Historiann

Happy Monkey says congratulations!

In response to “Practicing collegiality, and what to do when it’s not returned,” onlooker writes,

Perhaps you have thoughts on this question: What if a [tenure-track Assistant Prof.] were to leave [a] post after [the] first year? Can one resign a TT position within a year (especially for a “more prestigious” school) without ruining . . . relationships with [hir] colleagues? Is moving quickly considered okay within the field at large or can it damage your professional reputation?

onlooker:  I’m sure that taking a more prestigious job will only enhance your reputation as a rising star in your profession!  But, I think you ask a really good question, which seems to boil down to “can I do this without seeming like I’m a complete jerk?”  My answer is yes, of course–unless you want to look like a jerk.  (I’ve done that–it’s fun!  Especially when I delivered my big F.U. speech at the last faculty meeting I attended in my former job.  But, I’m sure that others will want advice on how to make a more graceful exit.) Continue Reading »

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You know how there are no jobs in history this year?  Well, unfortunately for me, my friends who are Associate Professors are finding jobs and leaving Colorado!  I’m happy for them and all of the new challenges and opportunities that they’ll face in their new jobs and new lives, but really:  where is their consideration?  Clearly, they haven’t been thinking about me at all!  Seriously:  I’m looking at three friends moving out of state this summer, and a fourth friend who teaches here is shopping for apartments three states away!  (This is why I’m posting a photo of the sad monkey today.  The sad monkey is me!)

I’ve written here before about how the academic life’s peripatetic nature means always leaving friends behind.  Well, I’m now officially the friend who is being left behind!  I guess that’s a lesson to remember:  things change even when you stay in place.  I love having so many readers and commenters here–but it’s not like I can have a cup of coffee with you whenever I want to and get your advice about my research, or you could ask for my help with yours, or like I could walk your dogs for you, or stay up late with you over a bottle of wine.

There is a point to this post, aside from indulging my self-pity:  Continue Reading »

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Oh, look–a pony!  (The best kind, too–one that doesn’t poop.)

We’re in Steamboat Springs, and it’s a powder day, friends, so I’m hitting the slopes.  Happy Valentine’s Day to all, and thanks for your thoughtful readership and comments.

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UPDATED BELOW

Yes, I know:  what a predictable headline.  But, it was irresistable!  Today’s blog post is a letter to all of the single college ladies, especially those of the heterosexualist persuasion.  Thanks to reader Indyanna and Tenured Radical for alerting me to this, and asking me to weigh in!

Dear undergraduate women,

You may have heard all of the buzz about the “new math” on college campuses where women undergraduates outnumber the men.  I’m here to tell you that this is a manufactured “problem.”  I went to a women’s college, where undergraduate men were outnumbered by 100%.  Even if you include the co-ed college with which we had a cooperative relationship, the numbers were approximately 70 to 75 percent women to 30 or 25 percent men.  And yet, this “imbalance” rarely came up as a topic of conversation.  There were women who always had boyfriends.  There were a lot of women who had girlfriends.  (Some had both boyfriends and girlfriends.)  And yet, most people–male and female alike, bi and gay as well as straight–were unattached:  interested in romance, but more interested in the other things that we did in college.  Some of those things were intellectual–but only some were.  Other things were artistic and creative, others were journalistic or political, and of course, a lot were just plain silly.  (For example:  menthol cigarettes, diet Dr. Pepper mixed with rum, streaking on the green or skinny dipping in the tiny fountain in the cloisters, and reading Walt Whitman and Radclyffe Hall, just to name a few examples.) Continue Reading »

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(Via The Daily Beast.)  “I want my daughter to live in a world where everyone’s decisions are respected.”  Good on you, Sean James and Al Joyner. 

It’s like I always say to my women’s history students:  Continue Reading »

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A friend of mine submitted an article to the Journal of the History of Sexuality early in the fall semester.  Within six weeks, he received two readers’ reports and a notification from editor Mathew Kuefler of a provisional acceptance if the revisions requested by the readers were made.  Over winter break, my friend revised accordingly, and found out by the middle of January that his article was accepted.  Total time from initial submission to final acceptance:  four months to the day.

Now, my friend’s article was pretty polished–it was originally sent out to another journal, which took more than a year to reject it on the basis of one reader’s report.  (Not cool.)  Still–kudos to Prof. Kuefler for his speed and efficiency, and kudos too to the readers who must have read and responded to the article in an extremely timely fashion.  Continue Reading »

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UPDATED BELOW

Howard Zinn died yesterday.  I never read much of his work, but I admired his career a great deal–the linked obituary is a nice rundown, but hilariously, it identifies Camelot lapdog Arthur M. “history goes in cycles” Schlesinger Jr. as a “liberal historian.”  Zinn was a “polemicist,” as Schlesinger called him–but then, aren’t we all?  It’s just that some of us are timid polemicists, and some of us are bolder than others, and Zinn was a bold, combative person.  (He was literally combative–the obituary linked above says that he got his head bashed in by police at a Communist rally when he was 17, and he was in the Army Air Corps during World War II.)

I never met Zinn, but curiously, our paths crossed in a distant way in-between my freshman and sophomore year of college.  Here’s the story of my brush with (the correspondence of) greatness:  Continue Reading »

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Dear Readers:  I was contacted a few days after Christmas by commenter Lance Manyon*, a colleague of the late Don Belton, an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Indiana University who was murdered in his home on December 27.  Lance was, in his words, a “friendly colleague” of Professor Belton’s, and spent Christmas Eve with him at a party.  Today, he offers some thoughts about Professor Belton’s life, and the ways in which both small-town gossip and media narratives have distorted the memory of this funny, smart, and above all complicated man after his murder.  Like many of Professor Belton’s friends and colleagues, Lance is left with the “cognitively unimaginable” fact of the murder, trying to make sense of the many different versions of the story and what they suggest about the deeper town/gown divisions in his college town and in the wider world.

*”Lance Manyon” is a pseudonym for a person on the faculty in the humanities at IU.

Our Holiday Murder, by Lance Manyon

Two days after Christmas, Don Belton, an Indiana University Assistant Professor of English, was murdered in his kitchen. More precisely, he was stabbed five times in the back and several times in the stomach and the chest. Belton was a small, black, gay man with a wicked sense of humor, and could easily have been a character in a Wallace Thurman novel. He was a renowned novelist and scholar of the HIV/AIDS experience. He was gentle, thoughtful, and sweet: when he arrived in Bloomington two years ago, he asked one program secretary for a campus map, and then offered to pay her back for it. For now, his murder is a cognitively unmanageable fixture of our day-to-day.  For the foreseeable future, it will force us to think carefully about the intersection of race, class, and sex in our college town. Continue Reading »

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UPDATED BELOW

Classy Claude has returned from the American Historical Association’s annual conference in San Diego to the wintry climate were he currently resides.  Classes begin tomorrow for Claude–alas, what lessons did the professor learn at the 2010 AHA?  You might be surprised!   

I have now returned from San Diego – and leaving was somewhat painful, I have to say.  The weather was just about perfect, and the sad truth was that anyone leaving San Diego today was clearly going somewhere where it would not be.  

I don’t have oodles to report because, in true AHA fashion, I didn’t actually go to all that many sessions – only one yesterday, and it was my own, and none today.  (I did not see the John D’Emilio talk discussed in the comments yesterday, but I, too, heard that it was fantastic.)  I did, however, attend the anti-Manchester rally yesterday right outside the Hyatt.  The protest was scheduled yesterday for two reasons: it was the two-year anniversary of the day that Doug Manchester made the donation that enabled people to begin the signature drive, which put Proposition 8 on the ballot in the first place.  His involvement was even more insidious and instrumental than I had thought!  Secondly, the AHA is among the few major organizations not to honor the boycott.  So, I went to the protest in solidarity with the anti-Manchester, anti-Hyatt, anti-Prop 8 gang.

The protest, which was supported by many different organizations, was a joint venture of both queer and labor organizers and it was – some grandstanding aside – pretty wonderful to see the kind of cross-class, multiracial support that was in evidence.  Fired Latina Boston Hyatt housekeepers roused the crowd talking about Hyatt hotels’ nasty labor practices and a racially diverse crowd of queer activists talked about their support for labor, and then labor talked about the fact that there was no real equality for them or for anyone at all until all people were treated with justice.  There’s nothing like a common enemy to unite disparate groups.  Be still my leftist heart!  Continue Reading »

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While I’m waiting for the exclusive report from Classy Claude to be filed from this year’s meeting of the American Historical Association, I thought I’d draw your attention to a comment from The History Enthusiast, who said that everyone in the pit on Thursday was a real Debbie Downer:

As a first-timer at the AHA Job Center I can report that it was much quieter than I expected (everyone was so tense!) and there were very few people milling around. That shouldn’t really be a surprise.

What struck me, though, is that when I smiled at people no one would smile back. I understand that the market is stressful (hello, I’m on it too) but some of the people I saw looked like they were going to cry. And there haven’t even been interviews yet! We were just dropping off CVs at the collection booth. I made small talk with one of the volunteers and he looked at me as if I had three heads. My guess is that none of the other applicants had spoken to him without having a look of sheer panic cross their face. Yes, I’m nervous too. Yes, this is a big frickin’ deal. But good God, it is not healthy to be so freaked out that you won’t even look other people in the eye. I find that very disturbing.

Those are all things I’d expect on Saturday when the interviews are in full swing, but today? Seriously. I feel like I was the only sane person in the room.

That sounds about right for the pit most years, right friends?  My bet is that The History Enthusiast will compare favorably to the Debbie Downers, especially since the departments hiring this year must be cheered by all of the top-notch candidates they’ll be able to lure.  Continue Reading »

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