August 28, 2011

Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Humanities Gain Importance in Career Paths

Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Humanities Gain Importance in Career Paths 1

Kristin Murphy for The Chronicle

Gretchen Case got a job as an assistant professor of medical ethics and humanities at the U. of Utah's medical school after three years in a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke U.

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Kristin Murphy for The Chronicle

Gretchen Case got a job as an assistant professor of medical ethics and humanities at the U. of Utah's medical school after three years in a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke U.

By Ryan Brown

When Eliot Bates finished his Ph.D., in 2008, he quickly realized he could hardly have chosen a worse time to go looking for a permanent faculty post in the humanities.

In spite of a paper trail of publications and several semesters of teaching experience, the best job he could find that year was a position as a visiting assistant professor in the music department at the University of Maryland at College Park, where he hoped to wait out the economic downturn.

But, as one-year