pro Augustis

No worries about side-tracking the discussion: the conversation about placement is an important one, and I think that having posters with more experience in programs and even on the market rather than just as applicants is invaluable. I didn't realize that the depth of information provided by Chapel Hill and UT was so unusual. Hopefully more programs follow suit. In terms of understanding the field at large, the low numbers of people really does seem like a problem. One of the professors I asked for advice went so far as to say that since the total number of (job) applicants is so low compared to a field like English, and the total number of jobs is so much lower than that, he is unsure that either figure or any departmental placement record actually has much predictive value due to the vanishingly-small sample size. Then again, if one program had a placement record of 70% and one of 50% over a period of years, it is hard to chalk that all up to chance, and in a market so dismal how can you not take every advantage? The points you mentioned, @συγχίς, about the relatively rapid change in departments and also how, with so few numbers, personal factors in terms of attrition could notably alter the picture are interesting. I've no idea how to really take them into account, or if it is possible to do so.

It was not only academic employment. One of the schools that I am thinking of, Chapel Hill, seems to list everyone, including those teaching high school and some with no current information (who I assume left academia). UT Austin's list, which I just have on paper and so unfortunately cannot link, had information for everyone, including some folk working IT outside the academy or what have you. Admittedly, neither of those lists takes into account attrition.

I can't speak for all schools, and as you are on the market, you definitely have a better sense of the overall contours of the Classics job market than I do. But I do want to say that some of the schools* I am deciding between have given what seems like very comprehensive information: all PhDs granted in the last decade or so along with the present employment of the individual, specifying whether tenure track or not. * Admittedly, one of these programs, UT Austin, only provided the information in a packet during the visit weekend itself, so it would be of little use to someone deciding whether to apply in the first place.

I hope my last post didn't seem haughty; I just meant to convey that UT had sent at least some word but, typing on my iphone, may have been too brief. The lack of rejections (for me at Toronto, where I have heard nothing, though I assume that is tantamount to a rejection) really is rather frustrating. Some schools I know have an unofficial wait list, and that is fine, but clearly that is not everyone, for surely some applicants are immediately removed from consideration. The fact that schools don't seem to bother speedily notifying the rejected, even once they have accepted those they intend, strikes me as simply inconsiderate.

I was accepted to UT Austin.

That's definitely also something I thought of; all of the programs I applied to were pretty highly ranked. In decisions, I think for me it has been subsumed under "Placement." After all, presumably the point of the rank is that it improves placement. If one highly ranked place for some reason does not have good placement, then I no longer see what the ranking is really doing for you.

I don't think it has to be a matter of literal ancestry. America and Europe have been heavily influenced by Greece and Rome, so I think that you could speak with some justification about a cultural/intellectual patrimony relevant to all people in those places, whether or not their ancestors came from Europepr not. ETA: those residents of America or Europe of other descent could also certainly have *other* patrimonies as well. I don't mean to exclude that at all

I hope no one minds someone from the Classics/History realm wandering in here, but this thread is quite enjoyable, and I have had a few sizable bloopers this application season: 1. When I wrote my statements of purpose, I worked off of a template but made revisions both in the last paragraph and in a few other places for each school. To make it easier to locate those parts, I bolded everything school specific. Being an idiot, I then sent off the first two applications with the bolding intact. Both schools thankfully let me change what I vaguely called a "formatting error." I got into one of them and haven't heard from the other yet (by now I imagine that means a rejection). 2. In early January, I got my first email from an admissions committee. Apparently I had forgotten to send one school a writing sample. Two weeks after I sent them one, they accepted me. 3. This one is less my fault, but it was still awkward. One school did a video interview, and I, again being a fool, declined to test the connection beforehand. As it turned out, I could hear them, but they couldn't hear me. Since it wasn't Skype but some other video service, I didn't realize there was a chat box for several minutes. Once I did, we changed over to actual Skype and everything went fine. They later waitlisted me (though not till after an in-person interview). Seeing as my two acceptances and my waitlist position all came out of these bloopers, I can only assume that admissions folk view our gaffes as somehow endearing... or at least are a tad more forgiving than we sometimes assume.

Congratulations! I visited there a week or so back; it's a great place. I didn't realize that they had a waitlist. Now I feel like I need to decide on that offer as soon as possible... I don't want to keep anyone out if I don't end up going there.

I don't know if I can be of much help here, as I haven't yet figured out how to finalize my own choice. But I can lay out the factors I am thinking of: 1. Fit, both with a prospective advisor and (ideally!) to at least some extent with a few other professors, also both in terms of offering interesting/relevant coursework for the first few years of the program and then being able to supervise the kind of dissertation I want to write. 2. Quality of Life/Vibe. By this rather vague category, I am thinking of stuff like the location and whether I already know anyone there, how well I see myself fitting in with the grad students there, how students get along with fellow students and also with faculty, and how invested the faculty seem in their students. 3. Placement. These are not, by the way, in order. If I knew how to order them, I'd be a lot closer to having a decision...

What a sickening development... I of course know that Classics is not immune from the evils of the world, but it still shocks me when something so horrible pops up in the academic bubble. It hits close to home, I suppose. I wonder what happens from here to his current students.

By the terms of the standard divide, I am a Latinist: my focus is Roman, and I have simply read far more Latin than Greek at this point. I can't say that I really identify as a Latinist, though. I think of myself as a Roman Historian, a job that surely requires both Latin and Greek. Trying to not be wholly pigeonholed into one or the other seems to be one of the potential challenges of being a historian in a Classics department.

I wholeheartedly agree with your point about changes in english. Every once in a while, those changes seem to me great enough to necessitate a new translation. Maintaining a Victorian Vergil would only serve to keep the text feeling distant and obscure. While you can never wholly get the feel of the Latin in a translation, you can certainly come a lot closer when reading a translation from your own age than one written by someone in the time of your great great grandparents. Outside of that, I don't think I could say that there is a need for new translations. Most new translations seem to add little, but every once in a while a brilliant translator creates something that would be a shame to lose. Of course, every would-be translator imagines themselves to be the latter rather than the former.

That seems pretty clear to me: the assignment will be returned at the next class meeting. Is that too late for you to make your decision? If not, you could try asking before then, but there is obviously no guarantee that the professor will give the information before then.

Go for it, then. I hope that my prior comment did not sound overly negative. As for lecturing, I agree: one of my undergrad professors somehow made lecturing seem like the most thrilling thing in the world, both for the lecturer and his audience.

I am glad to hear that. I should say that not all of my history classes were bad. Some of the teachers made the material very engaging. But not once in high school did we ever sit down with a primary source and try to figure out what it could tell us about the past.

I have no idea how to answer this, because, unless I am reading incorrectly, you haven't said what you earned on any of these assignments, merely how much they were worth. Whether you should drop also probably depends on how important the class is for what you are studying.

I agree with Quamvis, actually: I think I would enjoy teaching at the university level but am uninterested in teaching high school. Perhaps I am biased because my high school did not offer Latin, but I have a hard time imagining teaching anything like what I am interested in at high school. I took every history course offered at my (highly regarded!) high school, and not a single one was anything like a college course in approach. High school history consisted of memorizing facts, and I have little interest in teaching that, while, even if I am just teaching 100 level Roman History or whatever its equivalent, I would at least be talking about the topic I love and guiding students through the interpretation of tricky sources like Tacitus. This part of your post, Quamvis, did, however, catch my attention. If your reasons for pursuing this are a desire to teach in the university or a love of the subject matter, then I don't think that you should let a B deter you: it may be an obstacle to admission, but it may not be. But if you are only proceeding down this path out of a sense of momentum, then that is (in my opinion) an insufficient reason to spend years in grad school and enter a moribund job market.

The translator's understanding is likely better than mine, yeah. But the scholarly reader and the translator have different aims. The translator must create a readable, literary text, and sometimes that requires the sacrificing of accuracy. I have often found that, when I reach a tricky patch of Latin or Greek and reach for a translation to give me an idea, the translator has paraphrased the section because there simply is no smooth way of expressing the idea in English. Even when not going so far as paraphrasing, translators have to smooth over ambiguities in the original. An example from some work I have done recently: in the first century CE, there is a British prince named Togodumnus and a client king named Togidubnus. One scholar argued that the two were the same individual and that the passage in Dio taken to refer to Togodumnus' death had been misinterpreted. I ultimately did not find that argument persuasive, but had I not been able to read the original Greek I would have been totally unable to meaningfully agree or disagree with the suggestion. Every passage is not so thorny, admittedly. But I have come across enough that are that I don't think you can sacrifice the ability to deal with them without hamstringing your research right out of the gate.

Congratulations to all those who have heard good news recently. I have been quiet on here, since I've spent the last few weeks bouncing about the country to see various places and, when in New York, desperately trying to catch up on work. So far it seems that I have been waitlisted in Michigan and accepted at UNC Chapel Hill and UT Austin. Tomorrow I fly to Chapel Hill for the last of these visits, after which I'll have to figure out how to make the choice. I liked the UT program, the students there were all enthusiastic about the place, and Austin comes with the rather sizable bonus that my best friend from college lives there. Chapel Hill, on the other hand, seems better in rankings/placement. As to the Chapel Hill program itself, I should have a better idea of it once I've visited, and I hope that seeing it will make the choice clearer one way or the other.

is simply not true. The vast majority of inscriptions and papyri, material that is rather relevant in at least some capacity for most historical projects, has not been translated. Also, as the previous posters have pointed out, so much is lost in even the best translations. Roman ideas of government, expressed in Latin, have nuances that do not survive the transition into other languages. Not to mention that no translation is flawless, and several passages have been interpreted in very different ways by different translators. Finally, why 1807? Livy has been available in English translation since 1600.

I know two people there (one in Classics one not) who love it. Congratulations are indeed in order!

Thanks for the responses, everyone! I'll write them tomorrow morning to say that I am grateful for the offer and really do like the department but will be going elsewhere. @Iocheaira, it is indeed the same place.

One of the MA programs I applied to just asked for a Skype interview. As I already have the Chapel Hill (PhD) admit, the odds of my accepting their offer seem low, so agreeing to the interview seems like wasting their time. But declining to be interviewed seems so rude and abrupt, not to mention that part of me worries that as soon as I say no to this program I'll (somehow?) irreparably wreck the Chapel Hill situation. Anyone have any experience or thoughts on how to phrase this so that I don't come off sounding like I think I'm too good for their program?

When wait list notifications are sent out varies entirely by program. I know that some programs (e.g. Michigan) will put people on the waitlist before even sending out acceptances.