Unwitting Tuesday Hatred II; or Susurrus from a Broken Bullhorn

Yesterday Michael Bérubé (Michael Bérubé!) declared

If I came across a job candidate with a blog like this or this, or this, or this, or this, or this (jus t to take a half dozen at random), I’d be impressed, and if the rest of the candidate’s materials looked as good, I’d want to interview him or her ... because I’m very, very partial to people who write smart stuff.

(Click on that first "this" and experience instant déjà vu.)  So I'm the sort of scholar Michael would not not hire if I applied for a position at Penn on the condition that "the rest of [my] materials looked as good."  This contingent stamp of approval is a little alarming because, to be frank, I don't know how the rest of my materials look (and am a little confused as to what my "materials" would be).  I have one potentially forthcoming essay...but it's been "potentially forthcoming" since I sent in revisions well over three years ago. 

Last year I mustered gumption enough to email the guest editor of the issue my essay would've appear in and heard back almost immediately.  Not from him, mind you, but from an automated messaging service letting me know that Dr. _____ is currently vacationing in France and will return my message promptly upon his return.  That was last November.  Either his position puts the sin in sinecure or he's avoiding me, in which case I should abandon all hope of that article ever being published.  But even if I were to publish it elsewhere, I don't think it'd be part of my "materials."  (It concerns a field I no longer work in and employs an approach I no longer condone.)  So what else is there?

The chapters of my dissertation that I'll eventually publish as articles in the field's flagship journals.  (Some of which, I recently discovered, now syndicate their contents.  That's why the latest issue of American Literary History and American Literature are now available on my left sidebar.)  But all I can count on at this point is a finished dissertation and my teaching experience. 

I've taught or TA'd a variety of courses (some of which were cross-listed with Comparative Literature and Criticism) including Introduction to Irish Modernism (self-explanatory), Modern Youth (a course in which the kids queered 2oth Century bildungsromans after reading a healthy dose of Freud and Foucault), and Covering Elections (a hybrid literature and journalism class concerning the history of election coverage since 1960).  I've also taught numerous lower-division Introduction to the Novel and Introduction to Drama courses, as well as five or six Introduction to Literary Journalisms.  By the time I hit the market I'll also have team-taught The Ethics and Evolution of Literary Journalism (an upper-division course) with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barry Siegel. 

I strongly suspect none of that will matter when I hit the market because I haven't published anything yet.  Still, in terms of the originality of its research, my dissertation should belong to the stronger class of ones out there.  Others, however, will be far more marketable.  Correcting a half decade drift in Americanist scholarship simply is not sexy.  Necessary?  Certainly.  Sexy?  Not so much.  Since my approach addresses the contemporary impact and future influence of popular literature, I cannot choose (as others can) to focus on works which were obscure then but are now deemed important; I can only focus on works which are obscure now but were then deemed important, i.e. ones no one considers important anymore.

This "recovery" aspect allows me to stand on the shoulders of those feminists who "rediscovered" the most popular novels of the Nineteenth Century.  (The scare-quotes mock the historical absurdity of "losing" track of all the popular novels, not the quality of the archival work done by feminists in the '70s and '80s.)  But that's about as sexy as I can get without my thesis becoming an object lesson in academic pandering...which isn't "sexy" so much as "insulting."  (No matter how gratifying or flattering his gestures, the art of the pander necessarily insults: "But but but I've appealed to your basest instincts!  I've exploited every weakness you insist you don't have!  Why won't hire me?")

I don't want to insult other scholars by parroting their concerns.  (They have their reasons for having their concerns, much as I have my reasons for having mine.)  But trends being trends and outliers being outliers, I sense that I'm not long for academia.  And all boasting aside, that's academia's loss.  Why this sudden upswell of confidence?  Because I'm a damn fine teacher.  A natural.  (If by "natural" you understand "daily chafes his ass on the pedagogical grindstone to improve the quality of his course and increase its impact on his students.")  A teacher like me shouldn't be barred from academia because some fluke of academic fashion renders his work not unnecessary, not insubstantial, not offensive but simply unsexy. 

That's all the bravado I can brave for the evening.  Needless to say, of the many things in my life about which I'm terribly insecure, my success in the classroom isn't one of them.  (Except for that time I lectured three hours after chemo.  In a class taught by my advisor.  During which I barely sounded like a hearing person.  One day I'll hook a mike to the laptop and let you sample what I sounded like before the eight years of speech therapy...because I do a damn fine impersonation of a deaf person who hasn't gone through eight years of speech therapy.  Will wonders never cease?) 

It just dawned on me: I'm manifesting symptoms of Tuesday Hatred.  Had I known that from the get-go I could've vented far more effectively.  C'est la vie.  I can always confess my inappropriate hatred come Friday. 

Comments

[Amardeep]

How much you've published may not matter that much, especially at smaller liberal arts colleges. Most schools will be looking mainly at the dissertation to see what it looks like.

I also wouldn't be surprised if some readers of your future applications are less concerned with "sexy" than other things. It really depends on how serious the people reading applications are, and how much time they have.

Every so often you will get people who read every single word written by every applicant. (When I was once on a hiring committee, I tried to be that person.) The applicants who are "sexy" rather than "serious" tend not to get past such readers. (What I was looking for was: interesting, ambitious, coherent, and "real. "Real" meant: this project seems like it's biting onto something that matters, and the applicant has done the necessary footwork to make it come together.)

Slaving over your application letter to get every word exactly right helps a lot (especially with the people who are actually reading carefully). I wrote something like 8 or 9 drafts of my letter when I was on the market some years ago, and got people from outside of my sub-field to read every single draft. (Exhausting, but necessary. Helps if you can find someone else on the market to trade materials with)

Also, make sure your recommenders have access early to everything you've written in your diss. Sit down with each of them and sell yourself -- sort of the way you'll have to sell yourself in interviews. The most enthusiastic recommendations are usually written on the basis of thorough knowledge of the student.

And there's much more, I could go on for hours with this stuff.

The big question for academic bloggers on the job market is: what to say about one's blog? My gut is, you don't need to hide it, but don't mention it in the application...

[Luther Blissett]

Amardeep's completely correct. When you apply for a job, your materials are: your cover letter and dissertation abstract; your dossier (letters of reference and maybe transcripts). Then, maybe, they'll ask for a writing sample. Then, maybe, they'll ask for writing sample 2. Then the interview. Then the job talk. So, the search committee may only ever see a whopping 40 pages of your dissertation (even at first class research universities). And a friend of mine was recently hired at a research university who only submitted one 20 page chunk of his diss. His second sample was a review essay he'd published. His job talk was part of a different project entirely.

You're work needn't *be* sexy (whose is???). You simply have to find a way to articulate that you are intervening intelligently and originally in a current scholarly debate/conversation. Which, of course, you are. By challenging the idea of social darwinisn in naturalist literature, you are very timely: interdisciplinary, mixing science, history, and literature; engaging in on-going questions about the relationship between history and form; thinking about important cultural issues (evolution, race, etc.).

I think about recent hires at my university, and I just don't think the academy is as "fashionable" as some make it out to be. We've recently hired formalists, psychoanalytical critics, historicists of the old and new variety, and so on. The vast majority of colleges need people to teach comp, intro level lit courses, historical surveys, and then the odd, yearly upper-level seminar. Being a Lacanian who happens to read some Pound doesn't help candidates for these jobs. Being a solid scholar of a literary period with a good grouding in the cultural and historical dynamics of that period will help you.

[A. G.]

Ditto on Amardeep on the app letter. I have written long ones in the past, keyed of course to the position, and carefully crafted (with the George Orwell of Politics and the English Language over my shoulder).

For positions in my college (of education), evidence of outside funding or at least trying to get it is necessary, and such may be creeping into liberal arts. Is this fair for a junior hire? Of course not. A publication in a peer reviewed journal will raise eyebrows, somewhat less of a ditto for presentations at regional, then national, meetings.

I would tilt toward a smart blogger in the pool. In fact, if an applicant did not know about blogging, I would hope that person would advance forth to 1998 and wake up.