Advisor trouble: change or stick with it?

[Phedre]

Hey all,

So I very rashly asked a certain professor to serve as my main advisor/chair... I did this without having taken a class with him, without having had feedback on papers, etc. I just thought I clicked with him well and since we share so many areas of interest, we would work well together. I also asked him about a semester before I actually officially had to name my committee.

This is turning out to a be a mistake-- although I'm not entirely CERTAIN it's a mistake. I leave meetings feeling like he doesn't listen to me, he is a bit of a bully and is pushing me to study one particular sub-field. I am very passionate about queer theory, and it will be a huge part of my dissertation, but he is trying to steer me away from it (no jobs in the field). I am feeling like he doesn't understand me.

ALSO many of the older grad students have warned me about working with him-- that he's difficult, that he has many friends (huge networker, almost all of his students get great placement and great jobs-- at Ivies and prestigious SLAC) but also many enemies, etc. I feel like I've signed on to the mafia by accident! I suspect if I take him off my committee, he will be highly offended and things will be awkward and terrible. But if I leave him on the committee, I'm not sure if I can grow the way that I need to grow.

That said, we've only been working together for half a semester, so I might do the "wait and see" policy instead of the "shit I made a mistake" reaction.

But does anyone have any advice? Should I be listening to the experience of the older grad students, who almost unanimously tried to steer me away from him? Should I take the difficulty of our relationship to be a learning experience-- ie I will have to be challenged to defend my love of queer theory to him, which could be good? Or should I act now and say that maybe I acted too hastily and that i wanted to get to know him better first?

Please give advice! Thanks so much...

[jasper.milvain]

Other grad students are usually worth listening to, but in this case you might want to think about whether it's worth it for a potential placement advantage. In other words, I'm just as unsure as you are.

A lot of your problems seem to center around queer theory. Are the reasons that your advisor gives for minimizing your use of it compelling? Are you able to defend it based on contribution to the field and research potential, in addition to your passion? It sounds like the root of your dislike is around the challenge he's posing to the core of what you want to be doing. It could be a fair criticism on his part--if he's really a placement expert, he might be worth listening to IF there's a way that you can shift your work and still look yourself in the mirror.

[ARTH]

Or should I act now and say that maybe I acted too hastily and that i wanted to get to know him better first?

IF you decide to switch supervisors (I'm not suggesting that you should necessarily) I would suggest blaming it on academics rather than personality. Something about how as your research develops, you find your interests more in tune with this other professor.

[Minnesotan]

There's no way to uninvite someone gracefully.

As for the committee chair asking you to go another direction in your scholarship, you might want to at east explore the directions he advises. If the guy places new PhDs at such a high rate, maybe there's a reason for it. He might have connections, a nose for the market, or lots of experience training grad students.

Anyway, giving the JIL a once-over might soften your stance a bit. There are very few jobs for queer theorists, and feminist theory has been over-producing PhDs for years.

[Phedre]

Thanks everyone for the advice. I guess it's worth sticking it out for a bit, and then changing if necessary...

the one thing that i am really not flexible on is letting go of queer theory. I majored in gender and sexuality studies and that is the whole reason I am in academia (more so than for a love of literature)... I'd rather wreck my chances of getting a good job than letting this discipline go. So maybe ultimately it is worth it to drop him... not sure

[lotf629]

Phedre, I had a similar problem as a queer theorist at a forcefully (and sometimes, it seemed, forcibly) New Historicist place. I suggest you think of having one foot in queer theory and one foot in another methodology/subfield (whichever makes the most sense/is the most employable/etc. for your era). It's very doable, for instance, to synthesize queer theory and historicism: the trick is that you almost have to work twice as hard as everyone else, because your work has to contribute to both discussions. I talked about this a little bit on the Judith Butler thread. If you can get your advisor to stop seeing his approach and your approach as exclusive, you may be able to have your cake and eat it too. If you want to PM me I would love to talk more about ways to do queer theory/gender theory and also find jobs because it's my problem too.

As for the grad students, my two cents would be as follows: if they have basically the same ambitions you do (they want an R1 placement, you want an R1 placement; they want a SLAC placement, you want a SLAC placement; whatever), you should listen to them very carefully; if they have different ambitions, you should still listen to them, but less carefully. You should also remember that grad school is sometimes about making extreme sacrifices in order to set yourself up for future success: listen hard to find out whether they're telling you "Don't work with that guy because he'll make your next four to six years miserable" or "Don't work with that guy because his reputation is toxic in some areas of the academy." If it's A and not B, well, you have to decide whether it's worth the price.