Interview Season Comments (November - December 2019)
Please refrain from filling this thread with non-job related comments. Irrelevant comments will be deleted. There is now a new thread for general academia and "state of the field" (or world) rants.
10-15 at conferences but with video it's only restricted by a committee's time and stamina. We did eighteen in the latter scenario and twenty-one a couple years prior.
1.) Can more people confirm that VMI has notified that they are no longer under consideration ? It's rather unusual (though it does happen) for a SC to notify those who are not to be further considered prior to prospective interviewees.
2.) For SUNY-Cortland, if the Wiki is correct (sometimes people just like to watch the world burn and post incorrect data), then in about 10 days since closing they notified for interviews. This is shockingly fast for a T-T job that, I have to assume, had between 100-150 applications. Any more info on this would be greatly appreciated.
...I can also share with my fellow ancient historians that upon speaking with someone on the inside at Utah, they have not yet drafted a short list (all the more why I am suspicious of SUNY-Cortland!) yet they hope to reach out either just before or just after Thanksgiving break.
Also, I've been contacted (unsolicited) numerous times by the SC Chair at VMI who also informed me that they *will* contact interviewees prior to Thanksgiving break.
Inside info (from a very, very reliable source) regarding the "triumvirate" hire at Duke is that though they advertised for Asst/Assoc profs, they hope that at least 2/3 are Asst. Some in the Dept want it to be 3/3 Asst, but internal dynamics will likely make it so that at 1 might be Assoc. It is also very likely, as cruel as this may be, that if any Assoc. is offered the job they WILL NOT come in WITH TENURE. Not that 99% of those reading this are TT or Tenured already (lucky bastards!), but it's worth sharing what information I have.
...One last thing, regarding the Michigan Kelsey/Classics job, the SC has regularly emailed me (again, unsolicited), so any of you that may feel that any kind of "medical leave" as noted before may prohibit the SC from getting things done, I tend to not believe that such will be the case.
No, I tend to, as a rule, not reach out to SCs or anyone unless there is a very important reason to do so. I tend to think that even if one has a legitimate question it will often be seen as ingratiating by some on the SC. 99% of the time one never has any real reason to reach out to a SC.
But, regarding VMI and Michigan I did not reach out to anyone beforehand.
The published rules are far from transparent, but it seeeeeems to me like you can't be a non-tenured-but-tenure-track associate professor at Duke. I know of places where you're technically a visiting professor while they do a leisurely tenure process, but that's a little different (since it wouldn't require you to resign your current position).
Thanks for sharing! It reminds me of what this forum was once used for...
I know one person for a fact who got a real interview request from SUNY-Cortland, but that they won't finish interviewing candidates until mid-December, campus invites in January/February. One can only assume that they were a fast and efficient SC, perhaps reading apps as they came in.
Does anyone have any information on the Loyola search? It seems that the SC haven't yet requested references, but that could just be an indication that I'm not under consideration? Any insight at all would be appreciated. Thanks!
I haven't heard anything either. I assume that since they're interviewing at the SCS, we'd hear something before the SCS deadline (early December?), if we're so lucky to get an interview.
Ugh. I hate to have to say this but I’m fairly certain that the Utah claim on the Wiki is false. I spoke with someone in the Department there that I know after seeing the Wiki post, thinking that it was early, and they told me that the SC still has one more meeting upcoming to determine a short list and won’t be reaching out to contact until early December for interviews. ...so, someone is lying. Either a member of the Department or some random troll on the Wiki.
I’d like to think that whoever is misspeaking in this scenario that it’s an honest mistake, somehow, but sadly the Wiki has a history of people doing this kind of thing.
Unfortunately, I can confirm that interview requests were sent out today. I'm absolutely certain that your source must be misinformed. To clarify, this is for the ancient history search, not the ancient art one.
I'm very concerned at reading on the wiki that a school required its applicants to authorize a credit check. Any insights into how common this is and/or why it is considered relevant?
In my 5 or so years on the job market and the 100+ jobs that I've applied to, I have seen it once before.
It's rare, no doubt.
The justification that you would likely hear from said school would be something like 'it helps us to get a more full understanding of the character of the applicant that's not too different than criminal background checks.'
I think that it's bullshit and beyond fucked. I mean, it's really just another way for those of us from elite backgrounds who happen to have limited debt, et al., to stand out amongst the rest of us plebs.
This has been a thing for jobs outside of academia for some time now, though not all employers do it. As you can imagine, it has gotten pushback, and some states have banned the practice, or at least limited it to jobs that involve a person directly having control over or access to company money as part of their duties. It's all kinds of fucked up in general, but to institute it for academic positions is bullshit and whoever came up with the idea ought to have their fingernails pulled out and then be defenestrated.
Hmm. I'm deeply in debt but also have a good credit rating (700+) because I always pay on time. So what would that tell them? That I'm an idiot who's reliable?
If one year I get a few TT interviews, and the next one I don't, even though the number of job postings is the same and my CV is stronger, does that mean anything?
Not necessarily. There are so many factors out of your control - what the search committee wants, who else is on the market, what topics are really in demand. I am facing the same worry. But even if there won't be many new T-T jobs listed, hopefully you're not out of the running from searches that haven't sent out interview requests yet!
Thanks and good luck to you! I thought that each year I'd be a stronger candidate and that I'd get further in the process. I wasn't ready for regressing.
Good luck to you too! I feel the same way. But confession: every time I see on the wiki that a search moves on without me, I feel a little bit of relief. I am giving it my all and trying to get an academic job, but every time a door closes, I get closer to imagining a future beyond academia. That used to scare me, but now I see so many other areas where I could make a difference in the world, and that seems more exciting than taking a series of temporary contracts and putting my life on hold indefinitely.
You're not alone! And it's such a relief to hear someone else say this. I'm also trying my best for an academic job but the likelihood of not getting an TT job is making me prepare for non-academic work and it's also exciting (and terrifying) to make a change to something else outside academia.
Genuinely curious here, 11:12: If you're relieved (even just a little bit) every time a search moves on without you, why not just kick academia to the curb and go into one of those other areas where you could make a difference? Is the allure of a permanent job (its own kind of hell) and then tenure (probably something like heaven, if it still exists) so much more powerful? Or are there other factors that have you trapped in this purgatory? I'm genuinely relieved and happy for anyone who finds a good way out, and I'm one of the lucky ones who will probably die as a contingent faculty member at a T-2 "research" institution.
Can we all complain about Alberta canceling their search less than a week after the deadline? I know the province is going through budget cuts, but they should have canceled the search before everyone has to go through the trouble of applying...
As an American (not sure if you are as well), I completely ignore Canadian jobs. The likelihood of any Canadian institution offering a job to a non-Canadian is essentially non-existent. The job market is shit enough without being told "if literally every one of our own applicants are fucking awful, then, and only then will we consider anyone else."
...Applying to any T-T job is like trying to win the Mega Millions; applying to a Canadian T-T job as a non-resident is like trying to win the Mega Millions three days in a row.
Agreed: I was on the job market for five years, and I would never waste my time with a Canadian job. I never saw one go to an American. I also eventually stopped applying to English ones, also because I THINK I never saw one go to an American, either, or at least it was extremely rare and limited to ivy people who already had English contacts. There are foreigners in both systems (plenty of Europeans in England, of course), but that fact doesn't mean you have any kind of real chance at them as an American unless you have some kind of special circumstances.
Canadian universities typically hire Canadians for two main reasons: 1) they are required by law to give Canadians additional consideration, and 2) it is thought that Canadians are less likely to leave than Americans. At a major university like Toronto, reason 2 is less of a factor, which may explain why there are more Americans employed there than at other Canadian universities. My own view is that the best way not to get a job is to not apply for it.
I agree, there are lots of Americans and Oxbridge people in Canadian Classics departments, so it's not impossible to get an appointment; but there are also half as many Canadians in posts too. It really does mean it's a harder marker to break into which ever way we look at it. For what it's worth the U.S. institutions that won't sponsor visas are operating essentially an American First policy, not very many of these this year though.
I think it's more that they style themselves as the only international caliber uni in the country that is responsible for cross pollinating with the rest of the world so they hire whomever they deem the best. So lots of Oxbridge, Ivy, Stanford, Chicago, etc. The rest are then expected to hire from them.
Related to the Canada discussion... what about Australia? I'm curious about the Sydney job and if there is a bias against international applicants. Do they operate the same way as UK and Canada?
I think the best way to judge this is to look at the department there (or anywhere) for that matter. You'll probably see a good mix of Australians who have PhDs from institutions there, Australians who obtained PhDs from abroad (Oxbridge being popular) but undergraduate degrees from Sydney or similar, but presumably others who got jobs and had no or a less obvious connection to the place. The previous point someone made about wanting to hire someone they will feel confident will stay is probably a big concern. It's a buyers market after all, but there must be a real fear that if someone leaves the position/line won't be renewed. I think this might go someway to explaining why 'locals' get jobs. Last year a former Cape Town undergraduate got a job in their alma matter, probably because they knew no-one would stay very long in a place with comparatively poor salary and benefits by international standards, and also because they more than anyone else would understand the system and that person probably was the best fit for the job.
I know Americans (and Canadians) who have found lasting employment in Australia, but it is comparatively uncommon for the reasons given in the previous post. Imagine flying 20+ hours just to attend the SCS/AIA! I love Australia, but when I've applied for jobs there I've never been able to work up the necessary degree of enthusiasm because it's so far away from almost everyone I know.
RE: USYD: 'You'll probably see a good mix of Australians who have PhDs from institutions there'
Wrong. There is only 1 instance, a woman who got her degree from Queensland. The perfect pedigree to get a job there? BA from USYD, PhD from Cambridge.
As an Australasian academic of non-Australasian descent and pedigree, I'd suggest that most places down here will hire the way you'd expect virtually any US institution to hire. Sydney is like most places, "prestige" is a real thing, as is the very real concern that someone should feel like they belong (and the concomitant fear of abandonment by any new hire). The fact that fellows turn into permanent people in some places, or that a high proportion of faculty are "natives" in some sense, is (I think) no more or less regular than the exact same tendency at US institutions.
From the applicant's perspective, a non-Australasian is far more likely to get any of the jobs advertised than a native or a person with some other apparent connection - of the six recent searches I can think of off the top of my head, one winner was a native-born Oxbridge PhD, the other five have no (known) "native" advantages. Sydney may well do things their own way, this person doesn't know. But the OP did say "what about Australia," and Australia's in New Zealand, after all...
To repeat the comment from the first reply to the OP in this sub thread, "look at the department there (or anywhere)," but "anywhere" in the world, and not just Australia, to see how most of our systems are biased toward "natives." Also, apply for the job at Sydney if you think it makes sense, I've heard it's a nice place to live.
Woman from Queensland is, as I said, the one instance (hired yrs and yrs ago in somewhat nebulous circumstances)I did not count Otago as a local institution. As you said, it is NZ. So, you have 2 out of 12. I rest my case.
Again, please keep your comments in the appropriate threads. Conversations about race, racism and Classics should go into the "State of the Field" thread.
Sorry, I see now that my original comment could easily be read as a criticism. I don't mean that. Neither candidate is inherently implausible; they're just very different from each other.
I recall seeing an ad for a job in Gk lit at Sydney (not in ancient lit). I cannot find anymore. Can someone pls help me out and maybe even add it to the wiki? Thanks.
I think they are going to have SCS interviews, so maybe they are scheduling via Erik Shell. In his email he said he'd start the scheduling process on Dec. 6. But I feel you, I'm also very nervous, as almost no places where I applied made any kind of decision, even when they noted that they'd be doing Skype...
Has anyone not heard Loyola? I have a friend who got an interview with them, and saw that someone got a form rejection a couple days ago. I've heard nothing.
If you're hoping that they'll dip back into the general pool, I wouldn't get your hopes up. I've never seen it happen. They *might* dip back into the long list after campus invites but this is exceedingly rare if not unprecedented.
The first cut is brutal and chaotic and where even excellent candidates fall through the cracks. I'm convinced it's when all the horse trading behind the scenes skews the final result the most. Don't get me started on the $$$ candidates spend to get dossiers critiqued and practically written for them. It's another step towards ensuring that we recycle the same bs. I'm actually quite skeptical these days when letters read too perfectly as it received heavy outside edits that have little bearing on how a candidate will actually do in the job. After all, you can't have daddy advisor and expensive consultants holding your hand every day on the job.
How many candidates you think spend money on having their dossiers prepared for them? This has never crossed my mind, though I do know about the Professor Is In. I don't know anyone who did it, unless they're keeping it under covers.
Don't forget about candidates paying for mock interviews. I suppose one can argue that it levels the playing field for those who don't have graduate programs that provide this service, but it seems off to me. I know people generally laud services such as the professor is in for making the process more transparent, but once significant fees enter the picture, I can't help but feel that it creates a mandatory pay to play system just as Kaplan did for professional programs.
The only hope I have left is that I will not get a job. I only want a job to support my family, and I'm only still on the market because I have nothing else. Washing out will at least force me to find something else, which I should have done years ago (pre-dissertation) when I realized that I love research/writing but did not actually want to work with other academics!
Very sensible and it does seem that the winnowing process over the past decade has made academia even less attractive. Money was always shite but the current climate has certainly made it a downward spiral for quality of life.
To return to the original question, 10:48, I once got an interview request a few days after other applicants had already received requests. Not sure why it happened, but it did, so I would wait until you hear something before coming to a conclusion.
I have a disability so rejections sometimes take a number of days later to get to me. If you check off any of the boxes in the survey, you might be in the same boat.
And then last year there was an institution that sent their interview requests personally to some candidates, but others (me including) got to know about their interview weeks later when SCS scheduled it.
12:53, I can anecdotally vouch for the fact that the three friends that landed jobs last year (and two the previous) took advantage of heavy services (dossier edits/review, mock interviews) offered by their graduate programs AND pay to play consultants. Perhaps nothing one can do about it, but some committee at the SCS should at least be chatting about the phenomenon when assessing the direction our field is heading.
Just as placement is done for medical grads, there should be a central system where one inputs their credentials. No names. Let the accomplishments speak for themselves. References and other "metrics' we use now can be called in later to verify the goods, but I think we do ourselves a disservice by relying so heavily on processes where biases can enter into the picture so heavily.
Reminds me of the dramatic change in symphony demographics once auditions were done behind screens (surprise, members became a lot less white and male). I'd bet Classics would change dramatically if we could somehow harness the same concept for ourselves.
Blind auditions are still good, but the study behind the idea (like most work in social science) turned out to be dramatically overblown. It would be better to do what my department is now doing: every minority candidate gets, at the minimum, a longlist interview, whatever their CV looks like.
You kidding, judging by all the MCGA comments on here, people like those ensconced at Paideia will fight tooth and nail for anything that levels the playing field, long term future be damned.
@13:09, you'd probably have to start from the ground up, though, in order for this to have any impact on the wealthy whiteness of the field. Rich kids go to better schools and have better support, so they go to better colleges where they get better support (and they pay for extra better support), and so they get into better programs and can still pay for better support and then, surprise surprise, they wind up with jobs. It's pay-to-play every step of the way. Until we kill that monster from day 1, we're going to have a very white, very wealthy field.
I do think we're on a very very very very slow boat to a less male field, which is a fantastic but also frustratingly slow trend. I hope it's not too late for a somewhat even balance of genders to actually get real tenure-line jobs, though. I have a feeling that a lot of the senior people in our field will hold on until we've pretty much killed the idea of tenure-track replacements, which will leave a huge ranking disparity in the shrinking gender employment gap, pretty much killing off the apparent gains.
How does one explain the fact that symphonies were dramatically white and male until quite recently (and still favor the group heavily despite the high number of women and POC at top music schools)?
The long list interview is all good and fine, but it does little good when SCs are almost exclusively white and still majority male. You're asking committees to judge strengths and accomplishments they probably can't see and at the minimum have no experience with directly. Contrary to popular opinion, I'm a proponent of direct experience rather than the current take where anyones reads one book by a POC and all of a sudden they're woke experts.
I think what basically amounts to ghost writing of letters/statements is a troubling trend that will ensure that the interview pool is even more homogenous than ever before. I know it's "fair" as legacy admissions are considered fair but I still think it's gaming the system regardless of how the system currently classifies it.
13:20, I agree that the system is immersed in inequities and headwinds for minorities, but we have to start somewhere. Honestly, women and POC are accustomed to a higher standard and stricter expectations from birth to grave and we thankfully still have the trying. What we can do (and I speak to myself as a straight, white male) is remove as many hurdles as possible. Once each department has at least 10% POC, then the rate of change will hopefully accelerate. As is stands, having all the power players and even SCs at even the least prestigious jobs be white is preventing any long term change. Baby steps.
And before one of the MCGA people chime in, it's not diversity for the sake of diversity. It's the idea that POC always have different experiences and cultural viewpoints that I don't have as a CIS white male. I don't care if someone was adopted by a farming family in Iowa. Being visually different will impact you socially and culturally in ways I will never truly understand.
I'm most certainly not one of the MCGA people, but it sure seems like "diversity for the sake of diversity" (especially in the context of pleasing deans), with the "different experiences and cultural viewpoints" cited as the justification. In other words, I know a lot of people pushing for more POC's, but I wonder how many honestly care about what a POC brings to Homer or Juvenal.
Judged by whom? It certainly can't hurt to bring in new blood and perspectives to Homer and Juvenal rather than recycling lesser clones of senior scholars who might have said a useful thing or two decades ago. Diminishing returns, my friend. It is perhaps justified at SLACs or with the continuation of a long term project like a dictionary but I rarely see even the most touted pupil of a big name do something even remotely approaching the same despite getting placed again and again at top R1s and getting teed up perfectly to do so. Isn't it about time to share some of the oxygen and change things up? What can it hurt and it would certainly create more welcoming spaces for what has been the whitest of white nooks within academia. Let's mix it up. People act as if these POC are utterly unqualified which is pure malarkey. Once you're down to the top fifty candidates, it's a crapshoot and we've obviously narrowly calibrated our sights on a certain demographic that almost certainly has precluded an infusion of talent. It's time to stop thinking that women can't run marathons and blacks can't play quarterback. Can't believe Classics still hasn't had this Jackie Robinson moment.
I would let it pass as it's not just random rants but discussions that get to the heart of how interviews are scheduled, formatted, etc.
One thing no one has discussed is how many institutions are in fact going with video interviews. I think it's a great thing and hope it continues. I want to enjoy the SCS meeting for once without job angst hanging thick in the air.
It seems like they sent them out now/a little while ago... the person who already has SEVEN interviews seems to have made that update (along with the TLL). If they got the TLL interview, then I assume at least one position is a hardcore Latinist position.
Yes, especially compared to the last few years which have been (relatively) excellent for Hellenists. Not a great market for anyone, though. Solidarity!
Just looking through VAP postings. How absurd is Northwestern's?
"Applicants should submit the following materials: (1) A cover letter; (2) A one-page teaching statement; (3) A one-page diversity statement (optional); (4) A curriculum vitae; (5) Evidence of teaching ability and expertise, including sample syllabi (required), course evaluations (required), and video-based evidence of teaching or public speaking (optional); (6) A one-page research statement; (7) Three letters of recommendation."
Video based evidence of teaching/public speaking?! Seven items for a ONE YEAR post? Seems excessive and/or Northwestern is taking itself a little too seriously.
We've heard it's been a down year for Hellenists. As a Greek historian with a 2015 degree I will say it's down but not abysmal? Any thoughts from other specialties?
Terrible for archaeology. I looked back and I can't believe there were a dozen or more jobs every year back in the day. Now you have five if you're lucky.
@22:46 - um, perhaps you're being too narrow in your applications? I count 15 T-T jobs (worldwide) that a Greek historian could very reasonably apply for. That's no including any of the "generalist" positions. There are a good number of "ancient history" jobs in history departments this year (and last year), who might reasonably take a Greek historian as much as they would a Roman historian.
A list of potentially Greek history jobs in the US: Berea, Colby, Jacksonville, Rutgers, SUNY, UCLA (maybe), UMass Lowell, UNC Wilmington, Utah, VMI, Western Mass. Possibly Duke, too.
also, Queen's and UBC in Canada. also, Oxford. also, Sydney.
Greek Historian here. I agree with 6:04 that 22:46 should apply to more jobs. I applied to about 20, including generalist positions. But I will say, having been on the market a few years: it seems easier to get an ancient history position in a history department if you are a Roman historian, perhaps because many of them can also moonlight teaching late antiquity/early middle ages. We can too, but I've heard from one faculty member, at least, that they are a bit skeptical of that claim. And they are especially skeptical, rightly so, about the Greek (and Roman) historians ability to teach 'ancient' history where that includes the ANE and beyond. And again, I think I could do it, but it would be a risk for any department to think that someone who basically wrote about Polybius could glide in and teach a course in ancient history, especially as ancient history has (rightly) become global.
So do classicists still successfully land jobs in history depts with regularity? Archaeologists don't have this luxury as cognate jobs in anthro seem down and even more stringent about having an anthro PhD (regardless of ads that state "or related field").
In my experience it is the Wild West. I've seen people who wrote literature dissertations on historians get jobs in big R1 history departments. But I think that is not the norm. The one thing I've learned being on a couple search committees: the process is chaos on the back end and it has no logic because the people in charge of the process are not very smart outside our areas of expertise and not sufficiently self-aware to realize that. In the end that doesn't matter. Most people who get jobs will get tenure at that job, and that is excellent (for them).
I think you nailed it, 10:13, at least for classics searches. Our departments tend to be small yet quite specialized so we get searches for specialties that the committee members have only a vague notion about. Scary but true.
Do History departments, which are almost always larger, suffer from such myopia? I suppose it's all random chance that you have a knowledgeable SC member and the odds are much higher in larger departments that you will have one. I've rarely seen members brought in from other departments adding much clarity and they in fact often do the opposite.
In past years there have been a handful that clean up with interviews. It doesn't guarantee long term success. In at least several cases they washed out before tenure review. In many cases they gummed up the entire market by sitting on a number of offers and waiting until the last minute to decide. There's due diligence and then there's ocd bordering on neurotic and utter selfishness. Undoubtedly they cleaned up bc of attention to detail along with good letters and some luck with what searches happened but this doesn't guarantee that the same traits and luck will translate into professional success. From what I can tell, none have particularly distinguished themselves even if they stuck around (though they upgraded jobs in theory so they obviously got this one skill nailed down). You only need to land one and you can only accept one.
It kind of depends on what you think the function of the wiki is. If you think that it should provide a comprehensive picture of the whole process for every job, then yes: it would be nice if everyone signaled that they had received interview requests. But if you think it is simply a tool that lets people know what what point each search has reached, then those +1s don't matter. If someone says they got an interview request and you didn't, then that's all there is. It's rare that interview requests for a specific job come in waves.
19:57 is right. The wiki has been around for many years. Just about every search produces an interview list of 10-15 candidates. There has never been any job on the wiki for which anything close to ten interviews was reported, so it is useful only for knowing where searches are, not what one's competition is like.
17:30, am I right that the people who generally get 10+ interviews are grads on the market for the first time? The ones I can think of, none of whom have amounted to much (other than one being a good scholar who became department chair), had not yet proven themselves in even a one-year VAP/Lecturer position.
It may be frustrating to see freshly-minted PhDs succeed in a market where VAPs with more experience are struggling. But surely we don't want to legitimate the idea that they are unproven. New PhDs prove themselves by writing a good dissertation and doing some successful teaching in grad school.
We're currently moving towards a market where people in their 30s are expected to accept several years of low pay, no job security, and constant moves across the country (or world) before they get a shot at the permanent jobs for which they already have ten years of professional training: that slide should be resisted.
I don't think my experience is typical, but thought I would add it nonetheless. My fourth (and last) year on the market, I ended up with 10 interviews (7 TT jobs), after two years with two each for non-TT jobs, and a first year with none.
I was floored, because I went to a respected but hardly top-five grad program, had a rather tepid adviser, and wasn't really doing hot research.
It was an accident of the market that there were several SLACs and smaller programs looking more for people who slanted more towards teaching than research, and I'd done really well for myself in that respect. Now that I've been on SCs, I think that it was my track record for teaching many different types of courses and my recognition for being a good teacher both in grad school and my VAPs that helped me make short lists.
I don't know if the other "golden" interviewees are picked more for their scholarship and connection, but, at least in my case, it was quite the opposite.
It's awesome that you had the opportunity to earn kudos for your teaching as a VAP. At my last long-term post (an R1) VAP's were simply not eligible for teaching awards.
Yeah, I think "golden children" who get there by teaching is exceedingly rare. My guess is that burnishing your teaching credentials beyond a relatively basic level is not the best way to land a number of cold call interviews. I've never heard a committee member exclaim, "WOW, this person scored a teaching award at X uni - we must get her in the door for an interview!" Yes, it's definitely a plus especially at SLACs, but you're better off conveying excellence in a more limited arena of teaching and working on burnishing other areas that will distinguish you more than the hundred other apps.
14:48, you must be an old timer like me as I believe I know who you are talking about. Yes, the 10+ interviews golden child every year is the shiny object of that cycle's lust. The common traits are being OCD, having a well-known supervisor who goes to bat for them, an extablished program for their speciality, and a diss topic that just happens to be the hot ticket for several years.
15:47, we're saying they are totally unproven but the market tends to prefer potential ("upside") to experience and history has shown that this rarely pans out as expected. Also to say that being 5+ years out is a new phenomenon is totally untrue and glosses over an entire lost generation in the Xers, which is usually the outlook of the boomers but I suppose has been passed down to their millennial kids.
I don't think there's a pattern as to who gets 10+ interviews. My best year in terms of interview count was my second year on the market, followed by my fourth. It has more to do with who's looking and for what than with individual candidates I would think.
Has anyone else not heard back from Duke about the Greek TT jobs? I see from the Wiki that both interview invitations & rejections have been communicated? (I'm disabled so not sure if that box-ticking & subsequent categorization accounts for the hold up in my case...but I'm curious about if everyone else has received notifications about the status of their applications.)
Also, does anyone have any UCLA Greek job insights?
Re UCLA, the person being replaced as well as the attempted replacement (as a senior hire that fell through) indicate a job for a theory-oriented lit person working in one of the three specialties they named. Beyond that, I don't have any inside info on the state of the search, if that's what you mean.
Does anyone know why it takes a few days extra for applicants who claim a disability to receive rejections? I noticed Duke sent out rejections, but I've yet to receive one (although it is undoubtedly coming). A poster above mentioned that a delay happens sometimes because an applicant claims disability status. Can anyone say more about the logistics of why this happens?
I'm at a public university so I don't know the specifics of how laws and policies affect private institutions, but there is a regimented process here that every search has to follow. Every search gets attached to a compliance officer for oversight and every major milestone has to get checked off by the individual. Classics searches generally fly through since we more than most disciplines do not have a wealth of veterans, POC, disabled, etc. amongst our ranks. It's what it is.
On my end, I encourage this oversight and wish it had more teeth even. I believe that the system been too weak and pro forma if anything. It's like asking the DOJ to police the White House, so basically police themselves. There is little motivation for programs to want additional insight and my sense is that the process is generally useless outside stopping the most egregious cases of bias. The entire system has to be revamped if we're serious about change in higher education. Stronger oversight in this case with officers who actually have some authority (within reason). Right now they're ornaments that are a waste of money if not propagaters of an outright deception that help us feel better about ourselves by believing that equity is somehow guaranteed.
Take note of all the claims on here that it's a pipeline problem. My observation is that like hires like and will continue to do so in an institution that has helped propagate inequity for centuries whatever its original intent - e.g. training clergy. The same thing that happened with other institutions where one group lords over authority and prestige (military, police, politics, sports) has to happen in higher ed. Surprising for a "liberal" institution but I think the belief that there is no problem plays into why the status quo hasn't changed.
I wouldn't worry about a catalyst. Higher education is getting so shitty that the posh privileged segments of society will look for greener pastures. They're already gravitating towards admin so how long before they can't game the system there anymore for immense self benefit before they flee academia entirely? I give it another generation or two tops.
Interesting; at my university, admin is way more diverse than the faculty, such that I've been told that attacks on administrative bloat are a form of light racism.
Do you mean admins with authority over policy and oversight or glorified staff members given outsized titles such as Associate Dean of Counseling? We have tons of Bachelor's holders with such titles that come from more varied backgrounds than faculty. Once you get above that level the admin composition looks just like faculty.
Didn't take it as a dispute but my own observations after some years in the biz. Since the D word is so dirty to some here, I view it as letting a more natural process take place. Just as the GI Bill opened up higher ed in actuality to more social classes after decades of intent, we need something similar to actualize our latest attempts at realizing a more equal and just sociery.
Any word on UC San Diego? I know they're not interviewing at the SCS, so perhaps they're waiting until later this week or next week to send out requests...
Going back to the question of History departments hiring Classicists, how do people approach teaching World History / Western Civ classes that cover very long chronological spans (we're talking prehistory to early modern) and vast geographical areas, too. I know that we can't be expected to "know" the history of India, China or subsaharan Africa, just as much as scholars of those areas can't be expected to know ancient Rome or Greece, but what are we doing in those courses? Relying on schooling ourselves in these other periods/areas, on textbooks and engaging class activities? I'm curious, as over a few interviews, in multiple years, I've been asked that kind of question ("how would you teach X?") and find the scale of these courses unwieldy and it hard to fathom how any student learns anything from them that isn't surface level at best... maybe the emphasis is on ideas and skills, not content. As someone who never took one of these world history courses, can someone demystify them for me?
I'm Latinx and haven't received a rejection but my Asian friend has so I'm guessing blacks and Latinxs are considered protected as "underrepresented" while Asians aren't.
@16:52 My answer to SC's on questions like this involved admitting (as you did) that while no one can be an expert on all things, a few elements can make the class viable - the answer ran something like this: 1) 'My class is thematically arranged in ways that 2) highlight continuities and similarities, but also emphasize clear cultural differences and the need for non-teleological approaches to social/cultural/etc. development (or something like that). Some of the themes I've used have been: a) sedentary/non-sedentary interactions; b) state formation; c) religious/intellectual foundations; d) economic connectivity; e) porosity/permeability of ancient 'borders'.'
The idea is to show that you recognize, as you said, that no one can be an expert on all things - BUT, you're able to develop certain threads that keep students engaged and that provide meaning to the course (whether it's actually a meaningful class is debatable - they're often massive - but it's an extremely fun course to develop and teach).
Some other useful ways to take it for an SC are to highlight recent trends in comparative scholarship, e.g. Rome and Han China, that validate the overall 'global' approach, alongside the need for students to think globally and to understand long-term trends that impact us today. 'Underscoring the historical economic, diplomatic, technological, etc. superiority of China - and its relatively brief, recent decline - helps students to understand attitudes towards foreign intervention, etc. etc. etc.'
Anyway, that worked for me - at least my 3rd go around. YMMV......
19:09, wow, sucks to be Asian I suppose. We all should be telling students to think ten times before pursuing a career in Classics but why oh why make such an uphill climb unless you're masochistic to the extreme...
Honestly, Asians probably have more representation in academia than any other minority, so it's not surprising that they are on the way to not counting as underrepresented. Asians are still underrepresented in Classics, at least at the faculty level, but if you peruse most grad program pages it seems that this won't be the case for long...
This is the unsophisticated surface reading that results in many Asians never experiencing an Asian faculty member or mentor. They are "overrepresented" in the Humanities and certainly not in any scenario when compared to student demographics. What message have we been sending for decades to Asian students when most unis out there have been at least 10% Asians and sometimes over 30% in student body yet Asian faculty numbers hover somewhere around 3-5%, largely confined to the sciences and Asian studies?
I don't see a significant change in graduate students of Asian descent over the past twenty years. I know many have washed out for various reasons so to say change is on the horizon is overly optimistic.
Since we're more open now on NF, let's single out Harvard Classics. Look at their PR photos - often half the students are Asian. This casts severe doubts on the "pipeline" and "lack of interest" theories trumpeted by some on here. It's been like this for some time. The fact remains that Classics remains a gateway to prestige at places like Harvard and whenever prestige is involved, biases factor in as people from different groups claw for achievement and recognition.
Now look at the faculty. Last time this was pointed out someone defended the department by saying that they hire Jews and Mediterranean types. Right. Yes, we shouldn't force diversity for the sake of it as claimed by some, but who's forcing it? Could't it be that there are systemic factors in play that propagate narrowly defined notions of "merit" within a field that purports to study all antiquity and aspires to remain its gatekeeper? This is why many have joined the "let Classics" die camp and claims of communism and radical liberalism will not stop it at the rate we are going.
Yeah, the Latina not getting tenure is shite. Everything points to her being imminently qualified for tenure at Harvard and diversifying has nothing to do with it. Harvard's defense once you penetrate their blackout of the process is basically, we don't really get it but, anyway, by our understanding her work doesn't warrant tenure.
So, it looks like someone reported that Rutgers notified for interviews an hour or so ago.
I know that I'm grasping at straws here, but is it at all possible that these requests are staggered throughout the day ? Has anyone ever received an email hours after first Wiki notification ?
...This is beyond disheartening because not only do I genuinely feel like I am a perfect fit, but, according to my Academia page, my profile was viewed nearly a dozen times by either logged-in Rutgers faculty or was searched for from locations within 15 miles of Camden.
Last year one school notified by phone (which was nice). I think that one of the first people they called updated the wiki, so I thought I was out. The SC called me hours later. So it's possible, though I don't think it's normal practice and I don't want to give you false optimism.
I have also had hits on my pages that clearly look like they're from SCs. Free IP address geolocators help to check--and most older faculty don't know what a VPN is. In any case, their looking at your page only suggests interest in your candidacy--sometimes enough interest to get an interview, sometimes not. They're probably looking for more information, or checking to see if your materials match up with your online presence. This season one SC clearly looked at one of my pages multiple times a few days prior to sending out interview requests. I did not get an interview with them. On the other hand, I did get an interview with one school where at least one SC member had looked at my page about an hour before I got their interview request. Last year was similar. But some SCs don't look at your online presence at all, or at least not in visible ways.
The moral of the story seems to be: if they are looking at you, it's probably good, but don't get your hopes up. The proof is in the pudding.
I feel your pain my friend. The market isn't fair. I hope you find the job you want someday.
Sincerely,
Someone glad to have no interviews who probably ought not to have applied and will feel bad if I get interviews for a job I don't really want (but would do to feed my family).
There are so many entry level jobs that pay as much as a starting full-time academic. An easy jump is an academic staff job. Many starting staff positions at universities make 70-100% of a full-time lecturer or assistant prof. If you're doing it to feed the family with no long term academic aspirations, I would move to a relatively affordable city with a growing economy that is as close as possible to people you care about and not look back. Don't fall for the sunk cost or gambler's fallacy and move on asap.
A comment/story from an SC member in hopes of countering bad advice out there. At a recent meeting, a fellow faculty member was trying to advocate for candidates without publication records by noting that when THEY were in graduate school at (insert Ivy here) in the 90s, they were actively discouraged from publishing before getting the PhD. The entire rest of the SC reacted with incredulity that anybody could still believe this to be sound strategy. So, just in case any graduate student out there is still being fed this advice: do NOT buy it. SCs today expect publications. Your advisor's love of you is subjective, a publication record of peer reviewed article(s) is objective, or as close as we get to objectivity. A peer review journal article is worth far more than getting distinction on your exams or whatever other baubles your department can offer: spending excessive energy on people-pleasing stuff like that is hardly better than spending excessive energy preparing for teaching. Unless you have an advisor who can literally pull down a job for you, and there are very, very few who can, you need to focus some of your energy on establishing a publication record.
Cute, but this advice is in flat contradiction to the publicly visible record of hiring decisions at least at both R1s and SLACs. Maybe a few institutions care more about the number of pages you've published than the promise they see in your next six years, but most committees still don't seem fazed by hiring people with zero pubs. The gulf between what people think or say and what they actually do is, on the Classics job market, an abyss where you can barely see both sides at once.
On my 11th hiring committee at a second institution. Have been on committees for Classics, Anthropology, History, Philosophy, Judaic Studies, and English. We have never hired someone without publications.
Perhaps technically not zero publications but close to it, especially if an advisor doesn't intervene as they often do now with a low level opportunity. As with ghost writing and repeated mock interviews, this just makes the rich richer. I find it interesting that for a decade grads toiling away for years hardly gained any sympathy or attention but now that the millennials are entering this predicament it's some great travesty. Numbers and being squeaky wheels do matter it seems.
I think we're missing a big factor here: the type of school and its tenure expectations. 7:08 I don't know what type of school you're at, but I think this does differ on the basis of whether you are an Ivy or private R1, a R1 state, an aspirational R1, SLAC, elite LAC, etc. It can even differ school by school within these categories. Harvard and Northwestern took ABDs with no publications (as far as one can see) last year. But USC took an ABD with no publications, while Penn State took someone a few years out with a ton of high quality publications. Villanova took an ABD with a few publications.
We are more likely in a transitional period where it is *better* to have publications, but not a deal-breaker yet for a significant portion of the best schools. Supervisors can still vouch for the quality of the dissertation and some schools request the entire dissertation at interview stage (whether they read it is another matter).
It also depends on the tenure expectations of a school. Sometimes you want someone who has a lot of potential publications yet to come out, as their tenure rules might stipulate that all publications prior to starting the job do not count towards tenure. (I was told this at a campus visit once).
@10:14, I hear ya. At the last SCS it struck me how few of us made it now in the 40-60 age bracket. That's an entire generation lost. In my circle, I would say 90% never made it to a ladder track job. What a loss for the discipline.
There are a lot of different versions of "no publications." That can range from articles that are only ideas to something under preliminary review at a journal to several things a step or two away from appearing in print. Most of my recent work has taken about 18-24 months from initial submission to appearing in print. Sometimes people don't post CVs with anything prior to print, so some of these no-publication-ABD people might have several things in the pipeline that you can't see.
Regardless, they all fall roughly into the category of potential that we're contrasting with established experience. You combine it with overly exuberant letters from well known advisors and committees enamored by the what's sold as the next big thing and you get people landing jobs based much more on potential/familiarity and less on merit. Now all of a sudden you have a bimodal curve of faculty members that greatly exaggerates the preexisting demographics between generations mentioned by a previous poster.
Five years ago millennials weren't complaining so much about languishing on the market for years since they were the ones with potential beating out the established and now all of a sudden it's a travesty and the system sucks. Yeah, that's the breeze you're feeling from my eyes rolling.
2:11 here. We are a place that would not rank high on anybody's list of most desirable jobs. Shinier universities can, and do, take a risk on golden-child types who do not have anything yet. But most jobs are more like this one, even though most of the mentoring graduate students get comes from the people who got the snazzy jobs -- many advisors are giving advice based on their experience landing the top 5% of jobs, while most of their students, if lucky, will be getting the other 95. This is a different job market. We (and places like us) want to see that the person is already able to put out solid publications while having other obligations and without needing a lot of hand-holding -- and nothing says that like already having solid publications. For the record, we count anything that is accepted by a journal as a publication, whether or not it is out yet, and a book contract would also count. Book reviews would not, unless there was an argument that it made some kind of original contribution to scholarship
I was a finalist for the George Mason dig history position last year, and was ABD with 1 entirely unrelated publication. My app is significantly better this year but so far no interviews. It's a crap shoot.
Yeah, the USC search was quite ridiculous, I must say. Perhaps because they didn't have good luck with people who were offered those jobs in the earlier years? I heard they accepted and, later, decided not to come, so maybe it was a safer bet to offer it to people who would not get as many other offers.
Can someone comment on the UMASS Lowell position? I applied far ahead of the deadline -- but wasn't it 12/15? How does someone already have an interview?
You have to remember, often times (though not always) SCs will read apps as they come in. What makes the process take so long is a combination of A) not looking at any apps until after the deadline and B) difference of opinion among the SC. If a SC is on the ball, has been reviewing all along, and all are on the same page with regards to a short list, things can go very quickly. It takes about 7-10 days for admin to approve a short list after the SC has decided on one. For private schools, well, they don't always need admin approval but almost all publics do, so that's why most jobs see an average of a month turn-around time from application close date to first contact.
One last point. Be sure that you're paying attention NOT to the application close date but the application review date. Many schools will state in their ad that they will be reviewing apps months prior to an official close date. UNCW, for instance, had a review date of 11/15 but they state they will be accepting applications until the position is filled. So... even though they've already contacted their short list you can, technically, still apply until Feb/March when its been offered/accepted
Speaking of WNE, was anyone ever contacted about recommendations? The application said it would happen after the app was received. I got an email notifying receipt, but nothing about recommendations!
12:34 their app system was terrible (and similar to Berea). I emailed the chair, and he had me email HR, and I eventually got an email prompt to then enter names into a system.
Does anyone know if UC Davis is going to interview at the SCS? I checked the ad, but it doesn't say anything. This is a really implausible match for me and I just want to be done with the whole season and move on.
Great! I can't wait for it to be over. Fortunately, I have another year at my current institution, so I can take a whole spring and summer off from applying, haha.
Any more information about the Indiana position? Those who heard about an SCS interview, did it come from the school or directly through the placement service? What if you've indicated that you're not attending SCS?
I was notified of an Indiana interview via a placement service scheduling email--no direct contact with the school. Sorry, I have no insight into how they're handling people who have indicated they're not attending.
It is unusual, but not unheard of. It used to be much more common a few years ago. Prior to Erik Shell, I had friends who didn't even know about about the calendaring tool sign in to discover that they had multiple interviews they'd never heard about. At least Erik has it set up so you get a notification when you have an interview scheduled.
So, one of my three letter writers won't be able to send letters to any jobs starting January (he'll be overseas and won't have regular email access). I've thought that I could use Interfolio to have him upload a generic letter that I can then send out for him.. But a few questions..
1.) Is this part of the service that you have to PAY for ? 2.) Do you still enter the reccs email in any applications or is there a special email that is generated from Interfolio that connects to said's recc's letter and then sends it out ? 3.) How do you upload letters to an application system that doesn't really have any way for the Interfolio service ?
1) Yes, but you get 50 free letters (I believe). If this is the only recommender for whom you'd need this service you may not have to pay.
2) The latter. Each recommendation uploaded to Interfolio has an e-mail address associated with it: you enter that e-mail address and when the school e-mails that address they automatically get the rec letter back.
3) see 2). Pretty much every school communicates by e-mail now, and so you just enter in that e-mail address generated by Interfolio instead of the adviser's directly.
Hope this helps! Having been in this situation, it really is a nightmare. Find someone at your institution who can walk you through how this works, call Interfolio customer service, or just google me and shoot me an e-mail; people spent a lot of time teaching me IF and I'm prepared to pay it forward.
What I did was asking my writer to upload a generic one in an application that was open and then it was just there in the system. You don't have to pay for it and you can reuse it as many times as you want directly from your portfolio. No email needed. I don't know how to upload it without an app open or to a different system, but I know people who did it, so it's possible.
Interfolio is not free if you want a delivery option (it's $48 for 50 deliveries with "Dossier Deliver"). Since it's just one of your letters, it is worth investigating whether your grad department or career services can take care of it. It is super-convenient to have generic letters on Interfolio, but you pay for that convenience.
I had a similar situation, but just through Jan-Feb. I contacted schools that had due dates then, and they arranged for my writers to send in letters directly. Some of the schools did not require letters first round, so I'm not sure what they are doing with them in the meantime. In any case, I would ask the committee what to do.
From my own personal perspective, there is one positive change this year: search committees actually started notifying everyone that the interviews have been scheduled. My first year I don't think I received even one notification like this, while this year the majority of committees sent out early rejections. I appreciate it.
Totally agree. Even if the committee is no longer considering your application, it's a nice acknowledgment of the time and work you put into it. It's a very decent gesture.
Can anyone with experience on SCs weigh in on why rejections at the interview stage are not more common? I'm honestly curious.
Multiple-time SC member here. At my school, HR prohibits us from notifying any candidates of anything other than interviews until the search is concluded. It's an awful, stupid requirement that my colleagues and I despise. The last few years many departments have raged against it to no avail, though this year the critical mass of complaints from multiple departments may actually have an impact.
However, new developments also make it so that my SC may not have sent notifications out even if we'd been allowed. I've been thrilled to see many departments moving away from an SCS-dominated model which privileges in-person interviews at the annual meeting, and I'm hoping our next search can bypass the SCS altogether. However, this creates uneven timelines. This season, some schools went through the process very early (e.g., Holy Cross). As more and more schools follow this example, I suspect SCs will be less likely to send out rejections at the interview stage. If I'm only allowed to interview 10 candidates and 3 of those drop out of consideration because they've accepted jobs elsewhere, I'd certainly want to move down my list and ask the next three to interview. If I send out rejection notifications, however, I am barred from reactivating an application. Once a candidate is officially rejected, an SC at my school must stop all consideration of them. So even if my HR department allowed me to send out rejections at this stage, I wouldn't do it, at least for those who were in our top 25.
Is there any way to petition HR departments to allow you to update all applicants about when first-round interviews have been scheduled? You needn't officially reject anyone at that stage--just let people know that they were not selected for a first-round interview, and that it is overwhelmingly unlikely (but not impossible!) that their application will not be considered any further.
As an applicant, I would appreciate even this kind of email over stony silence.
Sometimes people just slip through the cracks. It definitely happens that a SC schedules an interview without contacting the candidate. But then it's about whether the candidate should reach out to the SC.
Nope... not sure what's taking them so long (other UC schools with much later deadlines have already notified -- Davis was nice enough to send out rejections, too). Or perhaps no one on the wiki has gotten an interview and that's accounting for the silence.
Is Arizona still the ne plus ultra of toxic Classics departments? Or has it gotten better? I finished my MA there ~8 years ago in the midst of the Reign of the Two Terrors.
Any idea how many UBC is interviewing?
ReplyDelete10-15 at conferences but with video it's only restricted by a committee's time and stamina. We did eighteen in the latter scenario and twenty-one a couple years prior.
DeleteHow many did the invite to campus? Standard three or more?
DeleteRe: VMI and SUNY-Cortland,
ReplyDelete1.) Can more people confirm that VMI has notified that they are no longer under consideration ? It's rather unusual (though it does happen) for a SC to notify those who are not to be further considered prior to prospective interviewees.
2.) For SUNY-Cortland, if the Wiki is correct (sometimes people just like to watch the world burn and post incorrect data), then in about 10 days since closing they notified for interviews. This is shockingly fast for a T-T job that, I have to assume, had between 100-150 applications. Any more info on this would be greatly appreciated.
...I can also share with my fellow ancient historians that upon speaking with someone on the inside at Utah, they have not yet drafted a short list (all the more why I am suspicious of SUNY-Cortland!) yet they hope to reach out either just before or just after Thanksgiving break.
Also, I've been contacted (unsolicited) numerous times by the SC Chair at VMI who also informed me that they *will* contact interviewees prior to Thanksgiving break.
Inside info (from a very, very reliable source) regarding the "triumvirate" hire at Duke is that though they advertised for Asst/Assoc profs, they hope that at least 2/3 are Asst. Some in the Dept want it to be 3/3 Asst, but internal dynamics will likely make it so that at 1 might be Assoc. It is also very likely, as cruel as this may be, that if any Assoc. is offered the job they WILL NOT come in WITH TENURE. Not that 99% of those reading this are TT or Tenured already (lucky bastards!), but it's worth sharing what information I have.
...One last thing, regarding the Michigan Kelsey/Classics job, the SC has regularly emailed me (again, unsolicited), so any of you that may feel that any kind of "medical leave" as noted before may prohibit the SC from getting things done, I tend to not believe that such will be the case.
I received a rejection from VMI.
DeleteCurious about the unsolicited emails - did you reach out to them previously about something else?
Thank you for the information!
Hi, 19:16 here.
DeleteNo, I tend to, as a rule, not reach out to SCs or anyone unless there is a very important reason to do so. I tend to think that even if one has a legitimate question it will often be seen as ingratiating by some on the SC. 99% of the time one never has any real reason to reach out to a SC.
But, regarding VMI and Michigan I did not reach out to anyone beforehand.
Best of luck, 7:17!
The published rules are far from transparent, but it seeeeeems to me like you can't be a non-tenured-but-tenure-track associate professor at Duke.
DeleteI know of places where you're technically a visiting professor while they do a leisurely tenure process, but that's a little different (since it wouldn't require you to resign your current position).
Previous post ETA: in Arts and Sciences. It's totally possible in the Med School.
DeleteThanks for sharing! It reminds me of what this forum was once used for...
ReplyDeleteI know one person for a fact who got a real interview request from SUNY-Cortland, but that they won't finish interviewing candidates until mid-December, campus invites in January/February. One can only assume that they were a fast and efficient SC, perhaps reading apps as they came in.
I wonder what are the specializations of people interviewed by Duke?
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone have any information on the Loyola search? It seems that the SC haven't yet requested references, but that could just be an indication that I'm not under consideration? Any insight at all would be appreciated. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI haven't heard anything either. I assume that since they're interviewing at the SCS, we'd hear something before the SCS deadline (early December?), if we're so lucky to get an interview.
DeleteLoyola requested letters about a week ago (I got an automated notification from Interfolio).
DeleteCan I ask why you haven't updated the wiki, then? That info would be helpful for some of us.
DeleteUgh. I hate to have to say this but I’m fairly certain that the Utah claim on the Wiki is false. I spoke with someone in the Department there that I know after seeing the Wiki post, thinking that it was early, and they told me that the SC still has one more meeting upcoming to determine a short list and won’t be reaching out to contact until early December for interviews. ...so, someone is lying. Either a member of the Department or some random troll on the Wiki.
ReplyDeleteI’d like to think that whoever is misspeaking in this scenario that it’s an honest mistake, somehow, but sadly the Wiki has a history of people doing this kind of thing.
Unfortunately, I can confirm that interview requests were sent out today. I'm absolutely certain that your source must be misinformed. To clarify, this is for the ancient history search, not the ancient art one.
DeleteSeconded-I got an interview request today for the history job at Utah. The Wiki is correct.
DeleteLol @ whoever felt the need to specify on the wiki that they have TWO scs interviews
ReplyDeleteSaw that too! How vain do you have to be to brag anonymously?
DeleteI'm very concerned at reading on the wiki that a school required its applicants to authorize a credit check. Any insights into how common this is and/or why it is considered relevant?
ReplyDeleteIn my 5 or so years on the job market and the 100+ jobs that I've applied to, I have seen it once before.
DeleteIt's rare, no doubt.
The justification that you would likely hear from said school would be something like 'it helps us to get a more full understanding of the character of the applicant that's not too different than criminal background checks.'
I think that it's bullshit and beyond fucked. I mean, it's really just another way for those of us from elite backgrounds who happen to have limited debt, et al., to stand out amongst the rest of us plebs.
This has been a thing for jobs outside of academia for some time now, though not all employers do it. As you can imagine, it has gotten pushback, and some states have banned the practice, or at least limited it to jobs that involve a person directly having control over or access to company money as part of their duties. It's all kinds of fucked up in general, but to institute it for academic positions is bullshit and whoever came up with the idea ought to have their fingernails pulled out and then be defenestrated.
DeleteHmm. I'm deeply in debt but also have a good credit rating (700+) because I always pay on time. So what would that tell them? That I'm an idiot who's reliable?
DeleteIf one year I get a few TT interviews, and the next one I don't, even though the number of job postings is the same and my CV is stronger, does that mean anything?
ReplyDeleteNot necessarily. There are so many factors out of your control - what the search committee wants, who else is on the market, what topics are really in demand. I am facing the same worry. But even if there won't be many new T-T jobs listed, hopefully you're not out of the running from searches that haven't sent out interview requests yet!
DeleteThanks and good luck to you! I thought that each year I'd be a stronger candidate and that I'd get further in the process. I wasn't ready for regressing.
DeleteGood luck to you too! I feel the same way. But confession: every time I see on the wiki that a search moves on without me, I feel a little bit of relief. I am giving it my all and trying to get an academic job, but every time a door closes, I get closer to imagining a future beyond academia. That used to scare me, but now I see so many other areas where I could make a difference in the world, and that seems more exciting than taking a series of temporary contracts and putting my life on hold indefinitely.
DeleteYou're not alone! And it's such a relief to hear someone else say this. I'm also trying my best for an academic job but the likelihood of not getting an TT job is making me prepare for non-academic work and it's also exciting (and terrifying) to make a change to something else outside academia.
DeleteGenuinely curious here, 11:12: If you're relieved (even just a little bit) every time a search moves on without you, why not just kick academia to the curb and go into one of those other areas where you could make a difference? Is the allure of a permanent job (its own kind of hell) and then tenure (probably something like heaven, if it still exists) so much more powerful? Or are there other factors that have you trapped in this purgatory? I'm genuinely relieved and happy for anyone who finds a good way out, and I'm one of the lucky ones who will probably die as a contingent faculty member at a T-2 "research" institution.
DeleteCan we all complain about Alberta canceling their search less than a week after the deadline? I know the province is going through budget cuts, but they should have canceled the search before everyone has to go through the trouble of applying...
ReplyDeleteAs an American (not sure if you are as well), I completely ignore Canadian jobs. The likelihood of any Canadian institution offering a job to a non-Canadian is essentially non-existent. The job market is shit enough without being told "if literally every one of our own applicants are fucking awful, then, and only then will we consider anyone else."
Delete...Applying to any T-T job is like trying to win the Mega Millions; applying to a Canadian T-T job as a non-resident is like trying to win the Mega Millions three days in a row.
Agreed: I was on the job market for five years, and I would never waste my time with a Canadian job. I never saw one go to an American. I also eventually stopped applying to English ones, also because I THINK I never saw one go to an American, either, or at least it was extremely rare and limited to ivy people who already had English contacts. There are foreigners in both systems (plenty of Europeans in England, of course), but that fact doesn't mean you have any kind of real chance at them as an American unless you have some kind of special circumstances.
DeleteI have at least three American friends who teach at Toronto. I don't know if that's unrepresentative of Canadian hiring more generally.
ReplyDeleteCanadian universities typically hire Canadians for two main reasons: 1) they are required by law to give Canadians additional consideration, and 2) it is thought that Canadians are less likely to leave than Americans. At a major university like Toronto, reason 2 is less of a factor, which may explain why there are more Americans employed there than at other Canadian universities. My own view is that the best way not to get a job is to not apply for it.
DeleteI agree, there are lots of Americans and Oxbridge people in Canadian Classics departments, so it's not impossible to get an appointment; but there are also half as many Canadians in posts too. It really does mean it's a harder marker to break into which ever way we look at it. For what it's worth the U.S. institutions that won't sponsor visas are operating essentially an American First policy, not very many of these this year though.
DeleteToronto is the exception rather than the rule. They actively discriminate against Canadians & against their own students.
DeleteI think it's more that they style themselves as the only international caliber uni in the country that is responsible for cross pollinating with the rest of the world so they hire whomever they deem the best. So lots of Oxbridge, Ivy, Stanford, Chicago, etc. The rest are then expected to hire from them.
DeleteRelated to the Canada discussion... what about Australia? I'm curious about the Sydney job and if there is a bias against international applicants. Do they operate the same way as UK and Canada?
ReplyDeleteI think the best way to judge this is to look at the department there (or anywhere) for that matter. You'll probably see a good mix of Australians who have PhDs from institutions there, Australians who obtained PhDs from abroad (Oxbridge being popular) but undergraduate degrees from Sydney or similar, but presumably others who got jobs and had no or a less obvious connection to the place. The previous point someone made about wanting to hire someone they will feel confident will stay is probably a big concern. It's a buyers market after all, but there must be a real fear that if someone leaves the position/line won't be renewed. I think this might go someway to explaining why 'locals' get jobs. Last year a former Cape Town undergraduate got a job in their alma matter, probably because they knew no-one would stay very long in a place with comparatively poor salary and benefits by international standards, and also because they more than anyone else would understand the system and that person probably was the best fit for the job.
DeleteI know Americans (and Canadians) who have found lasting employment in Australia, but it is comparatively uncommon for the reasons given in the previous post. Imagine flying 20+ hours just to attend the SCS/AIA! I love Australia, but when I've applied for jobs there I've never been able to work up the necessary degree of enthusiasm because it's so far away from almost everyone I know.
DeleteRE: USYD: 'You'll probably see a good mix of Australians who have PhDs from institutions there'
DeleteWrong. There is only 1 instance, a woman who got her degree from Queensland. The perfect pedigree to get a job there? BA from USYD, PhD from Cambridge.
That's not right at all. I see PhDs from Macquarie, Melbourne and Queensland, plus one from Otago in New Zealand.
DeleteMacquarie plus Melbourne are teachibg fellows who ended up there without formal searches.
DeleteI'm still waiting for you to explain away Queensland and Otago.
DeleteAs an Australasian academic of non-Australasian descent and pedigree, I'd suggest that most places down here will hire the way you'd expect virtually any US institution to hire. Sydney is like most places, "prestige" is a real thing, as is the very real concern that someone should feel like they belong (and the concomitant fear of abandonment by any new hire). The fact that fellows turn into permanent people in some places, or that a high proportion of faculty are "natives" in some sense, is (I think) no more or less regular than the exact same tendency at US institutions.
DeleteFrom the applicant's perspective, a non-Australasian is far more likely to get any of the jobs advertised than a native or a person with some other apparent connection - of the six recent searches I can think of off the top of my head, one winner was a native-born Oxbridge PhD, the other five have no (known) "native" advantages. Sydney may well do things their own way, this person doesn't know. But the OP did say "what about Australia," and Australia's in New Zealand, after all...
To repeat the comment from the first reply to the OP in this sub thread, "look at the department there (or anywhere)," but "anywhere" in the world, and not just Australia, to see how most of our systems are biased toward "natives." Also, apply for the job at Sydney if you think it makes sense, I've heard it's a nice place to live.
Woman from Queensland is, as I said, the one instance (hired yrs and yrs ago in somewhat nebulous circumstances)I did not count Otago as a local institution. As you said, it is NZ. So, you have 2 out of 12. I rest my case.
ReplyDeleteAgain, please keep your comments in the appropriate threads. Conversations about race, racism and Classics should go into the "State of the Field" thread.
ReplyDeleteStop being such petty little school marms. Are you guys German?
DeleteI totally disagree. I'm so happy that these conversations are being deleted and re-directed to the "state of the filed" thread. Thanks, moderators!
DeleteSo UCLA has posted another job talk in the Mellor chair search. Wow, is this a strange set of finalists.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing strange is that Brown let her go in the first place
DeleteSorry, I see now that my original comment could easily be read as a criticism. I don't mean that. Neither candidate is inherently implausible; they're just very different from each other.
DeleteSo...who is/was the other candidate?
DeletePosted where?
ReplyDeletehttps://history.ucla.edu/events/upcoming-events
DeleteI recall seeing an ad for a job in Gk lit at Sydney (not in ancient lit). I cannot find anymore. Can someone pls help me out and maybe even add it to the wiki? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteIs this Sydney half-time Language and Literature position the one you mean?
DeleteYes. Thank. I see it is part time but continuing??
Delete*not in ancient history.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone heard anything from Washington? Their application deadline was October 15.
ReplyDeleteI think they are going to have SCS interviews, so maybe they are scheduling via Erik Shell. In his email he said he'd start the scheduling process on Dec. 6. But I feel you, I'm also very nervous, as almost no places where I applied made any kind of decision, even when they noted that they'd be doing Skype...
DeleteFinals week
DeleteBased on past wikis next week is when the avalanche of notices go out.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone not heard Loyola? I have a friend who got an interview with them, and saw that someone got a form rejection a couple days ago. I've heard nothing.
ReplyDeleteIf you're hoping that they'll dip back into the general pool, I wouldn't get your hopes up. I've never seen it happen. They *might* dip back into the long list after campus invites but this is exceedingly rare if not unprecedented.
DeleteThe first cut is brutal and chaotic and where even excellent candidates fall through the cracks. I'm convinced it's when all the horse trading behind the scenes skews the final result the most. Don't get me started on the $$$ candidates spend to get dossiers critiqued and practically written for them. It's another step towards ensuring that we recycle the same bs. I'm actually quite skeptical these days when letters read too perfectly as it received heavy outside edits that have little bearing on how a candidate will actually do in the job. After all, you can't have daddy advisor and expensive consultants holding your hand every day on the job.
How many candidates you think spend money on having their dossiers prepared for them? This has never crossed my mind, though I do know about the Professor Is In. I don't know anyone who did it, unless they're keeping it under covers.
DeleteDon't forget about candidates paying for mock interviews. I suppose one can argue that it levels the playing field for those who don't have graduate programs that provide this service, but it seems off to me. I know people generally laud services such as the professor is in for making the process more transparent, but once significant fees enter the picture, I can't help but feel that it creates a mandatory pay to play system just as Kaplan did for professional programs.
DeleteThe only hope I have left is that I will not get a job. I only want a job to support my family, and I'm only still on the market because I have nothing else. Washing out will at least force me to find something else, which I should have done years ago (pre-dissertation) when I realized that I love research/writing but did not actually want to work with other academics!
DeleteVery sensible and it does seem that the winnowing process over the past decade has made academia even less attractive. Money was always shite but the current climate has certainly made it a downward spiral for quality of life.
DeleteTo return to the original question, 10:48, I once got an interview request a few days after other applicants had already received requests. Not sure why it happened, but it did, so I would wait until you hear something before coming to a conclusion.
DeleteI have a disability so rejections sometimes take a number of days later to get to me. If you check off any of the boxes in the survey, you might be in the same boat.
DeleteAnd then last year there was an institution that sent their interview requests personally to some candidates, but others (me including) got to know about their interview weeks later when SCS scheduled it.
Delete12:53, I can anecdotally vouch for the fact that the three friends that landed jobs last year (and two the previous) took advantage of heavy services (dossier edits/review, mock interviews) offered by their graduate programs AND pay to play consultants. Perhaps nothing one can do about it, but some committee at the SCS should at least be chatting about the phenomenon when assessing the direction our field is heading.
ReplyDeleteJust as placement is done for medical grads, there should be a central system where one inputs their credentials. No names. Let the accomplishments speak for themselves. References and other "metrics' we use now can be called in later to verify the goods, but I think we do ourselves a disservice by relying so heavily on processes where biases can enter into the picture so heavily.
DeleteReminds me of the dramatic change in symphony demographics once auditions were done behind screens (surprise, members became a lot less white and male). I'd bet Classics would change dramatically if we could somehow harness the same concept for ourselves.
DeleteBlind auditions are still good, but the study behind the idea (like most work in social science) turned out to be dramatically overblown. It would be better to do what my department is now doing: every minority candidate gets, at the minimum, a longlist interview, whatever their CV looks like.
DeleteYou kidding, judging by all the MCGA comments on here, people like those ensconced at Paideia will fight tooth and nail for anything that levels the playing field, long term future be damned.
Delete@13:09, you'd probably have to start from the ground up, though, in order for this to have any impact on the wealthy whiteness of the field. Rich kids go to better schools and have better support, so they go to better colleges where they get better support (and they pay for extra better support), and so they get into better programs and can still pay for better support and then, surprise surprise, they wind up with jobs. It's pay-to-play every step of the way. Until we kill that monster from day 1, we're going to have a very white, very wealthy field.
DeleteI do think we're on a very very very very slow boat to a less male field, which is a fantastic but also frustratingly slow trend. I hope it's not too late for a somewhat even balance of genders to actually get real tenure-line jobs, though. I have a feeling that a lot of the senior people in our field will hold on until we've pretty much killed the idea of tenure-track replacements, which will leave a huge ranking disparity in the shrinking gender employment gap, pretty much killing off the apparent gains.
How does one explain the fact that symphonies were dramatically white and male until quite recently (and still favor the group heavily despite the high number of women and POC at top music schools)?
DeleteThe long list interview is all good and fine, but it does little good when SCs are almost exclusively white and still majority male. You're asking committees to judge strengths and accomplishments they probably can't see and at the minimum have no experience with directly. Contrary to popular opinion, I'm a proponent of direct experience rather than the current take where anyones reads one book by a POC and all of a sudden they're woke experts.
I think what basically amounts to ghost writing of letters/statements is a troubling trend that will ensure that the interview pool is even more homogenous than ever before. I know it's "fair" as legacy admissions are considered fair but I still think it's gaming the system regardless of how the system currently classifies it.
Delete13:20, I agree that the system is immersed in inequities and headwinds for minorities, but we have to start somewhere. Honestly, women and POC are accustomed to a higher standard and stricter expectations from birth to grave and we thankfully still have the trying. What we can do (and I speak to myself as a straight, white male) is remove as many hurdles as possible. Once each department has at least 10% POC, then the rate of change will hopefully accelerate. As is stands, having all the power players and even SCs at even the least prestigious jobs be white is preventing any long term change. Baby steps.
ReplyDeleteAnd before one of the MCGA people chime in, it's not diversity for the sake of diversity. It's the idea that POC always have different experiences and cultural viewpoints that I don't have as a CIS white male. I don't care if someone was adopted by a farming family in Iowa. Being visually different will impact you socially and culturally in ways I will never truly understand.
ReplyDeleteI'm most certainly not one of the MCGA people, but it sure seems like "diversity for the sake of diversity" (especially in the context of pleasing deans), with the "different experiences and cultural viewpoints" cited as the justification. In other words, I know a lot of people pushing for more POC's, but I wonder how many honestly care about what a POC brings to Homer or Juvenal.
ReplyDeleteJudged by whom? It certainly can't hurt to bring in new blood and perspectives to Homer and Juvenal rather than recycling lesser clones of senior scholars who might have said a useful thing or two decades ago. Diminishing returns, my friend. It is perhaps justified at SLACs or with the continuation of a long term project like a dictionary but I rarely see even the most touted pupil of a big name do something even remotely approaching the same despite getting placed again and again at top R1s and getting teed up perfectly to do so. Isn't it about time to share some of the oxygen and change things up? What can it hurt and it would certainly create more welcoming spaces for what has been the whitest of white nooks within academia. Let's mix it up. People act as if these POC are utterly unqualified which is pure malarkey. Once you're down to the top fifty candidates, it's a crapshoot and we've obviously narrowly calibrated our sights on a certain demographic that almost certainly has precluded an infusion of talent. It's time to stop thinking that women can't run marathons and blacks can't play quarterback. Can't believe Classics still hasn't had this Jackie Robinson moment.
DeletePeople, it's the interview thread, not state of the field thread.
ReplyDeleteI would let it pass as it's not just random rants but discussions that get to the heart of how interviews are scheduled, formatted, etc.
DeleteOne thing no one has discussed is how many institutions are in fact going with video interviews. I think it's a great thing and hope it continues. I want to enjoy the SCS meeting for once without job angst hanging thick in the air.
No Emory news? Does anyone know what they are looking for in terms of specialization?
ReplyDeleteIt seems like they sent them out now/a little while ago... the person who already has SEVEN interviews seems to have made that update (along with the TLL). If they got the TLL interview, then I assume at least one position is a hardcore Latinist position.
DeleteThis is a terrible year to be a Greek literature person.
DeleteYes, especially compared to the last few years which have been (relatively) excellent for Hellenists. Not a great market for anyone, though. Solidarity!
DeleteJust looking through VAP postings. How absurd is Northwestern's?
ReplyDelete"Applicants should submit the following materials: (1) A cover letter; (2) A one-page teaching statement; (3) A one-page diversity statement (optional); (4) A curriculum vitae; (5) Evidence of teaching ability and expertise, including sample syllabi (required), course evaluations (required), and video-based evidence of teaching or public speaking (optional); (6) A one-page research statement; (7) Three letters of recommendation."
Video based evidence of teaching/public speaking?! Seven items for a ONE YEAR post? Seems excessive and/or Northwestern is taking itself a little too seriously.
I'm guessing it's written for someone particular in mind. If not, then they are absolutely out of their minds.
DeleteAnyone hear anything about Berea? That's the only job I'd ever call a dream job for me!
ReplyDeleteWe've heard it's been a down year for Hellenists. As a Greek historian with a 2015 degree I will say it's down but not abysmal? Any thoughts from other specialties?
ReplyDeleteTerrible for archaeology. I looked back and I can't believe there were a dozen or more jobs every year back in the day. Now you have five if you're lucky.
DeleteI'd say it's relatively good for philosophers? But those guys are in some eternal hell of zero jobs, so they should have at least one good year.
DeleteSorry, but with one (1) job in Greek history in North America, how is it anything other than abysmal?
Delete@22:46 - um, perhaps you're being too narrow in your applications? I count 15 T-T jobs (worldwide) that a Greek historian could very reasonably apply for. That's no including any of the "generalist" positions. There are a good number of "ancient history" jobs in history departments this year (and last year), who might reasonably take a Greek historian as much as they would a Roman historian.
DeleteA list of potentially Greek history jobs in the US: Berea, Colby, Jacksonville, Rutgers, SUNY, UCLA (maybe), UMass Lowell, UNC Wilmington, Utah, VMI, Western Mass. Possibly Duke, too.
also, Queen's and UBC in Canada.
also, Oxford.
also, Sydney.
Greek Historian here. I agree with 6:04 that 22:46 should apply to more jobs. I applied to about 20, including generalist positions. But I will say, having been on the market a few years: it seems easier to get an ancient history position in a history department if you are a Roman historian, perhaps because many of them can also moonlight teaching late antiquity/early middle ages. We can too, but I've heard from one faculty member, at least, that they are a bit skeptical of that claim. And they are especially skeptical, rightly so, about the Greek (and Roman) historians ability to teach 'ancient' history where that includes the ANE and beyond. And again, I think I could do it, but it would be a risk for any department to think that someone who basically wrote about Polybius could glide in and teach a course in ancient history, especially as ancient history has (rightly) become global.
DeleteSo do classicists still successfully land jobs in history depts with regularity? Archaeologists don't have this luxury as cognate jobs in anthro seem down and even more stringent about having an anthro PhD (regardless of ads that state "or related field").
DeleteIn my experience it is the Wild West. I've seen people who wrote literature dissertations on historians get jobs in big R1 history departments. But I think that is not the norm. The one thing I've learned being on a couple search committees: the process is chaos on the back end and it has no logic because the people in charge of the process are not very smart outside our areas of expertise and not sufficiently self-aware to realize that. In the end that doesn't matter. Most people who get jobs will get tenure at that job, and that is excellent (for them).
DeleteI think you nailed it, 10:13, at least for classics searches. Our departments tend to be small yet quite specialized so we get searches for specialties that the committee members have only a vague notion about. Scary but true.
DeleteDo History departments, which are almost always larger, suffer from such myopia? I suppose it's all random chance that you have a knowledgeable SC member and the odds are much higher in larger departments that you will have one. I've rarely seen members brought in from other departments adding much clarity and they in fact often do the opposite.
Did anyone else hear from Emory? Seems odd that there are not any plus-ones there. (Compare with Duke, e.g.)
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I'm suspicious of this seven interview person. There was a similar one last year with ten and it just seemed improbable.
DeleteIn past years there have been a handful that clean up with interviews. It doesn't guarantee long term success. In at least several cases they washed out before tenure review. In many cases they gummed up the entire market by sitting on a number of offers and waiting until the last minute to decide. There's due diligence and then there's ocd bordering on neurotic and utter selfishness. Undoubtedly they cleaned up bc of attention to detail along with good letters and some luck with what searches happened but this doesn't guarantee that the same traits and luck will translate into professional success. From what I can tell, none have particularly distinguished themselves even if they stuck around (though they upgraded jobs in theory so they obviously got this one skill nailed down). You only need to land one and you can only accept one.
DeleteIt kind of depends on what you think the function of the wiki is. If you think that it should provide a comprehensive picture of the whole process for every job, then yes: it would be nice if everyone signaled that they had received interview requests. But if you think it is simply a tool that lets people know what what point each search has reached, then those +1s don't matter. If someone says they got an interview request and you didn't, then that's all there is. It's rare that interview requests for a specific job come in waves.
Delete19:57 is right. The wiki has been around for many years. Just about every search produces an interview list of 10-15 candidates. There has never been any job on the wiki for which anything close to ten interviews was reported, so it is useful only for knowing where searches are, not what one's competition is like.
Delete17:30, am I right that the people who generally get 10+ interviews are grads on the market for the first time? The ones I can think of, none of whom have amounted to much (other than one being a good scholar who became department chair), had not yet proven themselves in even a one-year VAP/Lecturer position.
It may be frustrating to see freshly-minted PhDs succeed in a market where VAPs with more experience are struggling. But surely we don't want to legitimate the idea that they are unproven. New PhDs prove themselves by writing a good dissertation and doing some successful teaching in grad school.
DeleteWe're currently moving towards a market where people in their 30s are expected to accept several years of low pay, no job security, and constant moves across the country (or world) before they get a shot at the permanent jobs for which they already have ten years of professional training: that slide should be resisted.
I don't think my experience is typical, but thought I would add it nonetheless. My fourth (and last) year on the market, I ended up with 10 interviews (7 TT jobs), after two years with two each for non-TT jobs, and a first year with none.
DeleteI was floored, because I went to a respected but hardly top-five grad program, had a rather tepid adviser, and wasn't really doing hot research.
It was an accident of the market that there were several SLACs and smaller programs looking more for people who slanted more towards teaching than research, and I'd done really well for myself in that respect. Now that I've been on SCs, I think that it was my track record for teaching many different types of courses and my recognition for being a good teacher both in grad school and my VAPs that helped me make short lists.
I don't know if the other "golden" interviewees are picked more for their scholarship and connection, but, at least in my case, it was quite the opposite.
It's awesome that you had the opportunity to earn kudos for your teaching as a VAP. At my last long-term post (an R1) VAP's were simply not eligible for teaching awards.
DeleteYeah, I think "golden children" who get there by teaching is exceedingly rare. My guess is that burnishing your teaching credentials beyond a relatively basic level is not the best way to land a number of cold call interviews. I've never heard a committee member exclaim, "WOW, this person scored a teaching award at X uni - we must get her in the door for an interview!" Yes, it's definitely a plus especially at SLACs, but you're better off conveying excellence in a more limited arena of teaching and working on burnishing other areas that will distinguish you more than the hundred other apps.
Delete14:48, you must be an old timer like me as I believe I know who you are talking about. Yes, the 10+ interviews golden child every year is the shiny object of that cycle's lust. The common traits are being OCD, having a well-known supervisor who goes to bat for them, an extablished program for their speciality, and a diss topic that just happens to be the hot ticket for several years.
ReplyDelete15:47, we're saying they are totally unproven but the market tends to prefer potential ("upside") to experience and history has shown that this rarely pans out as expected. Also to say that being 5+ years out is a new phenomenon is totally untrue and glosses over an entire lost generation in the Xers, which is usually the outlook of the boomers but I suppose has been passed down to their millennial kids.
I don't think there's a pattern as to who gets 10+ interviews. My best year in terms of interview count was my second year on the market, followed by my fourth. It has more to do with who's looking and for what than with individual candidates I would think.
DeleteHas anyone else not heard back from Duke about the Greek TT jobs? I see from the Wiki that both interview invitations & rejections have been communicated? (I'm disabled so not sure if that box-ticking & subsequent categorization accounts for the hold up in my case...but I'm curious about if everyone else has received notifications about the status of their applications.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, does anyone have any UCLA Greek job insights?
Re UCLA, the person being replaced as well as the attempted replacement (as a senior hire that fell through) indicate a job for a theory-oriented lit person working in one of the three specialties they named. Beyond that, I don't have any inside info on the state of the search, if that's what you mean.
ReplyDeleteWould you mind saying who is being replaced?
Deleteone assumes the person who left for a place to the north, a school in San Francisco ("well, not in San Francisco, but nearby...")
DeleteMario Telo.
DeleteThank you for the information! It's been so long that I must wonder whether they already made the interview calls, but no one on the Wiki got it.
DeleteDoes anyone know why it takes a few days extra for applicants who claim a disability to receive rejections? I noticed Duke sent out rejections, but I've yet to receive one (although it is undoubtedly coming). A poster above mentioned that a delay happens sometimes because an applicant claims disability status. Can anyone say more about the logistics of why this happens?
ReplyDeleteI'm also curious about this!
DeleteI'm at a public university so I don't know the specifics of how laws and policies affect private institutions, but there is a regimented process here that every search has to follow. Every search gets attached to a compliance officer for oversight and every major milestone has to get checked off by the individual. Classics searches generally fly through since we more than most disciplines do not have a wealth of veterans, POC, disabled, etc. amongst our ranks. It's what it is.
DeleteOn my end, I encourage this oversight and wish it had more teeth even. I believe that the system been too weak and pro forma if anything. It's like asking the DOJ to police the White House, so basically police themselves. There is little motivation for programs to want additional insight and my sense is that the process is generally useless outside stopping the most egregious cases of bias. The entire system has to be revamped if we're serious about change in higher education. Stronger oversight in this case with officers who actually have some authority (within reason). Right now they're ornaments that are a waste of money if not propagaters of an outright deception that help us feel better about ourselves by believing that equity is somehow guaranteed.
Take note of all the claims on here that it's a pipeline problem. My observation is that like hires like and will continue to do so in an institution that has helped propagate inequity for centuries whatever its original intent - e.g. training clergy. The same thing that happened with other institutions where one group lords over authority and prestige (military, police, politics, sports) has to happen in higher ed. Surprising for a "liberal" institution but I think the belief that there is no problem plays into why the status quo hasn't changed.
Thanks for your comments on the logistics -- or, at least, giving me information about the process that allows me to make inferences.
DeleteRegarding your paragraphs 2+3, I'm not disputing the value of oversight, nor diversification in the academy.
I wouldn't worry about a catalyst. Higher education is getting so shitty that the posh privileged segments of society will look for greener pastures. They're already gravitating towards admin so how long before they can't game the system there anymore for immense self benefit before they flee academia entirely? I give it another generation or two tops.
DeleteInteresting; at my university, admin is way more diverse than the faculty, such that I've been told that attacks on administrative bloat are a form of light racism.
DeleteDo you mean admins with authority over policy and oversight or glorified staff members given outsized titles such as Associate Dean of Counseling? We have tons of Bachelor's holders with such titles that come from more varied backgrounds than faculty. Once you get above that level the admin composition looks just like faculty.
DeleteDidn't take it as a dispute but my own observations after some years in the biz. Since the D word is so dirty to some here, I view it as letting a more natural process take place. Just as the GI Bill opened up higher ed in actuality to more social classes after decades of intent, we need something similar to actualize our latest attempts at realizing a more equal and just sociery.
ReplyDeleteAny word on UC San Diego? I know they're not interviewing at the SCS, so perhaps they're waiting until later this week or next week to send out requests...
ReplyDeleteGoing back to the question of History departments hiring Classicists, how do people approach teaching World History / Western Civ classes that cover very long chronological spans (we're talking prehistory to early modern) and vast geographical areas, too. I know that we can't be expected to "know" the history of India, China or subsaharan Africa, just as much as scholars of those areas can't be expected to know ancient Rome or Greece, but what are we doing in those courses? Relying on schooling ourselves in these other periods/areas, on textbooks and engaging class activities? I'm curious, as over a few interviews, in multiple years, I've been asked that kind of question ("how would you teach X?") and find the scale of these courses unwieldy and it hard to fathom how any student learns anything from them that isn't surface level at best... maybe the emphasis is on ideas and skills, not content. As someone who never took one of these world history courses, can someone demystify them for me?
ReplyDeleteFirst time poster, longtime lurker. I also have a disability, ticked the box, and yet to receive a rejection note. Just for the record.
ReplyDeleteI'm Latinx and haven't received a rejection but my Asian friend has so I'm guessing blacks and Latinxs are considered protected as "underrepresented" while Asians aren't.
ReplyDelete@16:52 My answer to SC's on questions like this involved admitting (as you did) that while no one can be an expert on all things, a few elements can make the class viable - the answer ran something like this: 1) 'My class is thematically arranged in ways that 2) highlight continuities and similarities, but also emphasize clear cultural differences and the need for non-teleological approaches to social/cultural/etc. development (or something like that). Some of the themes I've used have been: a) sedentary/non-sedentary interactions; b) state formation; c) religious/intellectual foundations; d) economic connectivity; e) porosity/permeability of ancient 'borders'.'
ReplyDeleteThe idea is to show that you recognize, as you said, that no one can be an expert on all things - BUT, you're able to develop certain threads that keep students engaged and that provide meaning to the course (whether it's actually a meaningful class is debatable - they're often massive - but it's an extremely fun course to develop and teach).
Some other useful ways to take it for an SC are to highlight recent trends in comparative scholarship, e.g. Rome and Han China, that validate the overall 'global' approach, alongside the need for students to think globally and to understand long-term trends that impact us today. 'Underscoring the historical economic, diplomatic, technological, etc. superiority of China - and its relatively brief, recent decline - helps students to understand attitudes towards foreign intervention, etc. etc. etc.'
Anyway, that worked for me - at least my 3rd go around. YMMV......
This was a really useful and generous response! Thanks!
Delete19:09, wow, sucks to be Asian I suppose. We all should be telling students to think ten times before pursuing a career in Classics but why oh why make such an uphill climb unless you're masochistic to the extreme...
ReplyDeleteYup, just say no. We can do it, especially for our SOC.
DeleteHonestly, Asians probably have more representation in academia than any other minority, so it's not surprising that they are on the way to not counting as underrepresented. Asians are still underrepresented in Classics, at least at the faculty level, but if you peruse most grad program pages it seems that this won't be the case for long...
ReplyDeleteThis is the unsophisticated surface reading that results in many Asians never experiencing an Asian faculty member or mentor. They are "overrepresented" in the Humanities and certainly not in any scenario when compared to student demographics. What message have we been sending for decades to Asian students when most unis out there have been at least 10% Asians and sometimes over 30% in student body yet Asian faculty numbers hover somewhere around 3-5%, largely confined to the sciences and Asian studies?
DeleteI don't see a significant change in graduate students of Asian descent over the past twenty years. I know many have washed out for various reasons so to say change is on the horizon is overly optimistic.
NOT overrepresented, I should have said...dangers of typing on a phone.
DeleteSince we're more open now on NF, let's single out Harvard Classics. Look at their PR photos - often half the students are Asian. This casts severe doubts on the "pipeline" and "lack of interest" theories trumpeted by some on here. It's been like this for some time. The fact remains that Classics remains a gateway to prestige at places like Harvard and whenever prestige is involved, biases factor in as people from different groups claw for achievement and recognition.
DeleteNow look at the faculty. Last time this was pointed out someone defended the department by saying that they hire Jews and Mediterranean types. Right. Yes, we shouldn't force diversity for the sake of it as claimed by some, but who's forcing it? Could't it be that there are systemic factors in play that propagate narrowly defined notions of "merit" within a field that purports to study all antiquity and aspires to remain its gatekeeper? This is why many have joined the "let Classics" die camp and claims of communism and radical liberalism will not stop it at the rate we are going.
Yeah, the Latina not getting tenure is shite. Everything points to her being imminently qualified for tenure at Harvard and diversifying has nothing to do with it. Harvard's defense once you penetrate their blackout of the process is basically, we don't really get it but, anyway, by our understanding her work doesn't warrant tenure.
DeleteWhile these conversations are valuable, please move them to the "state of the field" thread. We won't delete this one, but future ones will be.
DeleteSo, it looks like someone reported that Rutgers notified for interviews an hour or so ago.
ReplyDeleteI know that I'm grasping at straws here, but is it at all possible that these requests are staggered throughout the day ? Has anyone ever received an email hours after first Wiki notification ?
...This is beyond disheartening because not only do I genuinely feel like I am a perfect fit, but, according to my Academia page, my profile was viewed nearly a dozen times by either logged-in Rutgers faculty or was searched for from locations within 15 miles of Camden.
Last year one school notified by phone (which was nice). I think that one of the first people they called updated the wiki, so I thought I was out. The SC called me hours later. So it's possible, though I don't think it's normal practice and I don't want to give you false optimism.
DeleteWishing you the best of luck.
I have only once received an interview request after a wiki update, in 4 years on the market. So, it's pretty rare (at least in my experience).
DeleteI have also had hits on my pages that clearly look like they're from SCs. Free IP address geolocators help to check--and most older faculty don't know what a VPN is. In any case, their looking at your page only suggests interest in your candidacy--sometimes enough interest to get an interview, sometimes not. They're probably looking for more information, or checking to see if your materials match up with your online presence. This season one SC clearly looked at one of my pages multiple times a few days prior to sending out interview requests. I did not get an interview with them. On the other hand, I did get an interview with one school where at least one SC member had looked at my page about an hour before I got their interview request. Last year was similar. But some SCs don't look at your online presence at all, or at least not in visible ways.
DeleteThe moral of the story seems to be: if they are looking at you, it's probably good, but don't get your hopes up. The proof is in the pudding.
I feel your pain my friend. The market isn't fair. I hope you find the job you want someday.
ReplyDeleteSincerely,
Someone glad to have no interviews who probably ought not to have applied and will feel bad if I get interviews for a job I don't really want (but would do to feed my family).
There are so many entry level jobs that pay as much as a starting full-time academic. An easy jump is an academic staff job. Many starting staff positions at universities make 70-100% of a full-time lecturer or assistant prof. If you're doing it to feed the family with no long term academic aspirations, I would move to a relatively affordable city with a growing economy that is as close as possible to people you care about and not look back. Don't fall for the sunk cost or gambler's fallacy and move on asap.
DeleteA comment/story from an SC member in hopes of countering bad advice out there. At a recent meeting, a fellow faculty member was trying to advocate for candidates without publication records by noting that when THEY were in graduate school at (insert Ivy here) in the 90s, they were actively discouraged from publishing before getting the PhD. The entire rest of the SC reacted with incredulity that anybody could still believe this to be sound strategy. So, just in case any graduate student out there is still being fed this advice: do NOT buy it. SCs today expect publications. Your advisor's love of you is subjective, a publication record of peer reviewed article(s) is objective, or as close as we get to objectivity. A peer review journal article is worth far more than getting distinction on your exams or whatever other baubles your department can offer: spending excessive energy on people-pleasing stuff like that is hardly better than spending excessive energy preparing for teaching. Unless you have an advisor who can literally pull down a job for you, and there are very, very few who can, you need to focus some of your energy on establishing a publication record.
ReplyDeleteCute, but this advice is in flat contradiction to the publicly visible record of hiring decisions at least at both R1s and SLACs. Maybe a few institutions care more about the number of pages you've published than the promise they see in your next six years, but most committees still don't seem fazed by hiring people with zero pubs. The gulf between what people think or say and what they actually do is, on the Classics job market, an abyss where you can barely see both sides at once.
DeleteSeconded! And nicely put, too.
DeleteOn my 11th hiring committee at a second institution. Have been on committees for Classics, Anthropology, History, Philosophy, Judaic Studies, and English. We have never hired someone without publications.
DeletePerhaps technically not zero publications but close to it, especially if an advisor doesn't intervene as they often do now with a low level opportunity. As with ghost writing and repeated mock interviews, this just makes the rich richer. I find it interesting that for a decade grads toiling away for years hardly gained any sympathy or attention but now that the millennials are entering this predicament it's some great travesty. Numbers and being squeaky wheels do matter it seems.
DeleteI think we're missing a big factor here: the type of school and its tenure expectations. 7:08 I don't know what type of school you're at, but I think this does differ on the basis of whether you are an Ivy or private R1, a R1 state, an aspirational R1, SLAC, elite LAC, etc. It can even differ school by school within these categories. Harvard and Northwestern took ABDs with no publications (as far as one can see) last year. But USC took an ABD with no publications, while Penn State took someone a few years out with a ton of high quality publications. Villanova took an ABD with a few publications.
DeleteWe are more likely in a transitional period where it is *better* to have publications, but not a deal-breaker yet for a significant portion of the best schools. Supervisors can still vouch for the quality of the dissertation and some schools request the entire dissertation at interview stage (whether they read it is another matter).
It also depends on the tenure expectations of a school. Sometimes you want someone who has a lot of potential publications yet to come out, as their tenure rules might stipulate that all publications prior to starting the job do not count towards tenure. (I was told this at a campus visit once).
@10:14, I hear ya. At the last SCS it struck me how few of us made it now in the 40-60 age bracket. That's an entire generation lost. In my circle, I would say 90% never made it to a ladder track job. What a loss for the discipline.
DeleteThere are a lot of different versions of "no publications." That can range from articles that are only ideas to something under preliminary review at a journal to several things a step or two away from appearing in print. Most of my recent work has taken about 18-24 months from initial submission to appearing in print. Sometimes people don't post CVs with anything prior to print, so some of these no-publication-ABD people might have several things in the pipeline that you can't see.
DeleteRegardless, they all fall roughly into the category of potential that we're contrasting with established experience. You combine it with overly exuberant letters from well known advisors and committees enamored by the what's sold as the next big thing and you get people landing jobs based much more on potential/familiarity and less on merit. Now all of a sudden you have a bimodal curve of faculty members that greatly exaggerates the preexisting demographics between generations mentioned by a previous poster.
DeleteFive years ago millennials weren't complaining so much about languishing on the market for years since they were the ones with potential beating out the established and now all of a sudden it's a travesty and the system sucks. Yeah, that's the breeze you're feeling from my eyes rolling.
2:11 here. We are a place that would not rank high on anybody's list of most desirable jobs. Shinier universities can, and do, take a risk on golden-child types who do not have anything yet. But most jobs are more like this one, even though most of the mentoring graduate students get comes from the people who got the snazzy jobs -- many advisors are giving advice based on their experience landing the top 5% of jobs, while most of their students, if lucky, will be getting the other 95. This is a different job market. We (and places like us) want to see that the person is already able to put out solid publications while having other obligations and without needing a lot of hand-holding -- and nothing says that like already having solid publications. For the record, we count anything that is accepted by a journal as a publication, whether or not it is out yet, and a book contract would also count. Book reviews would not, unless there was an argument that it made some kind of original contribution to scholarship
DeleteUSC hired two people last year with 0 double-blind journal articles between them. Come on.
DeleteI was a finalist for the George Mason dig history position last year, and was ABD with 1 entirely unrelated publication. My app is significantly better this year but so far no interviews. It's a crap shoot.
DeleteYeah, the USC search was quite ridiculous, I must say. Perhaps because they didn't have good luck with people who were offered those jobs in the earlier years? I heard they accepted and, later, decided not to come, so maybe it was a safer bet to offer it to people who would not get as many other offers.
DeleteThe USC hires are young, energetic, and have done more than most to promote classics outside of the academy - great choices, in my view!
DeleteCan someone comment on the UMASS Lowell position? I applied far ahead of the deadline -- but wasn't it 12/15? How does someone already have an interview?
ReplyDelete12/15 was Western New England. 12/2 was UMass Lowell. SUNY also moved quickly. It's the end of year rush now.
DeleteYou have to remember, often times (though not always) SCs will read apps as they come in. What makes the process take so long is a combination of A) not looking at any apps until after the deadline and B) difference of opinion among the SC. If a SC is on the ball, has been reviewing all along, and all are on the same page with regards to a short list, things can go very quickly. It takes about 7-10 days for admin to approve a short list after the SC has decided on one. For private schools, well, they don't always need admin approval but almost all publics do, so that's why most jobs see an average of a month turn-around time from application close date to first contact.
DeleteOne last point. Be sure that you're paying attention NOT to the application close date but the application review date. Many schools will state in their ad that they will be reviewing apps months prior to an official close date. UNCW, for instance, had a review date of 11/15 but they state they will be accepting applications until the position is filled. So... even though they've already contacted their short list you can, technically, still apply until Feb/March when its been offered/accepted
Speaking of WNE, was anyone ever contacted about recommendations? The application said it would happen after the app was received. I got an email notifying receipt, but nothing about recommendations!
Delete12:34 their app system was terrible (and similar to Berea). I emailed the chair, and he had me email HR, and I eventually got an email prompt to then enter names into a system.
DeleteI think the deadline was 12/2. Either way, the SC moved quickly, but not impossibly so.
ReplyDeleteDid anyone else not get a Utah interview, but also not receive a rejection yet?
ReplyDeleteUBC is the same for me so I suspect it's SOP for public schools to leave it open.
DeleteMe again. Oh UBC sent rejections as well? I didn't get one of those either.
DeleteAsking bc here and on AcademicJobsWiki, people posted rejection letters last week.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete?
DeleteDoes anyone know if UC Davis is going to interview at the SCS? I checked the ad, but it doesn't say anything. This is a really implausible match for me and I just want to be done with the whole season and move on.
ReplyDeleteProbably since it's a classics program running a standard search and it's still the default procedure barring details in the ad.
DeleteGreat! I can't wait for it to be over. Fortunately, I have another year at my current institution, so I can take a whole spring and summer off from applying, haha.
DeleteSame here. What a time to be administering final exams.
DeleteAny more information about the Indiana position? Those who heard about an SCS interview, did it come from the school or directly through the placement service? What if you've indicated that you're not attending SCS?
ReplyDeleteI was notified of an Indiana interview via a placement service scheduling email--no direct contact with the school. Sorry, I have no insight into how they're handling people who have indicated they're not attending.
DeleteIs this normal? It seems a little callous not to send candidates a cursory email, even just to tell them who they'll meet in the interview.
DeleteIt is unusual, but not unheard of. It used to be much more common a few years ago. Prior to Erik Shell, I had friends who didn't even know about about the calendaring tool sign in to discover that they had multiple interviews they'd never heard about. At least Erik has it set up so you get a notification when you have an interview scheduled.
DeleteQuestion about Letters of Rec and Interfolio...
ReplyDeleteSo, one of my three letter writers won't be able to send letters to any jobs starting January (he'll be overseas and won't have regular email access). I've thought that I could use Interfolio to have him upload a generic letter that I can then send out for him.. But a few questions..
1.) Is this part of the service that you have to PAY for ?
2.) Do you still enter the reccs email in any applications or is there a special email that is generated from Interfolio that connects to said's recc's letter and then sends it out ?
3.) How do you upload letters to an application system that doesn't really have any way for the Interfolio service ?
...Any info would be greatly appreciated.
I had a version of this same problem.
Delete1) Yes, but you get 50 free letters (I believe). If this is the only recommender for whom you'd need this service you may not have to pay.
2) The latter. Each recommendation uploaded to Interfolio has an e-mail address associated with it: you enter that e-mail address and when the school e-mails that address they automatically get the rec letter back.
3) see 2). Pretty much every school communicates by e-mail now, and so you just enter in that e-mail address generated by Interfolio instead of the adviser's directly.
Hope this helps! Having been in this situation, it really is a nightmare. Find someone at your institution who can walk you through how this works, call Interfolio customer service, or just google me and shoot me an e-mail; people spent a lot of time teaching me IF and I'm prepared to pay it forward.
What I did was asking my writer to upload a generic one in an application that was open and then it was just there in the system. You don't have to pay for it and you can reuse it as many times as you want directly from your portfolio. No email needed.
DeleteI don't know how to upload it without an app open or to a different system, but I know people who did it, so it's possible.
Interfolio is not free if you want a delivery option (it's $48 for 50 deliveries with "Dossier Deliver"). Since it's just one of your letters, it is worth investigating whether your grad department or career services can take care of it. It is super-convenient to have generic letters on Interfolio, but you pay for that convenience.
DeleteSorry about that!
DeleteI had a similar situation, but just through Jan-Feb. I contacted schools that had due dates then, and they arranged for my writers to send in letters directly. Some of the schools did not require letters first round, so I'm not sure what they are doing with them in the meantime. In any case, I would ask the committee what to do.
DeleteFrom my own personal perspective, there is one positive change this year: search committees actually started notifying everyone that the interviews have been scheduled. My first year I don't think I received even one notification like this, while this year the majority of committees sent out early rejections. I appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree. Even if the committee is no longer considering your application, it's a nice acknowledgment of the time and work you put into it. It's a very decent gesture.
DeleteCan anyone with experience on SCs weigh in on why rejections at the interview stage are not more common? I'm honestly curious.
Multiple-time SC member here. At my school, HR prohibits us from notifying any candidates of anything other than interviews until the search is concluded. It's an awful, stupid requirement that my colleagues and I despise. The last few years many departments have raged against it to no avail, though this year the critical mass of complaints from multiple departments may actually have an impact.
DeleteHowever, new developments also make it so that my SC may not have sent notifications out even if we'd been allowed. I've been thrilled to see many departments moving away from an SCS-dominated model which privileges in-person interviews at the annual meeting, and I'm hoping our next search can bypass the SCS altogether. However, this creates uneven timelines. This season, some schools went through the process very early (e.g., Holy Cross). As more and more schools follow this example, I suspect SCs will be less likely to send out rejections at the interview stage. If I'm only allowed to interview 10 candidates and 3 of those drop out of consideration because they've accepted jobs elsewhere, I'd certainly want to move down my list and ask the next three to interview. If I send out rejection notifications, however, I am barred from reactivating an application. Once a candidate is officially rejected, an SC at my school must stop all consideration of them. So even if my HR department allowed me to send out rejections at this stage, I wouldn't do it, at least for those who were in our top 25.
16:13 here. Thanks for your detailed, helpful answer! Much appreciated.
DeleteIs there any way to petition HR departments to allow you to update all applicants about when first-round interviews have been scheduled? You needn't officially reject anyone at that stage--just let people know that they were not selected for a first-round interview, and that it is overwhelmingly unlikely (but not impossible!) that their application will not be considered any further.
DeleteAs an applicant, I would appreciate even this kind of email over stony silence.
Has anyone actually heard from Cincinnati? I know interviews have been scheduled, but has the SC been in touch with anyone directly?
ReplyDeleteyes
DeleteSometimes people just slip through the cracks. It definitely happens that a SC schedules an interview without contacting the candidate. But then it's about whether the candidate should reach out to the SC.
DeleteAnyone heard from San Diego?
ReplyDeleteNope... not sure what's taking them so long (other UC schools with much later deadlines have already notified -- Davis was nice enough to send out rejections, too). Or perhaps no one on the wiki has gotten an interview and that's accounting for the silence.
DeleteIs Arizona a fake search? Guy there who teaches Roman history and does work with Veterans suddenly made me think there's no point.
ReplyDeleteIs Arizona still the ne plus ultra of toxic Classics departments? Or has it gotten better? I finished my MA there ~8 years ago in the midst of the Reign of the Two Terrors.
DeleteIt seems like UCSD notified yesterday. Has anyone heard anything about Bates College?
ReplyDelete