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Mikha

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Everything posted by Mikha

  1. There are more recent studies, but this is an article that I found helpful: https://read.dukeupress.edu/pedagogy/article-abstract/15/1/139/20455/Where-Do-PhDs-in-English-Get-Jobs-An-Economist-s Of course, this may not matter if you're not wedded to the idea of staying in academia after finishing your PhD, or if Program A has a strong track record of placing people into a local, robust community college system or private high schools, etc. — anything that would help you avoid living in adjunct hell for the rest of your life. Can't speak to the impact that program-specific scholarships might have on your competiveness during your graduate career, or afterwards.
  2. https://profession.mla.org/english-phd-stipends-in-the-united-states-statistical-report/ This stipend report is not a substitute for a holistic assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of an individual PhD program and is not intended to guide prospective PhD applicants toward or away from any given program. The report does not take account of such significant variables as relative strength of the program in the applicant’s area of specialty; any competitive fellowships and stipends available; exam requirements burden; teaching and service expectations; cultural life and nearby off-campus intellectual institutions; the number of years of full funding guaranteed past five, if any; or record of placing graduates into full-time academic employment.
  3. Princeton increasing their funding for grad students in the humanities to $38,000-$42,000. If you receive offers from multiple schools including Princeton, ask them to match. If you're currently a grad student, ask your department if they'll be offering a similar increase in order to stay competitive with new applicants. https://www.princeton.edu/news/2022/01/25/princeton-will-significantly-increase-stipends-support-graduate-students
  4. I've seen mention of this series on the Chicago MAPH thread, but just so newcomers can find this more easily in the future: https://annehelen.substack.com/p/the-masters-trap
  5. Not a fan of Kelsky by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel like this is good information for people to be aware of, being offered in good faith from someone who's managed to come out the other side with a stable job and career prospects, which is more than many folks who end up exploited and overworked in adjunct/VAP hell can say. Plus I think it's valuable to hear someone who's recently made the transition confirm that pivoting into industry takes a whole lot of work that can't be done overnight.
  6. Well in my department it was less of an ask than a reminder like "oh don't forget if you already have an MA show us the paperwork so we can get you tagged properly in our system for that experience instead of making you work a redundant year to 'earn' it before you get bumped up from level 1 to level 2" — hopefully most programs do this automatically if they make pay/rank distinctions based on years of experience, but I could see this part slipping through the cracks (I know it would've for me if I hadn't been reminded)
  7. +1. And @Oklashif you're coming in with an MA, some schools will allow you to use that to justify a bump up in rank (and pay) immediately once you start TAing, so I'd inquire about that and take it into consideration as well when crunching the numbers.
  8. For anyone who might stumble upon this thread in the future,: this is terrible advice, and emphasizes the importance of good mentorship from people who either share the experience of navigating the academic job market as a marginalized person, and/or possess the ability to understand it without letting white fragility and the rage of privilege denied get in the way (or at the very least don't react to criticism by playing the victim and digging their heels in deeper). And do keep in mind, there will always be someone like this on the committee. If there are multiple, run.
  9. I'll ask again, but slightly differently: have you had any experience navigating the job market or academic institutions as a scholar of color? I think that the use of identity as a basis for hiring and advancement is common knowledge at this point, and has been for decades among people coming from communities that have historically been excluded from academia, doing research in fields that have been dismissed as narrowly identitarian and unimportant from their inception, or didn't receive their degree from an "elite" institution due to a host of systemic barriers. I think all faculty of color have known this for a long time, and by extension, the marginalized students they mentor as well. Can you please clarify what you mean by "the diversity regime"? Is this following from Ahmed, Ferguson, or someone else? Because I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to get at, and at the moment your posts read like a bad-faith effort to draw attention to diversity and inclusion efforts as some kind of scapegoat for people's ire in response to the gutting of the humanities.
  10. OP, have you had recent experience navigating the job market and/or a new institution as a junior academic of color? Just in the last year we've seen events at Yale, Williams, Harvard, Purdue that point to a lack of sustained institutional commitment to diversifying their faculty, sometimes even basic competencies or awareness of other cultures, and this is nothing new. Plenty of famous academics have quit or moved on from major institutions that many people would do anything to be at. My own undergraduate institution instituted a diversity initiative in the form of a fellowship/cluster hire a decade+ ago, and every single faculty fellow that I interacted with during my time there has since moved on to other institutions or left academia altogether. Home institutions are as white as ever, and the fellowship no longer exists. For anyone considering this advice, consider: even if institutions are paying lip service to diversifying their faculty, what are these initiatives worth if the institution just treats their new hires as window dressing and does nothing to support them as junior scholars? What happens when you land in an unsupportive department in an isolated region where there are one or fewer therapists in town to support you, specifically? These are all realities that I've observed from colleagues, mentors, friends who've sometimes gone through multiple cycles, interviewed at multiple places, or even gotten the damn job, and run into these realities. Not saying it can't be done, but know the reality going in. And be wary in taking anything an institution says at face value.
  11. Just saw a fresh Chronicle article discussing a faculty member at Wayne State University and his reputation for grooming/bullying students (copy pasted below due to paywall). Given that we've seen this happen already with Avital Ronell for example, how is a prospective student supposed to know these things? Does anyone keep track of this #metoo stuff? https://www.chronicle.com/article/I-Was-Sick-to-My/246413?key=M4Uz02RD-3jerweavC_IPA97QCvIXnS9Ap2m130iW5opgtEyr49gNUG3Qd_2E8jESW1sNFRuVHRmazZQQlVMbUt5ckphamdmRVNTTk9hYWJIV0hMcmNXcnpKVQ&fbclid=IwAR1LZIAcmcL46P5vypdZQFJbvkQxgEE9i602wgq8Db9cEe0JLH0FcimRzBE [Article Text removed for copyright reasons -telk]
  12. Hello Ramus, Following your responses in the thread and was wondering given your first response to go with rank: if the choice is between a top 10 and a top 20 (instead of 2, 3, 5 as in your example), would your advice stay the same?
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