landscapes-of

This is probably not going to be helpful to anyone this far along in the process, but for posterity/literature/just in case: I noticed a number of people looking for recommendations of faculty working on mass incarceration, which is having a fairly huge moment right now among contemporary Americanists. @Qtf311 suggested "Rutgers, Columbia, NYU, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and PSU" which I would second. Don't forget to give Harvard a shot (Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Elizabeth Hinton are both major figures in the field, and their work is great), Michigan (Heather Ann Thompson is there, and Matt Lassiter seems to be working on a second book on law and order politics), and Cornell (Julilly Kohler-Hausmann recently published a book in the area, and I think there might be someone else there but it escapes me). I don't know Indiana's program very well, but Micol Seigel is publishing a book on policing next year. CUNY might be a good fit for some, I don't fully understand how interdisciplinary departments are there, but Ruth Wilson Gilmore (a geographer) has an affiliation with the center for Place, Culture and Politics, and though I'm not absolutely sure she's working directly on anything related to the history of the carceral state right now, her work is a great resource, especially when it comes to conceptual frameworks. I am sure everybody working in this area is already familiar with her, but it's worth mentioning. Many of the above and others were involved in the JAH's special issue on the carceral state in 2015, which I recommend taking a look at.

You can also become an archivist with a graduate certificate/program in archival studies, which you can normally get alongside a history or public history (etc.) MA. This can be a good option if you know you don't want to be a librarian and the MLIS would be a waste of time and money for you, but you would still like the archival experience and skills (to enhance your public history practice or work in archives themselves). The SAA has some information on archiving programs here. It does position you differently in the field, but it doesn't necessarily close off all options, and a lot of archiving jobs do not require the MLIS for this reason--the MLIS doesn't qualify you on its own. I've heard mixed things about the job field for certificate holders--they enter the market more qualified than an MLIS-holder without archival specialization, sure, but they aren't necessarily as versatile in, for example, a special collections setting. I dunno! This link describes the difference a little. In general, the most important thing is taking description (etc.) courses and getting experience. Here are some recent job postings in archives for which an MLIS would not uniquely qualify you, or for which something like a history/public history MA + archiving certification (and practicum experience) might: a project archivist at San Francisco State ("or an advanced degree in an applicable subject field with archival training," "a minimum of one year of archival experience"), university library specialist at UNC Greensboro, project archivist at Chapman University's Holocaust Memorial library. If you browse the archives gig blog you can get a sense of the breadth of archival work out there, a lot of which is in historical settings. In terms of programs, that SAA link above covers (I think) MLIS programs and PhDs with an archives focus as well as certification programs, I'm not totally sure how many schools have a standalone specialization/certification curriculum. It looks like Western Washington has a History MA with a built-in archives and records management program (including the internship), Wayne State in Detroit has masters programs in History and Public History as well as a History PhD, and they offer the certificate. I think UMass Boston's program looks something like that. If you do want the MLIS, though, there are lots of joint MA/MLIS or PhD/MLS programs! That would qualify you for archival work (if you take archival classes and get experience) as well as something like subject librarianship.

I know this is kind of silly (or maybe obvious) but: in addition to the above, if prominent members of your field are active on twitter, follow them. Follow grad students at other institutions. You'll get a sense not only of what's being published, but what people are reading, thinking about, interested in. (With moderation, of course.) (Except right now presidential politics is kind of monopolizing everyone.) Exercise caution, of course

This is a great and telling point, because so much paid (and click-generated) content is snipped from twitter, including much of that piece. It's something to remember. We're already pretty (I think) conscious of how our twitter presences represent us as scholars, but it can also serve as extensions of our work, which can then be literally reproduced by content farms. (There's plenty of literature out there about how Buzzfeed makes money off of people's tweets, for example.) We're expected to see this as maybe a good thing, or something, because it's exposure, but it isn't always best for us. (Or: it's pretty much always unfair, even if there's nothing we can do about it.) ("I'm certain the professor was paid" is telling too, because most people don't know whether authors got paid for the work they do producing content for these companies. Forbes does pay its web contributors, although it hasn't always.) The more pressing practical points when it comes to academia.edu are: 1. it is (increasingly) unstable, and should not be seen as a long-term repository--if it goes under, your stuff likely goes with it (we should assume this of all technology, but we forget) and 2. by signing up, you consent to allow them to sell or transfer your personal information and data, and their law enforcement disclosure policy is (to my eyes) a lot more liberal than twitter's. There's also a licensing policy worth paying attention to, same as any social media platform but with complications given its function.

A related aside: lots of scholars have been choosing to leave academia.edu, primarily because of its shady, nontransparent profit status and its data policies. I suggest checking this article out, it also includes alternatives: http://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2017/01/23/dear-scholars-delete-your-account-at-academia-edu/#26fedab62ee0 It's a much easier decision for more established scholars to make, though.

Hi! Mainly a lurker, but this is my expertise so whatever. I'm not in a PhD program l yet but I've done the professional range of Intellectual Business Casual™--library job, high school teacher, interviewee--and I've mastered the Look. I also attended a conference in my field a little while ago and took notes of womenswear. My advice to people (a bit too late in your case, but I'll leave it here anyway) is to take the long sartorial tradition out of undergrad, get yourself used to dressing a little upward instead of maintaining strictly separated casual, off-day wardrobes and academic, professional wardrobes. (I have no idea how old you are or what your professional experience is, this is just my generalized suggestion.) Everybody in this thread is right: be yourself, be comfortable, be able to walk and sit and stand. The fact is that if you look uncomfortable and act uncomfortable then you aren't going to sound or seem confident in your claims and your intellectual direction, which frankly sucks and I hate it. But it's the truth. Sarah Beth makes an important point, I think, about "swimming in" clothes and feeling like a "kid dressing up." The unfortunate thing is that suiting looks cheap when it is cheap, and that sort of thing is (ugh) really obvious to people on the other side of the payscale. It can make you look more "early career" or "internish." (I hate even saying these things.) This is why I advise against pants or pantsuits unless you have a pair that you love and look killer in (probably either tailored or you're the luckiest person on earth!) It's my opinion that you cannot go wrong with black leggings (yes, leggings!) or tights, a skirt, some sort of top and a cardigan. Cardigan! When in doubt, pretend like you're cosplaying the coolest librarian you know. (There is lots of good inspo on http://librarianwardrobe.com/.) (There are lots of "academic style" blogs of varying class and socioeconomic positions out there.) Heels? Never. I mean, unless you love them. Boots, pretty much September through May. Boots! It's probably a bit late in the season for a lot of shopping (also, $$$) but for the sake of future readers, I always recommend a comfortable, under-decorated pair of leather or faux leather boots with not a lot of heel (depending on your tolerance)--ankle boots, riding boots, etc. It's what everybody teaches in! (Well, here in the midwest, with the long cold seasons.) This is gonna be extra tough for a size 12 (or maybe extra lucky at a thrift store? not a ton of competition?), and size is always the mitigating factor--sizeism means you have to spend either more money or more labor to maintain even the minimum of professionalism. For people that don't love fashion and find it oppressive--which it absolutely is, even if you like it--I think it helps to think in formulas: leggings and tights, one or two skirts, tops you like and cardigans. Pick your favorite colors and you can wear them all together forever. Take the guesswork out of it. Final suggestion: sometimes around these parts I hear people say that women should, like, suppress their love of ornament and jewelry and all frivolousness lest they be outed as Superficial Women or whatever, and it's bananas. Anyway, every professor I ever had was a Statement Necklace kinda woman :). And don't feel like you necessarily have to sacrifice your gender identity (etc.) in dress for an interview--Academia is oppressive but it's not Wall Street, you know? Hope this helps--feel free to PM me for specific sartorial advice/solidarity. P.S. I don't even buy things that need to be ironed vs. tossed in the dryer or steamed in the bathroom.

I use AHA's history dissertation directory so much. I guess I can't say how reliable it is overall. It doesn't give you a sense of a whole dissertation committee in the same way the actual dissertation or somebody's CV can, and it's absolutely not interdisciplinary. But it makes it very easy and quick to get a sense of who is connected to who,* intellectually and institutionally. I use it to search for the dissertations & PhD institutions of scholars when I can't find it quickly by other means, but you can also select scholars and get a list of dissertations they supervised. Which can be very handy from a fit perspective, if not a prestige perspective. *"Always read the acknowledgements section."

Have you listened to Mittelstadt on the podcast Who Makes Cents? It's a discussion of this book so it might be kind of redundant for you but I really enjoyed it.

The app I was thinking of was Scanner Pro. I'm going to buy it myself (it's only a few dollars) in the next few weeks and see how I like it.

(Sorry, lurker.) I use an iPad Mini, the first generation. I love its mobility and especially its size for archival work but I'm honestly not convinced it offers much more than any other tablet. I have, however, read that some of the Kindles just don't have high-quality cameras. If you do decide to go the iPad route, it looks like Walmart (sorry) still has the $199 deal. I've been using mine for two years now and it's going great. You'd have to budget for a protective case, too, or else (if you are like me) you will drive yourself crazy with worry. The major problems I run up against with it in the archives are: Not long after taking snaps of documents (and, okay, selfies and pictures of my cat) the thing run's out of space. Not a huge problem when you use Dropbox etc. but it can make it less difficult to have your research materials on hand all the time. You can get a 32G iPad instead of the 16, but it costs a lot more and I can't imagine it's worth it. It's kind of hard to hold the thing and take a picture of something, especially when you're holding it above a document. (It is also kind of a pain to take mirror selfies.) Just awkwardly-sized with weird button placement. I don't love the photo organizational features and automatic photo (focus, stabilization) settings, but I've recently learned about a universe of apps that make this simpler, like these. A friend of mine uses a really neat one that would allow you to make folders (which could more conveniently group photos you take based on their archival location and streamline note-taking and ideally improve your citations) but I totally can't remember which one it is. It's my new year's resolution to be more organized in this respect so I will ask her which app it was and report back ASAP!