Spreadin’ Love 514

Academic job advertisements only want newly minted PhDs. If you spent several years adjuncting, while waiting out a bad economy, you're basically screwed. Read Scott Erik Kaufman

Naomi Wolff's new book about vaginas is creating some fabulous reviews. Check out Zoe Heller in the New York Review of Books.  (link fixed)

In praise of the male biological clock

20 thoughts on “Spreadin’ Love 514

  1. This suggests that a woman who wants to have children and to be an academic may be better off to marry and have the kids right after undergraduate, then go back and do a nice fresh degree after getting them through childhood.

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  2. “do a nice fresh degree after getting them through childhood.”
    Well, that would avoid the letter of the advertisement. But, let’s face it, the 2010 requirement is for more than just time from degree. They want someone young. They’re just not allowed to say that, so they are using degree.
    (though, numbers that specific always have me wondering if there’s a targeted candidate, especially at a state university, where there might be rules requiring units to hire people being eased out of jobs)

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  3. I have found I no longer care and am even looking forward to the collapse of American academia. Given its high percentage of dogmatic leftists, just plain jerks, and other unsavory people it really does deserve to fail. In a way they did me a great favor by permanently blacklisting me. God truly does work in mysterious ways.

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  4. “(though, numbers that specific always have me wondering if there’s a targeted candidate, especially at a state university, where there might be rules requiring units to hire people being eased out of jobs)”
    I read the whole ad and it is suspiciously exact. I guarantee that they have somebody very particular in mind already. It’s not nice to waste other people’s time with this ad, but I guess that’s how the world works.

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  5. Here’s another thing about that ad–as a commentor in that thread points out, it’s very unlikely for a freshly-minted PhD Ph.D. to actually have “A promising record of scholarship/research in pre-1900 American literature and culture” and to be able to “teach a range of subjects in American literature and culture between 1600 and 1900.” Note–that’s a very broad range and it’s literature AND culture, not just literature, so the pure lit people are automatically out. If I were looking for the person that this ad was written to measure for, I think it’s probably somebody who spent 8-10 years in graduate school, or spent a considerable time teaching as an ABD before finishing up, or some similar situation. It might also be a trailing spouse.
    As a certain professor used to say, you have to look for the lacunae.

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  6. I am not trained in hermeneutics. So I am unsure how to interpret this Old Testament reference. I take it this is supposed to be some sort of sophisticated way of insulting me. But, I am not exactly sure what the insult is supposed to be.

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  7. I’m referring to the part of the Book of Jonah where God tells Jonah not to be so eager for the destruction of others or so upset about injuries to himself.

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  8. I’ve been commenting under this same set of initials on this site for years. ‘MH’ is real enough for the internet. As for my occupation, I’m a data analyst doing medical research at a largish U.S. university that I won’t mention as I think that most people who comment here know it and because I don’t want to boost its google rankings for “butthurt.”

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  9. If the language of the job ad makes it for a specific person, then it might be a spouse job for someone else they’re hiring. Just a thought . .

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  10. I don’t know about ads in academia, but “1 to 3 years of experience” is pretty common in the outside world, which is about what this translates into.

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  11. Advertisement is a way of making your product known. Making it popular and known by everyone in this strategy we can be sure that our product will be recognized and will be more interesting.

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