It’s that time of year… and no, I don’t mean for busting out the Holiday music (for that please refrain until after Thanksgiving. Thank you.). This, my friends, is the season to consider applying for research fellowships! With so many thrilling archives around, full of material ripe for analysis, it would really be a shame for scholars like us not to use them in our research—especially because libraries often offer us money to do so! Both short- and long-term fellowships are available at many major libraries and archives, and although some of these are reserved for scholars who already have their doctorate degrees, others specifically aim to help PhD candidates complete their dissertations or research for a specific article they plan to publish.
Of course, to get a fellowship you have to apply, and the competition is stiff—which is exactly the reason I’m posting about it right now. If you’ve found a specific archive with which you want to spend some quality time, it behooves you to start NOW, drafting your application and asking people to write your letters of recommendation. For the libraries I’ve looked at, most fellowship application deadlines fall between December 1st and March 1st.
I’m still new to writing research fellowship applications myself, but I’ll pass along a few pieces of advice I’ve been counseled to keep in mind. They’re pretty intuitive, but worth mentioning nevertheless.
First, define your target. There’s no sense in visiting a specific archive if it doesn’t have the materials that will be useful to you, or if those materials are also available somewhere closer to home. Also, libraries will see no sense in supporting your visit if you don’t have a specific project for which to use their materials. Thus, it’s imperative that you clearly articulate both the nature of your specific research project, and what role the library’s holdings play within that project. The former is (I think) one of the most challenging things we do in this profession, but the latter is pretty easy to manage: comb through the library catalogues and start making lists of items you would look at if you could. Although many library catalogues are not comprehensive, searching them and making wishlists will help you get the lay of the land, so to speak, and plan future academic projects and research trips, whether or not you get the fellowship. In your application, mention some of these specific items from your list (and check in Worldcat to make sure they’re not also at the library of your home institution!).
Second, know your audience. Most committees assessing applications consist of librarians whose job it is to match their knowledge of the library’s holdings to projects that will use these holdings to develop exciting new ideas. Even if readers do have training in your field, it is unlikely that they will be experts in your specific area. Therefore, your project description should eschew all jargon, so as to be lucid and interesting to an intelligent general reader. Preserve your sense of the project’s intervention and be specific about what’s at stake, but craft it for people who are not necessarily Romanticists. (This is a useful skill to hone for the job market as well!).
Third, write with authority. While avoiding jargon, show that you have a solid understanding of what your work will accomplish, as well as the competence to accomplish it. Avoid passive voice: instead of saying “It will be demonstrated that…,” go for “I will demonstrate that….”.
Fourth, specify expected outcomes. What will this fellowship enable you to do? Finish a chapter? Complete an article for publication? You don’t need more than a sentence or two, but you should show that your research will result in production of a tangible piece of scholarship. Your readers aren’t going to pay you just to think about stuff—they need to know your work is going somewhere.
Fifth, organize, organize, organize. Most of these applications are quite short, meaning you must pack a serious punch in very few words. Have a thesis statement, clearly articulate your project’s intervention and importance in your field, and be as clear and precise as possible. Ask colleagues and professors to read your proposal, and then be willing to revise (sometimes repeatedly). Again, whether or not you get the fellowship, this process is useful just for your yourself! It will help you comb through the tangled web of thoughts and find the golden thread that holds it all together—the ultimate quest of any project, right?
There are big, comprehensive archives, and small, specialized archives, so I thought we could start building a list of favorites! Below I provide links to three fellowship-offering biggies: huge institutions with something for everyone. But there are so many others! If you know of a great archive, or have experience using it (like Michele at the Huntington, or Jacob at the Yale Center for British Art, or Kelli at the British Library), please leave a note in the comments!
Newberry Library (Chicago, IL) – Dec. 12, 2011
Huntington Library (San Marino, CA) – Dec 15, 2011
Beinecke Library (Yale) – March 2, 2012 (also, they have a Fall application in October)
Others for you to look up, or comment on: New York Public Library, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, The American Antiquarian Society, Winterthur Library, the Library Company of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Dumbarton Oaks Library, the Getty Research Institute, Kew Library (Royal Botanic Gardens), RHS Lindley Library. . . .
Again, we’d love to hear your recommendations or personal experiences with any useful archives! Thanks for sharing.
Happy Application Days to All!
-Kelli
Spring Planning (before November!): Selecting Works for Teaching Intro. to Women's Lit.
I just received my spring teaching assignment in my mailbox, and am delighted to find that I’m teaching “Intro. to Women’s Lit.” for the first time. I am a little kid in a candy store (or a rock climber in a gear shop) when it’s time to select possible works to teach for the next semester’s course. I’ve also noticed a trend in romanticists’ online communities, in that we enjoy suggesting works to teach on a certain theme. For example, on Romantic Circles’ Teaching Romanticism blog, Katherine Harris requested suggestions for her Gustatory Romanticism graduate course, and Roger Whitson did the same for his Visualizing Nineteenth Century Poetry course. In addition, the NASSR-L recently saw a flurry of responses to Diane Hoeveler’s call for suggestions for her Romanticism and Religion graduate seminar, and she very generously collected all of the responses in this Word doc. I’m going to use our forum for a similar kind of request–please help me decide what to teach. And following Katherine Harris’ example, I plan to post my final reading list and course description to our blog as a follow-up discussion.
I’m especially interested in your suggestions for American authors and works to teach from earlier periods, within the romantic-era, and post-romantic periods. To date, I have been transatlantically challenged, so to speak, as far as including American texts in my teaching and scholarship. (Well, I’ve been specifically assigned to teach Shakespeare and surveys of British literature for the past 3 years.) Though I have chosen to specialize mostly in British romantic works for my dissertation, I see this course as a great opportunity to begin to fill in a gap or two in my reading.
Course theme: “Adventure.” I envision the theme of “adventure,” broadly, as one that will include the genres of travel literature, the gothic, experiments with form like those found in Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent, as well as experiments with media, like Shelley Jackson’s electronic literary work Patchwork Girl. Namely, I’m interested in drawing attention to women writers over time who have ventured beyond society’s prescribed boundaries and who have taken risks that they convey one way or another in their authorship.
The CU catalog description requires that this course “[introduce] literature by women in England and America. Covers both poetry and fiction and varying historical periods. Acquaints students with the contribution of women writers to the English literary tradition and investigates the nature of this contribution.”
Initial brainstorming: I’m thinking of including the following authors/works (listed early to late): Sappho’s fragments (ed. Ann Carson), Julian of Norwich (med.), Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative (17th c.), Eliza Haywood (18th c.), Mary Shelley (rom.), Joanna Baillie (rom.), Ann Radcliffe (rom), Mary Wollstonecraft (rom), Isabella Bird (Vict.), Dickinson (Vict.), Woolf (mod.), Angela Carter (contemp.), Annie Dillard (contemp.), Jeannette Winterson (contemp.)
All reading and assignment suggestions are welcome, and I’m especially interested in your ideas for:
- 18th and 19th c. American authors and works–drama, fiction, poetry, essays
- I work on the gothic quite a bit — any American women gothic writers or works to recommend?
- 17th c works
- If you’ve taught this course, have you used a particular anthology that you would recommend?
- Assignment recommendations: I have been experimenting with my British Literature survey course with putting together student-made collections or exhibits that relate to works we’re studying in class. Any ideas how we could put together an adventure-themed exhibit for this course? (I’m thinking digital exhibit.)
Thanks in advance!
What Does This Mean: Unanswered Questions about the Evolution of ‘Performance’
During the Performance Seminar at NASSR 2011 Jeffrey Cox and Gillen D’Arcy Wood gave presentations which resulted in fervent discussion about performance in the Romantic period and the development and growth of Romanticism(s). As the seminar continued those in the room engaged in a conversation about where performance studies is going (in and out of Romanticism); ultimately, the question was posed about just how valuable ‘performance’ is as a term, but I could hardly re-present those perspectives here. So, I’m left with my own reflection on the conversation.
I left the seminar wondering about particular facets of the conversation and spent some time since the seminar questioning ‘performance’ as a term; as I continued to work through my summer reading list I found performance to be central to many authors’ arguments. The discussion at NASSR (and my reading since then) left me asking, “Has ‘performance’ become too broad? Has the term lost its value and poignancy precisely because the field of study has expanded beyond those literal performances of the stage?”
I assure you, I do not have an answer. Instead, my hope here is to leave you asking as well, to share some of this blogger’s thinking following a NASSR seminar, and perhaps to continue the conversation that began in Park City (as there are numerous other ways to define and theorize performance beyond what I mention below).
When I arrived home from Park City I read Donald Hall’s Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic theory and the future of queer studies; in his introduction, Hall summarizes Judith Butler’s “implication of individual agency in changing sexual and gender norms through disruptive performances” (10). He writes,
In [Gender Trouble], Butler argues famously that the specific critical and political task that her politically engaged readers should assume is to locate sites for subversion, ‘to affirm the local possibilities of intervention through participating in precisely those practices of repetition that constitute identity and, therefore, present the immanent possibility of contesting them’ (Butler 1999:188). She issued a call to arms, suggesting that gender parodies (such as drag) and other disruptive social performances might work to create a better world for queers. (Hall 11)
In other words, by removing the theater from ‘performance,’ Butler linked activism and the academy—she made an intellectual “call to action” which resounded beyond (and simultaneously within) the academic community, including within “social-action groups such as Queer Nation” (Hall 11). (Though, as Hall points out, Butler “backtracked quickly” just three years later in Bodies that Matter, disclaiming the political potency of parody and subversive performance [12].) No matter where Butler stands on the usefulness of her theorization, what is most valuable is Butler’s definition of ‘performance’ locatable in the every day—the unconscious and involuntary. I’ve found that thinking about and teaching social constructivism through performance—by discussing everyday life as a form of theater, by expanding the definition of ‘audience’ to those with whom we interact within our educational institutions, workplaces, and shopping malls—is quite useful for me and particularly accessible for my students. I do wonder if I could teach social constructivism without talking about performance in this way. Even if I could, would my students or I benefit from it? Why does this approach seem to resonate with students? To some degree, this notion of ‘performance’ is individually empowering. Knowing that the way one acts out one’s life has an immediate effect on the ‘audience’ can lead to a shift in thinking about interpersonal communication—even if one accepts that these performances are involuntary and never has the idea or intention of purposefully manipulating self-performance. This type of ‘performance’ helps some students understand that they can have agency over their performances and, to some degree, the ways that audiences receive those performances. For example, if they want to be perceived as a hard-worker they begin to act like a hard-worker, which is difficult to do without actually working hard. I think my students are willing to consider social constructivism this way because it helps them understand something more about themselves and the way they are seen in the world. (It also resonates with the materialist culture they are familiar with; after teaching Susan Alexander’s “Stylish Hard Bodies: Branded Masculinity in Men’s Health Magazine” it became clear that the students in my Popular American culture course fully grasp this “You are what you buy” definition of ‘performance.’) However, in many ways this definition is limitless. It becomes possible to think of everything and anything as a performance. If everything is performance we (literary and cultural studies communities, those of us at the NASSR Performance Seminar) begin to question just how useful performance is, and for good reason, I think.
Even if we wanted to, could we go back to a pre-Butler definition of performance? I’m not sure that we could, though we can certainly limit the ways that we use the term to understand the histories and cultures which interest us. Kristina Straub employs a definition of performance which bridges the space between the performances of the theater and the every day. In Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Violence between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Straub “draws from performance theory, as developed by critics such as Joseph Roach” (111); her analysis in the chapter “Performing the Manservant, 1730 to 1760” includes “performances of masculinity” that “occur on both the London stage—in the dramatic characters of footmen—and in the theater audience’s sometime violent contention between these servants and their ‘betters’” (112). Straub’s theorization of ‘performance’ “stresses the social formation of masculine gender and sexuality through repeated, publicly visible behaviors in the theater, ones that resonate with changing power relations that were more broadly played out in society” (Straub 111). This definition articulates a critical link between the stage and Main Street (so to speak); it organically connects the performances of both locations and again emphasizes the stage as a way of reading and understanding part(s) of the culture at large. It doesn’t limit the stage to a re-presentation of what is going on within larger cultural systems but makes cultural phenomena more visible to the audience/reader.
Straub’s definition offers a way of seeing the connection between the beginnings of ‘performance’ and its evolution into a concept that shapes a large number of identity fields. With this evolution in mind, I find it difficult to restrict ‘performance’ to the study of drama. The performances taking place on the stage at my local theater are certainly not the same as those taking place in my classroom; however, understanding one paradigm has helped me to understand the other. Through its expanded purview, performance theory leads to tangible shifts in the discourse(s) of identity politics and births intellectual work that expands the fields of literary and cultural studies in productive ways. Has ‘performance’ become too broad? Perhaps it has, but I speculate that this broadness is a reflection of theoretical usefulness. ‘Performance’ isn’t a term devoid of value and poignancy; on and off the stage it has reshaped the ways that we think about identities, bodies, languages, and rituals for (at least) the last twenty years.
*Thank you to presenters Jeffrey Cox and Gillen D’Arcy Wood, moderator Angela Esterhammer, and all of the audience members who contributed to such a thought-provoking conversation!
The Stainforth: A Brief Introduction to a Book That I Hope to Spend More Time With
STAINFORTH, FRANCIS JOHN, d. 1866. Catalogue [in a later hand] of the library of female authors of the Rev. J. Fr. Stainforth. [S.l., s.n., n.d.: before 1866]. 4to, 373 leaves. Spine title: Catalogue of Stainforth’s Library. WPRP 290.
Two weeks ago, I “met” the Stainforth, and my life hasn’t been the same since. Debbie Hollis, my wonderful boss and Assoc. Professor/Faculty Director of Special Collections at Norlin Library, had this book all set up in a cradle for me when I arrived in the reading room to start my weekly work on the Women Poets of the Romantic Period (WPRP) collection. Apparently, I’m late to the table in knowing about “the Stainforth” (that’s how Hollis refers to it) — but now that we’ve met, I understand the importance of this work. And I will add that this book is currently, as in *right now*, being scanned so that digital images of the handwritten pages will be available, open-access, for anyone to use, study, write about, or peruse for pleasure. As soon as it’s available, I will post a link to the electronic work.
I should add that for this 2011-2012 academic year, I’m a researcher for the WPRP collection at CU and will be reading, curating an in-house exhibit for the BWWC 2012 conference (June 7-10), and also curating a digital exhibit with the collection. I look forward to my WPRP research hours every week and have already learned a great deal from Special Collections staff and from the collection itself.
The Stainforth is a hand-written catalog that Rev. Stainforth created and that represents his library as it grew until his death. Special Collections’ information sheet that is included with the volume provides some helpful background for this book:
“Stainforth, for his time, was a most unusual book collector: his interest lay in the works of British and American female poets and dramatists. By the time of his death in 1866, he had amassed more than 6,000 works. The books are listed alphabetically on the rectos, and with additions on the facing pages. Stainforth’s collection provides what must be the single most comprehensive bibliographical record of English-speaking female poets and dramatists up to 1866. He owned remarkably large representations of many writers, and many celebrated rarities. . . . Not content with simply acquiring as many different titles as he could obtain, Stainforth meticulously went about procuring every edition of every title; of Mrs. Hemans’ National lyrics, to take just one example, he owned 9 editions published in London, Dublin, Philadelphia and Paris. It seems likely that he lived part of his life in America, as it would have been impossible to have amassed so many American books without actually spending time there. The books were dispersed over six days in July 1867 by Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, who described the collection as an ‘extraordinary library, unique of its kind… This celebrated and unrivalled series of the poetical compositions of British and American female writers, exhibiting in a complete form the growth and progress of the genius of woman in the department of poetry, has been selected, with great zeal, industry, and toil, with a view to rescue our fair poetesses from oblivion… The completest collection that could possibly be formed… an assemblage without precedent… unique, as no other of similar pretensions is known.’ The British Museum, acting through the bookseller Boone, was a major buyer; the British Library copy of the sale catalogue is fully marked with their purchases and the prices they paid.”
Why am I so excited about the Stainforth? Mostly because I have a lot of questions about it.
It’s a database of Romantic women writers and their works, but how complete of a database is this? It even looks like a database the way that it is so neatly formatted in columns on the page. And I’m a fool for textual data! If his catalog really does represent “the single most comprehensive bibliographical record of English-speaking female poets and dramatists up to 1866,” it would be amazing to process that data and learn more about authorship, publishing, distribution of works in various genres, and the circulation of works by women writers in particular. And even if the catalog turns out to be less comprehensive than advertised, it will be interesting to discover what categories of works Stainforth privileges by including them in his collection, and of course, what works didn’t make the cut. I also wonder who had access to his collection, and if his collection had any bearing upon readership of certain works or authors?
The organization of the book is fascinating. Stainforth organized his catalog alphabetically by genre, NOT by shelf-mark (these are included in the left-most column on each page). So, I can just see him (or his assistant) running around his library floors to gather titles and put his books in a new order just for this book. (Which leads me to wonder: how were his books organized on the shelf?) And as I flipped all the way through the book admiring his elegant penmanship and browsing his listings, I had an Indiana Jones moment:
About 3/4 of the way through the volume, his holdings entries stop, followed by some blank pages. After the blank pages, the writing appears upside-down. If you flip the book over to its back cover, you find that Stainforth starts a second kind of notebook here: it’s his acquisitions wish list, and it’s also organized by genre. His wish list consist of approx 870 entries for books he was looking for, and he crossed out about half of them as he acquired them for his collection.
How long did his cataloging project take? And wasn’t it a bit risky to keep the wish list for such a vast archive in the same book as the holdings list — what if he needed more pages for the holdings than the book contained? Did he regularly lend out any of these books, as in a circulating library? Is his collection partial to certain years, publishers, authors, or genres? If he did have a collection of male authors (and I would imagine that he did), why create a separate catalog of women authors–why not list them all in a master bibliography?
I don’t have many answers, just questions at this point. Right now, I’m using the Stainforth as a point of departure for a collaborative project that interrogates the intersection of materiality and metadata in 18th- and 19th-century digital texts. My only conclusion is that I am grateful for the suggestion of the Special Collections staff to look at this work, and for their initiative in scanning it. And for a Christmas present, can we please have it keyed? 🙂
This Little Graddie Went to Market…
Preparing for and Navigating the Job Market: Roundtable from NASSR Conference, August 2011
If you were at the NASSR conference last month, and happened to attend the job-market roundtable organized by the NGSC, then this post will be old news…but we figured there are at least some of you who want to know all the good advice! For all their wisdom, pragmatic counsel, and encouragement, special thanks again goes to all our panelists: Alan Bewell, Julie Carlson, Frances Ferguson, William Galperin, Jonathan Mulrooney, and Juan Sanchez. To protect the innocent, I’ve detached their names from the information below; please note that these are MY interpretations of what was said, edited and rearranged for your convenience. May they prove useful to all those currently preparing to go on the job market, and to all of us hoping to get there soon!
-Kelli
Choosing between a postdoc and the job market
The Postdoc offers certain advantages over the job market. It is generally much easier to get than a tenure-track position. However, there are many kinds of postdocs, and you might find yourself with a kind of postdoc that you don’t really want; some will help you more than others to prepare for jobs. The best kinds of postdocs are the ones that allow you to do research and get out some publications (these are generally 2-3 year postdocs).
Postdocs are also more difficult to apply for than jobs. The job letter can describe your research and experience very broadly and can be used on several applications; postdocs tend to have very specified requirements that often result in more time and effort invested; you have to write several very different applications, rather than one that can be tailored to many. Second, postdocs often want you to describe a NEW project: they don’t want you to go and finish your book; they want you to work on producing something new. This means you will be pitching two book ideas. Of course, when you go into the job market, you CAN say that you used the postdoc to develop a second book project, and you will have something to show for it…and this puts you in a really great position.
With the postdoc market, you may have more success because host institutions are interested in you developing new ideas and projects however you want to. In a job situation, you have to fit in to the department, and you will need to fit your projects to the departmental needs.
Format of the Job Letter and the Dissertation Abstract
These are THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS YOU WILL EVER PRODUCE IN YOUR CAREER! They will absorb hours and hours of your time, but you should recognize that time as a worthwhile investment. Nothing will affect your future prospects so much as these two documents. There is a standard tripartite form in the job letter, and you should adhere to it. You don’t want anything quirky or grandstanding. The entire letter should NEVER, under any circumstances, be longer than two pages.
Part 1: Announce your application to the job, and make clear your suitability for the position advertised. Show that you can operate from the center, rather than the periphery. Show that you are aware of their needs, and indicate your suitability to meet those needs.
Part 2: Describe your dissertation. This will naturally be the most difficult paragraph, and you should be prepared to make 8-10 revisions!
Part 3: Indicate your teaching experience. Every school, whether they are a research university or a teaching university, will employ you as a teacher, and they want to know that you have experience and enthusiasm for it. (see “Teaching,” below.)
To conclude, your last few sentences should declare your availability for an interview.
Getting Help and Guidance with the Letter, Abstract, and Interviews
The placement committee at your university can help a lot by giving practice interviews, mentoring, pairing a job candidate with a faculty member who is NOT on their committee (who can thus see with fresh eyes, like the people on hiring committees). If you can arrange such a pairing, you should meet with this person on multiple occasions. From a student’s perspective, this can be a very irritating experience, and may seem pointless, and it might feel infantilizing. It’s alienating labor for everyone involved, but everyone needs to be cheerful and grateful for it… and it can make a HUGE difference!
When to go on the job market
When to go on the market depends on where you are with your dissertation. For the most part, you should NOT go on the market unless you are done with your dissertation, or very nearly done. If you are an exception to this, let your advisor tell you that you are! You need to be at a point when you can talk about your work with confidence, both in the broadest terms, and in the 11-second elevator conversation. It’s up to you to figure out whether you want to do a “trial year;” but recognize that this will take lots of time that can feel slightly arbitrary, and it might be a better use of your time to move forward with your dissertation. It is indeed a useful exercise, but it is more useful at certain times than at others. Be discriminate.
How to interview and give a job talk (at MLA, or a campus visit)
Interviews are formal moments, and you should dress up – but you should also be comfortable! You should not be distracted by your clothing, and neither should others. Poise is also important; sustain it as best you can through all events, but especially make sure you have at least 15-30 minutes alone before your talk to gather yourself and your thoughts.
Clarity and conciseness are your best friends. You must learn to articulate quickly and clearly what you are “about.” Learn who you will be speaking to, what the format is, and what will be expected of you (your advisor can help you find these things out.) Keep in mind that you will be talking to non-specialists in your field. You don’t need to dilute yourself and open yourself up to super-broad questions you can’t handle, but you want to give the broadest possible range of your work and its relevance. Show that you know the specifics, but that you can participate in the larger conversation. Your originality is most apparent in the CLARITY with which you articulate your ideas, NOT that you are the first person ever to think about them. Avoid vague sloppy verbs like “negotiate”, “through the lens of,” or “this is a moment where…”
The quality of your research will probably be much like that of other candidates. In the interview, the committee will probably not ask you much about your dissertation itself; they will want to know how it fits in with the larger academic conversation, the limits of your project, etc. Also, the committee won’t know anything you haven’t told them in your application letter, and in the interview they will want to know about your wider academic interests.
Have Fun!! We all got into this profession because we enjoy it! That’s not to say that you don’t act rigorously professional, but in an interview you should communicate not only what you know, but HOW you know! The people who are interviewing you want you to succeed; you don’t have to convince them that you have the intellectual goods; they already think you do because they invited you! You are a colleague. Keep in mind that it is a conversation! The more it becomes a conversation, the less it becomes an interrogation…you win! If the committee is having fun, it will make a difference. Be human. Respond to questions as they occur, but keep it natural. This isn’t Trivial Pursuit. It’s okay to acknowledge when you don’t know something; keep in mind that such times are opportunities that demonstrate how you think about new ideas. Don’t be afraid to risk some intellectual playfulness. You can go out on a limb and have conversations, and be willing to stretch yourself.
It’s not always all about you. There is a good chance that at least one person on the committee will be crazy, and not necessarily liked by their colleagues… there are dynamics going on, like when you go to Thanksgiving with your in-laws. J Not everything that goes on between the people there has to do with you.
Both research and teaching are important. Don’t assume too much about what a school wants, based on its reputation as a research institution or liberal arts college. Always be prepared to talk about both your teaching and your research, and how they integrate. This will serve you well no matter what kind of institution you apply to.
Teaching – It is SO important!
Different universities may have different degrees of emphasis on research, but they ALL will emphasize teaching! In order to get an interview, you do have to have a strong letter and strong research; that is, teaching will not get you the interview. However, once you GET the interview, your teaching experience will often get you the job. Make teaching matter to you as a graduate student, and make sure you get experience with it. Don’t treat it simply as a part-time side job that you put second to your research. Make sure someone writes a letter of reference that can say something about your teaching. Invite a faculty advisor to observe you, so they can write with real knowledge.
Make teaching important to you in the interview. YOU can bring it up! Ask questions about teaching. Take time to find out about the kinds of courses offered at the university. Put together some sample syllabi, and be prepared (and excited) to talk about them. When you are talking to the director of undergraduate studies, teaching will be particularly important.
At this point in your career, a teaching portfolio is not really necessary, but you may want to leave some samples of courses you have taught or would like to teach with the committee. However, don’t make the mistake of giving the committee too many papers before or during the interview…. You want them looking at YOU, not at the six syllabi that you have constructed. Try to focus on perhaps one course that you might teach, and talk about it.
How to demonstrate your teaching skills at a campus visit
The job talk will likely be your most important teaching moment. Approach it like a teacher. Imagine the talk like a seminar, in which a lot of ideas are discussed, and everyone feels they’ve been engaged in an important exploration. Then, think of the Q&A as a class about your paper, with you as the teacher! Keep in mind that many search committees are new to the process too, and they sometimes fumble. So, YOU are the teacher. Find ways to let them know the important things about you. Take control in a diplomatic way to make it work; find creative ways to engage with difficult people. You’re at the beginning of your career, and no committee is under the impression that you aren’t! They are looking for potential, for how you organize your thoughts and think on your feet, and how much you respect the ideas of others, and yourself.
It sometimes happens that interviewers set up a sort of artificial class in which to observe you. IF this happens, discuss interesting and relevant things, listen to and interact with students, and finish on time.
How to act once you might have an offer.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. A job offer is just a gleam in the eye of a department and a candidate until an official letter arrives from the university. Until then, sit tight and be patient; don’t start asking questions about employment benefits and all those details. You can do that later.
Once you have your official offer (and if you have only one), you should feel free to ask for some time to deliberate. This is the time to inquire about various policies, money issues, and to make it known that taking the job might complicate your family situation. Through all the discussions, stay focused on the most important goal: a good situation over the long future. Don’t compromise your future relationship with your colleagues by being a tough negotiator.
If you have more than one offer, you should inform the chairs of both departments, so they can talk to each other.
If you don’t get a job offer, makes notes about the process while your memory is fresh. Review your experiences and your materials. Take a little time to remind yourself that jobs are hard to come by, and that it may not be your fault…then read something fabulous to cheer yourself up. 🙂
Q&A:
How is the job situation in Romanticism particularly?
Sometimes, Romanticism can get swallowed up by scholars of 18th or 19th centuries… romanticism does seem still to be regarded as its own “thing,” and as a component of an expertise, it still has a lot of traction. The field seems to have been quite agile in adapting itself to academic categories, without losing its identity.
Should Romanticists spin themselves for 18th-century or Victorian jobs? And if so, how?
Most importantly, you should make your own intellectual center very clear and honest. You can speculate out loud in your letter about ways that you might pedagogically fulfill the university’s needs, but don’t fake it. Be yourself, and be honest. If the university wants 100 years, that’s probably a teaching mandate, not a research mandate. They just want to know if you can teach stuff from a full century. As long as your research is interesting and worthwhile, and you can teach about a century of stuff, you’ll probably be fine.
Do interviews really sometimes happen in hotel bedrooms at MLA?
There are some regulations trying to be put in place, but you may have to be creatively professional. Don’t underestimate search committees’ bad behavior; awkward things may happen! Make sure that you have enough time between interviews, even if they are in the same hotel, or in the same city. If you are late, the committee won’t adjust their whole schedule for you.
Some departments are shifting to phone interviews, skype interviews, or interviews that happen even before MLA?
For better or worse, MLA is losing its centrality and control over the hiring process, and this does make expectations much less clear. The “rules” set up by the MLA are voluntary, and universities can choose whether to participate. Videoconferencing offers many advantages: not everyone can go to the MLA, you can reach internationally much more easily, and whole committees can be present. We are moving into an era in which this will be more and more common, and more important to think about. Check into what videoconferencing options are available to you, and learn how to use them!
For those interviews/offers that occur before MLA, you can ask for some time to consider, at least until after MLA.
Skype interviews and phone interviews present a different set of challenges from in-person interviews, and you should definitely practice for them. Especially practice when to know you should STOP talking. Practice pausing 30 seconds into a response, to watch/listen for cues that others might want to redirect or jump in. Practice putting your thoughts in order, so that if you get cut off, you have communicated the important information! In a phone interview, it might be good to talk explicitly about the process, and invite the interviewee to break in, or to expect pauses from you. It might be good to call your own voice mail, and practice talking to a machine for a limited amount of time!
In Skype interviews, be aware of the background you set up in your screen shot…there are lots of possibilities, and you can give people insight into the kind of person you are (both good and bad). This is risky, though, and a neutral environment is probably best.
Should we devote our greatest energies toward publishing, or toward finishing and polishing our dissertation?
There’s no question that having a well-placed article will speak well for you. However, the main decision is based on a very careful and scrupulous reading of the writing sample that you send in. The published article can be very powerful window-dressing, and it puts you into a different echelon of candidates…but your submitted writing sample will be most important.
If your dissertation project is under revision, and you think of it more as a manuscript than as a dissertation, how do you talk about it – as your book, or your dissertation?
Committees want to know how close you are to finishing; they don’t want to see that your project is continually evolving into nowhere. Be specific about what parts are truly finished. (Did you finish the dissertation, and now you are beginning the book manuscript?) The committee might ask “what are your plans for your dissertation”? You have two options; you can turn it into a book, or chop it up into 3-4 essays. Once you graduate, your dissertation is finished and done. If you’re at that stage, talk about your book project, not your dissertation. Talking about the book project allows you to talk about the dissertation without actually saying it. Committees aren’t expecting you to have your book already accepted by a press, and even having a book may not always work to you advantage. It is just one of many, many factors. Just do the best you can to present yourself as honestly as possible. Keep in mind that when a university hires someone to tenure-track, they’re imagining hiring you for 40 years. The big picture is the most important. Keep your perspective.
If you’ve been NOT getting hired for a long time, and you’ve been adjuncting for ever, is there a point when you should cut your losses and consider other careers? Is there a point when you’re just going to look stale, compared to other candidates?
Because the job market is tough, you are not going to look stale as fast as perhaps in the past…but you should be honest with yourself, and decide what your own psychological stamina is up for. It is tough, and you will need to look inside yourself and decide what’s right for you. BUT, don’t make a quick decision and get down on yourself too easily; be realistic about the fact that it may take 2-3 years to find a tenure-track position. Recognize that such delays don’t necessarily mean that your work is not up to par. Stay focused on what matters, and what makes you happy about your work – the research, the teaching, etc.
What other sorts of academic jobs are available? And if you get an “alternate” kind of academic job, does it hurt your chances of going back on the market for a job as a professor?
In some ways, it depends on what you’re doing. Some “alternate” jobs are perfect fits for the particular professorship. And it IS important to think about alternate jobs too. We are multiply talented people, despite being very focused…and sometimes developing ourselves on other disciplines can make our minds more fluid and mobile in terms of how we envision ourselves.
The human(ities) and the aesthetic: a NASSR response
I don’t know how many of you at this year’s NASSR attended the seminar on Aesthetics chaired by Frances Ferguson and Anne-Lise Francois, but it was packed. I came in five minutes late and wound up sitting on the floor along with fifteen or twenty other people. The nosebleed seats were worth it, though: the seminar was engaging and at times even combative. Though focused, obviously, on aesthetics—specifically, Kant’s aesthetics—the seminar also touched on wider critical questions. One of its liveliest debates concerned the problem of essentialism. Specifically, the universality of aesthetic response. Is there one? What are the ethical implications of assuming the answer is “yes”? What are they if we assume the answer is “no”?
For at least some of the attendees, the dangers of the former clearly outweighed its benefits—the adjective “essentialist” was at times deployed as a sort of polite insult. For others, there was still something valuable in the idea of a transhistoric or quintessentially human aesthetic response. Underwriting this debate was the question of what, if anything, is “essential” to our own discipline.
As someone who works in literature and medicine, I am used to seeing a rather different side to this question. The burgeoning field of Narrative Medicine often takes as its jumping-off point the claim that narrative—telling and listening—is a constitutively human activity. Scholars like Rita Charon and Kathryn Hunter have argued that illness unfolds narratively and analyzed such “stories of illness” as a baseline for constructing a therapeutic model that treats the whole patient. As Charon puts it, “Narrative studies, many physicians are beginning to believe, can provide the ‘basic science’ of a story-based medicine that can honor the patients who endure illness and nourish the physicians who care for them.”* In an effort to combat professional medicine’s reputation as uncaring and impersonal, Charon and her colleagues have begun exploring ways in which “literary” acumen can help doctors and patients better communicate. To my admittedly-biased mind, their work represents one of the best and most visible defenses of why the humanities, and English as a discipline, still matter.
What, then, do we make of the fact that Narrative Medicine is built on the back of an essentialist claim about humans’ dependence upon a particular aesthetic category (ie, narrative)? Much, I think—though again, I’m not exactly objective. I recall a conversation I had with a U of T medical student last fall on our respective degree programs. We were talking about forming a collaborative reading group for English and Medical students and faculty, and he said, “You have something we need. Humanity, understanding people. We need that.” This is an extreme statement, and I’m not convinced it describes most doctors (though it may flag, as do similar complaints of 500-student English classes, an inadequacy in professional forms of instruction). Nevertheless, his claim reminded me of the subtitle of Martha Nussbaum’s popular book Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Notice the shared verb and its object; I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Though I would be the first to admit problems in Nussbaum’s argument, her work, laudably aimed at an audience beyond the already-converted, foregrounds the classificatory struggle our discipline(s) have adopted as eponymous: what (in contemporary democracy at least) it means to be human.
It seems to me that all defenses of the humanities—at least until we change the name—involve entertaining similar debates about what “we” collectively share, whether that be the ability to desire or the inability to empathize with the Other. And until English renounces its role as the study of language, of representation, those claims about humanity are somehow bound up with the aesthetic. To me, one of the most interesting and necessary developments in the slow critical turn away from historicism over the past decade has been an increasing eagerness to reexamine the nexus of these difficult but crucial categories (cf. Ian Duncan’s NASSR plenary on the novel as the genre of “human nature”).
Unlike in narrative medicine, talking about “human” essentials need not be prescriptive (ha). Nor need it be strategic, a stance that always foregrounds a shared category’s provisionality. There’s not much room between these poles, but I think it’s a ground we’re duty-bound to explore. For example: during the Aesthetics seminar, Frances Ferguson—revisiting a point from her book Solitude and the Sublime, that Kant’s sublime involves an “essentially narrative agreement, making representative structures more important than the objects that move into and out of their particular patterns” (31)**—ventured that a broadly-encompassing aesthetic response might be posited in terms of form, not content. In other words (though this is vastly simplifying Ferguson’s point), “we” react to beauty via similar mechanisms, though how we go on to value that beauty differs. Though I don’t necessarily agree with this paradigm, I applaud its impulse. Ferguson’s suggestion skirts the boundaries of psychology (and/or cognitive science), and in doing so loops right back to the eighteenth century, when writers concerned with aesthetics—Burke, Smith, Hume, and of course Kant—were also leaders in discovering how the human mind functioned. Theirs was an Enlightenment humanism, to be sure, with all its attendant problems and historical blinkers, but they helped buoy the aesthetic as a key location for exploring the grounds of human nature.
In an intellectual climate where the humanities have become a territory that needs defending, let’s not cede that ground too easily.
* http://narrativemedicine.org/doc/Charon2004.pdf
**Ferguson, Frances. Solitude and the Sublime. New York: Routledge, 1992.
The Itinerant Scholar and a Bit of Sage Advice
Prologue: Advisor to Student
Advisor:
“You should apply to do research at the Huntington next summer, or at the NY Public Library.
Don’t you have family in LA, and New Rochelle? Or was it Manhattan? Both?
The Huntington is an amazing place to get work done—not just research but also writing. Everyone goes to the BL [British Library] but the Huntington also has outstanding holdings for scholars working on Romanticism.”
Student:
“Yes, I do have family near LA, but they live in Orange County. And you’re right about my relations on the east coast, too. My great aunt has a place on the island and her son, Michael, lives in New Rock City with his wife.”
Advisor:
“Ok, great. Draft your fellowship application materials and send them to me this weekend. Let’s start with the Huntington. If you get money, perfect, you’ll go there; if not, let’s shoot for NY since residing in OC would mean a commute. That’d be a waste of your time.”
Actual Log: Goodwill Huntington
The advisor was right. The rare books I consulted during my time as a fellow and reader at the Huntington Library’s Munger Research Center have proved invaluable to my dissertation project. However, from my first day on the Huntington’s sweeping and gorgeously curated grounds, the congenial spirit cultivated by the reader services staff impressed me most. After hearing a handful of stories about graduate students enduring long waits or general disregard at renowned research institutions, the Huntington handedly dispelled this academic urban legend.
Given my enduring interest in both Romanticism and science and the history of science and technology, I punctuated my visits to the Ahmanson Rare Books Reading Room with trips to the Burndy collection. The Burndy Library and Dibner History of Science Program house fascinating historical documents and artifacts that allowed me to supplement my archival research with necessary secondary readings.
When I needed to take a break from the reading room, I walked through my favorite of the Huntington’s botanical gardens. Otherwise, I strolled through the many beautifully curated exhibits on display. True to form, I was captivated by the permanent exhibit “Beautiful Science: Ideas that Changed the World” now showcased in the newly renovated Dibner Hall of the History of Science. Additionally, during the month and a half that I was in residence at the Huntington, I was also lucky enough to explore various rotating exhibitions, many of which catered to my broader interests in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. First, I visited “Born to Endless Night: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints by William Blake Selected by John Frame” and “Revisiting the Regency: England, 1811–1820.” Just before my time there ended, I took special pleasure in frequenting the exhibit “Pre-Raphaelites and Their Followers: British and American Drawings from The Huntington’s Collections,” which was curated by my friend and colleague Matthew H Fisk.
All such glorious distractions aside, I’ll leave my reader with one very sage piece of advice. Returning again to borrowed words, I would like to share with you the most valuable and counterintuitive information my advisor imparted to me before I made my first foray into the Munger Research Center.
Epilogue: “Try not to spend everyday at The Huntington performing research”
Advisor:
“It will be tempting to spend your allotted time (in the Ahmanson Rare Books Reading Room, from 8:30 to noon, and more, from 1-5) on nothing but transcription, research, reading. I battle the same impulse myself. But I would never write a page if I left this impulse unchecked.
Break up each day. You have a dissertation to finish. Research is of course an integral component and necessary to the completion of your project, but keep in mind that mining the archive is only part of what you do, and thus should only be part of your daily routine during your 6 weeks on fellowship. This time will give you the opportunity to forge habits that will help you to remain productive and to lead a balanced life after graduate school.
If you still work well in the morning, settle into a schedule where you write in the productive atmosphere of the Huntington during the am, and then, in the afternoons, gather your documents as ye may.”
Using the Yale Center for British Art
This week marked my first time working with an actual William Blake manuscript, having looked at the sole complete copy of Jerusalem at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. As a result—following (the always-insightful) Kelli Towers Jasper’s post on visiting the British Library—I thought I’d do well to write my own post on an equally wonderful, although similarly daunting (for some of us, anyway), institution.
Conduct Research Beforehand: Gaining access to the Center for British Art’s collection is both surprisingly easy and astonishingly free. Their prints, drawings, rare books, and manuscripts collection encompasses some 30,000+ objects. So, you can be assured there’s something in New Haven for just about any anglophile. No appointment is necessary to access the collections, nor is it required to let the Center’s staff know which works you’ll be accessing beforehand. That said, in order to make the best use of the collection possible, you’ll do well to take advantage of the Center’s fabulous search engine, which includes a wonderful “subject” component that may allow you to find works associated with whatever primary object(s) you’re visiting the Center to take a look at, in the first place.
Arriving in New Haven: It’s no secret that New Haven is inconveniently located in terms of accessible nearby airports. While you can fly into New Haven Tweed Airport, served by U.S. Airways Express through Philadelphia, your best bet will likely be to fly into Hartford Bradley International. It’s served by Southwest, every grad student’s favorite airline—in Windsor Locks, CT, 50 miles north. While the Yale University website alludes to shuttle service that serves the institution out of Bradley, I’ve yet to figure that one out. Your best bet will be to either rent a car, provided your research budget allows, or cab it from Bradley to the nearby Amtrak station and take the train into New Haven (my fav). Once in New Haven, the British Art Center is a fairly straight-shot by cab and your fare should be low.
Once at the British Art Center: All you need to do is arrive at the Center during the Prints, Drawings, Rare Books, and Manuscripts Room’s open hours (Tuesday through Friday, 10.00a to 4.30p) with picture ID (a university ID or driver’s license will do). You’ll need to check your bag at the door, but will be allowed to bring whatever research materials you need (books/laptop or tablet/notes/etc.) with you. Once in the room you’re looking for—on the second floor—the wonderfully courteous staff will greet you and ask what object(s) you’ve arrived to see. From there, you’ll need to present your identification and complete a brief registration card. While the staff prepares the materials you’re after, you’ll need to wash your hands in the sink next to the front desk.
Working with Your Object: The Center’s staff, having prepared your study area, complete with an easel, will instruct you on how your object should be handled. In the case of Jerusalem, it was important not to hold any of the separate plates vertically, since not all of them had been matted equally. The staff will monitor your work closely, and gently coach you—should you start to do something wrong (which they assured me occurs almost inevitably when you’re working materials there for the first time). You’ll be able to take notes with a pencil and be free to search through materials you’ve brought with you or request additional items along the way. My advice is to plan your visit so that after an initial period of engaging with your object, you’re able to take a break for lunch in order to process what you’ve looked at thus far. The staff will keep your study exactly as you’ve left it and—at least in my case—I returned with a renewed sense of energy and clear mind to continue to wrestle with Blake’s art.
In Conclusion: Visiting the Center proved to be a great and astoundingly stress-free experience. I highly recommend seeing what their collection might offer with respect to enriching most anyone’s research. Cheers to any other NGSC-ers completing primary-source research this summer. I’d love to hear what you all have been looking at and what your experience was like, in the comments, as well.
See you all in Park City.
Jake
NGSC Blog in Top 50 List
Just a quick announcement that we’re really happy to be listed in the Top 50 Must Read Blogs before Attending Graduate School. To find us, scroll down to the “Specialty Blogs” list and look for lucky number 33. Thanks again to NGSC bloggers and readers.
Next Thursday 8/11, 10:30am: "The Job Market" Roundtable at NASSR
“The Job Market” — NASSR Day 1: Thursday, August 11, 10:30am.
The NASSR Graduate Student Caucus is proud to present a roundtable on the job market. Come hear luminaries in our field give us critical advice on how to land the positions we’ve worked so hard for.
Speakers and topics include:
Alan Bewell (University of Toronto): Teaching issues.
Teaching portfolio: What should be included? How do you
demonstrate you are a good teacher?
Julie Carlson (University of California, Santa Barbara): When
is it best to go on the job market, before or after you are
finished with your dissertation? The MLA interview: what to
expect. Some tips regarding a good job talk, what to wear,
the importance of the question period, etc.
Frances Ferguson (Johns Hopkins University): What to do if
you get a job offer? How job candidates should talk about
their personal situations with prospective employers. Job
negotiations. What can you negotiate? leave? A prestigious
postdoc? Perhaps also something might be said about how one
should understand things if you do not end up with a job offer
or a campus visit.
William Galperin (Rutgers University, New Brunswick): The job
letter and the dissertation abstract. Genre of the job
letter: What should be in a job letter? What should not? What
are some viable formulas? Should we follow the standard format
(dissertation description,teaching experience, etc.)?
Jonathan Mulrooney (College of the Holy Cross): Interviewing
tips, as well as preparation for campus visits. (differences
between research universities, liberal arts colleges,
colleges, etc.)
Juan Sanchez (UCLA): sharing his recent job market experience
and post doc advice.
See you there!