Just Walk Away?

William Pannapacker's latest piece, unlike so much of his earlier advice here, here, and here aimed at warming prospective graduate students of the fate that awaits them, this time offers advice aimed more at current graduate students, professors, and other concerned parties about "how to fix humanities graduate education."

I read Pannapacker's 2003 piece as a second-year M.A. student, and, at the time, it rang hollow. I was convinced I was one of the few who would beat the odds, and, more importantly, I simply wanted to be in graduate school. I found the work -- reading, writing, thinking, teaching -- more satisfying than what I believed my other options to be. And I had a partner, family, and good credit to make the absurdly low pay I earned as a TA and later adjunct a mere insignificant inconvenience.

What I didn't understand at the time was the correlation between my willingness to work for less than a living wage and the dearth of "real" jobs every new Ph.D. has faced for decades -- a shortage exacerbated beyond all acceptable proportions by the recession. Pannapacker didn't make this correlation clear in his original or subsequent articles, until this most recent one. Even if he had, I'm not sure that, years ago, I would have digested its significance. I'm not sure I could have separated my in-the-moment desire to be part of an academic community from the impact the exploitation of contingent faculty had and has continued to have on the profession more broadly -- and that it would have on me as an individual later.

Doing "satisfying" work seemed like more than enough compensation. And, as I've said before, I think that very few people, myself included, who have completed Ph.D.s can look back and say -- whatever they may be doing now -- that graduate school was a waste of time, that it wasn't worth it, that they should've just gone on and done something else with that particular decade of their lives.

At the same time, what Pannapacker's most recent article does, finally, make clear is that it is impossible to ignore the correlation between the role graduate students play in providing undergraduate education at minimal cost to universities and the dearth of jobs they themselves will eventually face as they finish their degrees and seek full-time employment.

What Pannapcker has finally gotten around to saying is what I've been saying since my very first blog post, and again here, here, and here (not to mention numerous comments on other people's blogs). That is, I've been saying, as Pannapacker now does: Just. Walk. Away. As long as there is a supply of graduate students and recent graduates (because they hope for something better) willing to work for a pittance, colleges and universities have no reason not to continue A) admitting them to programs whose sole purpose is the supply of underpaid labor and B) paying them far, far less than they are worth -- and far, far less than they will need to support themselves and their families in the long-term. Ultimately, institutions have a vested interest in the status quo, while we (graduate students and recent Ph.D.s) do not. Organizing is a good thing, yes, but it's not enough. Institutions will never change until they have to -- and don't be fooled by the claim that the humanities don't make money for colleges and universities, that, were we all to walk away right now, humanities departments would simply shut down. The humanities are at the core of most undergraduate education programs. If there was a shortage of people willing and able to teach Freshman Comp, Intro to History, and Foreign Language I and II, institutions would find a way to attract talent. With money.

Our fault has been to love what we do too much and to be too willing to make sacrifices that are neither in our own future best interests nor in the best interests of the future of the profession -- nor in the best interests of colleagues who may be less able to sustain an existence as contingent faculty members after they graduate than we may be. Really, do we want a future in which everyone is an adjunct? Because, with the ever-increasing elimination of tenure-track and otherwise full-time positions, that's where we're headed.

And it's right that someone should start pointing this out to prospective and current graduate students -- that it's not just all about you and what you're willing to do on the cheap for the privilege of doing "satisfying" work for a few years. While I'm sympathetic to the response to Pannapacker expressed here, I believe that, once you understand this correlation, it is both selfish and unethical to continue to perpetuate the falsehood that graduate students are themselves not, to some degree, responsible for the current state of the profession.

I take responsibility for my choices, and that's why, once I came to understand my own complicity in perpetuating an exploitative system, I chose to walk away -- that and the fact that I believe our society needs to reckon with the discrepancy between SAYING a college education matters and PAYING for its true cost.

Leaving academe doesn't mean you don't love the life you're leaving behind. It need not mean a betrayal -- because you and your colleagues and your students are the ones being betrayed when you remain complicit with the current system.You can reinvent yourself career-wise on the outside and still pursue your intellectual interests. And you can find ways to teach -- to share your love of literacy and learning -- while still making a decent living and without continuing to perpetuate a broken system.

If you are a tenured professor or a professor on the tenure track, stay, if you like what you do. Do whatever you can to improve the working conditions within your own department, within your institution. Your students need you, and you are only a part of the problem if you ignore it. Because you have tenure (once you have it), you have the capacity to be part of a solution. Take action. Use your position to work for the best interests of the profession.

But, if you are an adjunct? No. The ethical thing to do, once you understand how the system works, is simply to walk away. If you stay, you will be taken for granted. You will be used up and disposed of for a pittance.

Walk away. You owe it to yourself, your students, and the future of the profession.Your talents do have value; and, eventually, those who need to understand this will.


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Inside the Idea Factory

Policy is manufactured, bought and sold, paid for, mostly, by those you would expect. Money and ideas go hand-in-hand. But, let's play devil's advocate. Really, what is so wrong with that?

While there are think tanks (and individual projects at think tanks) that lose money researching and promoting relatively unpopular and under-financed ideas, I find the following from here more often to be true:

"Modern think tanks are nonprofit, tax-exempt, political idea factories where donations can be as big as the donor's checkbook and are seldom publicized," notes Tom Brazaitis, writing for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "Technology companies give to think tanks that promote open access to the internet. Wall Street firms donate to think tanks that espouse private investment of retirement funds." So much money now flows in, that the top 20 conservative think tanks now spend more money than all of the "soft money" contributions to the Republican party.

 All think tanks are really doing is providing products -- ideas and policies -- that their supporters demand. What's wrong, I repeat, with putting your money where your mouth is, or, as these things go, paying someone else to speak for you?

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Think tanks are like universities in some ways -- filled with clever, resourceful, ambitious people who care about ideas (and ideologies), but, again,

A think tank's resident experts carry titles such as "senior fellow" or "adjunct scholar," but this does not necessarily mean that they possess an academic degree in their area of claimed expertise. Outside funding can corrupt the integrity of academic institutions. The same corrupting influences affect think tanks, only more so.

Think tanks are like universities minus the students and minus the systems of peer review and other mechanisms that academia uses to promote diversity of thought. Real academics are expected to conduct their research first and draw their conclusions second, but this process is often reversed at most policy-driven think tanks.

I will say that it is absolutely possible for people to become experts on subjects they do not necessarily have academic degrees in -- and that's something all of my post-academic readers might keep in mind as they pursue other careers. You can have an active mind. You can think deep thoughts. You can even earn your living by thinking and writing. And you can do all this within the context of a "normal," nonacademic job that pays the bills - and more, if you are smart enough and driven enough. And there are certainly people here, people I work with every day and respect, who understand the subjects and policy issues they write about in great depth even though they don't have academic credentials affirming their expertise.

But there are also people, like the one I refer to in this little angry  post (whom I fortunately don't have to interact with regularly) who are where they are, doing what they are doing, because of their politics rather than any sort of in-depth knowledge of the issues underlying the policies they promote. Unlike the high complexity, low profile issues my office generally deals with (although tracing the money even here leads to very unsurprising conclusions), some issues are grossly distorted, misrepresented, and oversimplified. People with strong ideological  motives but little true expertise are easy targets and willing collaborators -- spokesbots, if you will -- for well-funded special interests.

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I'd be lying if I said there weren't also bipartisan collaborations and compromises that don't necessarily always please every donor. Libertarians and progressive environmentalists? Yes, such coalitions exist and differing parties are able to work well together. Both groups receive funding from so-called special interests and occasionally do find common  ground. But the question I leave readers with is this: Are all special interests equal? Are the "interests" of conservation groups or green industries that fund environmentalist think tanks -- whose "interests" at least in part are a greener world -- the same as the profit-driven "interests" of, say, a major insurance or oil company that funds a libertarian think tank?

Research Update and Project Outline

So here's another in my series of research updates aimed at tracking Project Dissertation-to-Book -- a series of posts mainly to keep me honest about my efforts but perhaps of interest to anyone working on a similar project, especially independently.

On Saturday, I finally made it up Grad U Library to return two Whole Foods bags full of books I could have (and should have) returned months ago. I don't know why I was hanging onto them. I had this crazy idea that once I got my head back into the project I might need them. But that was because I took a very long time getting my head back into the project after my defense last year. Once I finally did (within the last month or so) -- and made a new reading list for the project -- I realized I would not have any use for them and could always check them out again anyway should I need to.

So, thanks to Peaches and his air-conditioned car, back to the library they went. I also brought my new book list with me and checked out 5 books (off a list of 40 or so) I need to look over. Why so few? Because, with my new status as alumni borrower rather than faculty/grad student, I can keep books out for only a relatively short time. I need to efficiently go through what I check out from now on, take notes on what I need, perhaps make photocopies of parts I might want to revisit, and get the books back to the library. Plus, there was a stack I forgot to bring back that need to go back before August 1st. I need to get done with these 5 this week and then go back for more.

I've also been thinking about how the book needs to differ from the dissertation -- what needs to be revised, added, etc. Thinking about this before was a bit overwhelming, but, having actually begun the process of moving ahead, it seems much less so. What I have to do is actually not that overwhelming at all.

In a nutshell, here's an outline of what I have in relation to what I need to do:

Introduction to X
Parts of the original intro I like a lot and will keep, but a revised intro needs more contextualization, mostly historical. A lot of the material on my new reading list (a lot of which has been published between 2010 and 2011, i.e. after my diss was done) is aimed at this, at doing a better job of framing the project. Not the most exciting work but certainly not overwhelming.

Part One: Early Literary Responses to X
Chapter 1: In-depth discussion of Author A. This is done. Will change very little in the original except to cite a few important critics I left out. Mostly in footnotes.

Chapter 2: Discussion of authors B, C, and D who were contemporaries of A. Author B is done. C and D need to be written and all woven together. This chapter will take some work. A chunk of my reading list is devoted to this chapter. It will take some time but is absolutely manageable. This is the part I will work on first.

Part Two: Texts That Use X to Re-Imagine Past and Present
Chapter 3: Authors E and F that use X to look at the past. This is 100% done. A short version is a published article. No revisions here -- this is my favorite chapter, and I like it as is (and readers have responded similarly)

Chapter 4: Author G that uses X to look at the present. This chapter is mostly (and possibly all the way) done. What's already written does not need revision. Again, it's already published (was actually my first publication), but I think I may need to add another seection that contextualizes Author G within hir genre. My committee didn't think this was necessary for the diss, but I think it might be for the book. We'll see. Will deal with the intro, Chapter 2, and Chapter 6 first and then reevaluate.

Part Three: Texts That Use X to Think About the Future
Chapter 5: Authors H and I. This is 90% done. A condensed portion is a published article. It doesn't need major revision in terms of things I left out or that need to be substantively changed, but the prose could probably use some tightening up.

Chapter 6: Author J. This is completely new. Will be written from scratch. The primary text is one I love and really want to write about but didn't for the diss because I had written enough (page-wise) and didn't want to step outside of national boundaries. This author lies outside the project's original national boundaries, but I think I can make a case for including this text. It's an appropriate way to end. Considerable work here, but I think I wii enjoy doing it.

Conclusion
My original conclusion is OK but very short. Needs a little more substance. A little more writing -- not at all taxing. Will worry about this (and probably write it in a day) when the rest of the revision is done.

So, that's that. I have plans, and I have books. What else does one need?

The Worst Way to Start a Conversation About Literature

...is to begin with the question, "Have you read X?"

If it's a famous book, the person who hasn't read it may be put off by your presumption. If it's obscure, you may generate some interest, but the wrong tone can still make you come across as a pretentious ass.

A better way is simply to say,"I happened to be reading X the other day (or whenever) and I was thinking (fill in your thiught). What do you think of my idea (observation, insight, whatever)?" This or some variation of it will give people a chance to respond to you and your thought rather than putting them on the spot. They can talk about the book if they've read it, but they can also defer to you without feeling stupid.

You Can Deduct Unreimbursed Research Expenses from Your Taxes

If you're a professor, that is. The IRS says so right here (scroll down a ways to the bulleted phrase "research expenses of a college professor," but don't ask me how I stumbled onto this today -- trust me, it wasn't through the effects of my own curiosity).

I don't know what exactly this means for the unreimbursed research expenses of adjuncts since research is not typically in their contracts (although you could probably make a case for its necessity to furthering your career) and some of you savvy readers are probably way ahead of me here, but in comments to this post a ways back, Professor Zero mentioned the cost of gas involved in taking care of hir research needs.And so when I stumbled onto this bit of useful tax info I figured I'd post since a lot of people are having their research budgets cut and going to conferences/archives etc. becomes an out-of-pocket expense -- but a necessary one.

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I have nothing much else to say at the moment, so it's good my last post seems to have been so popular. In less than a week, it's already at number 8 in the top 10 most read posts here. Hopefully, a few of you are getting something out of it.

At some point, I do have to tell you about last weekend's visit to the Tea Party branch of the family of Peaches (Long story short: They were ecstatic to find out I work for Free Market Think Tank -- only to be shortly thereafter appalled when I revealed that I have not yet myself transformed into either an admirer of Sarah Palin, as they are, or "a delusional anti-government Randite fuckebagge" (no, I will never get tired of this phrase -- if you've been following the blog and my occasional comment elsewhere, you understand why).

But for now, it's too hot to think. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking by it, even thought I'm hiding out indoors in the air-conditioning.

Maybe so, and, apparently, there are people bored enough to have actually tried:

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Mmmmmm, that's got me thinking about dinner. Most likely salad (seriously, eggs in this weather?). But...does such an experiment count as research? That's the real question. Or, not, if you're like me and going it alone (honestly, I haven't made much progress since the last research update). Whatever. It's summer and such is how things go. Y'all stay cool, and, if you are in a position to do so, don't forget to deduct those research expenses!! Every little egg counts.

5 Myths About the Academic Job Market

JC's recent post about the "exciting opportunity" he was invited to apply for (one-year VAP position in Bumblefuck teaching 4/4) reminds me of how prevalent myths about the academic job market are, despite the fact that some of us are starting to wake up, smell the proverbial coffee, and point out publicly that the emperor has no clothes (and is butt ugly, too, and, yes, I know I'm mixing all sorts of metaphors and running on my sentences, but it's Saturday morning and I get to do that sort of thing -- because it's my blog!).

Anyhoo, the following 5 nyths about the academic job market are myths I wholeheartedly believed throughout graduate school, all the way until the very end, when I finally started to wise up and pay attention to what was happening to me and my colleagues rather than to what people said was supposed to happen:

Myth #1: If you do everything right, you will get a job.
This is an especially egregious myth to perpetuate among smart, highly motivated, highly ambitious graduate students. The idea is that if you write a stellar dissertation, publish at least one (preferrably more) full-length, peer-reviewed articles before hitting the market, teach a ton, present at a dozen conferences, win awards, and receive the highest accolades from your committee, then a job awaits you, even while you are still ABD.

This is bull$hit through and through. Every adviser, well meaning as they might be, will point to someone for whom this was true and tell their newest protégé(e) to follow so-and-so's example, and a job, too, will follow. What they neglect to say is that, for every person who did everything right and got a job, there are at least two or three others who also DID EVERYTHING RIGHT and DIDN'T get a job.

Most advisers don't perpetuate this myth maliciously -- they really do mean well and want to see their students go on to get tenure-track jobs and be successful. But they have selective memories. Confronting the truth would be painful and would probably also force them to confront some perhaps even uglier truths about contingent faculty in their own departments and the intimate relationship between the lack of "good" jobs and the overuse of adjuncts.

Myth #2: If you are willing to go anywhere and everywhere, a job awaits you.
While it is true that you increase your chances of finding a job by applying to everything and anything you might be remotely qualified for, doing so is no garauntee that a job will come of it. Again, for every person who applies for a hundred jobs in a given year, lands 2 interviews and 1 job (at teaching intensive regional college in Bumblefuck), there are countless others who did the same thing and got nothing. They're adjuncting or VAPing again and waiting to go through the whole application process all over again. Is it worth it? That's up to you, but, at the very least, don't believe that just because you're willing to go anywhere and everywhere and apply to a hundred jobs -- most of whch aren't even a good match for you -- year after year that eventually all your hard work will pay off. Odds are it won't.

Myth #3: Spending years taking VAP and postdoc positions will eventually pay off.
In most professions, having more experience is a good thing. In academe, most people have enough teaching experience by the time they go on the market the first time. As long as you can prove that you can independently design a syllabus and manage a class, which is clear from your having taught multiple classes during multiple semesters as an adjunct while you were ABD, you have enough experience for any committee considering your application. Year after year beyond that doesn't add up to anything and won't improve your odds. If you want to move across the country to take a VAP position because it pays better than your current adjunct gig and you haven't yet decided to throw in the towel, go for it, but don't believe you're making yourself a better candidate for the next go-around on the market.

Myth #4: The people who do end up with tenure-track jobs do so because they have the very best credentials.
See Myth #1. While it is certainly true that those who do get jobs are highly qualified, just because you got one doesn't mean you have better credentials than those who didn't. Committees narrow down their applications to the most highly qualified and choose to interview -- and ultimately hire -- those they believe would be the best "fit" for their department. You have no control over how "fit" is subjectively determined by each individual committee and, other than trying to style your letter to the job ad and the department's online description, you have no control over making yourself that one person who "fits" best -- and in some cases, while you might be good at the job, you really might not be the best "fit" and, should they hire you because you were clever enough to make yourself seem like the best "fit," you could well end up miserable.

Myth #5: Spending time working on a back-up plan is a waste of time and will interfere with the time you need to spend on making yourself the very best candidate for academic jobs.
As Myths #1-4 illustrate, putting all your eggs in one basket is just plain stupid. Spending 8-10 years in graduate school gives you more than enough time to build up your CV AND work on a back-up plan. Once you're done with your coursework, use your tuition remission to bank some practical skills. Just take a class here or there -- say, in accounting or technical writing or the language you studied just barely enough to pass the language exam. Or, once you have "enough" teaching experience, get some other type of job. My current job is a perfect example of the kind of job a graduate student could do "full-time" and still have time to work on the dissertation. I have more free time now than I had while I was teaching, I'm making nearly twice as much money (albeit still not much in the grand scheme of things), and I'm building a skill set that is actually marketable in the "real world" (my job type at a different kind of organization -- larger and for-profit -- pays quite well, but no one would have hired me in that context without the experience I'm now gaining). It's much better to do this while you're still a graduate student -- and, yes, you do have the time to pursue your academic goals at the same time you're working on having other options besides adjuncting when that first academic job search doesn't pan out. You have, literally, EIGHT TO TEN YEARS!!

Rediscovering Mornings (Or, Yoga on a Day of Short Posts)

Now that the Congressman's gone, I'll write what I was going to originally. Namely, I finally decided to give in to the kittehs and get up to feed them at 5:30 AM (instead of what I usually do -- put up with their annoying whining, sitting on my chest, and attacking each other ON THE BED while I'm trying to finish sleeping). Getting up this early, I was able to get to yoga (which I've been woefully neglecting) at 6:30 and still get back home by 8:00, which is when I usually get up, in order to shower etc. and get to the office by 10:00.

Morning yoga was awesome. First, it was awesome to go for the second time in a week (I went Saturday, and it's been a couple months since I've gone more than once a week). I get regular exercise walking to and from work -- just under 2 miles each way -- but it's not the same as yoga. Second, mornings just as the sun is coming up are cool and peaceful and quiet compared to the rest of the day, so walking over to the yoga studio (and back) was awesome. Third, not that many people are crazy enough to haul a$$ out of bed at 5:30 AM in order to get some yoga in before work, so the class was small, which was awesome. On weeknights and weekends, the classes can be so crowded that you have to be careful not to whack your neighbor with an arm when you're doing sun salutations

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or kick someone behind you when you roll over from shoulder stand to plow pose.

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Fourth, I will totally never be able to do this

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crazy, amazing cross between a headstand and a handstand if I don't practice!! (Hey, I may never be able to do it anyway, but it's nice to have goals -- both short-term, like getting up early a few days a week to GO to yoga in the first place, AND long-term ones...)

And, lastly, yoga is just plain awesome, inside and out, and it's worth getting up early to do.

There Is a Former Congressman in My Office Right Now

I have nothing profound to say here. Just thought readers might find it amusing that someone as eccentric as me is sitting typing on this crazy blog -- live blogging the moment, no less -- not ten feet away from a former member of Congress.

He is "former" because, apparently, his "2010 Republican primary opponents asserted that his voting record in his second House spell was more moderate than his first. He was one of 17 House Republicans who voted for a Democratic resolution opposing the Iraq War troop surge of 2007, and has spoken against climate change scepticism, offshore oil drilling and warrantless surveillance since returning to the House."

BUT he's pro gun and pro life.

Ah, contradictions.

Surprise! Conservative Christian English Instructor Finds Animal Studies and Posthumanism Objectionable

I am not going to dignify the opinions expressed here by writing a defense of Animal Sudies (Go ahead and take a look and then tell me why again have I linked to this in my blogroll? Sometimes they do post insightful pieces, but this? Meh...). I think scholars working in Animals Studies, a few of whom are mentioned in the article, do a fine enough job of articulating why their work is valuable to the humanities. It's easy enough to deride the titles of academic papers, as the author does -- especially those that suggest ideas one finds objectionable -- for reasons of religious belief, rather than engaging with the arguments meaningfully.

But, forget engaging meaningfully with key scholars. How about simply reading what the Institute for Critical Animal Studies says about the field in an introductory paragraph? While Conservative Christian English Instructor does cite and even quote from the ICAS website, she seems to have lost the capacity for basic reading comprehension. She writes,

Adherents of Critical Animal Studies generally look with contempt on animal-welfare organizations and “animal studies” not preceded by the word “critical.” 

But the whole point of Critical Animal Studies, again according to the ICAS's website (from the description of their journal, JCAS), is

to breakdown and mediate oppositions between theory and practice, college and community, and scholarship and citizenship, in order to make philosophy (in a broad sense) again a force of change and to repatriate intellectuals to the public realm.

In other words, far from looking with contempt upon these related fields, Critical Animal Studies seeks to bring together the activist work of "real world" animal welfare organizations and the theoretically oriented academic work of Animal Studies. The whole point is that theory and practice work best -- and accomplish more -- together.

Sure, interpretation can be political (pick your side), but critics owe it to their political opponents to understand their positions before disputing them. To do so, basic reading comprehension is a prerequisite, and Conservative Christian English Instructor fails to meet it (BTW, she doesn't identify as a conservative Christian in the article, but if you Google her name, that's the first thing that comes up, a self-description on her website).

Moreover, she struggles with the term "posthumanism," another prerequisite to "getting" either Animal Studies or Critical Animal Studies (she'd have some real fun with Animality Studies). Admittedly, posthumanism has a host of differing and complex definitions, as well as varying origins, but if the whole business of poststructuralism isn't your cup of tea (and it is clearly not CCEI's), please stay away from Foucault.

Far, far away...

What CCEI does get is that posthumanism is indeed a response to Western humanism, what it's done and what it stands for -- that posthumanism represents a rejection or at least a critique of the anthropocentric notion that humanity is golden, that whatever serves "Man's" interests is right and good in the eyes of God, that God Himself created Man in His image to do His work on Earth....

But here we are, at the end of Conservative Christian English Instructor's essay, back to square one, for she does, indeed, recognize exactly what posthumanism (and fields like Critical Animal Studies that draw upon it) means to her own core beliefs: Making such critical moves signifies

the rush to embrace the primitive and the popular in order to undermine the Judeo-Christian ethic of man’s dominion and the Enlightenment emphasis on reason and reasonable discourse.  This is just one of the ominous aspects of  Critical Animal Studies.

Well, exactly. But why is such a challenge "ominous"? Isn't there a way to approach posthumanist and other poststructuralist positions through reason?

In fact, reason never really went anywhere, even as we critique it. We just no longer think of it strictly in opposition to emotion, in a relationship of positive to negative, male to female, human to animal, etc. (pick your Derridean pair). But.....can we have some, please? Can't we do more than simply point and say, "Look! There's a fly in my Golden Chalice. Look, see? It's a fly!"

Or, a sphinx in our historical vista:

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Or a freakin' snake in the Garden:

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Posthumanism and Critical Animal Studies may be relatively new, but it's not as if there isn't a fairly long history of humans turning to animals in the search for identity.

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What's new is that in the last century and a half since Darwin published The Origin of Species, it has become less and less reasonable to presume upon mere faith that humans are entirely exempt from the rules that govern the coming, going, and changing of all the other species that inhabit the planet Earth. In other words, the opposition between "human" and "animal," whatever differences you might point to, itself has become less than a rational one.

The ultimately ominous portent of posthumanism for someone like CCEI is surely that, implicitly, it embraces a Darwinist narrative and suggests that humanity itself will, over time, eventually either evolve into something "posthuman" or go extinct.

Research Update

A number of weeks ago, I wrote about my frustrations over being cut off from library access, now that I am no longer "affiliated" with Grad U. Obviously, that might present an obstacle to anyone trying to work on a scholarly project -- like, say, revising one's dissertation into a book. (If you missed that post, do go back and read it. Whatever your personal feelings about continuing your scholarly work outside of academe, there really is something quite troubling about the notion that affiliation is a prerequisite to scholarship and that paying to maintain a past affiliation is not even an option for many people.)

But, despite the cursing and fuming, I was hardly daunted, and, while I am in no hurry to race through this project (after all, I'm not on the tenure clock), I do aim to make steady, if slow, progress. While some readers might not find such posts as this one especially interesting (if you left or are planning to leave academe because you've discovered you dislike "academic" work), I will be writing them every now and then as a way of holding myself accountable, as well as sharing with anyone who may also be attempting to self-reinvent as an independent scholar.

So here's the shakedown five weeks after my affiliation/access meltdown:

• Pulled myself up by my bootstraps, went up to campus, and got myself an alumni borrowing card. 
• Still don't have remote access to the databases, but that's not a big deal. It's easy enough to go up to Grad U., and when I go there on a weekday to do research for work (because, on occasion, the databases come in handy for that, too), I can expense the train and bus fare. Plus, most of what I need to look at for the dissertation-to-book process are books, not articles.
• The downside to my new status in terms of borrowing books is that, instead of keeping them checked out for a year, the maximum borrowing period is only 56 days. Damn!
• The upside to my new status in terms of borrowing actual books is that, instead of keeping them checked out for a year (or renewing them for endless years!) during which time they mostly gather dust, I have to be organized about reading them, taking note of what I need quickly, and moving on. 

Once I adjusted myself mentally to these new parameters, I set myself the task of putting together a reading list. A lot of new and relevant books have come out in late 2010 and the first half of 2011 -- the titles are, well, tantalizing! I've got my list of secondary sources I need to go through and good chunk of the primary sources (much of which involves an author I'm really looking forward to getting into more in-depth and the rest a genre that is good "fun" reading, as well scholar fodder).

So, with the reading list done enough for a trip to the library, here's a general to-do list and overview of my plans for the next few months:

• Take reading list, as well as all the old books I still have checked out (with new, quickly approaching due dates) collecting dust at home, and haul a$$ up to the library. Won't happen this weekend but some weekday this coming week, if there's time, or next weekend will be just fine.
• Spend a few hours in the library sorting things out, figuring out what's worth checking out of the library, what's merely worth perusing casually and setting aside.
• Check out only as many of those suckers as I think I can reasonably get through in 56 days.
• Go home, read, take notes, organize thoughts. 
• 56 days from mid July is roughly early to mid September. Go back to the library then and repeat the above. Check databases at this time or after the next 56 days to cull whatever needs to be read from there. 56 days from mid September is mid November. Thus, optimistically speaking, I will be done with research by Thanksgiving.
• Write, write, write. Dissertation, goodbye in 2011. Monograph, hello in 2012!
• Have a draft of the book ready to submit to editor at Very Fancy Press by early summer 2012 -- that is, in a year.

And this is a very reasonable timeline, I think, too. Wish me luck and stay tuned for future updates.

The greatest library in the world.....

The Paradox of Value in Humanities Education

Readers of this blog know that money comes up a lot. I quit my job as an adjunct because of money, largely (and lack of opportunities for promotion, too, but money was a big part of that). I complain about salary inequities in academe frequently. I weigh the value of the Ph.D. in terms of its potential to get you a decent job both inside and outside academe.

But the paradox of all this complaining -- and the reason, I think, that compels a lot of people to go to graduate school in the humanities despite the economic farce (bordering on tragedy for some) they face upon finishing (or quitting) -- is that you cannot properly assess the value of a humanities education in terms of money. Neither on the scale of the individual nor society.

Consider what Martha Nussbaum suggests as merely a "sketch" in Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Among the things the humanities offer are:

• The ability to imagine well a variety of complex issues affecting the story of a human life as it unfolds: to think about childhood, adolescence, family relationships, illness, death, and much more in a way informed by an understanding of a wide range of human stories, not just aggregate data.
• The ability to judge political leaders critically, but with an informed and realistic sense of the possibilities available to them.
• The ability to think about the good of the nation as a whole, not just one's own local group.
• The ability to see one's own nation, in turn, as a part of a complicated world order in which issues of many kinds require intelligent transnational deliberation for their resolution

None of these things is directly measurable by economic means, neither in terms of investment nor return, because the "product" is impossible to quantify or contain. One of the reasons we like to talk about a college education in terms of an individual's financial "investment" and the "returns" of a "better" job, higher wages, and greater opportunities is that some of the arguably greater benefits to being educated are less easily packaged. Moreover, taxpayers increasingly want to know what they are getting when they subsidize public colleges and universities and student loans, but can you really put a price on the cultivation of imagination, critical thinking, creativity, and emotional literacy? Jonathan Bates writes, of the public value of the humanities,

Government and its officers have a prime duty to account for the expenditure of taxpayers’ money, but in measuring the value of research a much subtler style of accountancy is required. There is something especially inappropriate about the attempt to quantify the ‘value’ and ‘impact’ of work in the humanities in economic terms, since the very nature of the humanities is to address the messy, debatable and unquantifiable but essentially human dimensions of life, such as history, beauty, imagination, faith, truth, goodness, justice and freedom. The only test of a philosophical argument, an historical hypothesis or an aesthetic judgment is time – a long period of time, not the duration of a government spending review.

 Bates is speaking specifically about research, but that's gotten a bad rap by some recently, and, more importantly, the correlation between research and teaching in the humanities is not a small one. The point isn't that every scholarly argument that's published in an obscure journal intended for an audience of peers makes its way into the classroom. The point is that if we are teaching students habits of mind as much -- if not more so -- as we are teaching them content, it's important that we practice what we teach -- that we continue to produce knowledge, continue to inquire, continue to seek.

There is no economic measure for this, but there is also no getting around the cost.

And what do we lose when the seekers can no longer afford to be teachers, when they simply walk away?

Via

Or, Maybe Just...

Fire up one of these and go here.

Via

Freedom (Happy 4th of July, Sort Of)

So, today is the 4th of July, and everybody wants to celebrate freedom -- the freedom to set off illegal fireworks (as the kids around here do until 3:00 AM), the freedom to fire up the grill and cook some hot dogs, as my next door neighbors do, the freedom to eat apple pie, to wave flags, to clap along as the band plays "Stars and Stripes," to gather in the street at the top of the neighborhood hill to watch the city's public fireworks display from afar (because, really, who wants to go through a security checkpoint to see fireworks, especially when you're not "free" to bring beer?).

Freedom is a pretty big deal in libertarian think tank land, as you would expect. We have a bumper sticker in the office that says "I believe in freedom. What do you believe in?"

I'm a progressive, souless. hipster atheist, and I don't believe in anything, by some people's reckoning. But I remain mystified: How, again, does one exactly "believe" in something so abstract? Libertarians and conservatives love to throw "freedom" around,  as if it were a football or a frisbee, and all you have to do is catch it, run with it, and pass it on. And, of course, it has such connotations -- the American Revolution, the Liberty Bell, the Statue of Liberty, Presidents George Washington et al.

Hot dogs, apple pie, the Stars and Stripes, baseball, fireworks, Main Street.

But what precisely are you believing in when you "believe in freedom"? When you put it that way, who doesn't believe in freedom? Who doesn't catch hold of the fantasy chain of signifiers that carries you away from the here-and-now into a past that never was, a present that is not, and a future that never will be?

"Freedom," used this way, is nothing if not an attractive distraction from the inescapable relationship "free" individuals bear to the responsibilities, inheritances, and interdependencies of existing as members of a social species.

We are free -- but for the demands of our families.

We are free -- but for the constraints of making a living.

We are free -- but for the inequalities that persist despite the laws intended to correct them.

We are free -- but for our individual and collective past. We are free -- but for our foolishness.

As long as "no man is an island," no one is free.

White Picket Dense puts it this way:

How much freedom do you have on a day to day basis? Do you have the freedom of time? Can you decide what time to wake up each morning? What time to eat lunch? What time to switch tasks? Who controls your hours? Do you have freedom of location? Do you decide where you are going to do your work? Did you decide that you wanted to live so far from where you work, and exhaust valuable energy resources? If you believe you are free, ask yourself: free to do what?

That is the key question: "Free to do what?" Even if your answer is "free to make your own way in the world," you are never free from your dependence upon others. Indeed, even as your wealth increases, so, too, does your dependence on others to maintain it -- to build and clean your houses, to care for and educate your children, to manage your investments, to manufacture your cars, to fly your planes, to work in your offices, to grow and prepare your food, to make and sell you your clothes, to upgrade your technology, to fix your heart when it breaks, to tell -- and sell -- you everything you always wanted to hear.

Freedom, more or less, is an elixir of self-deception.

But fireworks? Well, you are more or less free to enjoy those at your own risk.

If you haven't had a chance to yet, go check out The Homeless Adjunct's most recent post and Independence Day contribution "What Would Thomas Jefferson say?" Here, ze asks us to think about the current situation in academe as we eat our hot dogs and apple pie and watch those fireworks:

What would Thomas Jefferson, who was most proud of founding The University of Virginia, feel about the state of the American university now?  As nearly 1 million university professors are now “contingent” and impoverished, and our universities have been reconfigured on something closer to a factory model, where is the university life Jefferson envisioned?

*  *  *  *  *

I suggest that Jefferson would be appalled.  He saw ignorance as the enemy of freedom:

“I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it.” –(Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1810. ME 12:393)

While freedom may remain an elixir of self-deception for some, I would concede it is an ideal worth believing in -- but only if we can take responsibility for making the means of achieving it accessible to all.