When I attended my first Modern Language Association convention several years ago, I recall being overwhelmed by the throngs of job seekers. Standing in a hotel hallway, I chatted with a Shakespeare specialist who was also on the market. When she asked about my specialty, I proudly said, "African-American literature." Her response was, "You're lucky. That's a hot field. Plenty of opportunities there. You should have no trouble getting a job."
In some ways, her prophecy proved right and in other ways it missed the mark.
As an African-American woman with a Ph.D. in English, I have often been told I am "lucky" because my field is in high demand and many institutions are actively recruiting minority scholars. But the reality is that many minority faculty members, particularly women of color, find themselves in situations where they, or their fields of expertise, are undervalued and unappreciated.
All too often, our teaching and scholarship are wrongly perceived as lacking in "rigor" and intensity. Minority faculty members are hired specifically to teach multicultural literature only to find those courses continually cancelled for dubious reasons. Or, senior colleagues with no training in ethnic literatures are asked to teach the course because the department perceives them as more "objective" about the subject matter and more experienced. Sometimes, minority faculty members who have Ph.D.'s in English -- but who don't specialize in multicultural literature and have no interest in teaching it -- are ordered to teach such courses because of a stereotype that they can only be taught by minority scholars.
I have encountered numerous individuals at conferences in all of these situations, and my experience mirrors their own. So, when I was told by the Shakespeare scholar that I was lucky, I felt quite ambivalent, to say the least.
At the time of that conversation, I already had a tenure-track teaching position at a university. But I was troubled by the superficial diversity efforts of the university. I was surrounded by colleagues who considered me to be an "affirmative action hire" and not a true colleague. Not only did I rarely have the opportunity to teach my specialty, but I had to sit back as senior colleagues, who had not formally studied African-American literature in graduate school as I had and who were not particularly welcoming to people of color, were given the opportunity to teach the courses.
During my first year at the university, I was told that I would be teaching African-American literature classes, but I ended up being assigned to teach a survey of early American literature that focused very heavily on literature written in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Meanwhile, an upper-level course in African-American literature that I was initially supposed to teach ended up being canceled much to the dismay of the students who had enrolled in the class.
Frequently I felt maligned, mocked, or dismissed when I tried to take advantage of professional opportunities such as attending conferences or working on publications. For example, I was invited to give presentations at international conferences on a couple of occasions, and while white male colleagues were praised whenever they were invited to present at conferences outside the United States and heralded for generating interest among scholars abroad, my initial efforts to travel to conferences abroad were met with hostility.
At one point, the chairman of my department told me that I would never be able to travel abroad to go to a conference. And another senior colleague admitted that he feared I would be recruited away if I received exposure at an international conference. On the one hand, I was told to focus on my scholarship and attend conferences. On the other hand, my attempts to do so were often met with resistance. I did eventually secure grant money to travel to the international conferences, but I often had to get it from outside my department.
At that particular time, the university had never tenured a nonwhite faculty member in English, nor had any nonwhite ever held a position in the English department above the level of assistant professor. The glass ceiling seemed incredibly low, and I felt as if I were bumping my head against it constantly. Finally, I decided to go on the market, and a private, liberal-arts college invited me for an interview at the MLA -- the very same convention where I had the discussion with the Shakespeare scholar.
The interview went well, although at times I felt that the search committee was rather ambivalent about me, and that feeling grew when the college contacted me after the conference to schedule an on-campus interview. The faculty member who called said, "Are you sure you are still interested in our position?" and "Do you really want to be on our faculty?"
During the on-campus interview, faculty members kept commenting on how glad they were that I had actually agreed to come, which made me wonder if they had some sort of inferiority complex or if they had difficulty in attracting minority candidates. Buzzwords like "diversity" cropped up continually. Then I discovered from one of the faculty members that the department already had another candidate in mind for the position who had a very strong chance of getting the job. I felt as if I had been brought to campus so that it would look like a legitimate search when the department already knew whom it was going to hire.
Needless to say, I was not offered the job. However, the following year, I returned to MLA to interview with about six other colleges, which led to another on-campus interview at another small, private, liberal-arts college and ultimately to a tenure-track job. At my new college, I would actually get to teach courses in my specialty, which was certainly an advantage over my situation at the university, so I was excited.
After a few years, however, I was ready to go back on the market. In my time at the college, I have often felt like the token minority professor, expected to show up at events to make the college look diverse, overly and overtly scrutinized, and frequently treated like a second-rate teacher and scholar.
Although I received good evaluations and had high enrollments in many of my classes, I was criticized for not being rigorous enough in my classes, even though I required just as many assignments from my students as other faculty members. I was told that I was not tough enough as a grader, yet my understanding was that my grade distribution was similar to that of my colleagues.
Additionally, in a review, my teaching style was criticized. I tend to favor an interdisciplinary approach to teaching because African-American studies, by its nature, draws from a variety of disciplines and critical approaches. I also encourage my students to connect the texts they are reading to contemporary social and political issues as well as their own experiences. I use lectures, large-group discussions, and small group discussions where students are responsible for generating their own questions and answering them. In my evaluation, I was criticized for having students engage in these small group discussions. Clearly, the perception was that I was too hands-off as a teacher, yet I think that students need to be agents in their own learning, and I see a great deal of value in having them wrestle with important issues in small groups where the discussion can be more focused. I have had numerous students tell me that this approach has benefited their learning greatly.
Throughout my years at the college, I published books, articles, and essays about African-American literature, but I often felt that my efforts were frowned upon. In the review process, I was accused of caring more about scholarship than teaching, even though I made it very clear that I felt like my teaching and scholarship connected in the materials I submitted during the review process. Granted, the college was not a publish-or-perish type place, but as one professor at the college informed me, "If you don't publish, you do perish in the sense of not being able to keep up with your field or connect with colleagues in your field outside your institution."
After several years of feeling extremely isolated and unappreciated, I was offered a tenure-track position at another university this spring, and I have accepted it. In my new position, I will have the opportunity to continue to teach my specialty at a university with a much larger student population. I am under the impression that the university accommodates a variety of teaching styles and encourages research and publication. My new colleagues seem welcoming, and the university is located in an area with a more racially diverse population. I see numerous opportunities for continuing my research and teaching interests.
Lately I've been thinking about that MLA conference where the Shakespeare scholar told me, "You're lucky." The answer in my mind is both "Yes" and "No."
Some people who have been unable to obtain even one tenure-track job may marvel at someone like myself who has had several offers. On the other hand, the reasons behind why I have continued to be on the job market so many years after completing a Ph.D. in English stem from the double jeopardy of racial and gender oppression that still persists in the academy -- a place where sometimes well-intentioned people confuse diversity with tokenism.
