A Meager Salary, An Unemployed Spouse, and Large Classes: Why I’m Still Attending Conferences

For the past several days, Brian Croxall’s “The Absent Presence: Today’s Faculty” has been making headlines on Twitter, academic blogs, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. And rightly so. Coherent and convincing, Croxall’s argument is three-fold:

• First, humanities job candidates consistently lack the funds necessary to attend the very conference that will potentially land them a job. The massive MLA Convention is the conference to which Croxall refers, lovingly described by some as a veritable “meat-market” or “ant colony.”
• Second, the humanities job market is currently more “anemic” than usual. Indeed, one only needs to turn the NY Times‘s depressing article “At Colleges, Humanities Job Outlook Gets Bleaker” to understand Croxall’s concern. Here’s a sobering quote: “the number of listings in the MLA’s Job Information List was down 37% from 2008’s numbers, the sharpest decline since MLA started tracking job ads in 1974.”
• Third, departments are hurting themselves and their students when they continually opt to hire contingent faculty instead of opening and/or filling tenure-track positions. For example, Croxall points out that some contingent faculty, those who are seeking tenure-track jobs, do not even have offices (i.e., they cannot offer students traditional office hours). Moreover, adjuncts or VAPs (Visiting Assistant Professors) find it hard to give frequent and more beneficial assignments/assessments beyond the “3-paper class” because they know they will be spending much of their spare time “looking for more secure employment—or working a part-time job.”

If you are currently or have ever been an adjunct, an instructor, a visiting assistant professor, or a non-tenure-track hire, you most likely empathize with Croxall. I know I do. In brief, here’s my story:

I earned the Ph.D. in the Humanities in December 2004 (emphases in Shakespeare and film adaptation), but I have yet to land a tenure-track position. Theoretically, I should have begun applying for jobs while working on my dissertation (summer/fall of 2004) or shortly after I received the degree, but I didn’t. Instead, I immediately accepted a visiting assistant professor (VAP) position at my degree-granting institution, filling in for my dissertation advisor who took a sabbatical to finish her book on Rita Hayworth. As a result, I didn’t officially enter the job market until the fall of 2006. Now, with two MLA conventions and several phone, (awkward) hotel-room, and on-campus interviews behind me, I’m still applying for positions in departments of film, RTVF, communication, cinema studies, theatre, and English. That even looks exhausting; it’s what I get for insisting on an interdisciplinary degree, I suppose.

Without doubt, I identify with Croxall’s assertions, particularly his first that VAPs and the like are struggling financially. Been there, done that, so to speak. For example, as a visiting assistant professor, my income is about $14,000 less per year than the salaries for most of the tenure-track jobs I’ve applied. What’s more, my department is unable to offer any more monetary assistance at this time for conferences (it’s bleak everywhere, people). Finally, to make matters worse, my husband — like 15 million other people in this country — is currently unemployed; he works in student affairs, which, like many academic departments across the country, is also unfortunately freezing positions right and left. Therefore, I completely sympathize with those teachers (and families) enduring financial burdens.

However, even with my present monetary situation, my husband’s unemployment, and my large class load (200+ students over 4 classes), I am still attending conferences and presenting papers, at least two per year. Here’s why:

• To enhance the vitae. Although some professors won’t admit it, this is probably the #1 reason we all go right? Job candidates (and search committee members) know all too well that a “beefy” CV is the first step to landing that tenure-track position. A former professor of mine once referred to this process as “Puff, the Magic Vitae.” In other words, teach, speak, write, publish — build it, bulk it up.
• To stay abreast of research in my field(s). Croxall also cites this reason in his piece, reminding his audience that conference attendance is “critical for one’s scholarship since it allows one to hear the latest research in one’s field.” Indeed, I am always intrigued by what other Shakespeare and film scholars are coming up with. For instance, at a conference a few months ago, I heard a paper on the influences of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in the Harry Potter films, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. While I’ve certainly noticed the Macbeth-inspired movie posters for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) and have heard John Williams’s song “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” I don’t know that I would have thought to create an entire paper around this subject.
• To hear about others’ research. I attend conferences to keep up with other fields as well, no matter how far removed they are from mine. It’s amazing what kind of texts, written and/or visual, that people spend their time reading, researching, and writing about. One conference I attended a few years ago featured a paper memorably entitled “Cunnilingus as a Eucharistic Act: Sexuality and Ontology in Michael McClure’s The Beard.” What a title. You know the chairs in that room were full.
• To establish — and keep — my name out there. Because I attend roughly the same conferences every year — SW/TX PCA/ACA, Literature/Film Association, and Film & History — my name and previous work are apparently recognizable to other attendees. Sometimes I’m known as “the one with all the color handouts” (e.g., here’s one on Shakespeare Behind Bars, another on Bogart and Bacall). Other times I’ve been “the one who always finishes around 16 minutes” and “the one who showed us clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.” I guess it could be worse in that no one associated me with anything at all.
• To network and support others. Had I not been present at these conferences I would not have been able to hobnob with editors and founders of prestigious journals, with book editors, with area and conference chairs, or with colleagues. Nor would I have been able hear others’ panels, supporting those who attended my talks and who posed thoughtful questions to me thereafter. Because of my conference connections, I’ve also been fortunate enough to have editors approach me about ideas for their publications/publishers rather than vice versa. This is probably the only reason I’m currently working on a proposal for an anthology on Nancy Meyers and Nora Ephron.
• To demonstrate determination. Finally, I am going to conferences even under these dire circumstances because it suggests a certain bit of perseverance. Yes, the money is lacking, and yes, the jobs are scarce. But at the same time, I’m also fairly sure that hiring committees, love their hearts, aren’t very concerned with all that. They just want to bring in a candidate with solid teaching experience and evidence of ongoing scholarship; you’ve read the thousands of similar-worded job descriptions, right? And ultimately, the committee desires someone who will fit nicely into their already established department. This last bit is why I don’t take rejection personally anymore: if I’m not a good fit, then I’m not; I will be somewhere else. Keep pressing on, I say, just as I’ll be doing in six weeks, when I head to the 2010 PCA/ACA Conference in Albuquerque, NM…

technorati tag: teaching-carnival

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