(More) bad news and helpful hints

/ Historiann

Wicked Walter from Waxahachie got his “crazzy” on and informed Rate Your Students yesterday that “[y]ou done killed it. And I hate you for it.”  Says Le Mauvais:

I loved this site. I think a lot of longtime readers did. And now the place is all clean and well lighted (and heavily advertised!) and it’s just another mainstream piece of bull$hit. You know what it means if an idea has 75% of the faculty in favor of it? It’s a colossal waste of time. If you let 5 academics run anything, it turns into the biggest f#@king mess since the Bay of Pigs. (See, I read my history, too.)

Well, good for you, Walter.

Walter also gives props to our pal Archie, who checked in again from the dwindling hours at the AHA yesterday morning.  Well, mostly he was complaining about the job candidates he interviewed, and Historiann (aided by the white-robed angel on my left shoulder, who goes by the name of GayProf) is feeling like this website has already given itself over to teeing off on the youngest and most vulnerable among us…and that’s not the Historiann way.  We are not Rate Your Students, not even the shinier, better-lighted version that Walter complains about–we’re about compassion and understanding for all (except the Chapstik guy.  That was just nasty.)  The funny thing about Archie’s last post is that he agrees entirely with Tenured Radical about the 2010 San Diego conference kerfluffle and suggests that there are more (and less expensive) ways to piss off a homophobe than boycotting the 2010 conference or trying to move it to another hotel at this late date.  Says Tenured Radical:

I would like to propose an alternative for next year’s AHA: I think we should go. I think queer folk and their allies should go to San Diego in unprecedented numbers. I think we should occupy Doug Manchester’s hotel, and I think we should hold mock weddings in the lobby. I think we should pass out literature to his guests educating them on civil rights issues and their connections to queer citizenship. I think we should move our queer programming out of the meeting rooms and into the public spaces of the hotel — the lobby, the restaurants, the shops. . . . [A] good start for queer historians might be to go to San Diego in vast numbers and queer the convention, and queer that hotel, big time.

And, as though he is channeling a fouler-mouthed TR, here’s Archie: 

[W]e wound up with a resolution that created a fund to hold a bunch of history of marriage panels in this a$$hole’s hotel. This strikes me as the saner route. It might even get picked up in the media, which might then actually cause this f^*khead some embarrassment at the country club. I mean isn’t that better than giving him half a million free dollars because we all want to be pure?

Well, you know what they say about politics making strange bedfellows.  Finally, in a helpful public service, Squadratomagico has reposted some links to two tasty and nutritious posts from yesteryear on 1) mistakes to avoid on job interviews (for both the interviewing departments and the job candidates), and 2) how to craft a job talk.  (That second one seems particularly timely and useful.)  Have a great day, darlings–I’ll be checking in later, so play nice!

0 thoughts on “(More) bad news and helpful hints”

  4. Squadratomagico–I’m rethinking my anti-AHA stance for 2010, not just because the conference will be in San Diego (and I like to support conferences on the West coast) but because of the street theatre potential. We should organize mass same-sex makeout flash mobs or something, in addition to wedding, after wedding, after wedding…

    Ortho and GayProf: RYS has energy. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad juju, sometimes it’s merely snarkily cathartic. It’s like The Force. You have to learn to use The Force, Luke.

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  7. I prefer the spork — it’s like the Force only a lot more useful!

    Have fun at the 2010 AHA — I think that street theatre would be just what the conference needs, to be honest. And some decent accommodations for conference interviews.

    Sorry to say, I don’t think I’ll make it there. It’s just too crazy to try to travel anywhere out of Snow City in the dead of winter, especially someplace that would require two or three miraculous connections on top of actually getting out of here properly. I still remember the midwinter departure that was delayed a few hours because the plane was too cold to start up in the morning!

    Our national meetings will be late May in Ottawa, however. It’s a lovely time to visit up this way and you can enjoy multidisciplinary scholarship at the same time!

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  8. Pingback: Interview Horror Stories « Knitting Clio

  9. Janice–May is a lovely month in which to have a big annual conference, especially in Canada. (The Medievalists do it every year, in Kalamazoo, right?) I went to a meeting in Ottowa in May once, the Carleton (Uni) Conference on the History of the Family, in 1997. It was quite pleasant and filled with tulips, as I recall!

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  10. Wow – I just got back from a conference in San Diego, and we law profs have lived through this already, see e.g.

    http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=3806

    http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=3859

    http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=3918

    All the conference programming got moved out of the Hyatt, and over to the Marriott. Most law profs either stayed at the Marriott or a nearby Hilton or other hotels (there are lots in the neighborhood.)

    Incidentally, the bedside table in my Marriott hotel room had both a Gideon bible and a Book of Mormon.

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