The Social Network: Or; Does Networking Really Matter To An Academic Career?

One of 17 ways to visualize Twitter.

Why do we tell young scholars to "network," and what  do we mean by it?

As I was finishing up Samuel Delany's Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999) last night, I came across this gem of a quote on p. 138:

I feel that my career benefits regularly from the results of my networking.  My ultimate take on networking is, however, this:  No single event in the course of my career that I can cite has been directly caused by networking.  Nevertheless, the results of networking have regularly smoothed, stabilized, and supported my career and made it more pleasant (there is that term again) than it would have been without it.

In general I would say (and I would say this to young writers particularly):  Rarely if ever can networking make a writing career when no career is to be made.

Delany, as many of you know, is a queer science fiction writer who has also written a fair amount about the sexual landscape of New York City.  To put this quote in context, Delany is writing about the redevelopment of the Times Square district in the 1980s and 1990s, and its consequences for human relationships.  In the second half of the book, he works out the distinction between the formalized set of connections that "networks" represent (in this case he is talking about writers' conferences, and the science fiction events that are a part of his professional life), and what he calls "contacts."  The latter category, he argues, are informal, unpredictable, and are produced through a spontaneous, democratic generosity that is far more likely to produce a significant change in one's circumstances.

Delany's view that cultivating connections did not make careers surprised me, to say the least, since I have always viewed the mainstream literary world as highly networked.  Those of us who fail to break in may not be writing what a larger audience wants to read, but we often don't know (or command the respect of) the right people either.  When I was living in New York full time in the 1980s, the people who got published were also the people who were adept at getting invited to parties, meeting important people, and aggressively using those people to move up the chain.  Fran Lebowitz was, and still is, a classic example of such a person; but a great many other well-published authors, who are far less amusing, also fit that category.  Perhaps it's just an outsider's perspective, but I still see major book contracts being delivered into the hands of some people and not others because they are able to work their networks effectively and get in to see the right people. 

But what about the history world?  What role does networking play and should we counsel younger scholars to put time into it?  Has my own career benefited more from networking or "contacts"?

To answer the last question first, I would say that I would have to add a third category of connections that are neither contacts or networking, but something in between:  more dynamic and spontaneous than networking, and more durable and sustaining than contacts.  For example, I first met Historiann in a cab, a cab which she reminded me many years later when we sat down for lunch over beer and oysters, I paid for.  I was a professor with a travel budget, she a graduate student, and the cab cost the same regardless of how many people were riding in it.  I have no memory of paying for the cab, but it sounds like something I might do, as it fits my general philosophy of social welfare in which resources are redeployed to those who will, in turn, redeploy their own resources to others when they succeed. 

Fast-forward any number of years, I have become Tenured Radical, and I get an email from the author asking me to look over a new blog, Historiann, which quickly became one of the hottest history blogs around.  Since then, we have become friends and done three different projects together, none of which has probably changed our lives, but which have, nonetheless, been very pleasurable and satisfying.  So is this contact or networking?  Did the cab matter?  Would we have met in the blogosphere anyway?

Who knows.  I think the tougher question, since we are all free in the blogosphere to pursue the friendships and intellectual exchanges that we desire (and it would be interesting to hear more from Delaney about whether he thinks the Internet has altered his paradigm), is:  in the more constricted realm of the job market and academic publishing, does networking matter?

To this I would actually say no, it doesn't.  This isn't a reason not to go to conferences, of course, and I would urge all universities to fund conference attendance for graduate students and younger scholars to the fullest extent that they can.  I think it works against the stultifying tendency of the academy to keep untenured people in as subservient a state as possible for the longest possible time.  It encourages friendship rather than naked competition (many of my closest friends, and those who I still seek advice from, are women who I met through the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians as a graduate student.)  Finally, it encourages people to keep up in their own and related fields, to be challenged by others and respond to those challenges, and to become socialized.  These are all good things.

But I have never known anyone who could attribute their academic success to the fact that they were well-connected.  In fact (brace yourself for a downer):  some of the best connected people I know have suffered repeated setbacks, on the job market and in publishing, despite their ability to network and excellent reputations.  Networking is also different from having letters from influential people, whose opinion is respected by others and who testify to your excellence.  Such things count, as do the phone calls that people place before making a Big Hire, to the people they really trust (I've made those calls and received them.)  But there are simply too many people involved in any given decision for even the most influential people to have a decisive role in your future.  Paradoxically, it is not infrequent that when someone invested in your success is accidentally in a position to help you, s/he will recuse hirself from the decision entirely in order to ensure that the decision is perceived as just.   

I'm not saying that this makes academia the cradle of democracy.  I'm just saying it doesn't work that way.  Delany's best observation is:  "Rarely if ever can networking make a writing career when no career is to be made."

Where I would say that networking has helped me enormously is my ability to get things done.  The more people you know in your field, the more effective you are.  The more widely known you are as an honest person, or a fun person to work with, or someone who understands the principles of fairness and reciprocity, the more likely you are to make other people feel that you are worth spending their limited time and energy on.  In a more local sense, I find my networks among mid-level administrators at Zenith to be an invaluable resource for problem solving, information gathering, and getting channels unclogged.  If this post teaches you nothing else, it should be this:  administrative assistants hold the keys to your kingdom; information technology people are gods and goddesses; and the registrar's office is a temple.

The ability to get things done not only makes life more pleasant, and far richer when you consider time consuming projects like program development and the hiring of new colleagues, but it frees up time to write.  It also brings interesting and novel projects -- book series, journal articles, special issues, conferences, and Internet-based exchanges -- to fruition.  This, I think, reveals the basic value of networking:  when it works, it isn't about you.  It's about you in relation to others.  Scholarship, at its most effective, is about exchange, not about the grandiosity of one person.

And that's why it is worth paying attention to.

It's Safe To Go Back To the Annual Meeting; A Radical Guide To Days 1 and 2 of The 2011 AHA

I just want to say:  gays were not involved in logo design or color choice.

Last year there was quite a hullabaloo about the American Historical Annual Meeting out in San Diego. Doug Manchester, who owns the hotel the AHA chose, had given gobs of money to Prop 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative.  He also got a lot of that money by running a union-free work place.  It was what you would call a lose-lose choice for the AHA, and resulted in a lot of people flying out there to picket, and a lot of other people having to give their papers by sneaking in and out hidden in laundry trucks.  (No, not Really!  That was a joke!)  This year there are no worries: you can come into the hotel without worrying that you will have to cross a queer picket line, or worse, that the hotel bar is off limits to Good People.  We historians are meeting in the People's Republic of Boston, a city that is unionized up the yin-yang and where everyone is free to gay marry.  Go here to find out how to gay marry while you are in town; or slip over the Connecticut border and do it there!

But maybe you have never been to an Annual Meeting, you are a graduate student, and you aren't sure what to do after you gay marry.  Sure, you can run around to cool panels with famous people on them, and you should definitely go to your friends' papers and show up at your own panel.  But what else?  Read on:  I can't link everything worthwhile on this great program, but here are a few that caught my eye in the first 48 hours.

Thursday there are some great teaching workshops going on all day. You don't have to be very far along in your grad school career to attend one or more of these since they could keep the first few years of your teaching career from being a confusing hell.  Try How to Create An Undergraduate Course and How To Become An Effective Lecturer on for size, as well as Wise Use of the Methods Course in the afternoon.  Hint:  for those of you with conference interviews, attending these workshops is a bonus, since it might give you some ideas that would allow you to take the teaching part of your interview in a direction that is new and unexpected.  Imagine a conversation that begins with you saying, "Yesterday I heard Derek Musgrove talking about an interesting technique that I would like to try out.  For the survey, I think I would tweak it a little (blah, blah, blah.")

Thursday afternoon?  How about, instead of reading on this blog that, hypothetically, it would be great if historians were trained for careers other than teaching, find out what those careers already look like at Careers in History:  The Variety Of The Profession.

Friday at 9:00 A.M. the Book Exhibit opens.  This is a critical venue for meeting, greeting, and being introduced to others.  Remember the Radical Rules of the Road when in mixed company:

• Greet your graduate mentors but do not cling to them.  In fact it is best, when you see them, to look as though you have somewhere very important to be.  Practice saying into the mirror:  "Gosh, it's really great to run into you -- I'm off to the Chapel Hill booth to meet up with a friend/an editor/someone on my panel.  Have a great meeting!"  Only break this rule if they happen to be with someone very important in your field, in which case, keep a keen eye out for an introduction.  Count slowly to five in your head:  if the introduction is not forthcoming, skate out of there.
• Leave any and everyone before they leave you.  If you see someone's eyes drifting over your shoulder, even slightly, say warmly:  "I've really got to run -- so nice to have had a chance to say hello," then skate.
• If there is someone you know, but are unsure whether to greet or not, casually pick up a book and leaf through it.  If said person greets you, look very surprised and say: "OmygodIcan'tbelieveIdidn't see you!"
• If someone important calls you by the wrong name, let them.  If they do it twice, correct them.  If they keep doing it, forget it. There is one historian, who will remain nameless, who has greeted me for twenty five years as if I were Isabel V. Hull of Cornell, and I no longer correct her. 
• If you run into someone you just did a hotel room interview with, you don't have to act like you are employed by an escort service and pretend you have never met them.  Smile and nod; if you are close enough to speak say hello and say you had a good time in the interview.  Even if you didn't.  
• Have one sentence to say about your dissertation if a senior scholar asks.  One.  "I'm writing about the transgender community in Havana after the Cuban Revolution," for example. Most people are just asking to be polite, although in the rare instance that the person really is interested in it, be conversational -- do not launch into your interview speech.
• Never, never, never ask a senior scholar what s/he is working on unless you are dinner partners.  Your just-to-be-polite question is:  "Are you having a good meeting?"
• Check compulsively, but discreetly, to make sure your fly is not open. 

At 9:30 Friday, there is a workshop on interviewing.  I cannot stress enough how important this workshop is, particularly for those of you who are not yet on the job market.  Interviewing is not just about saying, doing and wearing the right things, although it is that.  It is about reading your audience and responding to the questions that are actually asked while delivering the information you want your interviewers to have.  Much of the workshop consists of mock interviews held in a large ballroom that is not unlike the gang interviewing room in the basement where you might, one day, actually be interviewed.  The people who pose as interviewers are kind and helpful, and will honestly critique your performance.

In the same time slot is Getting A Job At A Community College, which is unfortunate.  But if you have been on the market for several years, if you realize that teaching is your bag, if you are part of an academic couple -- why not find out?  And learn a little more about the kind of institution where the majority of students start their college career?

Other Friday events that look promising are the International History publishing roundtable, which has an all-star cast, including Susan Ferber of Oxford University Press; Social Science Research Council info session; Revisiting the Teaching of Religious History

And of course, if you want to meet Tenured Radical go here.  Women historians and feminists of all genders will want to attend the Coordinating Council for Women in History reception. 

Oh, The Joy Of Political History! Day 2 at Policy History Conference

Why do we go to conferences? Most of us end up asking this question, perhaps as we are finishing up a paper or a comment later than we wanted to, or packing hastily the night before a flight that is too early. I was certainly asking myself why I ever leave home for any reason as I contemplated the fact that, for the second morning in a row, I had no hot water at the Holiday Inn. Fortunately it is summer, and becoming chilled first thing has no lasting effects; my spirits were raised even further by unexpectedly locating a branch of Au Bon Pain a block and a half away where I could have a nicer breakfast than I had had yesterday. ("Do you know that the graduate students at Harvard refer to your chain as A Big Pain?" I overheard a senior scholar who was trying to arrange a table for twenty ask the manager conversationally. "No, I didn't!" the cheerful Midwesterner replied, as if my colleague had just made his day.)

Here's a link on why we go to conferences by Karen Tani at Legal History Blog entitled "Networking" (say what you mean why don't you, Karen?) Readers should note that while these hints are particularly helpful to graduate students, they are good to work into your repertoire at all stages of life, particularly if, as many of us might agree, you don't work at an R-I and people don't automatically brighten, regardless of who you are, as they do when they see "Princeton" on a person's name tag. More importantly, we go to conferences to exchange ideas, and unless you are into stealing other people's ideas it is good to be able to attach a name to them in your citations when they make a difference to your thinking. There is nothing more aggravating than hearing someone in the audience mention her interesting research during the Q & A, and then have to dodge others as you dash over before s/he leaves the room because s/he didn't identify herself. As Tani points out in this post, one of the points of coming to a conference is to get feedback on your work, but another is to make connections that might lead to more formal scholarly collaboration as well.

Some combination of an excellent program committee, my good luck, and the nature of the conference has made this event, now in its second day, particularly fruitful. While I haven't seen Karen networking, I did see her give a superb paper this morning on a panel called "Ironies of Legal Liberalism: Political Surprises in the Histories of Welfare, Civil Rights and Feminism." Karen is a Sharswood Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and is finishing a history Ph.D. at Penn on the long history of welfare rights. She was followed by Sophie Zee, of Penn Law School ("Rights on the Right: The New Deal Origins of Conservative Rights Constitutionalism, 1950-1980;" Deborah Dinner, of Harvard Law School, on "The Costs of Life: Feminism, Choice and the Debate Over Pregnancy;" and Hiroshi Okayama of Keio University. I didn't get the title of Okayama's paper, but he is proposing an interesting correction to Steven Skowronek's influential argument that the state of courts and parties gives way to a Progressive vision of state centralization. Instead, he argues, judicialism works its way into the state informally, as Progressive administrators imagine that the commission system might take the place of courts as the primary arbiter for rights. The entire panel, as Eileen Boris commented from the audience (following an excellent comment by Gretchen Ritter, a professor of government at UT-Austin), should cause us to think about whether historians' fascination with the complexity of post-Goldwater conservatism has made us a little lazy about thinking about divides in liberalism. General consensus seemed to be that this was right on. In addition to running the panel in an uber competent way, Matt Lassiter of Michigan suggested that a law degree and a history degree, which Dinner, Zee and Tani are all wrapping up, seems to be just the ticket.

This conference is particularly marked, from my point of view, by the quality of the scholarship presented and the quality of the discussions. That many of the presenters I have heard are also quite young scholars is a great credit to the conference organizers for having the courage to reach out to doctoral students, and it is an argument for why we need to be fighting for tenure-track positions to place these talented people. One of these rising stars is obviously Marsha Barrett, of Rutgers University, who appeared earlier in the 8:30 time slot on a panel called "Examining Alternatives: Reconsidering the Republican Right." This session also featured fine papers by Zenith's own Leah Wright, Timothy Thurber of Virginia Commonwealth University, and a comment from Paula Baker. Barrett is working with David Greenberg at Rutgers, and presented an outstanding piece on the implications of Nelson Rockefeller's intervention in the 1960 Republican Party platform. Political history wonks would, of course, find this interesting, but Barrett's presentation was so compelling that it suggests she will get a lot of attention.

Cross posted at Cliopatria.

Dateline Columbus: Policy History Fun, Day 1

The Policy History Conference is in the Columbus Hyatt, which is also currently housing a bunch of men's college rugby teams engaged in tournament play. For those of you who are at the conference but were unable to get a room at the Hyatt, this proliferation of apple-cheeked lads may explain the shortage of accommodations at a time of year when Columbus seems to be otherwise deserted. Because the rugby tournament headquarters are near the PHC book exhibit, this means that there are occasional moments when the public areas are full of (mostly male) academics in suits giving way to a flying wedge of sweaty, strapping and polite young men who have tiny shorts and legs of steel.

My first panel this afternoon was, as I promised, "Feminism: The Changing Status Of Women In The Age Of Eisenhower," the Book Forum on Alan Petigny's The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965 (Cambridge, 2008). Susan Hartmann of OSU was the chair and discussant; additional comments were offered by Beth Bailey (Temple) and Jennifer Burns (UVA), both of whom also have new books out. The Permissive Society argues that the 1950s are a time of transformation, rather than a time of complacency. Petigny proposes a re-periodization of the sexual revolution, re-centering the forces of change attributed to the 1960s around the earlier social and sexual upheavals of World War II and its aftermath. While the discussion focused on only two chapters that discuss feminism and sex, in his introduction, Petigny noted that religion and psychology are two critical fields where attitudes towards women and sexuality became dramatically more liberal in the 1950s, laying the groundwork for all of the transformations that feminism claims to have achieved in the 1960s. These intellectual corrections, he noted (mansplainin' alert!), are something feminist historians are resisting strongly, despite the evidence he has mustered.

Petigny (who was just officially promoted to tenure at the University of Florida two days ago) then sketched out what we might call the Mad Men, or "Don Draper" theory of history: that we can best understand the 1950s not as a time of discrimination and oppression, but one in which "norms" and "values" were in tension, particularly in the realm of sexual freedom and women's status in society. These two categories got a little tangled from time to time, and it wasn't clear to me whether Petigny himself believes that female sexual freedom = female power, or whether that was a misunderstanding. Norms, as he defines them, are the dominant social rules; values are what people actually act on but won't cop to publicly. Cultural history has gotten it all wrong, Petigny proposes, and his correction to that draws on the "hard" data of polling, surveys and the census. By the 1960s, this tension between norms and values had become unbearably stretched, he concludes, and norms had to adjust: but how people behaved, and how history and historical subjectivity had changed because of it, was a done deal. The sexual and gender revolution was essentially over by 1961.

Forget the Pill, Title IX, the decades-long campaign to end gender segregation, and equal pay for equal work. Forget Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the ACLU's gender equality project: none of that mattered. Forget that women's history is not only cultural history, but has embraced the practice of political history for decades. As I write this, what I suspect is that this book is yet another argument against affirmative action. Its rejection of structural discrimination as the cause of gender inequality in the twentieth century positions The Permissive Society as an explicit argument against the historical importance of political feminism (as Burns pointed out in her comments.) Because my skepticism about the book's argument and methodology is running very high only on the basis of what its author said about it (and because he engaged critical questions by simply reiterating the arguments he had already made) I'm going to stop right here. But let me say, as far as I could tell, my reservations about The Permissive Society were shared by others on the panel. Or, at least they didn't contradict me when I voiced those reservations in the session. Since I am so familiar with their work, Bailey and Hartmann are people I already admired, so I would say that the most unexpected pleasure of the afternoon was Burns, an assistant professor whose book on Ayn Rand, Goddess of the Market is being reviewed everywhere. She has a very keen mind, and my guess is that there will be a lot of competition over her in the coming years.

The remaining work of the day was "State Abortion Politics And Policy," which was interesting and followed by a great discussion; and a plenary session on "The Media and Politics," in which the topic was the crisis in journalism and the threat to democracy it contains. While this kind of conference might not be everyone's cup of tea, I am quite enjoying it, in part because the participants speak more spontaneously and forcefully than they do at your average conference. While there is a mix of reading prepared material and speaking from notes, it is the right mix; furthermore, in the Petigny panel, there was an undercurrent of strong disagreement that didn't seem to cause people anxiety or cause them to censor themselves in any unpleasant way. The plenary, which featured two academics and a senior editor at the Columbus Dispatch (who really hates the internet, and had a lot to say about the ways it has cheapened journalism and public culture) was an outstanding example of how academic historians can bring their expertise to a contemporary problem.

Tomorrow? I'm thinking "Examining The Alternatives: Reconsidering The Rise Of The Republican Right;" "Disaster Politics In Historical Perspective;" "The Republican Party In The Post-War South;" "Governing Out Of Sight: An Enduring Pattern of American Political Development;" and maybe, if I'm still standing, "American Economic Crises in Historical Perspective."

Goring, Goring, Gone: OK, this has nothing to do with policy history, but doesn't the end of Al and Tipper Gore's 40-year marriage deserve a moment of silence from historians? That they announced it over e-mail deserves another moment of silence, since of all the ways to let people know you are splitting up this strikes me as both very efficient and mildly appalling. As usual, Michael Wolff at Newser has a few oddball insights, not the least of which is that Gore has always struck him as "emotionally fragile." Another is that "nobody's marriage survives middle age (even those that appear to survive, probably haven't.)" Are there heterosexuals who find this as peculiar a thought as I do? The notion that marriages just don't last is either cynical or liberating, I can't decide which. Perhaps the tougher truth is that relationships often do not survive moments of change or transition, like retirement, where two people who have been intimate for years discover they want to count down the decades to the grave in very different ways.

That the Gores are in their early sixties and that Wolff is describing them as middle-aged is heartening for those of us in our early fifties.

My guess? They actually do love each other. However, Al has a whole second career in which he gets to be as wonky as he wants to be, and chunk up besides: it is a true fact that if he were having an affair he would have gotten a personal trainer and lost weight, ok? Tipper wants to stay home and have a private life and was kind of hoping that after all these years of being on the road that he did too. If this is true, then I feel bad for both of them. Tipper: I forgive you for the censorship stickers on the CDs. Al: I forgive you for Love Story.

It's a Twistah, It's A Twistah! More Notes From The Heartland

So far I have been in Ohio for a day and a half, and I'm impressed. The little college town that was my first stop was a time-travel experience. People leave their doors open when they are away from the house for an errand or a stroll around the neighborhood. Children walk home from the school bus. Slightly older children ride their bikes around town, walk to the main shopping area, go from house to house, finding their friends and hanging out in a generally unsupervised and benign way.

People seemed happy and relaxed.

Between Cleveland and Little College Town is farmland; when I left LCT today to drive to Columbus (about a hundred miles due south), I passed more gorgeous farms, many of which are run by Amish people. The road rolled gently up and down hills, and was lined on both sides with nicely painted white fencing and the occasional family dairy operation. I drove by several horse and buggy outfits: in one, a woman in a long cotton dress and a bonnet was selling fresh strawberries. Well-kept barns, fields full of beef cattle (some of which were newly born), horses, pigs and the occasional llama or goat were nicely laid out around well-painted nineteenth century wood, and sometimes brick, houses trimmed with gingerbread. Periodically I would pass through a little town: one clapboard municipal building had a sign identifying it as the Town Hall and Garage. Signs advertised an Elks golf outing, or a Saturday pancake breakfast benefiting the volunteer fire company.

It's all very different from Shoreline, I must say. Leave your front door open there to go meet your kid at the bus stop and all your furniture will be gone when you return. But one thing we don't worry about much in Shoreline is tornadoes -- although there have been a few in recent memory: in 1989 three twisters converged on the Cathedral Pines in Bantam and turned them into mulch. So tonight as I was driving south through central Ohio, imagine my dismay when the country music station was interrupted by a terrible screech, followed by a tornado warning.

What to do, what to do?

I've been in a similar situation before, where I was a stranger in an unfamiliar weather zone and had no idea whether to take a disaster warning seriously. Once when we were in Kauai a tsunami alert interrupted our TV show: I spent the next six hours sitting out on the lanai waiting for the sea to draw back to Indonesia and then come rushing back to crash down on our heads. Didn't happen then either. But the truth is, although I have always wanted to see a live tornado, as the vicious thunderstorms began to sweep across the highway at alarming speeds, the car was battered by sheets of water and lightning crashed down around us, I was conflicted. My deep concern about whether I should just pull off the highway (something I would have done in the Nutmeg State) was in conflict with my concern that I would just be a sitting duck when a twister tore straight up the highway at me. I admit, I was also a little miffed that the iPhone has no video function, since a video of a twister ripping up the highway towards me would have been a cooler conference souvenir than the tote bag we usually get. The traffic crawled along and I scanned the sky from side to side, as the National Weather Service periodically urged me to take cover and avoid flying debris.

But where would I take cover? Should I stay in my car? Abandon the car and dive in a ditch? (This is the correct answer, as I later discovered.)

Fortunately I never had to figure that out. Although I did see what I learned are called "cloud drops" -- dark cloud formations that appear to be dipping to earth and sometimes turn into tornadoes, there were no actual tornadoes. Lightning hit a house in Pataskala, and power is out all over central Ohio, but I did not have to pull over to the shoulder, abandon the car, rush over to kick the nearest storm cellar and scream "Auntie Em! Auntie Em!" This is the only thing I know how to do in the event of a tornado, and I wondered whether the good people who live in Ohio all the time have better ideas. This is FEMA's idea of what you should do.

Anyway, despite the fact that I did not see a live tornado (at a safe distance), I have had more fun in my first 36 hours in Ohio than should be allowed. Tomorrow: Day One of the 2010 Policy History Conference. My picks for Thursday? Probably the Book Forum on Alan Petigny's The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965 (Cambridge, 2008); and either the Book Forum on Julian Zelizer's Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security From World War II To The War on Terror (Basic Books, 2009) or "State Abortion Politics And Policy."

See you there. And watch out for flying debris.

Sunday Wadical Woundup: Guns, Money and Conference News

"Hey, Amy" (Wait For It) "Where You Going/With That GunInYourHand?" For the most complete summary to date of the Amy Bishop Case, the University of Alabama-Huntsville prof who murdered and wounded her colleagues execution-style, go to today's New York Times. As we all know by now, Bishop's post-tenure denial rampage was not her first killing. However, today's story raises a pointed question. The 1986 "accidental" fratricide in Bishop's childhood home was immediately followed by Amy, then a college student, not calling 911 as one normally would in an accidental shooting, but demanding a vehicle from a car dealer, at gun point, claiming that she was being chased by an angry husband. Why did not someone, anyone, at least have her evaluated by a psychiatrist at some point after this and many other, less fatal, episodes of grandiosity? More than one person in Bishop's life was clearly not operating in the land of the real, since the final tragedy in Huntsville was preceded by numerous occasions when Bishop's behavior was violent, vicious and delusional. Added bonuses in the Times Sunday coverage are revelations about the anonymous tips after the Huntsville killings about the possibility that Amy had set a "herpes bomb" in the building; and the scary photo of Amy with hubby James Anderson, one of the people I would be pretty angry at if I had been widowed or orphaned by Bishop. Anderson is a corporate researcher who is also Bishop's intellectual collaborator -- if I were a prosecutor, or a civil litigator working for a bereft family, I would want to depose him about what he knew and when he knew it. Wouldn't you?

A final note: I know the Second Amendment lobby (several of whom are personal friends of mine) would say that if Amy's brother, or subsequently, the Huntsville biology department, had been packing, someone might have taken Amy out earlier. But I'm not sure I want to live in a world where you have to go to family dinners or department meetings dressed by Smith and Wesson. U haz gun control?

U Haz Gunz But No Research Moneyz? Ok, I'll stop. I don't know why Historiann and I think it is so funny to write in LOL cats language -- we've never discussed it -- but we do, and it sure dresses up a news item like this one. The American Historical Association has two grant deadlines coming up: the J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship in American History, co-sponsored " by the AHA and the Library of Congress. It is awarded annually "to support significant scholarly research in the collections of the Library of Congress by scholars at an early stage in their careers in history. PH.D. degree or equivalent required." The Jameson, of which your favorite Radical is an alum (lesson? Classy grad school credentials not required) has a March 1 deadline. On March 15 space history weenies will want to have filed for the Fellowship In Aerospace History, "supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), annually funds one or more research projects for six months to one year. Proposals of advanced research in history related to all aspects of aerospace, from the earliest human interest in flight to the present, are eligible, including cultural and intellectual history, economic history, history of law and public policy, and history of science, engineering, and management." Up, up and away, as Astroboy used to say.

Here's a hint, Junior Historians Guild: small grants like this are not only good for pushing your work forward and signaling to your colleagues that you are serious about your research agenda, they establish what is called a "grant record," which then pushes you up the food chain for bigger, more prestigious grants.

Conference Deadlines Redux: Please note another change in the Berkshire Conference sidebar -- we at Tenured Radical are in receipt of an extended deadline of March 19 2010. Go here for the call. Having trouble getting the panel together? Ask one of the thematic sub-chairs for help, or join H-Women and troll for conference buddies in the listserve like so many other people are doing.

"I was Gonna Go To Barbados, But The Job Market Tanked": Got no plans for spring break? Why not toodle up to Harvard for the 10th annual Graduate Student Conference, "International Society and Its Discontents", March 12-13 2010? It looks like a superb conference, and even if Cambridge (like almost every other college town) has lost most of its independent bookstores, it's still one of the premier academic theme parks in the country. So drift on up, listen to some panels, meet your future colleagues, suck a little air and you will come home smarter. Guaranteed. And if it's like the graduate student conferences I remember, there will be a ton of couch surfing, so don't be shy -- tell the organizers you have no place to stay and I bet they will help you.

Extra, Extra: Introducing The Sunday Radical Roundup

In an effort to post more consistently and also to celebrate the Lord's Day in a traditionally Protestant way (what the Lord actually meant by "resting" was that he would get some work done on his Book), I am hereby inaugurating the Sunday Radical Roundup. Following a practice that is common in the blogosphere, but most expertly performed by Ralph Luker in his daily series of Notes at Cliopatria, every Sunday I will produce a series of short items, old and new, that I want to bring to the attention of my loyal readers.

Additions to the Tenured Radical sidebar links include The Book, a new book review blog that has been launched by The New Republic; The Book Bench, its predecessor at The New Yorker; and Constitutionally Speaking, a blog written by South African Constitutional scholar Pierre de Vos of the University of the Western Cape.

Registration is now open for Reblaw 2010, February 19-21, 2010, an annual student-run law conference at Yale School of Law that brings progressive activists, practitioners, and scholars into conversation with each other. Registration is also open for the Transgender Lives conference at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, on April 17, 2010

Cultural studies, museum folk, historians and American Studies scholars might want to check out the website for the District Six Museum which is not in the least new, but was newly discovered by me two weeks ago prior to visiting the museum itself at 24 Buitekant Street, Cape Town, ZA. Memorializing the 1966 destruction of a multi-racial urban community by the engineers of South African apartheid and the displacement of that community to the Cape Flats, the exhibits themselves are more like a talking book than a museum. If you are doing a website evaluation in one of your classes this year, this is a great example of what a good museum website can do. If you are going to Cape Town, make sure this moving and nuanced collection is on your agenda.

Those still planning their classes might also want to check out the website for the Prelinger Archives, a collection of 60,000 ephemeral films now owned by the Library of Congress. I found the Prelinger collection because of a Cold War-era short film circulating on Facebook instructing teenage boys on how to detect pedophiles, the collection includes "films produced by and for many hundreds of important US corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions."

And last, but not least, the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender History has migrated to a new web address and will be undergoing redesign in the coming months.

Anything you want announced in the Sunday Radical Roundup should be sent to tenuredDOTradicalATgmailDOTcom.

Call For Papers: Conference On Undocumented Hispanic Migration, Connecticut College, October 2009

The Radical received in her inbox this morning (from colleague Frank Graziano, chair of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College):

CALL FOR PAPERS & PREREGISTRATION: Undocumented Hispanic Migration: On the Margins of a Dream. Connecticut College, New London, CT 06320 / October 16-18, 2009. A multidisciplinary conference featuring presentations by Peter Andreas, Linda Bosniak, Leo R. Chavez, Jorge Duany, Nancy Foner, Judith Adler Hellman, Juan F. Perea, Alejandro Portes, and Saskia Sassen. Also includes presentations by immigrants; by educators, social-service providers, and attorneys who work with undocumented Hispanics; and by border-enforcement officials. Preregistration is now open. The deadline for paper and panel proposals on migration, border enforcement, and undocumented life in the United States is April 1, 2009. For further information contact Prof. Frank Graziano, fgrazATconncoll.edu.

If you go to this link you can download the long call which, in addition to adding to your interest in this event, will give you a truly beautiful poster.

Wrap-up of AHA Day 1: The Radical Hasn't Been To A Session Yet

And doesn't really expect to. I'll be lucky to make the book exhibit. Much as I would like to see some scholars perform their scholarship in groups, this year I am fated to see them do it one at a time in hotel rooms. Which is interesting, but not exactly the community experience one expects of a scholarly meeting. However, since Zenith seems to be one of the few schools that did not cancel its searches, it makes us minor celebrities. Thanks, (Not So) New President.

Yesterday's highlights outside of the hotel room where my search committee was meeting included brisk walks up and down the Avenue of the Americas (quickest cutover to the Doubletree, where our interviews are being held, is on 47th street - that way you exchange the clots of tourists on Broadway who stop and take pictures of each other in front of the ESPN studios for the not much lighter, but moving crowds on Sixth Avenue.) For reasons I am unclear about, since I lived in New York for years, my 24 hours at the Hilton has caused me to think back to my post-college days as a writer for an advertising agency, lodged on the 40th floor of a skyscraper two blocks north of this singularly unattractive hotel. I spent my days writing about what we did at the agency -- writing press releases for our clients, and articles for the company newsletter (entirely written and published by me) that kept everyone up to date on the latest AT&T campaign. Then one day this job, which I had imagined from the movies would be glamorous, came to resemble the Hanoi Hilton rather than the New York one down the street, and I went to graduate school. The rest, dear readers, is History.

Highlights of this meeting so far include a chance meeting in the registration center with Tom Sugrue, whose new book, Sweet Land of Liberty: the Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North I hope to receive free in the mail this spring as part of this year's Beveridge Prize reading. The day was concluded not, as you might imagine, by going to what looked to be an outstanding plenary sessions, but by cabbing it to Chelsea, where my Conn College neighbors James Downs and Jennifer Manion hosted a gay party. Topics of conversation included: the beautiful view from Jim's balcony, the economy, how long Jen should cook the pigs in blankets, canceled searches, how unbelievably beautiful Jim's apartment is, flatlined salaries, and how nice it was that Jim and Jen had had this party in the first place.

Grand Hotel: The AHA Conference Interview Redux

Baron: You're so beautiful. It tore my heart to see you in despair like that...Please don't cry any more...I'd no idea you were so beautiful. I'd like to take you in my arms, and not let anything happen to you, ever...I've never seen anything in my life as beautiful as you are....

Grusinskaya (getting up): You must go now.

Baron: I'm not going. You know I'm not going. Oh, please let me stay.

Grusinskaya: But I want to be alone.

Baron: That isn't true. You don't want to be alone. You were in despair just now. I can't leave you now. You, you mustn't cry any more. You must forget. Let me stay just for a little while. Ah, please let me stay.

Grusinskaya: For just a minute, then.

Okay, so your conference interview won't be this exciting. But here's hoping it won't be so mysterious, convoluted and indirect either. Surely you are starting to get excited? Aren't you? So let's start to prepare for the Big Event, now that you have your all-important outfit exactly the way you want it and you have acquired the information you need about what the committee will wish to discuss.

Last year I went over the basics of the conference interview in this post; shrewd readers will note (have noted) that this year's advice on how to dress was both more detailed and more conservative than last year's advice (to sum up last year's advice: be yourself -- within reason.) For those who don't follow hyperlinks, the formula for a successful interview is this: have a five-minute description of your dissertation ready to go; be able to talk about specific courses you will teach, particularly those mentioned or implied by the original advertisement; enter the room as if you commanded it, making self-confident, eyeball-to-eyeball connection with everyone there, and sustain it throughout the interview; and have a couple questions about the school that indicate both that you have done your homework and that you have a warm, genuine interest in the school (even if you do not yet feel it.)

As I have written elsewhere, there are three obvious elements to every conference interview: scholarship, teaching and the conclusion to the encounter that is so easy to fumble: "Do you have any questions for us?" Throughout, there is a tricky subtext to every interview. You, the candidate, should be trying to figure out, no matter how well you have prepared for this moment, "Who are these people?" And they are smiling and looking at you and thinking, "Who is this person?" Only their question needs to be answered before you leave the room. Although your perception of them can help you do a skillful interview, the only perception that matters in any practical sense is theirs. If the committee cannot answer it to their enthusiastic satisfaction, you don't get a second chance.

But just for a minute I want to address the perils of the candidate acquiring fixed ideas about the search committee, and the school, prior to the interview. I am hearing two things on the graduate student grapevine this year prior to this weekend's American Historical Association Annual Meeting. One is terror, because jobs have been canceled and may yet be canceled even if the committees are being permitted to go ahead with interviews; the other is some version of "Oh, I have an interview at Xstatic University, but I would never go there." For some reason the response to a shrinking job market among some graduate students is to shrink their prospects even further by setting personal criteria in which the candidate announces that s/he "could never live outside a city" (an even better version of this is "I couldn't ever leave New York/Chicago/San Francisco." Well good luck with that one.) Another is, having done the appropriate research on the institution and the committee, for the candidate to announce that s/he is probably going to withdraw from the search because the ideological atmosphere at that university, or in that part of the country, is unbearable in some way. OK, be that way -- but withdraw now so they can interview someone else at AHA, ok?

Those who are in touch with their inner terror are probably doing the best at this point: not only are you going after all your interviews like the dog to the proverbial bone, but you are also planning on going to the gang interviews held at long tables (known as the "cattle call" in my day) where schools that can't afford to rent an interviewing suite, or who have been authorized to search at the last minute, are interviewing people on a first-come, first-serve basis. And you know what I say to you? Nice work. Because not only can you make a great life as a tenured professor at a school your mentors at Ivystan University have never heard of, you might even hang in with the profession long enough to figure out what you want out of it, and whether you want to (or can) write your way out to someplace else. Or you could find out if you actually care about writing at all, and would be happier at a teaching-intensive school.

But I want to talk to the rest of you for a minute. Those interviews that you are writing off before you have done them are interviews that need to be prepared for just as zealously as the interviews for the jobs you covet. Why?

As one blogging historian recounted to me recently, she had made a list of pros and cons for a possible job that would require a big move, and was discussing it with a friend. The friend (also someone I know, and it is a classic remark from this person) said: "Never turn down a job you haven't been offered yet." I'll go one step further. It is the highest form of narcissism to convey that it is you, with your Ivystan degree, who have the right of first refusal. Can you still lay claim to the idea that you want a career as a working historian if you will only work at a school of similar status to the one from which you will receive your Ph.D.? Can you honestly imagine that Bogtown State University is desperately hoping that you will consent to move to the next stage of their process, but you -- desirable you -- will assert that you "vant to be alone?" Oh for heaven's sake. Now, what you are probably experiencing is the same terror that is sending other candidates scurrying to those long interviewing tables in the basement of the Hilton, but you are responding to it in a self-destructive way by cutting a school that has a salary, students and benefits to offer before they have the chance to cut you. I "vant you" to know two things: I understand. And also -- this is nuts, unless you have some other game plan that is equally acceptable to you, like moving into an administrative career, marrying money, cobbling together eight adjunct courses next year and hoping Obama has a health plan up his sleeve, or winning American Idol. So here are the Radical's do's and don'ts, for interviews at schools that make you want to cry just thinking about them.

Do regard all interviews as good experience. Self-presentation, performing all the basics of a good interview, tailoring your responses to the needs of the school you are interviewing with, and performing like a champ when you are nervous and in an unfamiliar environment are all learned skills. This is just as good a setting to acquire them as anywhere else.

Don't imagine that just because you have researched a school you know everything about them, about how you would be received there, or even about whether you would like it. I know two gay men who, sequentially, went to work for the same state university in a fly-over state. Both were treated with graciousness, kindness and great generosity in a place where you might ordinarily expect them to have been committed to an asylum on principle. It was a stage on the way to somewhere else, and everyone knew it, but it was a pleasant stage for all concerned nonetheless.

Do treat all search committees with respect. They are giving you a chance -- give them one too. I have had a few interviews in my life where some Big Research University graduate student has roared in and treated the Zenith committee (a group of people who has a proven teaching and publishing record, despite our lack of a graduate program) with absolute contempt. I actually think this is just inexcusable, but if my personal disapproval doesn't sway you, try this: you have no idea who else may hear of your childish behavior at the smoker that evening. Like someone on your dissertation committee. Even if you are sure that you would rather sell hot dogs on the streets of New York (they may be hiring too -- you should check as long as you are in town) than go to Struggling State U., SSU may be your only option this year. Or SSU may be the other offer that allows you to negotiate a bit for the job you really want. But even if neither of these things come true, someone else who really wanted the chance to interview didn't get it because of you, and the committee had enough respect for you to give you a chance. Give them a chance too.

Don't ask detailed questions about personnel matters. Starting salary, research budgets, tenure clock, personnel processes related to joint or shared appointments -- all of these things are time-wasters in my view, until and unless you are invited to campus. Why? Because the committee is making decisions about you at this point, not vice versa. BUT:

Do ask questions that should have been in the ad but weren't, and that might give you an opportunity to let them know more about why you are perfect for the job, or just a thoughtful person they might like to have on board. Let's say the teaching load was not mentioned in the ad or by the committee. Asking about it (let's say it's a 3-4 load) then allows you to say, "and how do most of you manage that load?" Here, a point of information question has led you quickly to expressing interest in them, and what their lives are like as if being part of their enterprise was something that was real to you. Or that you love the twentieth century survey so much, teaching three sections of it simultaneously sends you to the moon. Here's another scenario: let's say you are interviewing for a women's history job, and you know from your research that there is a women's studies program, but it hasn't been mentioned. A good initial question would be to ask neutrally: "Are members of the history department also encouraged to participate in interdisciplinary programs?" Here, you could get good information about the department culture. More importantly, you are communicating your interest in the department culture, but also reaching out to anyone in the room who was hoping you would want to be part of a women's studies project and didn't want to scare you off by loading the job down with too many expectations -- or scare her colleagues off you by tarnishing your sterling political history credentials by suggesting that you might (gasp!) be a feminist.

In other words:

Don't forget that they are interviewing you, but do shape the end of interview, if you can, by the questions you ask. While it is perfectly reasonable to solicit information about the institution that you don't have, every second of the interview should be aimed at conveying positive information about yourself. I would argue that it is only appropriate to ask a couple questions, particularly since there is another candidate coming up on your heels, and question-time is always a way of concluding the interview. But manipulate every question to create an opening to convey something about yourself that either was not elicited by the committee, or that lets the committee know that you are interested in the uniqueness of their department, and their institution.

Good luck, History Scouts. See you in New York. And write in to tell us how you did.

Update: this just in from Historiann.

Receiving the Call: What To Do When Scheduling A Conference Interview

There has been so much heartbreak and angst lately about the state of the job market, here and elsewhere, that the Radical has neglected one critical function of this blog: professionalization. This post is aimed indirectly at search committee chairs and mostly at the people who love them. That's right, this one's for you, you lucky folk who will be called to a convention interview sometime between now and the first of the year, primarily in the fields of History and Literature, both of which have their Big Annual Meetings in the next month. What follows is information that you need to elicit in that first telephone contact, or if you haven't --- which is fine -- follow up with an email tomorrow and get it.

Let's begin. You are a person who has applied for a job, and you are at home playing Minesweeper -- er, I mean working on your dissertation. Is that the telephone? (Imagine sound of phone ringing -- brrring! brrring! - or more likely, your cell's ring tone, now cued for the season to the first lines of Culture Club's "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?") Yes it is! You look at the caller ID. It's the area code for Los Angeles/New York/Ann Arbor/Duluth! Omigod. Ok. You answer.


How do you begin crafting their impression of you? What information needs to be exchanged, other than when and where?

Who is on the search committee? While not essential information, this does give you some way of preparing for the interview. Look them up; figure out if you know their work, and think about how your research relates to -- preferably in a complementary, not a redundant way -- their fields of interest. Other than providing the grounds for small talk, knowing who they are will allow you to strategize what to say, and perhaps not say, about yourself. It will also prepare you to connect to people on the committee in the interview itself by crafting logical, conversational connections with them. "As you know from your work on the Cold war, Dr. Strangelove...." might be one verbal gambit for beginning the process of allowing them to imagine you as a colleague. Yes, they are calling because they are interested in you, but you will create a better impression if you appear to be interested enough in them that you have done your homework. They know you want a job next year: what they don't know is if you will be a good fit with the department. As a candidate, the fruits of this labor will not even be apparent to you. When the hotel room door clicks behind you, you want someone on the committee to say something inchoate and spontaneous like, "I can really see him teaching our students," or "Wouldn't she really fit into our department?"

How long will the interview be and how will it be structured? This is the moment to learn as much as you can about how the committee will prune the list of semi-finalists and how much you need to tell them about what. Will it be a half-hour interview, equally divided between teaching and scholarship? Will teaching be the top priority -- or will teaching be one of several topics? If I were you, I would keep a folder by your telephone so that you can look up the precise wording of the advertisement as you are talking to the person who is calling to schedule the interview. If it says "French Revolution" as one of the fields, say maturely, "I'm assuming you will want someone to teach a course on the French Revolution -- would you like me to bring a sample syllabus? Would you like me to sketch it out as a seminar or a lecture course? Or try it both ways?" Then follow this up with: "Are there any other courses I might be regularly responsible for that I should think about prior to the interview? Perhaps the Modern European History Survey?" Ask if they want syllabi faxed in advance. They probably don't, but it makes you sound businesslike, and it would make for a more substantive interview if the committee did review your courses in advance.

As for your scholarship, every search committee will want to hear at least a little something about your research, but this is the time to ask about whether the committee will be interested in talking about your research trajectory as well. Sure, you are finishing your dissertation and your idea of a trajectory may be the path a crumpled page of a draft takes on its way to the waste basket, but there's no time like the present to think of that next project -- particularly if they plan to ask you about it and give you three minutes to answer the question.

Don't act like you are the busiest person in the world and that you are doing the committee a great favor to make time for them. Yes, it's a good idea to slip in that you are giving a paper at the meeting, and that you will be meeting with a series editor from Fancy Eastern University Press. Why not? But don't be elusive or act self-important; don't find some way of letting them know that Ken Wissoker is on your speed dial, or leave the impression that this search committee just got in under the wire of a very busy conference schedule. If you need to reschedule with an editor do so. S/he will understand, believe me, and it's better to do that than make a search committee think you are a diva before they have even met you in person. And don't let slip that you have multiple interviews -- now is not the time to make a school that may end up being your best or only option feel like they may already be your second choice, or worse -- that you are so desirable that it is hardly worthwhile to bring you to campus because you will surely get a better offer.

Make sure you get the search chair's cell phone number. Candidates get lost -- particularly when there are several hotels involved. Several search committees from one place may be using a suite reserved in the name of only one person -- who might not even be on your search committee. It happens. Be prepared.

Make sure that before you start jumping up and down, whooping and hollering "Yabbadabbadoo," that you have actually hung up the phone.

Oh, Canada! The Radical Overcomes

So for the last few days I have been in a Far Northern City at a Legal History Conference. I was invited there to be on a panel organized by Princeton History department newbie Margot Canaday (whose book, by the way, is coming out in the spring -- keep your eyes peeled.) It was a great panel, and since I had never been to a meeting of this particular society before, actually a Different Experience (always nice to know you can have one, after almost 25 years of being an academic, isn't it?) Lots of the people attending were legal scholars, some were historians of the law, and others (like me) were kibitzers who stomp all over the field while we write a book that is sort of about the law. I spent time with two dear friends who I hadn't expected to see; a third, also a kibitzing historian, ran up to me at registration on Friday, and said: "Thank God I know someone here!" Folks in the law definitely live better than we in history or American Studies departments: the meeting was held at the Fairmount Laurier, named after a distant relative in the Canadian branch of the Radical family, Sir Wilfred Laurier, once Prime Minister of Canada.

You can see how much I have had to overcome to become the Radical.



Anyway, the beds were soft, the conversation sparkling, and the money large and clunky when it wasn't just odd colors with pictures of that nice old lady on it. I don't know how Canadians deal with the bags full of loonies they get as change every day, except to give them away to the homeless so their pockets don't fall apart. Which they probably do, being Canadian. As one of many delightful activities at the meeting, I attended a dinner last night organized by Mary Dudziac (and also attended by Dan Ernst) of Legal History Blog. Mary, Dan and I held court on the blogosphere: it seems like everywhere you go nowadays people want to know how blogging works, how you got into it, and how you know what to do once you get to the blogosphere. The answers to these questions, almost uniformly among bloggers, are:

1. Easy-peasy (sometimes follows a discussion on the merits of Blogspot versus Wordpress);
2. By accident and because I like to write; and
3. You figure it out as you go along.

Since there were a lot of lawyers around I also asked a number of anxious questions about fair use, since blogging often entails theft and re-printing.

Mary, and an unpleasant flame skirmish on the previous post which I have since erased, have almost persuaded me to stop taking anonymous comments and/or to use moderation. The down side -- and it's a real down side for a blog like this -- is that very few people comment when you make it even slightly cumbersome to do so. But, as Mary pointed out, having people write anything they want about you and circulate it on your own blog is unpleasant too.

I'm not sure which is worse about being flamed (pick one):

1. Someone I don't know writing something nasty and completely ignoring what I wrote in the post so that s/he can elaborate on how much s/he dislikes me or what an idiot I am.
2. Said person dropping hairpins that s/he is someone I know, so that I don't know whether said commenter is a sock puppet of a known commenter, someone I truly do not know, someone I sort of or used to know, or someone I work with every day who is actually a sick f***k using my own blog to pick on me.
3. Losing my temper and flaming back, and hence revealing myself as a person whose poise can be temporarily disabled.
4. Having said commenter respond to being attacked in an equally nasty way by writing in a hurt, disingenuous tone, "Gee, I (sniff) just wanted you to engage my ideas," when in fact there were no ideas to engage -- just an accusation that I am an idiot or a hypocrite or a power-mad Peronista.

As the ever-fabulous Robert Self of Brown had noted at dinner the night previous (and I paraphrase), it isn't clear that more communication on the internet is actually better communication. What we do know is that people who take the trouble to comment are a very small proportion of those who read: I would say on this blog fewer than 1% of readers are commenters, and I bet that is even true of very popular blogs who get two or three times the hits I get every day. Thus, those who comment are, as the pollsters say, motivated. What this means, in my view, is that they are either truly interested in the post or truly interested in making contact with the blogger, and in the latter case, negativity is probably as much a motivator as admiration, if not more so.

And as if I haven't been tested enough in the blogosphere in the last 24 hours -- presto! I just discovered that I was in danger of being bumped from my flight. Why? Because I didn't pay extra to guarantee that I would not be bumped from my flight. Isn't the free market wonderful?

The Radical Goes To A Genteel Academic Conference (Disguised As A Blogger Meetup)

I just got back from the Little Berks, which is a weekend conference composed of the group of people who organize the Big Berks every three years. One of the things we do in the meeting immediately following the conference is elect the new President. I am happy to say that the results of the election can now be revealed: the new President of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians is Kathleen Brown, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. She replaces Ruth Mazo Karras, Professor of History from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Ruth has done a great job, and Kathy will too.

There were many highlights of the weekend, but Yours Truly had the pleasure of being on a history blogging panel with Clio Bluestocking and Knitting Clio. It was a real pleasure to meet both of them, and Knitting Clio really does knit. She was working on what looked like a baby blanket while she was there, and braved a cold to participate. About Clio Bluestocking I cannot write, as she is pseudonymous, but suffice to say it is always a special pleasure to find out who someone "really is." Heather, at least, I had googled some months back. Both women have a dry sense of humor, and the panel was a great success.

(By the way, one of the big topics after the panel, when we were all sprawled on queen-sized hotel beds waiting for the new Tina Fey sketch on SNL was: who is Ambrose Hofstadter Bierce III? You may be gone, but you are not forgotten, old man. I was grilled as to whether I had ideas as to who he might be: I do, indeed, have ideas -- good ones, I think -- but explained that it is not only against the Blogger Ethic to divulge names, but that it is equally wrong to provide clews in the form of speculation as well.

My contribution was entitled Tenured Radical Speaks; or, What the Historian Learned When She Went to the Blogosphere, and it should be thought of as both an early blogiversary post, and a big, thankful shout out to all the real and virtual friends who have encouraged me along the way. I reprint excerpts below:

Almost two years ago, I started writing a blog called Tenured Radical. This means that today I am fast approaching what is known among my kind as my second blogiversary. In that first post, on October 17, 2006, I assumed that every academic would understand the title of the blog as an ironic gesture. Nonetheless, I explained to an as yet unknown audience that “long ago, when the new right decided to undermine the intellectual foundations of the nation, one of the big charges made by radical neocons was that universities were full of ‘tenured radicals’ who were indoctrinating the youth of America. The not so big secret, of course, is that universities and their faculties are far from radical, and that tenure is one of the features of university life that makes academics cautious at best, conservative at least. We need to change that….if you keep reading this blog,” I promised, “you will get some insight into the mysteries of the system, and what kind of people folks turn into if they don't keep ironic distance.”

“That's why I'm blogging,” I concluded. “Ironic distance….Because frankly, boys and girls, being an academic isn't as much fun as it used to be, and I think we need to do something to change that.”

Going back to read some of those early posts, I am amazed that a forum was created in my lifetime that allowed a person to announce an agenda and begin to self-publish for free; mildly embarrassed at some of the things I put up and the reasons I put them up (although some of the same things are wicked funny), and more than a little proud of what I have accomplished as a writer and a public intellectual over the last twenty-four months. I have learned a great many things that I never would have learned had I not started blogging, including how to sit down and knock out a piece like this in a few hours, do a couple quick revisions, and feel pretty good about putting it out there for a lot of people I respect to critique.

I also think a great deal more than I used to about how technology alters public culture and provokes democratic change, as well as about what it means to create accessible literary arenas where people can disagree about important ideas. I think about what it means to compile an electronic archive that one can re-write almost indefinitely (in fact, Nancy Cott, Director if the Schlesinger Library, is currently working with her staff on a project to archive feminist blogs permanently, which will cause a blog like mine to ultimately be “fixed” in a way it never will be while it is up on Blogspot.) I think about anonymity, since most bloggers and many people who comment on blogs, are anonymous. I myself began blogging anonymously, and then stopped, something I will say something more about later if you are interested – and while I have a strong position about the dangers of anonymity, it also has an important place in academic life in allowing senior people to hear things they would not otherwise be told....

....Not inconsequentially, my persona as the Tenured Radical (who also calls herself TR) was launched during a period in my life that I would characterize as a moment of professional crisis and self-doubt, a time that I happily no longer feel any need to dwell on. But my flippant call in my inaugural post for “ironic distance” and “fun” was as close as I could get at the time to saying what I really felt, which was that if I couldn’t resolve my anger and frustration at how my writing had been purposely trashed as part of a departmental political struggle, I would need to do something else for a living that did not require publishing or writing, and fast. I can hint at the extent of this existential crisis by adding that, in addition to exploring the blogosphere, I was also having lively conversations with the dean of admissions at the Yale Law School.

Now, some of you are going to say “Aha! Just what I thought! Blogs are not writing, or scholarship. They are therapy!” Well, no. I was in therapy, and lots of it. What I needed to do was to learn to write all over again with confidence, grace, authority and wit. I needed, in short, to learn to have fun again. And that was one of the most important things this historian learned when she went to the blogosphere.

Blogging is, first and foremost about writing, and writing in a way that foregrounds play as well as intellect. This makes blogging fundamentally different from how we were all brought up to write in history school, which is that writing was first and foremost “our work.” Think about it: one of the earliest conventions we learn as graduate students is to greet a person we don’t know, not by asking “what are you writing?” but, “What are you working on?” In a book I would recommend to all of you, which I read shortly after I began blogging, Ann Lamott’s Bird By Bird, Lamott (who is not a blogger, but sort of writes like one) goes on at often hilarious length about the difficulties of taking on a writing life as one’s work. They are all difficulties that are very familiar to historians and, I would wager, often accentuated by the general condition of being women working in institutions that are sexist to a greater or lesser degree (something by the way that we don’t talk about much any more except by sharing anecdotes.) Among the difficulties addressed in the book are being simply unable to write because of an incident, or incidents, of writing trauma in the past (check!); ordinary forms of attention deficit disorder that cause you to interrupt writing to feed the dog, do the laundry, watch TV (check!); the problem of getting useful, accurate, and swift feedback so that you can tell whether what you have written is good or bad (check!); wanting to have fun instead (check!); and difficulty in keeping a continuous focus on one’s work, a focus that cannot be achieved if one does not write every day (check! And check!)
Now, part of why this book appeals to me is that Lamott talks about very difficult things (like having someone tell you for malicious reasons that what you have written is a horrible book when in fact you are fairly sure it is a good book) in a funny, and not a tragic, way. That was very helpful to me because it wasn’t just that I had been traumatized by such an incident, it is that there is virtually no academic script that doesn’t relate obstacles in one’s writing career as having a tragic and permanently damaging outcome. Such outcomes might include the indefinite delay of a well-deserved promotion, as in my case; but there are also worse outcomes: people lose jobs, or –worse, if you really imagine yourself as a writer – you never write again, even if you do keep your job. And what Lamott argues is that there is no way to solve this problem but to write.

Write everyday.

Blogging helped me do that. As I did I began to write little essays about the condition of our lives and the work we do, and people responded to them: essays about teaching, about the dilemmas of the twenty-first century university, about what it meant to be a good senior colleague, and most of all – some of my most popular posts – the evils of the tenure system and a job market clogged with good people who can’t find work. One result of these essays was I got something from blogging that I never anticipated: new colleagues! For surely, part of the trauma of my temporarily derailed professional life was discovering that there were a small number of people I worked with who were really willing to take the time to really damage my reputation as a writer and scholar if they could – not just take the time, but commit to that project. Then there were the bulk of my colleagues at Zenith, who really came through for me, but over a period of years, paradoxically became yet another reminder that I lived in a world that was perhaps permanently divided between friends and enemies.

What blogging allowed me to do primarily, however, was to think seriously and productively about what brought me to this profession in the first place, and work specifically to make that thing happen in a new way. For me, what I have referred to elsewhere as “my second career at the same institution” has also caused me to think seriously about how I got to this point and what I want out of writing. Most important, because of blogging, I write every day, something that makes it possible to be a writer all the time, not just on weekends or on sabbatical, as I often did when writing was the “work” that came last because it required so much more focus than everything else. And this has reshaped my writing habits substantially. Time spent doing other things (teaching, say, or chairing) is time when I am taking a break from writing, not the other way around. Even if large projects are completed slowly, to write every day is to keep continuity in my creative habits that nurtures a sense of connection to my writing as primary work – not work that gets done when my work for everyone else is finished.

As a blogger, I also get to be a historian who engages regularly with contemporary history, which is a messy and exhilarating business. Those of you who follow Tenured Radical, know that in addition to writing about the past, I get to be a cultural critic, essayist, unrepentant goad to right-wingers and faux Dear Abby for young historians. That said, this kind of cultural work on the internet is considered highly suspect by many scholars I know, in part because there are virtually no rules that govern blogging, and the university world is obsessed with rules and the respectability that comes with following the rules. Blogging is also an activity associated most strongly with the young, which makes a middle aged scholar-blogger even more suspect as serious intellectual. I have had conversations with some of my colleagues in which you would have thought they were talking to someone who had taken up competitive skateboarding at the age of fifty.

It is the best kind of middle-aged crisis, I think. While blogging has involved me in some dicey interactions in the university world, it has also included me in a diverse intellectual circle of people, most of them younger than I, and many of whom are graduate students or working adjunct. In other words, my new colleagues are people I really wouldn’t know otherwise, and I have to tell you, I learn a lot from them. This, in turn, has allowed me to re-engage with my old colleagues in a freer, and sometimes pleasantly detached, way, and with a sharpened sense of consciousness about what higher education ought to be doing.

Blogging also allows me to write short pieces, work on form, voice, and getting complex ideas across to an audience that I need to entice in order to keep them reading. I sometimes compare it to a pianist playing scales: to the extent that blogging is not, perhaps, the most serious scholarly form, to take it seriously is to become a better writer. But best of all, I am read every day and my readers write back. They tell me what they think, and sometimes they tell me that my writing made a difference to them. Sometimes they get angry at me, and because of that I have become a keener listener and also grown a tougher hide. I have come to terms with something that is often difficult to face in the scholarly world, particularly given our systems of high-stakes evaluation: that sometimes there are people who really hate what you think is your best work. This, I will say in conclusion, has made me a braver writer.

And it has made me a historian who is once again having fun.