Nothing remarkably incisive to say about all of this beyond the capsule rendition of how it works. It is an engine of professionalization, though. American job candidates, almost all of them, spend an entire year focused almost exclusively on this sort of thing – well, save for any teaching they might be doing, and frantic nighttime dissertation finishing. You enter into your first year on the market a kid who likes to read and write; you exit a fully fledged professional academic. Don’t get me wrong – there are good and bad things both about this sort of professionalization. But it is something to note, and perhaps something worth thinking and writing about a bit more, what effect the rhythm of the market has on intellectual life in the academy. Of course it’s always present, informing the decisions that people make about their work etc. But it becomes profoundly present, definitive, in bursts. There the struggle to get into a PhD program, and then relative calm for a few years. Then a frantic burst of market-awareness, then a bit of calm (at least on that front) as you start your job. Then the tenuring process, and after that, if you’ve made it, calm again… until you decide to look for another job… Goes on and on.
Ads Without Products on the MLA job list.
This is irrelevant to your post, but I was in the university library yesterday trying to find some books to use for a paper I'm working on. The library was about to close so I was pretty rushed to find something. After having found a decent selection of books I rushed through the stacks to get to the elevator so as to get downstairs to check them out. As I'm flying through the stacks with a pile of books in my arms, I see this flash of a book that says "Theory of Harmony". I backtracked and sure enough it was Schoenberg's "Theory of Harmony". Upon leaving the library, my pile of books one one book heavier.
ReplyDeleteThis slightly sent a shiver down my spine! And gave me a sudden vision of a massive class-action lawsuit - tallying up all the mental-health expenses (psychiatrists, anti-anxiety drugs, anti-depressants, sleeping pills, plus pain-and-suffering compensation for anxiety-related lost hours of sleep) of all MLA members and getting a cash settlement from the academy, to be shared out between all universities...!
ReplyDeleteI call the registrar. I owe $950 for one research credit because I am no longer TA-ing for the school and don't have a fellowship. "I don't have that kind of money, obviously. Is there a payment plan?" "No." "What if I take a temporary leave of absence and save up?" "You have to pay for the all the credits you missed." "That makes total sense. So if I take a year off I'll owe roughly 3,000 dollars when I return." "Sorry, them's the rules." Now I need to spend valuable research and writing time looking for extra work and then, if I'm lucky, working. I'm thinking of just giving up. All because I can't provide them with extremely cheap labor. Now the prospect of going on the job market and getting a position at a fourth or fifth tier college and writing a book that will probably go unread or be outdated in ten years even if it is--this seems less like the beginning of a suicide note now and more like my wildest fantasy.
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ReplyDeleteMith, that's horrific. And insane.
ReplyDelete... and FURTHERMORE, if I take a leave of absence, I'll have to start paying off my student loans again, and if I make the minimum payment of 150 a month for 12 months that's another 1800 it'll cost me.
ReplyDeleteMy whole solution is to steal. And who better to steal from than the professional screenwriter and author of A History of Violence? I'll send him my screenplay and get his response, thereby--obviously--stealing his years hard-won knowledge.
Happily. Ever. After.