schlesinger1

If your program is going to be on line, and especially if you're gong to be teaching, I very strongly recommend that you ask your department in writing for policy on how to use technology. The policy should have enough "how to," "do-s", and "do nots" that allow you as end users to protect your risk. IMO, the policy should answer questions including:
What are a T.A.'s responsibilities as a T.A. if a student does not have access to Zoom? What may T.A.'s do if a student broadcasts from his or her residence wearing controversial items of clothing, or displaying firearms, or is disruptive? Ideally, the policy will include measures for you to be reimbursed for license fees if not also network access and technology. (It's my position that departments should subsidize fully professional accounts that T.A.'s use and mandate that all section meetings be recorded., and that T.A.s be issued equipment that belongs to the school.)
I understand and share some of your frustration. I do ask that you understand that many academic institutions are realizing how dependent they are on revenue generated by people being on campus and the revenue generated by taxes on a municipal, county, and state level. In some cases, institutions may be deciding that they simply do not have a choice -- either open campus or start firing people as a broader plan of shutting down entire programs and departments.

As I mentioned in my original post, I am not opening up my SOP for history programs with this anecdote. 
No it is not it is not a recent discovery and I would not attempt to suggest it is. There has been a shift in recent years to an ethnography of policing which warrants a discussion in my SOP. I am not telling anyone how to do their job and would never presume to do that. However, engaging with questions of the ethics of fieldwork is something that I have seen in successful SOPs from other Anthro applicants. I am not attempting to "move the needle", but show I am aware of existing debates. 
As for brevity, we're writing on a forum lol

This seems on the money. I'm now in a TT R1 position, and I have zero online presence. Your online profile could not matter less in comparison to the quality of your research and, as AC suggests above, the mismanagement of social media has serious downsides. 

Also depends on the school that's hiring. The problem is magnified at R1s--you won't be competitive after maybe three or four years (maximum) of postdocs/VAPs. Unofficial rules are less defined at lower-ranked schools. 

quite a lot to unpack here. you assume that I’m not using this as a way to put a better application forward next year which is quite a big assumption to make. I’d like to recontextualize: I said I was a bit put off by a rejection not being BCC’d. For you to take that and then imply that I’m not listening to advice, am more concerned with being “right” than growing and many of the other things you have implied in your response is quite the assumption.
The people on this forum are humans. We have reactions in the heat of the moment. Not everything human beings do is always about “helping to build a dynamic that encourages experienced members to stay and continue to help”. For this to then be applied on a bigger scale to “this is why academic historians don’t like speaking with undergraduates” is again a big assumption to make and if anything just highlights the issues with gate keeping in academia as an institution and the way it treats the human beings who make it up, something that I have consistently had to deal with as a marginalized person.
I’m relatively new to this website and I’ve learned a lot of things about the grad school process. People have been very kind to me. The way a small comment has been blown out of proportion and the way I’ve been mischaracterized and told I have an attitude because of it is very disheartening and doesn’t make me want to reach out and in the future.
That’s all I have to say about this. Have a good weekend and I hope we all can be kinder to those on the other side of the keyboard. 

@whatkilledthedinosaurs, while you can certainly take what ever tone you please to express your dissatisfaction, it is more than "just venting on a grad school forum," not the least because you've provided identifying information about yourself on a BB that does not allow for the deletion of posts.
What you are doing is developing a habit that may not work as well for you as a "this is only a temporary set back / the good of the profession is good enough for me" take it all in stride comportment.
ICYMI, @AP has a Ph.D. in history and is a faculty member. A part of the big picture that you may be missing is that a critical mass of professional academic historians are not particularly fond of interacting with undergraduates. (Which is why the history fora are among the busiest at the Grad Cafe, season after season.) When you bring snark to the table, "mostly tongue in cheek" or not, are you helping to build a dynamic that encourages experienced members to stay and continue to help? Or are you sending a message that you're going to argue when you're given guidance you don't like?
To be clear, no one is asking you to be inauthentic or to genuflect. But there's something to be said about giving respect to BTDTs to get respect.
Returning to @AP's comment. You most certainly can argue what you "obviously know" or you can dial it down and understand the information you're being given.
 The path of an academic historian is strewn with obstacles and rejections. Between now and the time you are presented with a Festschrift , you're gong to experience people telling you "no, not what we're looking for/not good enough" even when you're damn sure that the answer should be "hell, yeah!" Feelings of frustration,  disappointment, sadness, depression, anger, bitterness (not me, never), are understandable.
However, the choices one makes when dealing with feelings are pivotal in the personal professional development of an aspiring academic historian. You have spent valuable minutes and intellectual energy "venting" and then defending your venting. You have sent a clear message to experienced members of this BB that you would rather be right than to receive information that will help you make choices that will get you where you want to go.

sorry but why do you feel the need to be such an asshole about this? the poster didn't get into a program they really wanted to and are upset about the way the rejection was dealt with. sounds perfectly reasonable on their part. 
pretty mean of you to turn this into a broader thing about how "professional academic historians are not particularly fond of interacting with undergraduates"! 

Unfortunately, yes, bad idea

Unfortunately, yes, bad idea

I know it's hard, but resist the temptation!

I know it's hard, but resist the temptation!

I know it's hard, but resist the temptation!

I wouldn't. That strikes me as bad form. 

Or one could argue that the Cold War began during the First World War. And "domestic national politics" can refer to myriad events, trends, and dynamics beyond elective politics.
@ipavineri please be mindful of how you discuss "fit" when you're talking to professors. This season in particular, applicants are, IMO, turning the meaning of fit sideways. 

I might be a bit hard on UVA, though I went to undergrad at its academic rival! 
It's not a bad place, but there are far better. I think the placement record speaks for itself, though. Success in TT placement is usually a good sign for a program.

I tell this story often, but when I was reaching out, I was worried that my AW score (4.5) was low enough to merit a retake. The DGS paused for a second to think and then asked, "is that the one that's out of 6?"

Perhaps speaking a lil out of turn here, but I'm unsure as to why you would ask for feedback on your rejection if you were going to disregard their comments out of hand. Speaking from experience, the people I had read my SOP were individuals who had gone through the process on either side (as adcom or as successful applicant) in the past seven years and knew my school list well. Also, if we're taking the anecdotes on a number of these threads seriously, then it seems entirely possible that LORs could still be weak and have no bearing on your relationship with the faculty writing them.
 
In any case, it is a good thing to be unconcerned about it at this point!

Unless there are special circumstances, like being out of school a long time or something, I'd be concerned for your grad school prospects if you can't find any professors willing to write you a recommendation.

I'm sure that decisions of this nature depend, at least partly, on the perceived quality of the applicant pool in each subfield, so it would be impossible to make them without considering all the shortlisted applications first, or at least getting feedback and recommendations from faculty members in each subfield.
 
And I'd only consider asking for a fee refund if I suspected my application hadn't been processed or reviewed in full despite meeting the submission deadline. That is to say, if you had reason to suspect UPenn simply decided to throw out all the Russian history applications without reading them this year, sure, I think you'd have a good case. But, as I said, I imagine it was more complex than that.
 
Which is not to say that I don't understand your frustration! It does feel unfair to fall prey to the caprice of departmental intake decisions and I fully sympathize with you.

A simple comment. No topic is inherently ruled out by virtue of 'fashion' or 'fad'. It is, however, necessary to consider that if you wish to address a topic through a lens that was identified as problematic ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or more years ago, you had *better have an extraordinary reason why that old-fashioned lens is still relevant in the 21st century.* 
 
I write this as a medievalist who is studying what seems at first to be a *very* old-fashioned topic that is *very much* out of the historical mainstream on its face. With that said, I am incorporating the ideas, insights, historiography, and theoretical frameworks of the 21st century, which have not only interested my advisor, but also scholars on two continents. The trick, of course, is now to pull it off and convince an audience that is broader than my advisor and other specialists in my sub-field that my work is of contemporary interest and relevance. I am not owed this audience -- I have to earn it. I don't think that Vr4douche is 100% wrong in suggesting that some topics are 'faddish', but it is also fair to note that these 'fads' are very much a corrective of centuries of exclusive focus on a very narrow range of topics and individuals, and that correction is far from over. My topic does not involve race, gender, and ethnicity, but I believe strongly in the importance of those lenses of historical (and contemporary!) analysis. I am determined to convince my colleagues that my voice and my work are part of a broader conversation that *must include at its core* those frames of analysis, even if this particular project of mine does not place them there.
 
In short -- follow your muse, don't play the victim, and enjoy the process while you can.

I just got waitlisted by Michigan. They didn't have the patience to actually write my name so instead I received an email that began with "Dear <Title> <Last Name>".

If you don't see that there is an imbalance in the system you are either blind or the beneficiary of the imbalance.

I said you questioned the value of race, ethnicity, gender and culture because you questioned the value of race, ethnicity, gender and culture in explicit terms in the post above my last one, as well as with your attitude throughout this entire thread.

I said your proposal isn't good because if it was, maybe you wouldn't be complaining about professors turning you away. They wouldn't do that if your proposal was compelling. Sounds like you got your feelings hurt and, instead of attempting to improve and adapt, decided to blame the bogeymen of social historians and non-traditional history.

Best of luck to you. I'm officially disengaging from this conversation. I've humored you much longer than I should, despite my better judgment.

Everything you wrote there validates my view that the 'new historians' are really the entrenched conservatives resistant to change. How can you begin to comment on my proposals without having read them? Obviously you think my proposals are bad because I do not focus on social or cultural history. So you praise the inclusiveness of history yet you promote a very limited concept of it. Seems hypocritical.
 
And I will remind you that I never once questioned the value of racial, ethnic, gender etc. histories. I actually enjoy the good ones, especially the works of Natalie Zemon Davis. My complaint is that the influx of studies that could properly be done in other departments has not been met with increased funding, teaching jobs, or graduate spaces for those who want to study traditional aspects of history. But of course you don't have a problem with this...you're the beneficiary.
 
Why do you say I dislike academia? because I do not get my jollies from modern methodology? It seems that you have now narrowly defined academia in addition to history. So much for inclusiveness.