forum becoming increasingly well known and relied upon and (2) the increasing backlog of job-seekers as the years go by. I would be curious to know whether the amount of trolling has really gone up this year relative to the sheer volume of posts. The endless Sententiae Antiquae article on the topic traced some major FV battles over the years and suggested that they had become progressively more virulent, but SA also showed that the number of posts has also been on the rise. I would guess that the number of rule-breaking posts has remained constant relative to the overall number of posts.
Because some people are SO MUCH (abl. of degree of difference) better than we deplorables are that they get multiple TT offers and presumably use the leverage to negotiate for things like a TT position for the spouse or a lecturer position for the mistress.
I don't have the inside details on Chicago's tenure expectations, but it helps to have your book published when you go up for review. It's not like the Yale of old where they set out to deny tenure to 90% of their assistant professors.
Where did the three candidates go? This was a good year for Ancient History, but not that good that everyone could turn down the plum job of the season....
I would guess one of them accepted a job in Europe. I don't know if I believe the claim that three people turned Chicago down, but I have no inside info at all.
Well, don’t we all know of at least two of those offered the Chicago jobs? I want to say that neither of the two mentioned here on FV that turned down Chicago went to philology positions, so no need to assume that Chicago actually made offers to “historians.”
Cornell was able to make an offer good enough that someone willingly chose to live in Ithaca over a real city with a job at university that's just as good and has more money?
Don't bother applying. SO many inside candidates already, I hear... Most of them ABD so it'll be cheaper to burn your lengthy CV than to put a stamp on it.
RE: the person who turned down Chicago for Cornell
I don't know...If I had the choice of being with my spouse and having to live in Ithaca or being apart from my spouse and living in an actual city I'd probably choose the latter. But then I'm a terrible person, so there's that.
Don't be such a wet blanket.The conversations here aren't nearly as fun most of the time.Useful and sometimes illuminating, though, which is why FV needs to stay.
In all honesty, though, FV serves a very important function for junior scholars. Many of us have barley one trustworthy advisor to whom we can rely on for information, and though he may have very good insight and advice it’s also rather possible that his interpretations could be out of touch or a a bit dated. One of the best things that FV can offer is a candid forum for us all to find out critical information from a variety of folks, many of whom may be on sitting SCs to which we may have applied.
> "Don't be such a wet blanket." — The rallying-cry of smug douchebags everywhere. A genuine classic.
> "...nearly as fun..." — I guess not everyone takes joy from wallowing in misery...or in creating it.
> "Useful and sometimes illuminating, though..." — Yes, the constant churn of misinformation, lying, backbiting, bitterness, casual racism, unapologetic sexism, and general dimwitted entitlement is such a fantastic resource. A tragedy to lose such are rare and precious jewel.
@5:32:
In all seriousness, this forum is a fucking toilet fire that can't disappear soon enough. I say this as a junior scholar doing the market grind, and who had FV recommended as a "useful resource" by peers. Anyone who thinks they are getting "critical information" here is well and truly fucked. FV is an embarrassment to everyone trying to genuinely improve the field, and offers no useful service in return, since any supposed insight it provides is impossible to verify, and, in many cases, demonstrably false.
Here's a thought: since you find FV so lacking, maybe, I don't know, stop coming here? That's honestly probably the best solution for all the people out there who clutch their pearls or get their knickers in a twist whenever they see something that they don't like on FV. Instead of the shrill, hysterical shrieking that FV must die because it occasionally offends somebody's delicate sensibilities, maybe move on with your life and pretend like FV doesn't exist. Oh, and if you don't want people to call you a wet blanket, then maybe stop acting like one. While you're at it, remove the stick from your ass. That might help too.
I wouldn't be surprised if the people constantly bloviating about the ills of FV actually like having it around. It provides an opportunity for them to get on their high horse and ruminate on how much more woke they are than the "deplorables" on FV and pat themselves on the back for being the ones who are truly doing their part to Make Classics Great Again because they wear safety pins and pussyhats and read Eidolon and give to the Sportula or whatever.
See it's posts like @4:01pm and 4:08pm which make FV into a flaming pile--like the thread following it / out from it--and don't respect some basic principles of decency; if you had your name on these posts, you could be liable for defamation perhaps. FV should shut down and needs to be replaced with IDs attached to IP addresses.
> "I wouldn't be surprised if the people constantly bloviating about the ills of FV actually like having it around." — The old, "all these people complaining about X really like it" defense. Another classic! And this time tied to some free-floating misogyny. Clear the way, I've filled my bingo card!
But totally, you caught us: we naysayers all secretly like being embarrassed by crass, fuckwitted comments by apparent colleagues in our field. I mean, what's not to like?
I *love* how dependably FV partisans bring up Eidolon and/or DZ when upset about some slight. I mean, it's such a totally secure and not at all suspect strategy for lending your argument an air of thoughtful integrity.
But, just to be safe, you better check under your bed tonight, or while you sleep those turrible Eidolon cucks will steal your vital masculine essence!
Honestly reading this entire last stretch of conversation has been rather tiresome. Everyone who thinks that FV needs to die should sod off.
The reason that people seem to have such animosity toward DZ and other people at Eidolon is because they are joyless scolds who traffic in preachy navel gazing.
Yeah! You preachy scolds should sod off! You snowflakes can't handle uncomfortable opinions...so that's why we're telling you to stop telling us your opinions!
Let's try to be nice again. Also, to correct some of the horrors above. The Sportula project is the most creative, bighearted thing I have seen from Classicists in a long time. I think those who founded it should receive nothing but praise for this.
More niceness: While some of us are slagging off others anonymously here, the people at Pharos are putting themselves at risk to highlight dangerous appropriation of the classics.
Eidolon--whatever you may think about politics--has established a space for talking about classics online in a way that did not exist five years ago. My undergraduates read it and feel like they are part of something that matters.
Most of the projects I just mentioned have been designed and helmed by classicists who have not been winners on the job market treadmill but have gone on to create something meaningful and with impact. (And the Paidea institute should be added here too).
I have posted these last handful of comments to get us closer to 4k, to try to change the conversation, and to point out that many scholars who are struggling are focusing on doing good in the world.
People keep saying that they want to keep FV; some of the same and others acknowledge that FV has many problems. Can't we show we're better for a bit, that we can merit something different?
(Eidolon) "My undergraduates read it and feel like they are part of something that matters."
You base your values on what webpages give your undergrads warm fuzzies? They feel like they are part of something that matters when they play Kandy Krush.
Part of the MCGA agenda is caring about undergrads rather than obsessive focus on FAKE NEWS research. So partial credit. Exposing them to Eidolon, if they are poor kids, can be part of helping them assimilate into the 'meritocratic' (wanna-be technocratic) elite. And some, I assume, are nice articles.
I think there's a lot of frustration about how "classicists who have not been winners" (your words not mine) have applied the rush to prototype Silicon Valley mindset and the non peer-edited channels of the internet to appoint themselves Masters of the Social Justice in Classics discourse.
@8:21: FV needs to stay if only so that we can keep triggering these pathetic pearl-clutching losers. It's really fun to see how upset they get that not everyone subscribes to their brainwashed view of the world. The thing is, the #deplorable non-woke Classicists could start their own new FV-style forum, and inevitably, the pearl-clutchers would go on there to engage in concern trolling. They simply can't help themselves. So the fun will continue!
4,546 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 3801 – 4000 of 4546 Newer› Newest»I just came here to get some job updates, and now the train is well and truly off the tracks (posts some creepy FB meme of the King of Pop snacking on some popcorn).
I am an archaeologist, and while my PhD program did not require that you take any courses in the ancient languages, it does so because it generally only admits people who've already done 4-5 years of each language from BA/MA study when entering the program. Moreover it was understood that once you were ABD you'd be working on your languages on your own or through the various intensive summer sessions to stay fresh. So while I'm not going to be writing any articles on prepositions in Euripides or intertextuality in Lucan, I can read and understand the languages quite easily, along with the scholarship, and incorporate textual sources into my research when relevant.
Throughout my MA and PhD and even since then, I've watched philologists occasionally attempt to incorporate archaeological material into their work and it can be woefully bad. Not always, but I'm often shocked that people who study the language of Greece and Rome often know very little about the actual places and their physical remains.
Some perspective on Concordia, which was asked about above (mid-career Canadian here, not at Concordia): there seems to be an internal HR requirement there that the VAP be re-advertised even when there is already someone in place (it can be renewed for up to 3 years in total, and was re-advertised in past years when the person in post was eventually renewed). More pertinently for American applicants, though, it is true (as has been noted above) that it is virtually impossible for a non-Canadian applicant to get a Canadian VAP, as the effort involved in doing the paperwork is not worth it for such a short-term position (tenure-track postings are a different matter, as the recently-hired faculty at e.g. McGill and UBC will indicate). I will say that this is equally true of American (and nowadays, UK) temporary jobs - aside from the really rich places, people without the existing right to work don't really get a look in.
On the other hand, there are special rules regarding hiring postdocs in Canada (basically there is no need to do a labour market assessment as there is for TT/VAP jobs), so those are a better shot for non-Canadians.
Philologists are also horrible at history. At my institution (a top 5) the philology students, though they can sight translate Pindar and Thucydides, are often embarrassingly ignorant of ANY historical context to their texts and have zero understanding of modern historiographical approaches to the sources they study. The Classics Dept has to have their PhD students take 100-level history courses on Greece and Rome just so they can have a basic understanding of things.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to *all* philologists here, but enough that it’s often jarring to meet a philologist who can put context behind Cicero’s speeches.
^true. But as a historian I must say that most ancient historians are pretty horrible at history too.
Ancient historians probably balance the beam the best out of the concentrations we are discussing, since they need to have command of whatever languages they work in as well as the archaeological record to create an informed narrative. At least, that is, if they do 'proper' history. (Cue outrage over the perpetuation of a stereotype of historical studies).
But hey, philologists, archaeologists, and historians should all band together, to relentlessly mock people who study reception.
Let's not forgot the red-headed stepchildren, the Late Antique and Byzantine scholars.
LA has the advantage that they can still be called Classics in that they still teach us about the ancient world. Reception, on the other hand, is really another discipline posing as Classics. i.e. the use of Classical authors in American political speeches is really Poli Sci masquerading as Classics just so someone can say they are 'interdisciplinary.'
@9:06PM, maybe we're at the same school. The majority of philologists definitely don't know any history at my institution. For instance, not knowing that there was actually a civil war prior to the one between Caesar and Pompey, or another thing we call the "Social War"--and that they both have a bearing on Cicero and all late Republican literature. Or that knowing something about Neronian policy might help you understand Neronian literature.
I'm constantly being asked basic questions about historical details by these philologists, but I never have to ask them any textual questions (yet), because we are expected to have the same linguistic training as them, pass the same exams, teach the same classes...
Don't get me started on the archaeologists masquerading as classicists. @8:33PM: my question to you would be-- you may know the know languages, but can you teach them? I know some who can and some who can't.
@10:08...
9:06 here. I’m comfortable enough sharing that I’m at UNC. You?
Not to derail this respectful conversation bashing philologists vs. historians vs. archaeologists, but there is no world where UNC is a "top 5" Classics program.
UNC isn't even eating our lunch.
NOS DOCTARVM HEDERAE PRAEMIA FRONTIVM DIS MISCENT SVPERIS.......
MCGA!
@11:41 LOL my thought also
Any new wiki updates? I'm so curious about some of the ones that have been offered and accepted for over a month.
Do generalist positions usually go to those in a certain discipline or is it really dependent on fit? Do historians make better generalists because they have broader training?
Any news about Chicago—now that Columbia has apparently made a second offer—haven’t heard if they have a second candidate or if it’s a failed searcn?
Find me a generalist position or an "open specialty" job in a Classics dept that hired a non-lang-and-lit person and I'll buy you a cookie.
Going back to the preferred titles for a minute... why do people include Dr. in their names on Twitter or other social media?
..... because they're jerks.... But at least they advertise that fact publicly!
"Not to derail this respectful conversation bashing philologists vs. historians vs. archaeologists, but there is no world where UNC is a "top 5" Classics program."
"@11:41 LOL my thought also"
Measure your dicks elsewhere - you people can't even 'rank' Cincinnati correctly. A plague on both your houses.
@11:41,
Any kind of ranking is doomed to fail for Classics. I think that we all have a good understanding of what are the top 10-12 schools, which UNC is surely within. Is it a “top 5” ? Who knows. It depends what you’re speciality happens to be. Generally speaking, I think most would place UNC in the lower top 10, but surely within the top 10. I think you’re splitting hairs here to actually get upset about someone else viewing a top program as being slightly *more top* than you might see it. It’s rather obnoxious.
“Oh, you own a Ferrari? That’s not one of the top 5 car manufacturers! The top 5 are Rolls Royce, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, and McLaren.”
@7:21,
Yes. 100% agree with you.
Looks like FV's active UNC/Cincinnati trolls have been offended! Watch out, everyone.
Not sure that it's trolling to point out when people are being elitist assholes in their attitude toward the public institutions in the upper ranks of Classics PhD programs. Whine all you want, but Cincinnati, at least, continues to eat everyone's lunch. Not only do their students get jobs, one of their faculty just snagged a nice one.
Not only do their students get jobs, one of their faculty just snagged a nice one.
Trolling?
What Troll FROM Cincinnati would see the departure of a core faculty member as a bonus?
Yes, anti-Cincy trolling. "It is such a good dept. that faculty typically land very good positions at better schools."
Cincinnati still has four archaeologists, I think they'll manage until they replace the departing professor.
Lol to the idea that departures get replaced automatically. Especially at public schools. Maybe in the old days.
Did anyone say anything about an immediate permanent replacement? If a line isn't approved for a TT search they'll likely have a VAP for a year to fill the gap. I would imagine, though, that since Cincinnati has a successful department that the departing faculty member will be replaced with another permanent hire if not this coming cycle then the next one.
Won't someone please think of the lunches?? #famesvolent
Come on everyone, let's fill in the wiki--these jobs have been "accepted" for weeks, some months, and no one has put a name:
- Cal State
- CUNY-Queens College
- Haverford
- Johns Hopkins
- McMaster
- UCLA
- UMass
Honestly Cincinnati will likely continue to eat our lunch. The departing faculty member, while I'm sure they're great, was not the source of influence in that department. No doubt everyone will continue to lose out to Cincinnati grads for some years to come.
I don’t understand why people find it warranted to constantly beat up on Public institutions. Publics have produced more TT folks this year than the Ivies. Michigan, UNC, Berkeley, and of course Cincinnati have a combined greater # of successful job candidates than the 7 Ivies that produce PhDs.
..it might be time to rethink the (outdated) viewpoint that Ivies produce superior academics. In fact many Ivy dept hires over the past 10-12 years only confirm the market’s preference for those from “public Ivies” if you will.
Yeah! Let's get those names so that we can stalk these people and figure out why they got the job that someone else so clearly deserved. Is it because they were an inside candidate, which could mean anything from they attended any school in that state for their BA, MA, or PhD? Their heavy of an advisor threatened the school with some kind of nonspecific abuse? Because of their race, gender, socioeconomic status? Did Eidolon somehow do it? Is it because they went to a Top-5? Is it because they DIDN'T go to a Top-5? Obviously they won't have deserved it, so let's get to figuring out what really happened.
People beat up on public institutions because they are elitist assholes and it is their natural inclination to do so. Nevermind that that most of the faculty at public institutions like Berkeley, UCLA, Washington, Michigan, Cincinnati, UT Austin, UNC, UVA, or wherever have degrees from the same schools as people at Ivies or other fancy private universities. It's not like these departments are filled with slack-jawed morons with PhDs from Obscurity U. You'd think that the overeducated people who populate our field could easily grasp this, yet here we are. Elitist privilege is a helluva drug.
@2:57 again, sorry, I forgot to include MCGA, people with jobs are eating our lunch, white men have it harder in academia than anyone else, the volunteer Servii aren't doing their jobs and are stifling free speech that no one is willing to put their name to, etc.
Still no FSU decision?
Lol to the idea that departures get replaced automatically. Especially at public schools. Maybe in the old days.
May 4, 2018 at 11:44 AM
Here's a pretty good illustration of the fundamental confusion experienced by some number of us regarding Cincinnati and a small handful of other "state schools." See, Cincinnati absolutely *WILL* replace a departing archaeologist within a year or two. History proves this. They'll also replace a departing historian or philologist. If you've ever applied for one of these jobs (there have been several in the past few years), maybe the reason you weren't even considered is that you talked down to a group of real scholars about their hapless program in a podunk Midwestern burg. Seriously. Read the history of Cincinnati's Classics program - I guess anyone doing classical archaeology will already know about this - or have a look at their dedicated Classics library sometime. Read about their endowments. To echo what was said pages ago, people with a PhD in Classics really should know about the history of the field and how the academic job market works (and on both sides of the pond, just to piss everyone off). For all our capacity for research and critical analysis, we sure are narrow minded and short sighted.
4:37 is spot on. Cincinnati, at least for those of us in archaeology, is a top program with a long history of excellence. It's one of those places that you apply to along with the typical Ivies and par-Ivies not because it's a "safe" school (does such a thing even exist for PhDs?) or because you can breeze through the program, but because it's just as good as most of the other places one might apply to study Classical archaeology. The training is rigorous (just take a look at the department's handbook for grad students online) and at the end of the day the department places its students.
4:37, I think you are way off base in interpreting the 11:44 comment as somehow a dig at Cincinnati let alone an expression of the poster's arrogance. It is rather an assertion of the reality that tenure lines do not automatically hang around after departures, retirements, or deaths. This is especially true at public schools not because public schools are not as good--that has nothing whatsoever to do with it--but because they are by definition more subject to unpredictable funding streams and other external pressures. That said, since Kotsonas was only there for a few years, it seems unlikely that his position will be deemed somehow unnecessary. Not much has changed in the overall landscape of the academy since he was hired.
If someone gets a campus visit invite, but cannot afford to pay up front (SC offered reimbursement to come later), what is the appropriate protocol? Do you tell the SC the truth about your limited finances? And if you do so will this hurt your chances?
@4:56
In re the system: it probably does not hurt you. The department or school will find some way to foot the bill. If they can't or won't, then it is a dramatically broken university and getting the job there will negatively impact your health and life in the long- or even short-term.
In re the department: there's no telling. Not being able to pay upfront will mark you as outside the norm. Whether anyone notices, cares, or makes decisions based on it -- even subconsciously -- will be up to who they are as individuals. There's no knowing about that in advance. It's possible -- perhaps less so, but still possible -- that some might even raise their opinion of you because you'd be diversifying their pool according to class. Most likely, anyone who finds out would just be mildly annoyed the stinginess of their own university and the problems it was causing with their applicant pool -- NOT annoyed with you.
Because Classicists are horrible (and academics in general are horrible), if I were you, I'd ask a better-off friend to lend you money till the reimbursement comes. Obviously it's for a good cause and you will pay them back.
You can't spell Classicist without classist! MCGA!
Late to the game but why was the Brown job cancelled?
MCGA is the cry of the working-class Classicist.
while the liberal elites try to smash the (figurative) Eidola in the temple and replace them with their own.
4:56 here.
Thanks for the great (and quick) feedback!
..it’s a shame that campus visits are even a thing at this late stage of the game. I mean, May is a very hectic month and undergrads will be gone from campus by the time the visit happens and many faculty will also be gone. Making a teaching presentation and/or job talk a rather stale event to be a part of. Add to this that the very short notice between invite and event makes all airline costs extremely high ($2,200 is the lowest I can find) and the nearest airport is more than a hour away into the countryside, thereby necessitating a rental car and hotel. It’s such a mess.
I think that I’ll have to either apply for a new credit card or go and get a car title loan to fund this. I’m far too scared to cause any ripples among the SC at this stage by being a “problem” candidate, whether they find fault in me personally for it or not. :/
Thanks again for the feedback.
@4:56,
I wish you the best of luck in acquiring the funds that you need to make your campus visit! One would hope that SCs are not entirely oblivious to the fact that travel and accommodation is not cheap and that covering it upfront is a burden for job candidates, especially when one must book things very soon beforehand. Of course, this is the field where I've often heard oblivious senior faculty tell PhD students and young professors to "tap into your savings" or "get an advance from your parents" to cover costs associated with job or conference travel when it is expressed that such expenses are often onerous. Since, you know, everyone in the field has a nice pile of money saved up or rich parents to fall back on.
@4:56, have you asked Sportula for funds?
Also, if you are in the Philadelphia/NY area, you can get cut-rate fares out of Stewart International in Newburgh.
Cincinnati is outstanding for archaeology, solid enough for philology, and rather lackluster for history (though they do have three people working on historiography). They could really use a senior historian or two who works on bread-and-butter areas.
Getting back to the issue of beating up on other people who got jobs we might have wanted, no one has complained yet about jobs unfairly going to people who got their degrees in the same geographical region. Look at Haverford's hire, who has a degree from Penn. If we're going to attack people for all the other advantages complained about on FV, shouldn't we go after those with the nerve to apply for jobs at places close enough to their grad institutions that the faculty might know each other? (I feel sort of proud for coming up with a previously unheard gripe in FV's final weeks. It's sort of like discovering an animal unknown to science in the depths of the ocean or Vietnam's jungles.)
Sorry, @7:12, I think you're too late. There was some complaining a few months ago about how Southern schools tend to hire people from the South because they don't trust that non-Southerners will stick around long enough to get attacked by a palmetto bug and whether or not this is unfair. Don't give up hope, though. There's gotta be SOMETHING.
As someone who works at a public institution, I think 11:44 is right that the time when positions were automatically replaced is long gone. And that has nothing to do with the prestige of a program or its success; in the past that may have been good enough, but not anymore. Lines turn into adjunct posts quickly as Deans give the precious TT lines to non-humanities fields. The idea — frequently voiced on FB —that a departure at School X means a line in that specialty is woefully out of date.
@4:56. Is it impossible to take the train? Amtrak is sometimes a good deal, depending on where you are going. You might consider a 10-12 hour train ride vs. a 90(ish) minute flight? I know its not ideal, but I hope that it might help.
^^ I'll second 7:39. Amtrak is quite reasonable and even if you'll have a long train ride, it's far, far more comfortable than flying so it makes up for it. You're actually treated like a human being and not a criminal or cattle. Also, Amtrak tends to goes to far more smaller, sometimes out-of-the-way places than airlines do.
@4:56 PM, $2200 (for the flight alone) is not a small amount of money, and I would not hesitate to email the search committee first to let them know that the flight is going to cost that much (I did that with my fly out, and my flight was only $1000) and second to check to see if, given how expensive it will be, it would be possible to have at least the flight directly bought by the university. Even if it isn't their standard practice, sometimes there are ways for departments to cover these sorts of things. I realize that you don't want to come off as a difficult candidate, but as someone who has been on both sides of a search I think it is a fine thing to at least ask about.
I'm searching for solutions to a problem, and I'm hoping someone on here might have an idea. My small college currently has a long-term adjunct whom we'd really like to put on the TT. Our problem is that, while our numbers are OK, we don't quite have the dire, outstanding need in terms of enrollment that would convince our provost to create a line. I'm looking for a creative solution to this (maybe figure out a way to create a shared line with another department?). I thought perhaps folks on here would know of examples of ways that departments solved similar problems. Any help is appreciated.
Could said person be connected to a wider campus initiative or cluster hire? Could the case be made that they’ll add new high enrollling classes due to their specialty? Can they be a joint appointment w another dept?
Is there some sort of administrative program they could manage part time? I'm not sure what sorts of programs you offer, but I've had friends get their positions elevated by having a partial appointment in programs like study abroad, in fellowships/scholarships (basically managing fulbright apps and the like), in the writing center, and in first year acclimation. For whatever reason admins seem to like adding to the admin more than to faculty. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You're asking FV how to hire your inside candidate? LOLOLOLOL.... troll much?
@1:29 PM: No, 6:51 AM is not asking "how to hire an inside candidate." They're asking about strategies to create a TT line that doesn't currently exist. I can't understand how you could think it is a bad thing to try to create a new TT classics job - who do you think your enemy is?
I would suggest 6:51 would be better off trying this question in the CHE forums, where they will find more potential respondents with some knowledge of how line creation actually works and fewer knee-jerk accusations of bad faith.
I know I'm late to this particular party, but when the person above said they were at a 'top-5' program, my first thought was "I bet people at about 12 programs consider themselves top-5." (Mine wasn't even top-12, for the record.)
8:07 AM: worth noting that most of the comments were helpful, only one was half-teasingly negative.
Also, you're correct this is about creating a new line from scratch. But part of what causes bitterness on the part of candidates is that they are often kept totally in the dark about situations like this. There's often no way that the person crawling out of bed at 5AM to tailor her/his teaching statement before the baby wakes up, before adjuncting duties begin, could know that this is a new line for a particular person vs. a regular, actually open position. Or else s/he would spend that hour sleeping. It's the getting jerked around to support an charade that irks people, not that there's an "enemy."
@1:33–it’s not clear from the original post, but my guess is that this dept doesn’t intend to run a full search, but convert this job from contingent to TT. I know of at least one institution (an R1) where this has happened recently and a new TT line was created specifically for the current VAP.
1:33 here: sure, that could also happen, and I doubt anyone on here would object. (Although I'm sure that's just begging for Rabid-2018-FV to come prove me wrong.....) Its searches under false pretenses, not internal promotion, that gets people. Not some sense that a lucky adjunct/vap is an enemy.
I'm looking for some honest feedback here. I am feeling exceptionally shitty given how this job year has gone. This is my first year with PhD in hand on the market.
Last year, as ABD, I had 2 T-T interviews, 1 of which saw the 1st interview be a paid campus visit and 1 VAP interview.
This year (so far) I have had 4 T-T interviews and 3 VAP interviews. All of them are currently dead in the water. There remains 5-6 late-game VAPs that have not closed applications yet.
How bad is it that I never get asked to have a campus visit? I feel that most interviews go well and that there seems to be a good vibe between myself and the SC, but they shut the door in my face after the interview and I'm left feeling as if something I said or didn't say must account for continual rejection.
How many 1st round interviews are normal before you get a campus visit invite?
Without giving too much personal info away, I have my PhD from a top-10, I have a good number of publications, fellowships, etc.. and am a sitting VAP at a no-name SLAC.
Buck the fuck up kiddo. With 4 (!) TT interviews and 3 VAP interviews in your first year with PhD in hand you are doing just fine. Damn sight better than I've ever done.
@8:29PM.
A friend of mine used to turn the record audio function in his phone on when about to enter an interview and then play it back later to see with some distance how he really answered questions and so on. He said it was brutal, but effective to see what he really sounded like. Perhaps doing some things like this and practice interviews with some peers and mentors will help give you that extra edge to get you to the next stage.
@8:29
I used an inelegant and totally unscientific method to judge when I should be "up" for a job. (This is in no way to say that just TIME is enough to make one deserving of a TT job, or that if you wait long enough it will happen just because you were in line first. Neither is true. It was just the way I looked at it to give myself some perspective.)
Every TT job interviews about 10-12 people in the first round, and then 3-4 campus-visits. So I would need 10-12 first round interviews and 3-4 campus visits before all of the other eligible people had been hired and it was my "turn."
Of course this is total bullshit and that's not the reasoning or logic for how the market works. My method makes no sense at all. But it worked out almost exactly like that for me-- the numbers were right!
8:29 here,
Thanks for all the insight, everyone. It’s grgeatly appreciated.
Here are some more personal statistics to throw into the mix for you, 8:29: I was on the job market for 5 years. In those 5 years, I applied for 138 jobs (83 T-T), had 25 interviews (15 T-T), 7 campus visits (6 T-T), and 1 T-T job offer. For 2 of those 5 years I had few interviews and no campus visits. I was lucky that my personal circumstances made it possible for me to stay on the market for that long, so I am definitely not encouraging people to "just hang in there" unless they are able to and want to. On the flip side, I had friends who got T-T jobs while ABD. In the years I was on the market, I didn't perceive any patterns I would label as "normal" - every year was wildly different in terms of available jobs, timeline, and my own experiences.
Here's my personal experience:
I've been offered every TT job I've ever interviewed for. (Yes, it's plural.)
I've offered interview advice here on multiple occasions to people who are starting to get frustrated.
Each and every time it's been laughed down by other people who "know better".
RE: 10:45AM. So what's your advice (assuming it's not simply to send a copy of your CV and cover letter)?
Managed to obtain a TT job, after years of frustration.
And I agree that, having far more failure than my one success, there is no advice to give. The market is variegated and capricious. What gets you on campus at one place might make you toxic at another. What we have today is less a market than a lottery; I was lucky to finally get a winning ticket.
I recall once, after two years on the market, giving advice to an ABD about to go to her first SCS interview. An uncharitable person might say I mansplained. She landed a TT job that cycle, while I washed out, going on to further years in VAP hell.
Nothing is guaranteed. I think the best solution is be the best teacher and scholar you can be, and be ready to endure a succession of professional humiliations, financial setbacks and vast personal despair.
So... Washington University in St. Louis... Any word of interviews yet?
A friend of mine has an interview scheduled with Wash U in St Louis. They heard about it last week.
@10:45 you sound like a really great colleague who definitely would not come off as arrogant or condescending to junior scholars.
As someone who has had interviews (yes, it's plural) every interview is different so if you would be so kind as to unlock the golden door to the mysteries of the Classics job market for us that would be much appreciated.
What's up with these jobs that have recently been added on the wiki but were never advertised through the SCS? Ashland and Idaho are the main ones. They're TT searches; why wouldn't they advertise through the SCS? It's a bummer to not even have seen the ads in time. I realize you can't count on the placement service for everything, but still...
Here is my track record, just to contribute to the evidence that there is no "normal":
Year 1: 6 interviews (0 TT)=> 1 fly-out, 1 offer (VAP)
Year 2: 2 interviews (0 TT)=> 0 fly-outs, 0 offers
Year 3: 1 interview (TT)=> 1 fly-out, 1 offer (TT)
I got more selective about applications each year, which probably accounts for why I received fewer interview requests as time went on. The one TT interview/visit/offer I received was just a stroke of extreme luck (I just happen to be a really excellent fit for this particular job...plus who knows what happened behind the scenes with other top candidates).
For some it might be a numbers game, for others it's just waiting and hoping that the stars align.
@5:06pm, yeah, it's annoying, but some places want to avoid the PITA that is the SCS Placement Service. Things have improved A LOT since I was first on the market, but a lot of institutions decided they weren't being well served so they've gone to other lists. H-net was always useful for the occasional outlier (https://www.h-net.org/jobs) and I found the Chronicle job alerts to be reasonably useful back in the olden days. I think they've tried to improve that service recently by making it more comprehensive, but I haven't been actively on the market recently so I don't know how effective it is. For archaeologists, the AIA still has a really comprehensive list, but occasional grant opportunities and university positions sometimes popped up on the European Association of Archaeologists page (there's a list of links there now, too). If you can stomach a move overseas, jobs.ac.uk lists positions associated in some way with the UK (so Commonwealthy, maybe?) that don't necessarily pop up in the usual places in the US. Then there are all the other lists, like Liverpool and the WCC and probably a whole bunch I don't know about.
Looking back on several years of actively pursuing gainful employment, I can't say that the breadth of my search for open jobs really helped me very much. I ended up with traditional jobs that were advertised in the traditional ways, after applying for far too many jobs and interviewing for far too many jobs. I would probably find an accurate statistical analysis of my approach to be completely depressing, but the numbers are in the realm of the portrait given by 9:29, above.
Congrats to 10:45 who has been offered every TT job s/he has interviewed for, that's great. Statistically, of course, we all know that this can't happen to everyone, or even to most everyone, or even to a significant proportion of applicants. Jobs are offered to the outliers, in a statistical sense, so don't take peoples' refusal to accept your anecdotal experience as Gospel as a personal attack on your ability to offer meaningful job interview advice. The simple reality is that departments interview around 10-12 candidates for each job, and only 1 or 2 of those candidates will be offered the job. We cannot possibly collect enough meaningful data on each individual job to determine whether your Jedi Interview Technique landed you multiple offers and a 100% Kill Rate. But congratulations on having a job, that's a great accomplishment! And who knows, maybe your scoffed-down advice has actually been helpful to some of us out here, so thank you for taking the time to share your experiences.
Yeah, I know about the other sources for UK jobs and about h-net, which I checked routinely until the end (so I thought) of the t-t season, but it never occurred to me that a big American research university would conduct a t-t hire for an ancient historian without advertising to what is still the main professional organization for ancient historians (I guess I should rejoin the AAH...). I'm not exactly heartbroken or anything but it seems weird. Greater vigilance next year!
Can anyone shed any light on the standard "Salary is competitive, includes health insurance, and will be dependent upon candidate’s experience and credentials"? Do 'experience and credentials' mean that you have your PhD in hand or does it mean you automatically make more if you went to a 'better' school? Are you supposed to negotiate salary for a one year VAP?
In my experience on both sides of the process, it would be hard to negotiate a salary for a visiting position but it is entirely possible to negotiate things like conference funding/research funding, etc. Soft $$ things.
Experience and credentials for us usually means: PhD in hand, any previous years of teaching experience, etc. For us it does not mean anything about where you went to school.
I'd be happy for others to chime in here and adjust the scale below, but it seems like "salary is competitive" means:
45-50K at non-flagship state school or low-endowed private school
50-55K at a flagship state school or medium-endowed private school
55-60K at a well-endowed private school
60K+ elite SLAC or R1
Of course for state schools you can look up the publicly accessible salary databases.
You can always negotiate. ABD people will be given less (credentials), if they are allowed to take the position at all. People with one or two VAPs under their belt (experience) can use their previous salary to negotiate for a better starting pay. Occasionally you will be told there is "no room" on salary - if you had a higher paying previous position, you can still bring that to the table, and if they absolutely will not move on salary then you can negotiate for "soft" money.
Do you think it's sensible to ask about relocation assistance in case of a 1-y. VAP?
@9:09,
It largely depends on the institution that you'll be VAP-ing at. If you happen to be the lucky fellow who got the Dartmouth VAP, then sure. If you're VAP-ing at a smaller, obscure SLAC that is not awfully-well funded, I'd avoid asking.
I believe that it's not wholly unreasonable to ask, but don't expect too much in return. At best, they may offer $500 to help go towards moving; don't expect anything really great.
...But, asking won't hurt and don't wait for them to offer you extra money. Best of luck.
It's reasonable to ask about money for moving expenses. I had a 1-year VAP at a SLAC and they offered $2000 without me asking. Don't they write it off their taxes anyway?
@ 9:35,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEL65gywwHQ
@ 9:51 (9:35 here)
Admittedly, I have a Kramer-level of understanding when it comes to taxes.
@9:35, the new tax code means that you will be taxed on any moving funds you receive this year as if they were part of your salary. Thanks, Trump! Super looking forward to that.
MCGA!
@10:26,
I’m not 100%, but can one no longer use moving expenses as a deduction? If you can, just be sure that you report the “costs” of your move as an equal or higher amount than whatever the stipend you may receive happens to be, and it cancels out any effects on your taxable income.
I’m just glad that I’m no longer a PhD student having to claim my graduate stipend and tuition remission scholarship as fucking income (easily a combined $50,000 that never touches your bank account) under the new tax rules. There has to be a sneaky way for Depts to get grad students’ tuition paid without it being processed as “income” for them. I mean, if CEOs and Wall Street douches can figure out ways to minimize their tax burden, tenured profs should have no problem in figuring this out.
I believe the taxation of waivers and remission didn't make it into the final version of the odious tax bill. It was in the House version but not the Senate version, and it did not make it into the reconciled bill that was sent to President Pussygrabber to sign.
That said, I have no doubt that right-wingers will think up some new, cruel way to punish graduate students. These people hate education, and especially anyone associated with the university system. Right-wing morons believe universities exist to indoctrinate students and turn them into Marxists, when in reality most of the professoriate is made up of pseudo-woke liberals of the Donna Zuckerberg variety.
If conservatives have come to "hate education" it's only because liberals have too often behaved in hate-worthy ways. If you are not aware of that way of looking at things then you do not get a well-balanced supply of news from both left and right.
2:20 here again. Maybe 1:57 was being sarcastic. Now I can't tell.
Anyway, I was coming back here to say that when it comes to moving expenses, it used to be that you were moving for a job of at least a year in length to deduct them, which is one of many reasons these 9-month, 9-paycheck contracts some of us are on is insidious. No idea if that has changed with the new bill.
Re the deductibility of moving expenses -- job-related expenses are no longer deductible. Period. Even if you have enough to itemize (a threshold which will be much harder to meet now), you can no longer deduct ANY "employee business expenses." No deductions for travel to conferences; no deductions for books or supplies; no deductions for any expenses at all that you incur related to a job. If you're self-employed, you can still deduct expenses for your own business, but not any expenses that you incur as an employee of anyone else.
Sorry, folks. I was stunned by this myself, as someone whose research requires a lot of travel to archives, and who has deducted those expenses for years now. But no more. Employee business expenses were among a whole group of miscellaneous deductions that went away.
anyone have an update on the FSU archaeology job?
One work around for the end of deductions: if you make money freelance writing, tutoring, or are paid honoraria outside of your regular employment, you now run a business entitled "Your Name, Freelance Classicist Esq." You can then deduct reasonable business expenses related to research (i.e. conference travel, since going to the SCS is relevant to your work as writer/tutor/speaker) against this income. The only catch is your business has to be profitable, otherwise it is not a business (so if you made 500 dollars tutoring, you could only deduct 499 dollars of SCS expenses). It is a bit of a pain to do the taxes, but can be a way of preserving the deductions the GOP tax bill ripped away from those of us in the 99%.
4:18 (and anyone else),
In my opinion, you shouldn't be able to deduct your expenses for travel to archives, or similar activities. Philosophically, deductions behind ANY business-related expenses -- corporate level or individual -- is that we as tax-payers collectively take a hit by letting someone else pay less in taxes AS AN INVESTMENT ON FUTURE PRODUCTIVITY. If we could get, say, a $100,000 from a business now for taxing some expenses they had growing their business or $1,000,000 in a few years after they've grown, the choice is obvious. Same with an individual, which is why self-employed people deducting their expenses -- as I myself have done, in an unrelated area -- makes sense for us tax-payers on the whole. But you, or I, or any other academic employed by a university does not offer greater economic growth through travel to, say, the National Museum in Athens to look at sculptures, or the archives of the BBAW to study the history of German "Wissenschaft," or the American Numismatic Society to look at coins for a study of Messalina on Claudian coins, etc. Same goes for conferences, which do not grow the economy. So if you are no longer able to deduct your archival trips or conference travel that is a GOOD thing for American tax-payers collectively.
5:26 here. I hit "submit" too soon, and didn't notice that my second sentence was left unfinished. It should begin "Philosophically, I believe that the reason behind deducting ANY"
FSU: I only have news that is now several weeks old, but what I heard was that the candidate who got the offer also had an offer from UCLA and wanted a spousal hire. UCLA was unwilling to make a spousal hire, but FSU was trying to make it work. So probably they are still negotiating complicated details?
Is there just the one campus invite for the Idaho job? I know that some people don’t update the Wiki, but as a recent Skypee who did not receive notice a few days ago for a campus invite, I’m a bit worried.
Idaho used a rather odd practice of having rounds of “cuts” for applicants up until the 1st round interview stage, so it’s plausible that they’re doing an unconventional method (campus invite one at a time?) for round two.
...I’m likely grasping at straws here, I know, but I’m losing my mind as this was the very last job I had in the works.
For some VAPs it is not uncommon to have only one campus visit; the candidate is either acceptable, and therefore hired, or unacceptable, at which point they invite a second candidate. Cannot say if that is what is happening here.
@7:24,
Idaho is a T-T job for ancient history. It was a late arrival that was posted in mid-March
FSU current candidate was UCLA's second choice candidate; this might also have held things up. I have heard that both FSU candidate and partner have now accepted FSU job.
Does that mean UCLA is on to the third round?
4:57 -- The only catch with setting oneself up as a business and deducting travel, research expenses, books, etc. that way is that you cannot then *also* use any travel funding your institution provides for the same trip. You can't say "I'm going to the SCS as part of my duties as a VAP at X. Univ. and using the $500 (or whatever) they give me to help with that trip" and also, for the same trip, say "I'm going to this conference as a freelance small business owner." It's either an "employee business expense" or it isn't. So one would have to figure very carefully, ahead of time, whether the potential tax savings would be greater than the amount of travel money provided by your institution (if you have one).
For me, and I suspect for most academics, this will all be moot. There is no way my spouse and I will ever break the $24,000 standard deduction threshold. And of course the higher "standard deduction" is largely smoke and mirrors in terms of tax savings for most of us, since the personal exemptions have disappeared. The net result in my case will be that we will pay several thousand dollars a year more in taxes than we did with personal exemptions and itemized deductions.
Any word on the the William & Mary VAP?
..I tend to think that most people have abandoned the Wiki recently
It appears that Princeton's Ancient History program just suffered another major setback!
3:14, to what do you refer?
Never mind... I didn't scroll ALL THE WAY down. Well, it's several thousand miles from where he was long expected to head, but not a surprise that he left.
1:51, my understanding is that there are no updates yet.
This seems to have USC's hiring, since his spouse was supposed to take up a job there next year but has disappeared from the website.
LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Remember how when people insinuated someone benefited from their senior mentor/lover, the shaming was great on FV. Well surely it has come to pass....
Likely that Princeton will have a senior hire for Greek History next year; they just brought on an ABD this year to replace Champlin’s Roman History position when he retired. Doubtful that they’d be willing to have two junior historians in there; that would make attracting grad students problematic.
@3:54, I do not think this reflects on the junior scholar's record at all. She's a very well qualified and respected scholar in her own right. Sometimes family responsibilities have to be negotiated, and that is part of life. Don't be a troll about it.
'Sometimes family responsibilities have to be negotiated'....funny how those family responsibilities benefit some, and harm others.
@5:41pm: correct. Said person may have an excellent pedigree and publications, etc., but if your partner is not a senior academic... then you have no power to negotiate "family responsibilities". Thank you for pointing out the inequality. Not to mention that these are precisely the types of relationships that aren't supposed to happen, according to university rules.
Some of us don't/can't apply for jobs in certain areas because of our partners or families. Others get fancy jobs negotiated by a more powerful senior 'mentor.'
FSU and UCLA "news" above is inaccurate
Ok then 6:54 could you tell us what is inaccurate about the FSU/UCLA "news" or better give us accurate "news"?
The post at 5:46 yesterday is correct, I have heard.
^^ I should say, I've heard, except for the "unwilling" bit which I have no knowledge of.
As we move into the home stretch of FV, any chance posters want to change the tone and start showing some love to the world?
I'd like to thank the founders and the moderators for creating and guarding a space that was so important to a decade's worth of young classicists.
[keep it up--there must be good people in the field we can recognize...]
As a first-time poster, I would also like to thank the founders and moderators. I've not done well on this market, and it has helped to have unofficial information about the progress of job searches, and especially to know that others are in the same situation. I suspect that the nastiness is coming from a relatively small group. Hopefully there is some way to keep this space going without giving in to the trolls.
As someone who’s been reading this space for many many years (and still not settled but thankfully still “in the game”), I can also attest how useful it has been. Unfortunately it has also proven to be deeply damaging psychologically. One thing I’ve learned over the years, though, is that there are far more good people in Classics than I once thought. Unfortunately the screaming of the trolls sometimes drowns out the sane voices. But take it from me - focus on building real relationships with real people, and take the anonymous comments with a gigantic grain of salt. It’s tough out there, but the vast majority of your colleagues understand this and are sympathetic. Good luck everybody!
As a several time SC member, I would also like to give my appreciation to the FV staff. FV started right around the time I got my TT job, and it was a great resource for me as a candidate. It's also been helpful as a SC member. I admit when I'm on a search I check it every so often to make sure that my department hasn't become the subject of debate or anger (happy it hasn't--we truly want to run searches that are as fair and humane as possible). I've also learned quite a bit about what helps makes candidates lives a little easier, things my department can do when searching that don't cost us anything but helps candidates, and other concerns candidates have. I will be on another TT search in two years, and I know that I will miss having access to candidate perspectives. I have several colleagues at other schools who likewise use FV when they're on searches, and I know they shall miss it as well.
It is unfortunate that there are not more options for honest dialogue between SCs and candidates. I recommend (as others have) that, in the absence of FV, we find a way to make use of the job-related fora at the Chronicle. I am active regularly there, as are many of my colleagues.
I know that this sentiment doesn't really help disappointed candidates, but I'll say it anyway. The most recent two searches I've been on have been incredibly humbling experiences. My SC typically interviewed a dozen+ candidates, and in both recent searches we left the SCS with the same impression: that all, or the vast majority, of the candidates we interviewed would be incredible additions to our department. There were no "duds", only scholars that all of us would have been happy and proud to work with. In all these cases there was nothing really that candidates could improve upon. We just had to pick one excellent candidate from a stack of apps from equally excellent candidates, and we did.
Commence sirglejerg in: 3... 2... 1... MCGA!
Nearly 4,000 posts this season. Let’s ask ourselves how many of those were deleted? 40, tops, I’d guess. So are we really going to eradicate the only ( and widely-known/used ) forum for us all on account of <1% of the posts being shameful??
KEEP FV ALIVE.
Not just "shameful," but in some cases even legally actionable, if the comments were not made anonymously.
You're right about the relatively small number of harmful posts, but how does one calculate the true harm caused someone when they are accused of having a mental illness, or are said to have gotten their job because of their minority status rather than their academic credentials, or are the subject to more personal criticisms, etc.?
This is why we REALLY need to switch over to a forum system in which people have to register before posting. And that could still be anonymous, because we're all clever enough to figure out how to use an anonymous Gmail account to do so, but at least there would be some measure of control. And this year proved that control is needed.
How is any of this legally actionable? To say that SC's in Classics take racial/ethnic/gender identity into consideration is to state the obvious.
Accusations of mental illness are a different case, but look how many people have said that about our (notoriously litigious) President, and how many have been sued?
If you really don't know the legal distinction to be made between saying in public "Pres. Trump is mentally ill" and saying that about a private citizen then it's a damn good thing you chose our field instead of going to law school.
Goldwater won a lawsuit against a magazine. Trump was once a candidate, not president.
In an article titled "The Unconscious of a Conservative," Fact Magazine reported in 1964 that 1,189 psychiatrists believed Goldwater to be "psychologically unfit to be president." Goldwater went on to sue the magazine for libel — and won.
So has anyone come up with a plan for the continuation of FV? I think that to let it die would be a tremendous waste and detrimental to scholars on the job market and the field more broadly. The sheer number of posts this cycle ought to count for something, and as others have pointed out the number of posts deleted by comparison is minuscule.
Leave FV up and alive. The positive aspects of its existence far outweigh (perhaps even fully negate) the rare cases of troll posts.
The field needs FV, in my estimation. Letting FV die only to have Eidolon or something similar fill the gap and police the conversation is not acceptable.
What's going on with the Chicago search?
Agree that FV should go on. If the present moderators don't want to keep up with it, they should pass the job on. As others have pointed out, the number of comments indicates the number of people who rely on this resource. Some have suggested that the amount of negativity has also increased, but I would guess that's related to an increase in usership which is due (1) to this forum becoming increasingly well known and relied upon and (2) the increasing backlog of job-seekers as the years go by. I would be curious to know whether the amount of trolling has really gone up this year relative to the sheer volume of posts. The endless Sententiae Antiquae article on the topic traced some major FV battles over the years and suggested that they had become progressively more virulent, but SA also showed that the number of posts has also been on the rise. I would guess that the number of rule-breaking posts has remained constant relative to the overall number of posts.
Chicago is a failed search. They offered it to 3 candidates and all 3 turned them down for better offers. Expect it back again soon.
Better than being at the University of Chicago?!?
3 people turned down Chicago? HOW. IS. IT. POSSIBLE.
Because some people are SO MUCH (abl. of degree of difference) better than we deplorables are that they get multiple TT offers and presumably use the leverage to negotiate for things like a TT position for the spouse or a lecturer position for the mistress.
Well, Chicago is known to not give tenure, which is why this job came out in the first place.
I don't have the inside details on Chicago's tenure expectations, but it helps to have your book published when you go up for review. It's not like the Yale of old where they set out to deny tenure to 90% of their assistant professors.
Make Chicago Great Again!
A humble suggestion: MCGA by hiring me!
Where did the three candidates go? This was a good year for Ancient History, but not that good that everyone could turn down the plum job of the season....
I would guess one of them accepted a job in Europe. I don't know if I believe the claim that three people turned Chicago down, but I have no inside info at all.
Well, don’t we all know of at least two of those offered the Chicago jobs? I want to say that neither of the two mentioned here on FV that turned down Chicago went to philology positions, so no need to assume that Chicago actually made offers to “historians.”
One went to Cornell, where’d the other one go?
Cornell was able to make an offer good enough that someone willingly chose to live in Ithaca over a real city with a job at university that's just as good and has more money?
Cornell also made an offer to retain her husband. So, yes.
Maybe FV can post a job listing for a one-year VAP (professor of the practice) in Servius-ing? We could have 200+ applications via Interfolio. MCGA!
Don't bother applying. SO many inside candidates already, I hear... Most of them ABD so it'll be cheaper to burn your lengthy CV than to put a stamp on it.
@11:19 and 11:37: LOL
RE: the person who turned down Chicago for Cornell
I don't know...If I had the choice of being with my spouse and having to live in Ithaca or being apart from my spouse and living in an actual city I'd probably choose the latter. But then I'm a terrible person, so there's that.
It's possible they like the countryside, didn't they apparently turn down Columbia too?
From what I've heard about married life, I imagine the amount of sex would be the same in both scenarios, no?
Depends on whether your mistress can get a spousal hire, or how much you like to mentor students.
isnt spousal hire for a mistress a contradiction in terms?
Must depend on how big a name you are.
Yes, what a shame to lose this forum. The loss of valuable conversations like these will truly impoverish us all.
What if the spousal hire is a mistress who is also one of your own current ABD graduate students?
@ 4:17
Don't be such a wet blanket.The conversations here aren't nearly as fun most of the time.Useful and sometimes illuminating, though, which is why FV needs to stay.
Then her letter of recommendation alone should enable her to obtain a lecturer position with benefits.
This is fun?
I am enjoying it!
What could be more fun than joking about spousal hires and the weird sexual proclivities of Classicists?
Hmmmm... doing the same but about Egyptologists?
#VINTAGE #PHILOLOGIEDESOISEAUX
In all honesty, though, FV serves a very important function for junior scholars. Many of us have barley one trustworthy advisor to whom we can rely on for information, and though he may have very good insight and advice it’s also rather possible that his interpretations could be out of touch or a a bit dated. One of the best things that FV can offer is a candid forum for us all to find out critical information from a variety of folks, many of whom may be on sitting SCs to which we may have applied.
#Keep FV alive.
FV is a much better representation of academia than Eidolon, that's for sure. I'll miss it.
@4:24 PM:
> "Don't be such a wet blanket." — The rallying-cry of smug douchebags everywhere. A genuine classic.
> "...nearly as fun..." — I guess not everyone takes joy from wallowing in misery...or in creating it.
> "Useful and sometimes illuminating, though..." — Yes, the constant churn of misinformation, lying, backbiting, bitterness, casual racism, unapologetic sexism, and general dimwitted entitlement is such a fantastic resource. A tragedy to lose such are rare and precious jewel.
@5:32:
In all seriousness, this forum is a fucking toilet fire that can't disappear soon enough. I say this as a junior scholar doing the market grind, and who had FV recommended as a "useful resource" by peers. Anyone who thinks they are getting "critical information" here is well and truly fucked. FV is an embarrassment to everyone trying to genuinely improve the field, and offers no useful service in return, since any supposed insight it provides is impossible to verify, and, in many cases, demonstrably false.
Hey 6:03,
Here's a thought: since you find FV so lacking, maybe, I don't know, stop coming here? That's honestly probably the best solution for all the people out there who clutch their pearls or get their knickers in a twist whenever they see something that they don't like on FV. Instead of the shrill, hysterical shrieking that FV must die because it occasionally offends somebody's delicate sensibilities, maybe move on with your life and pretend like FV doesn't exist. Oh, and if you don't want people to call you a wet blanket, then maybe stop acting like one. While you're at it, remove the stick from your ass. That might help too.
> "If you see a problem, just ignore it and pretend it doesn't happen." — More priceless life wisdom from the FV trenches.
> "...Instead of the shrill, hysterical shrieking..." — The self-aware comment of someone shrilly, hysterically shrieking.
> "While you're at it, remove the stick from your ass." — Ah, *le mot juste.*
You're doing a really lazy job with the concern trolling shtick.
A level of effort suited to the venue...
I wouldn't be surprised if the people constantly bloviating about the ills of FV actually like having it around. It provides an opportunity for them to get on their high horse and ruminate on how much more woke they are than the "deplorables" on FV and pat themselves on the back for being the ones who are truly doing their part to Make Classics Great Again because they wear safety pins and pussyhats and read Eidolon and give to the Sportula or whatever.
FV needs to stay and the naysayers need to go.
See it's posts like @4:01pm and 4:08pm which make FV into a flaming pile--like the thread following it / out from it--and don't respect some basic principles of decency; if you had your name on these posts, you could be liable for defamation perhaps. FV should shut down and needs to be replaced with IDs attached to IP addresses.
Wow, I didn't know that Classics also had so many people who are actual lawyers too.
> "I wouldn't be surprised if the people constantly bloviating about the ills of FV actually like having it around." — The old, "all these people complaining about X really like it" defense. Another classic! And this time tied to some free-floating misogyny. Clear the way, I've filled my bingo card!
But totally, you caught us: we naysayers all secretly like being embarrassed by crass, fuckwitted comments by apparent colleagues in our field. I mean, what's not to like?
^^^ You seem fun. Maybe you should head on over to Eidolon or Twitter and chat with Donna Zuckerberg about how much everyone here sucks.
I *love* how dependably FV partisans bring up Eidolon and/or DZ when upset about some slight. I mean, it's such a totally secure and not at all suspect strategy for lending your argument an air of thoughtful integrity.
But, just to be safe, you better check under your bed tonight, or while you sleep those turrible Eidolon cucks will steal your vital masculine essence!
Honestly reading this entire last stretch of conversation has been rather tiresome. Everyone who thinks that FV needs to die should sod off.
The reason that people seem to have such animosity toward DZ and other people at Eidolon is because they are joyless scolds who traffic in preachy navel gazing.
Yeah! You preachy scolds should sod off! You snowflakes can't handle uncomfortable opinions...so that's why we're telling you to stop telling us your opinions!
Some of us just come here for the scurrilous gossip, can we get back to that? Lay off the haranguing SJW bullshit.
Pretty clear there's a troll in here today. The one that complains but won't leave? Yeah, that one.
Totally. An irritating distraction from the usual important business of this forum.
Let's try to be nice again. Also, to correct some of the horrors above. The Sportula project is the most creative, bighearted thing I have seen from Classicists in a long time. I think those who founded it should receive nothing but praise for this.
More niceness: While some of us are slagging off others anonymously here, the people at Pharos are putting themselves at risk to highlight dangerous appropriation of the classics.
And again: the itinera podcast brings out great stories in positive ways.
Eidolon--whatever you may think about politics--has established a space for talking about classics online in a way that did not exist five years ago. My undergraduates read it and feel like they are part of something that matters.
Most of the projects I just mentioned have been designed and helmed by classicists who have not been winners on the job market treadmill but have gone on to create something meaningful and with impact. (And the Paidea institute should be added here too).
I have posted these last handful of comments to get us closer to 4k, to try to change the conversation, and to point out that many scholars who are struggling are focusing on doing good in the world.
People keep saying that they want to keep FV; some of the same and others acknowledge that FV has many problems. Can't we show we're better for a bit, that we can merit something different?
(Eidolon) "My undergraduates read it and feel like they are part of something that matters."
You base your values on what webpages give your undergrads warm fuzzies? They feel like they are part of something that matters when they play Kandy Krush.
Please, MCGA. OK?
^^^
And this is why we can't have nice things.
Part of the MCGA agenda is caring about undergrads rather than obsessive focus on FAKE NEWS research. So partial credit. Exposing them to Eidolon, if they are poor kids, can be part of helping them assimilate into the 'meritocratic' (wanna-be technocratic) elite. And some, I assume, are nice articles.
I think there's a lot of frustration about how "classicists who have not been winners" (your words not mine) have applied the rush to prototype Silicon Valley mindset and the non peer-edited channels of the internet to appoint themselves Masters of the Social Justice in Classics discourse.
@8:21: FV needs to stay if only so that we can keep triggering these pathetic pearl-clutching losers. It's really fun to see how upset they get that not everyone subscribes to their brainwashed view of the world. The thing is, the #deplorable non-woke Classicists could start their own new FV-style forum, and inevitably, the pearl-clutchers would go on there to engage in concern trolling. They simply can't help themselves. So the fun will continue!
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