I feel that I keep deferring my reflections on fellow Innovations blogger Richard Vedder’s work (I hope he’s not offended), but I simply can’t pass up my impressions of last week’s Modern Language Convention, the annual gathering of English and European language professors and graduate students, where the attendees present conference papers and (much more importantly, as everyone knows) where Ph.D. students are interviewed for jobs and assistant professors pitch their book manuscripts to academic-press editors.
First impression: The conference, for the third year in a row, is a shadow of its former self. The humanities are in such poor financial shape that far fewer people can afford to attend. Departments can’t afford to send teams of professors to interview prospective job candidates, so the professors don’t go, nor do the candidates, since tenure-track jobs are scarcer than ever. So the MLA no longer feels like a convention: The main hotel (the J.W. Marriott in Los Angeles) never felt full, elevators were never crowded, coffee-shop lines were oddly short, and seating in the main lobby lounges was never a worry.
Rumor has it that phone interviews, rather than in-person interviews at the convention, are on the rise, so much so that a Ph.D. student in my department (English at Ohio State) suggested we might do well to do mock phone interviews as a way of preparing our job seekers. It sounded like an odd idea to someone like me who has been in the profession for 31 years, but it makes perfect sense in today’s climate: More colleges are opting for phone or teleconference interviews because it’s all they can afford. As a hiring venue, the MLA convention is, I think, teetering on the brink of obsolescence.
Second impression (also the second time I’ve written about it for The Chronicle): In response to the scenario I just described, and to its financial roots, the MLA Program Committee dedicated the first day of the convention (January 6) to “The Academy in Hard Times,” turning that day into a fervent show of solidarity.
The idea that the “academy” is in crisis is patently ridiculous and thus the show of solidarity was nothing more than a joke. The humanities are in very hard times, but postsecondary education in the U.S. is in a state of significant transition. STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) are enjoying a funding boom, as are precincts of universities that generate money—business schools, law schools, medical schools, athletic programs. This list doesn’t even account for the continued growth of the for-profit postsecondary education industry, in which the humanities have no role. No amount of commiserating by a collection of literature professors will change that.
For our organization to say that the “academy” is in crisis misleadingly equates the academy with the humanities and exposes us as a collection of narcissists. The humanities are simply not relevant to the contemporary university in the way that they were, say, 60 years ago. So the day of devotion to “The Academy in Hard Times” was based on a totally outmoded concept of the university, a failure to acknowledge the institutional history in which we all play a part.
Third impression: The single most interesting thing about this year’s MLA convention had nothing to do with the MLA. Bob Samuels, president of the University Council-AFT, organized an astonishing “Counter-Conference” held during the afternoon of January 8 (while MLA sessions were going on) at nearby Loyola Law School. Only there did I feel that I was in the real world. AAUP president Cary Nelson gave a tour-de-force 27-point presentation on an assortment of day-to-day things that humanities professors can do to enhance their chances of having their voices heard; Jeffrey Williams spoke eloquently, as always, about the looming crisis of student debt in the U.S.; Christopher Newfield offered a hilarious look forward to 2020, in which students would march on Washington, burn their “student debt cards” and force legislators to fix the way that higher education is funded in the U.S.
The bottom line: The Counter-Conference perfectly reflected what the MLA should do, but is not doing. The whole convention next year in Seattle should be devoted to a broader institutional consideration of the university, and not even necessarily to the place of the humanities in it. So long as literature professors complain that “the academy” is in “hard times” because we’re suffering, we will continue to look like fools.
29 Responses to The Academy Is Not in Crisis
rosemaryfeal - January 15, 2011 at 11:07 am
There were over 8,000 paid registrants at the 2011 convention, which is over 700 MORE than the 2009 Philadelphia meeting (http://www.mla.org/conv_stats). The reason the convention felt less crowded was the space itself. New facilities with wide hallways and escalators everywhere, coupled with the sunny, warm temperatures in L.A. that encouraged people to sit outside in the LA Live space, created the sense of OPENNESS. In fact, that was the impression most people took away from the 2011 MLA convention: open conversations, and a mix of on- and off-site activities and discussions. Attendees (including grad students, alt-ac career people, adjunct profs) have been blogging and tweeting about how the convention felt renewed and open with pleny of space for discussion and productive disagreement.
Rosemary Feal
Executive Director
MLA
22036873 - January 15, 2011 at 11:10 am
Frank, I’m sorry, but this is wrong on so many counts. Trivial point first: the convention attendance was 8,000, up from last year. (I am genuinely surprised by this.) More important points:
“For our organization to say that the ‘academy’ is in crisis misleadingly equates the academy with the humanities and exposes us as a collection of narcissists.”
Ah, no. As I pointed out in the introduction to my “Academy in Hard Times” session, public universities are now seeing the disappearance of stimulus funds and will have to make up anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of their budgets. Jerry Brown’s new budget for California is a disaster for the entire system of higher education in that state — not just for the humanities. And California is not alone. The nationwide crisis in state budgets is very real, and you shouldn’t blow it off this way. Which leads me to:
“STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) are enjoying a funding boom, as are precincts of universities that generate money—business schools, law schools, medical schools, athletic programs.”
Medical schools and athletic programs generally do not generate revenue. On the contrary, they are usually sinkholes. Which brings me to Chris Newfield’s wonderful work, and the “counter-conference”:
“The single most interesting thing about this year’s MLA convention had nothing to do with the MLA. Bob Samuels, president of the University Council-AFT, organized an astonishing “Counter-Conference” held during the afternoon of January 8 (while MLA sessions were going on) at nearby Loyola Law School. Only there did I feel that I was in the real world. AAUP president Cary Nelson gave a tour-de-force 27-point presentation on an assortment of day-to-day things that humanities professors can do to enhance their chances of having their voices heard; Jeffrey Williams spoke eloquently, as always, about the looming crisis of student debt in the U.S.; Christopher Newfield offered a hilarious look forward to 2020, in which students would march on Washington, burn their ‘student debt cards’ and force legislators to fix the way that higher education is funded in the U.S.”
Funny thing, but Chris gave precisely that paper — at the MLA. As part of my session on “The Academy in Hard Times.” In the real world. Sorry you weren’t there. Cary and Jeff also spoke at the MLA. Too bad you missed those papers too. But I hope to see you around next year!
22036873 - January 15, 2011 at 11:12 am
Oops, “22036873″ above is me, Michael Bérubé. Sorry about that! It’s my nickname, you see– some people call me “2203″ for short.
kathiiberens - January 15, 2011 at 11:35 am
Your definition of “crisis” seems to tally the financial trends in higher education at the expense of the broader mission. Certainly I believe the rise of for-profit online learning vendors to be a “crisis” in how we construe what it means to be educated. Some online vendors have been investigated by the GAO for fraud: preying on students who are unlikely to be able to finish the degree program, or for whom the online degree will not appreciably increase their earning power. See this from the GAO http://bit.ly/b0lXeq and this, about Kaplan U., from the New York Times: http://nyti.ms/eTmMtc
We are living through a time when people are skeptical of what can’t be measured, and when the need for technical and other skills might incline students to seek vocational learning, even at elite universities. These trends would bode poorly for the humanities were humanists not deeply engaged in work at the nexus of interpretation and computing. This is not to say that the digital humanities is the sole way in which humanists can demonstrate the value of the field to those outside it: I’m a big believer in the power of close reading to redescribe our world in ways that spark social change, grow sympathy, and generally remind us of the complexity of what it means to be human.
My experience at MLA11 this year was very different from what you describe. I’m no longer in the field. It was my first MLA in 14 years. I attended so I could check out the digital humanities firsthand. I arrived at the Marriott in a skeptical frame of mind. But the vitality of the panel conversations, and the checked-in, finger-on-the-pulse leadership of MLA Executive Director Rosemary Feal and a cadre of other senior faculty left me feeling not just hopeful for the future of MLA, but for the humanities itself. Were you on the #mla11 Twitterstream? If you had been, I think your perspective published here would be more nuanced.
hanzer - January 15, 2011 at 11:50 am
Compared to What?
Compared to E. Oakland, California, where I live, nearly 50% of the African-American population is unemployed and the recession of the past two decades has slid into full-blown depression. However, the closing down of higher education opportunities for communities such as this DOES constitute a crisis.
It is, in fact, an entire class that has been dismissed.
So, when we say there is a crisis in the academe, one of the primary things we are concerned about is the shrinking of higher education opportunities for the entire strata of students who are pushed out of the HE system by rising tuition, unemployment and foreclosures, and the pressure on community colleges from middle class students migrating from their usual spots in the 4-year colleges down into the CC system.
So the unprecedented focus in the MLA on academe in hard times, which I heartily support, was not meant to address merely the conditions of shrinking tenure track lines or reduced professional develop. budgets, but to focus as well on the downstream implications for what is coming to seem like a permanent underclass–the students, and their families, who are pushed out of the HE system.
Margaret Hanzimanoils, De Anza College
clupke - January 15, 2011 at 11:59 am
Frank Donoghue states that the MLA Convention is an “annual gathering of English and European language professors and graduate students.”
This is not exactly correct. The MLA is an organization open to academics of any foreign language, as well as English and comparative studies.
There are two divisions dedicated to East Asian languages and one devoted to Arabic. There were about a dozen sessions on Asian languages of one kind or another. This is clearly not a sufficient amount of representation, and we are working to expand the presence of Chinese and other Asian languages in the organization. I also support the expansion of African and other languages as well.
Nevertheless, the notion that the organization only caters to or is only composed of European and English language scholars is a misapprehension that must be corrected. I hope Mr. Donoghue will acknowledge this.
Christopher Lupke
Associate Professor and Coordinator of Asian Languages
Washington State University
kcfeminist - January 15, 2011 at 12:02 pm
This MLA was indeed different as folks above have pointed out. As I myself noted yesterday on the ProfHacker blog, I’ve been trailing along with my partner to the MLA for years when he’s interviewing or presenting but not engaging with the convention; as a literature Ph.D. currently working in student affairs, I didn’t feel a connection to the MLA or my discipline (despite continuing to teach language classes). This year was different, however. I started following #mla11 before arriving in Los Angeles and was already sorry before arriving that I hadn’t registered for the convention. While in LA, I continued to follow along on Twitter and was really sorry that I wasn’t “really” attending. I should also note that this was the first time I felt that my perspective as an “alternate academic” (super alternate even as most of the conversation around alt-ac positions focuses on libraries and research, not student affarirs) would be welcomed by the MLA and I’ve already been in touch with Rosemary Feal about the possibility doing a session at next year’s convention. She put me in touch with the program committee and I’ll be working on something. These are not the actions of an association like the one described in this post.
rogerwhitson - January 15, 2011 at 1:11 pm
I also think it’s worth considering just what “attendance” means when people like myself, who did not fly to LA, were able to use Twitter and other digital media apps to participate in backchannel conversations at panels.
uf_gator_phd - January 15, 2011 at 4:49 pm
In all this talk about twitter and MLA11, I’d like to point out that at the counter conference, none of the organizers were sitting in the back of the room tweeting about presenters such things as “It would take a few hours to correct the mischaracterizations in so-and-so’s talk” or “So-and-so looking back, rehashing old history, while the ppl in the room seem to want to look forward.” Because that would be unprofessional.
jane_prof - January 15, 2011 at 6:00 pm
Wow, there’s a nicely veiled comment; I wonder what you could mean.
Twitter was an extremely positive force at the convention, used by organizers, by attendees, and by folks who weren’t on site to push conversations forward and make deeper connections among the ideas in circulation. It was not used unprofessionally, even — or perhaps especially — when used to correct mischaracterizations and to create a more positive, forward-looking discourse.
Serious debates and disagreements were carried out over Twitter over the course of the convention, but airing those disagreements was done in an effort to think productively about how to find a way to improve the situations we’re facing across the academy. That, I would say, is far more professional than the claim, made by so-and-so, that the organization was “pimping out” its members on Twitter.
Nice, that. Little wonder that a conference organizer might want to defend her organization and its membership from such attacks.
mnellsmith - January 15, 2011 at 7:13 pm
Previous comments have addressed the puzzling mischaracterizations of the convention in Frank Donoghue’s column, so I will focus on uf_gator_phd’s veiled remarks about MLA convention organizers allegedly trash-tweeting presenters from “the back of the room.” The tweets quoted in uf_gator’s comment were by MLA Executive Director Rosemary Feal, who produced them while seated next to me, at the front of the room, during the session I organized and on which she presented, “New Tools, Hard Times: Social Networking and the Academic Crisis.” Her tweets were in response to remarks by a fellow panelist that she felt misrepresented the MLA’s history on labor and economic issues. At that point, Feal had already made her formal contribution to the session. I can’t blame her for wanting to try to correct the record, and I appreciate that she chose to do so on Twitter rather than turning the Q&A into a re-hashing of a long, complex history. I also appreciate her efforts to use new communications tools as a way to make the MLA a more open and responsive organization. That’s why I invited her to be on this particular panel, and I am delighted she was able to be a part of it. That she opted to make use of those tools while the session was going on is a testament to her energetic leadership — not to mention her skills in multi-tasking.
Marilee Lindemann
Associate Professor, English
University of Maryland
mnellsmith - January 15, 2011 at 7:18 pm
Oops — Michael Bérubé’s nickname is a number; mine is apparently “mnellsmith,” a version of the name of the individual with whom I share a Chronicle subscription.
Marilee Lindemann
eetempleton - January 15, 2011 at 8:40 pm
Clearly uf_gator_phd was reading a different Twitterstream than I was at this most recent MLA conference in Los Angeles. I could not make it to the New Tools session because it conflicted with another session that I needed to attend, and I very much appreciated the presence of Twitter there because it allowed me to follow the main ideas despite my physical absence. In fact, just about all of the tweets with the #mla11 hashtag were directly related to the conference proceedings.
Thank you to the MLA for embracing social media and providing wi-fi in all conference rooms and public spaces. It opened the conference up in rather significant ways not only for those of us in attendance but also for our colleagues who couldn’t make the trip.
Certainly if a panelist was checking their Facebook status or fantasy football team during a fellow panelist’s remarks, *that* would be considered unprofessional, but that’s not the scenario being described in the comment above. I think we need to rethink what we mean by “professional” if it can’t include the open exchange of ideas with others in our discipline or the building of a network of people with whom to discuss, and debate our positions.
russell_berman - January 16, 2011 at 8:04 am
Many corrections have been made already to the accumulated errors in the article. Chris Lupke has commented on the presence of East Asian languages and of Arabic. Let me just add that it is strange indeed that Donoghue writes of “European languages”–that’s an odd way to think about Spanish and French, hardly limited to Europe. Discussion of Latin American literature and the range of francophone literature is well established. How could Donoghue miss that?
sidsmith - January 16, 2011 at 3:51 pm
With over 8000 in attendance at the MLA convention in Los Angeles, it’s not surprising that people report diverse experiences. Frank experienced the convention in one way, but that’s not the convention that many of us attended. Indeed, over and over I heard people comment on the liveliness of this convention, the sense of its vitality in issues intellectual, scholarly, pedagogical, and professional.
I for one think of the 2011 convention as a new kind of convention. Many panels provided kaleidoscopic views of a topic, with panelists presenting short papers. Attendees and non-attendees tweeted from sessions as they unfolded. Bloggers and tweeters sat at tables set aside for them, commenting on presentations and discussions. The convention presidential theme of “Narrating Lives” offered many an ensemble of sessions constituting a conference within a convention—and even a YouTube project.
As I observed in my presidential address, “We ought not forget the changes won by hard work in the past. We cannot escape the distressing trends in higher education at this time. We can remember the past of our profession in all its complexities and contradictions and register the effects of the current transformation.” The annual conventions of professional associations are in the midst of transformation. Many people registered excitement about the opportunities provided by aspects of that transformation.
Sidonie Smith
Martha Guernsey Colby Collegiate Professor of English and Women’s Studies
MLA 2010 President
tejackso - January 17, 2011 at 7:54 am
“The humanities are simply not relevant to the contemporary university in the way that they were, say, 60 years ago.” I hear this kind of thing a lot. But I’m not clear on *how* they were relevant then, but not now. My feeling is that either they were irrelevant then, basically because from a certain notion of practicality/use they’re just always irrelevant. Or else they were relevant then, and, basically because of a certain competing notion of their…unlikely?, indirect?…practicality/use, they’re as relevant now as ever…?
tony jackson
drgrieves - January 17, 2011 at 9:48 am
Why is sitting “at the front of the room” tweeting any less disruptive than sitting at the back of the room? Was the subject of the twitter discussion made aware of it content so he or she or hu could respond? Or that it was going on? In other words, could the speaker, as eetempleton puts it, in an “open exchange of ideas”?
I do not understand how a session chair would find this kind of under-the-table communicating laudable.
snapcase - January 17, 2011 at 11:19 am
The contemporary “university” is not a “university” without the humanities – it is a business and trade school.
gabrielledean - January 17, 2011 at 11:22 am
I think the journalist chooses to define MLA as an “annual gathering of English and European language professors and graduate students” in order to make it seem more parochial and old-fashioned–ie, to support his later point about the declining relevance of the humanities.
What is “relevance”–and more importantly, what are “the humanities” these days? If by the former he means, something with the popularity and cultural capital that is likely to lead to a middle-class salary, then he’s got a point. If instead he means, something that is culturally necessary, then he has clearly chosen to ignore the many ruptures in the social fabric that humanists are singularly equipped to perceive, analyze and address (see hanzer’s comment above; and we could add many others that do claim popular attention–who has seen “The Social Network” or “Casino Jack”?).
It also seems he has chosen to ignore (in this piece) the changing nature of “the humanities” and the ways that the MLA 2011 reflected & reflected on some of those changes, which previous commenters have pointed out.
For an interesting view on how to have the conversation about “the humanities”–their definition, value and ongoing crisis–see Mary Crane’s piece today in Inside Higher Ed:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/01/17/mary_crane_on_a_different_way_to_help_the_liberal_arts
laurarosenthal - January 17, 2011 at 12:11 pm
I attended both the “The Strange Death of the Liberal University in Britain?” and “The Academy in Hard Times” sessions, braced for gloom and perhaps even a little self-pity. Instead, I heard smart, analytical, unsentimental, and very insightful papers that looked toward advocacy, productive response, and the future. I particularly appreciated Reed Dasenbrock’s emphasis, echoed in various ways throughout the “Hard Times” panel, on the significance of undergraduate education in strategies for advocacy and in our professional lives in general. I would like to see more sessions like these at future MLA meetings.
I also heard many excellent papers in my own and related fields, and appreciated not having to wait for an elevator! So thank you Rosemary and Sidonie for a wonderful conference.
Laura Rosenthal, Professor of English,
University of Maryland (an apparent hotbed of MLA appreciation)
briancroxall - January 17, 2011 at 12:46 pm
I agree with the sentiments expressed in the overwhelming number of comments here about how this most recent MLA Convention. I will simply add that if Mr. Donoghue is worried about the convention becoming a “shadow of its former self” because attendance is down–something that is not true from 2009 to 2011, but is likely to be true as budgets continue to be cut and the faculty increasingly become casualized–then it is absolutely necessary that those who are fortunate enough to attend be engaged in quick reporting via Twitter and the blogosphere so as to be inclusive of others. And then we should all go home and write more reflective posts about the experience. I’ve done the latter, which you can find at my blog.
jungianscholar - January 17, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Frank Donoghue makes some interesting observations and points. Yes, the Liberal Arts seem to not receive the focus and funding that often goes to the hard sciences. I suspect that since universities like to get large research grants in the hard sciences, they see the benefits of providing programs to support the hard sciences.
As kathiiberens points out, though, we see many areas within the liberal arts experiencing change, or at least the opportunities for change. Unfortunately, few colleges and universities understand the importance of interdisciplinary studies, and many professors find their historic orientation and grounding gets in the way of them being open and receptive to understanding the language and issues in other disciplines.
If many of these professors could get beyond their own fears, or egos, we might find some genuine and valuable collaboration with results to enhance both fields, as well as possibly create new ones!
A really good professor can provide the environment for transformative learning, which includes critical thinking and reflection, so that hopefully their students might experience this deep, permanent kind of learning that extends one’s vision and depth of reflection. I would think that for those hard science people, and engineering folks, (who I see as often creating excellent applications of the use of hard science in solving social problems such as better and safer designed bridges and buildings) would benefit from a wider world view, and deeper understanding of self and other.
sand6432 - January 17, 2011 at 5:54 pm
Prof. Donoghue mentions the assistant professors seeking to pitch their books to editors in passing, but comments no further about how successful or not they may have been. Not very is my guess, especially if those manuscripts are revised dissertations. The MLA worried about publication of monographs in its report circa 2000, but sidestepped the real problem, which is that (1) most major academic libraries subscribe to ProQuest’s dissertation database and thus consider themselves to have all these dissertations already in their collection and feel no need to expend scare acquisition dollars on buying revised dissertations, (2) editors for scholarly presses know this, so are reluctant to consider such manuscripts, and yet (3) P&T committees still insist on having junior faculty publish one or two books before they can get promoted. The system clearly is dysfunctional, and no one is doing anything about it. To add to this deplorable state of affairs, librarians are now enthusiastic about “patron-driven acquisitions” and are abandoning traditional approval plans, which at least ensured publishers a minimum sale of 100 or so copies on publication. Now this sale will be stretched out over a period of years, which will hurt publishers’ cash flow and make them examine even more carefully what monographs they can afford to publish. Junior faculty will suffer the most since their names are not known to the patrons who will now provide the impetus for ordering books. This is a real crisis for the humanities that will not go away anytime soon.—Sandy Thatcher
kfitz - January 17, 2011 at 10:59 pm
Sandy, you’re exactly right that this represents a major crisis in the field, and that junior scholars are bound to suffer from the decreased ability/willingness of presses to publish first books derived from dissertations. The MLA is, however, working on this problem, in part through immediate past president Sidonie Smith’s call to re-envision the dissertation as something other than a proto-book (see http://www.mla.org/blog&topic=134 and http://www.mla.org/blog&topic=133). More work in this direction is required, of course, but it’s coming.
maw57 - January 18, 2011 at 10:49 am
Here’s my question: does the Chronicle exercise any quality control on this kind of article, or is this section essentially a blog? Fact checking by an editor and editorial requests to support claims might have helped save Prof. Donoghue some embarrassment and his readers some irritation. — Mark Wollaeger
rmelton5 - January 18, 2011 at 1:38 pm
“To add to this deplorable state of affairs, librarians are now enthusiastic about “patron-driven acquisitions” [PDA] and are abandoning traditional approval plans, which at least ensured publishers a minimum sale of 100 or so copies on publication.” Mr. Thatcher: if you ran a grocery store in an area with fairly specific demographics, would you want a system where you were forced to buy bottles of all the exotic brands of olive oil your distributor supplies when your shoppers prefer canola oil, with the olive oil sitting on the shelf past its expiration date, unbought? I’m a librarian (with advanced degrees in literature) who builds collections for a very cultural-studies oriented literature department; I can’t afford to devote my shrinking budget to buying monographs on topics on which my faculty (and ergo their graduate students) have no interest in. Long before PDA, I modified my approval plan so that I do all the selection. In doing so, I’m both being attentive to the scholarly and teaching needs of my Lit Dept while being a much better steward of the taxpayers’ money. Stop trashing librarians! It is not our job to subsidize our own universities’ presses (much less the commercial publishers who publish the even more marginal monographs); that is the job of university administrations and the system of scholarly rewards (tenure). We’re doing the best we can with shrinking budgets to provide you with the content you want, free to you, when you want it. PDA is one (just one) of the ways we are trying to fight back against the flood of content and the increasing amount of it (even in the humanities) being priced by high profit-making corporations, to which you as scholars are increasingly sending the results of your research. I’m sure I’ll be reprimanded for daring to use a commercial metaphor, but the world of scholarly humanities communication has now become highly commercialized itself. Librarians must deal with that fact every working day.
sand6432 - January 18, 2011 at 3:01 pm
To “rmelton” I would reply that, while PDA makes perfectly good sense from your position as a librarian working with a tight budget and is thus entirely rational from your perspective, its effects are not rational at the system level, just as the attitude toward revised dissertations is irrational at that level also. I write, not as a scholar myself, but as a former university press director (Penn State) who was obliged to explain, in 1995 in a Chronicle essay, why we could no longer publish literary criticism. If you aim to serve your faculty in literary studies in the future, you are helping advance the day when no books in the field will be published at all, at least by university presses, and thus there will be no books to acquire via PDA or any other means. It is not your fault for trying to act rationally within your sphere, of course, and producing a result that will have systemically dysfunctional consequences. That problem needs to be solved at the system level.
To “kfitz” I offer my thanks for the references to the new discussion initiated by MLA’s president, which I think is all too the good and much needed. (The second link did not bring up any useful content, however.) The problem will not be solved, however, unless P&T committees can be persuaded to abandon the book as the “gold standard” for career advancement, and that will be a difficult expectation to change, I fear.
Sandy Thatcher, past president of the Association of American University Presses, 2007/8
rosemaryfeal - January 19, 2011 at 8:47 am
Sandy and all: this link will take you to Sid Smith’s MLA Newsletter columns on the topic of doctoral education and the dissertation: http://www.mla.org/blog_index&folder=103
Rosemary Feal
Executive Director
MLA
gopokes - March 29, 2011 at 4:34 pm
This is incredible for for Denison! -Kenyon Swimming has always been synonymous with college swimming excellence. As Sperber put it in Beer and Circus, Division III NCAA athletics represents what’s right about college athletics. Div III is the conscience of college sports.