Blog CXV (115): Eight Questions: Southern History

Jason Phillips is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University. He holds a BA in history from the University of Richmond, an MA in history from Wake Forest University, and a PhD in history from Rice University. Phillips works at the intersection of cultural, intellectual, and military history. His first book, Diehard Rebels: The Culture of Invincibility (University of Georgia Press, 2007) explains the deeply ingrained attitudes and wartime experiences that shaped the reality of white southerners who fought to the bitter end, resisted Reconstruction, and embodied the Lost Cause myth. His articles have appeared in numerous journals and essay collections. The Organization of American Historians selected his Journal of Southern History article, titled “The Grape Vine Telegraph: Rumors and Confederate Persistence,” as one of the ten best American history essays of 2008. He is working on a second monograph, Prophecy of Blood: Anticipation and the American Civil War, that studies American forecasts of the war to understand how widespread perceptions of the future shaped collective actions during the conflict and social memory after it. Phillips is also editing a collection of essays, Master Narratives: History, Storytelling, and the Postmodern South, that showcases eleven southernists who work at the intersection of southern fiction and history. In recent years a willingness to see southern worlds that exceed binaries of race, religion, gender, geography, and class has greatly enriched southern studies. Master Narratives begins the difficult task of transcending another rigid dichotomy, modernism and postmodernism. Louisiana State University Press is publishing the book in spring 2013.

 

What is the greatest strength of your field? In the history profession?

Southern history is strong in many ways. As someone who also does Civil War history, I love the chronological breadth of southern history. Civil War historians are embracing the broader era of the war, as evident in the new journal, the Journal of the Civil War Era, but Civil War history is still a blink of time compared to the centuries of southern history. This chronological breadth makes southern history a huge field of diverse historians who are all devoted to explaining the same, enigmatic region. One way southern historians have tackled this challenge is by employing interdisciplinary categories of analysis. The field’s cross pollination with literary studies has always been strong, but more recently, southern historians have borrowed from anthropology and archaeology in fascinating ways. But if I have to select one, greatest strength, I would have to pick the Journal of Southern History. Southern historians are fortunate to have one of the most prestigious academic journals as their own. The Journal pushes the field without succumbing to faddishness and explores the South through a lens that reflects larger historical problems in American history.

For the profession, the enormity of our subject—humanity’s past—places historians in a unique position within academia. Historians work in the humanities, the social sciences, business and economics, engineering and technology, and the natural sciences. We practice an art and a science. Few professions touch as many fields of knowledge. This breadth forces historians to be generalists despite the increasing specialization of academia. Historians who study diverse places, times, and subjects still engage each other professionally, whereas other disciplines have become so specialized that they fracture into sub-disciplines with methodologies and theories that no longer sustain a single disciplinary dialogue.

What is the biggest issue facing your field? The history profession?

For roughly twenty years, scholarship on historical memory invigorated southern history by importing analytical frameworks from anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and literary criticism that showed the relationship between social constructions of the past and contemporary power dynamics. Memory gave southern historians a new, more sophisticated way to study not only nostalgia and myth but also race, class, and gender in the region. As an analytical category, memory also connected southern history to trends in new cultural history. Plenty of collective and collected memories of the southern past remain unexplored, but the field has already derived as much energy and momentum from the subject that it is likely to acquire. The biggest issue facing the field is finding a replacement for historical memory that can reinvigorate the field and connect it to burgeoning fields and inquiries across the discipline.

Presentism not only contaminates the questions and arguments that historians articulate, it inflates the importance of the recent past at the expense of older eras. On the job market we see presentism with the proliferation of positions for twentieth-century history and the near extinction of positions for Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern history. Historians are drastically shrinking their own field of inquiry perhaps to prove their relevance in a time when funding for higher education diminishes, but the impact of elevating the history of now above older periods could be disastrous for the profession as a whole. The discipline must support vibrant work that sparks discourse across centuries as well as across the globe.

What is the most interesting work being done in your field? Why?

Southern historians have imported many of the “hot” topics that have energized the discipline in recent years. These trends often stretch the time or space of inquiries, like reconsidering the “long” civil rights movement or viewing the South from a transnational perspective. Other hot topics like southern environmental history seem long overdue but nonetheless offer interesting conclusions by showing how the history of an “exceptional” region relates to the historiography of American environmental history, a field that established its central debates and narrative by focusing first on New England and the Midwest. Recent interdisciplinary work in the field is also very fascinating. Archeological work on plantations and slave markets has provided a new understanding of slave life for example. Works that rely on the digital humanities are showing how southern historians can ask, argue, and share new research through new technologies. Southern historians’ long association with literary criticism and fiction gives them a unique opportunity to challenge the form and not just the content of historiography. James Goodman’s Stories of Scottsboro (1994) still points a way to more sophisticated work on how southerners have grappled with the uncertainty of knowledge. I participated in a conference at the German Historical Institute where historians analyzed uncertain knowledge in American history and many of them set their work in the South.

How valuable is teaching in the professional development of a career?

Teaching experience is a requirement for success on the job market. Most positions in higher education will value teaching as much or more than research, so graduate students need to acquire teaching experience in a variety of courses and formats. Beyond the job market, teaching is valuable for professional development because the craft of teaching hones historians’ ability to tell stories, present arguments, engage historiography, write and revise work, and explore diverse fields.

What direction or type of publishing would you advise a new Ph.D. to conduct?

Publish articles in the top peer-reviewed journals in your field. In southern history, there’s only one—the Journal of Southern History. But if your subfield is chronological or thematic, you could seek publication in those areas as well. Articles in major journals will be read by a wider professional audience than other publications, including essays in anthologies and even your book.

This does not mean that publishing articles matters more than revising and publishing your dissertation. The sequence of publishing articles before the book will increase the quality and quantity of your research. Working with journal editors and referees will sharpen your work before it becomes a book, and well placed articles advertize your forthcoming book to best advantage. Plus, from a practical perspective, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to pull articles out of a book manuscript after it as has been submitted to a press.

What issues affect most the development of a career: family, school resources, popularity of field, reputation of alma matter, etc.?

For historians, the reputation of the alma matter is the least important factor and the others vary greatly for individuals and fields. Family is an independent variable; if you have one or highly value your extended family, the location of a job or the pressures to pay bills can be major factors at the start of your career. If you can postpone having children until you have a tenure track job and are sure you can surpass the standards for promotion and tenure, that’s the safest decision. If not, you’re taking major risks and missing lots of sleep in order to start a career and a family simultaneously. If family is not a major part of your life, school resources and the popularity of your field may determine how, where, and when your career begins.

What advice would you give to an undergrad interested in working on a Ph.D. in history?

If you love history, few career options are more appealing than spending years reading, researching, and discussing the past with great scholars. Start with an MA program to get a taste for graduate school. Even if you don’t continue for a Ph.D., earning the MA will open career opportunities for you. If you’re still interested in working on a Ph.D. after the MA experience, target eight to ten programs that are strong in your field. Contact potential advisors and current graduate students at those programs. Take a test prep course to maximize your GRE scores, because unfortunately those numbers matter. If you’re accepted into a Ph.D. program, pursue the degree only if you receive a fellowship or assistantship from a solid program. If good universities are not willing to invest serious money in your education at this point, your chances of eventually succeeding on the job market may be slim. You should not consider going into major debt to earn a history Ph.D. Even if you get a good job after graduate school, your salary will not erase that debt.

What advice would you give to a new Ph.D. unable to find employment in a history department?

Everyone who finds a job in a history department has a losing record on the job market, so try to stay positive. There are many rewarding careers available to a new Ph.D. in history. Archives, museums, publishers, foundations, secondary schools, the government, and a host of other employers seek professionals with the skills that a new Ph.D, has mastered in graduate school. Consider all your options instead of fixating on a standard academic career.

If you still want to work in a history department, there are many ways to stay professionally engaged while hunting for a job (teaching whatever courses you can grab, participating at professional conferences, applying for post-docs and grants), but the best thing you can do is publish. And not all publications are equal. As I pointed out above, you should publish articles in the top peer-reviewed journals in your field. Find courses to teach to pay the bills and hone your pedagogy, but don’t assume that teaching will be viewed as proof that you are still engaged in the profession. The surest way to demonstrate professional development and activity is by turning the strongest chapters of your dissertation into articles at major journals. Don’t undersell your work by submitting it to obscure journals or small anthologies; once you’ve published those gems you can’t submit them to better journals.

Meanwhile, stay ready and strengthen your application. Share your cover letter with people who have recently succeeded on the market for advice on how to make it stronger. Review your teaching portfolio and writing sample. Reconsider who is writing letters of recommendation for you. You need a strong letter from your advisor, so keep him/her updated on your work—you want that letter to be current. Strengthen your relationship with other scholars by building new professional relationships and seeking new references. One of these relationships might get you a job in a history department; academia can be a small world after all. Work on your interviewing skills. Practice your job talk in front of an audience, and schedule mock interviews with colleagues and mentors who are willing to help. If those are not options, interview yourself in the mirror to polish your oral expression. Once you’ve gone the extra mile and done everything in your power to strengthen your application, you can face the fate of the job market with the comforting thought that you have done everything you could.

Blog CXIV (114): Eight Questions: Japanese History

The next contribution in the Eight Questions series comes from Greg Smits, an associate professor of
 history and East Asian studies at The Pennsylvania State University.  Smits recieved his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, his MA from the University of Hawaii and his BA from the University of Florida.  Before arriving at Penn State, he taught for five years at Eastern Washington University.  Smits is the author of Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought and Politics, which has been translated into Japanese.  He co-edited the anthology Economic Thought in Early-Modern Japan.  He has had articles published in the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, the Journal of Social History, and the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies.  He has also published articles in Japanese-language academic journals and newspapers, including Okinawa Bunka Kenkyu [Journal of Okinawan Culture]. He is currently writing a book about the cultural reaction to earthquakes in Japan.
 

How valuable is teaching in the professional development of a career?

Teaching is always valuable, but the precise role/value depends on the nature of the institution. Teaching is the most important component of a career at liberal arts colleges and smaller regional colleges and universities. At research 1 institutions, of course, research and publishing constitute the most important aspect of a career, though teaching still matters a great deal. So graduate students should take every opportunity to hone their teaching skills as early as possible. No matter where one may end up, good teaching is essential.

What direction or type of publishing would you advise a new Ph.D. to conduct?

This question depends on the nature of the institution. At a research 1 university, the first book should be a specialized monograph and it should be out in 4 years or less. By the 6th year (tenure time), it is often essential to have published a couple of articles from a new project to demonstrate that more is on the way. On the other hand, other types of institutions may look more favorably on publishing articles or books that can be used profitably in the undergraduate classroom. Nevertheless, it is probably a good idea to put out an academic monograph, if at all possible, regardless of the institution, to set the stage for a future move if that becomes desirable.

What issues affect most the development of a career: family, school resources, popularity of field, reputation of alma matter, etc.?

Determination and willingness to keep his or her nose to the grindstone is perhaps most important. Avoid becoming involved in campus politics, large amounts of committee work, etc., and focus on teaching and research. For getting that first academic, job alma matter matters more than it should, and the topic of one’s research matters a great deal—probably more than it should. Selecting an obscure topic as a graduate student will be a major hindrance in landing a job. So, if it can’t be avoided, the trick is to hitch an otherwise obscure topic to a more popular trend.

Although it may sound counterintuitive, having “a life” that has nothing to do with academia is great for maintaining sanity. Volunteer work or a serious hobby, for example, can function this way. Even though there is an opportunity cost in terms of time and energy, regular participation in something completely unrelated to one job an university settings can actually result in greater productivity and all around happiness.

What advice would you give to an undergrad interested in working on a Ph.D. in history?

My advice in all cases: Don’t do it! I have PDFs of “100 reasons not to get a PhD”-type articles I sometimes send to bolster my point.

What advice would you give to a new Ph.D. unable to find employment in a history department?

Assess your skills and knowledge, figure out what else you can do with them, and pursue every possible career path. Most important, do not join the ranks of untenured (often so-called “part-time”) instructors.

Blog CXIII (113): Eight Questions: Canadian History

Nic Clarke received his Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa in 2009. He is a sessional instructor at both the Royal Military College of Canada and the University of Ottawa.  His research primarily focuses on the history of disability in Canada. His current work explores the different perceptions of martial ability and disability held by lay people, the medical profession, and the military during the 1910s. He is using Canadian Expeditionary Forces enlistment papers and service records as a means to identify common health problems afflicting Canadians.  It is the first study to provide a detailed description of the mechanics of the Canadian Expeditionary Force medical examination, the evolution of physical standards for service, and the increasingly complex categories of fitness developed by military authorities as the Great War continued.  He has had articles published in The International Journal of the History of Sport, First World War Studies, Canadian Military History, Histoire Sociale/Social History and BC Studies.

What is the greatest strength of your field? In the history profession?

“Canadian History” is an umbrella term that encompasses a wide variety of fields of historical research that are founded on the experiences of the myriad peoples that have lived (and continue to live) within the boundaries of Canada. As a result, the field of Canadian History is not only vibrant, but also constantly expanding into new and exciting areas of research. In relation, the growth of interdisciplinary studies—such as the Canadian Century Research Infrastructure—that ally historians with other academics have provided important new approaches, viewpoints, and tools for the study of Canada’s past.

What is the biggest issue facing your field? The history profession?

The biggest issue—and this has been developing for some time—is the ever increasing devaluation of the discipline of history. Historians must shoulder some responsibility for this reality. Too often we have been content to keep our research within the guild, rather than engaging with the wider public. As a result, large sections of the public have little idea of what we do. Concomitantly, the profession is facing a general devaluation of academia, especially in the field of the Arts. This is evinced in Canada by the belief—held by a number of different sectors—that academic research must be utilitarian or have direct commercial applications. Few of the people who hold this belief see Canadian History as utilitarian beyond, perhaps, a vague idea that Canadians should know some ‘important’ dates, individuals and events from Canada’s past. This position both overlooks the fact that historical research has multiple utilities outside the ‘ivory tower’, and negatively impacts on the support provided to the discipline. Take for example: (1) the Government of Canada’s announcement in the 2009 Federal Budget that “[s]cholarships granted by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council [were to be] focussed on business-related degrees”; (2) the slashing of the Council’s budget by $14 million in 2012 Federal Budget; and (3) the repeated funding cuts to Library and Archives Canada –Canada’s national library and archives.

What is the most interesting work being done in your field? Why?

All of it! I am constantly amazed and enlightened by the myriad different studies—ranging from work on Canada’s First Nations through explorations of childhood to reinterpretations of Canada’s experience of the two world wars and beyond—that are sprouting in the field of Canadian History.

How valuable is teaching in the professional development of a career?

I would argue more valuable than most people realize – even though our profession lives by the mantra of “publish or perish”. Members of history departments are, as a general rule, expected to teach. Hiring committees look at teaching experience when vetting candidates for positions. In some cases short-listed candidates’ teaching skills are directly tested by hiring committees. Therefore, a strong teaching dossier and extensive teaching experience can greatly aid one’s quest to gain a position.

More generally, teaching provides you with assets that can be employed in your professional life far beyond the classroom. For example, the information presentation skills (and confidence) one gains from lecturing undergraduate students can be leveraged when presenting conference papers, public lectures, and media interviews. You can also gain important new insight into your own research when preparing lectures or discussing material with students. Many academics learn as much from their students as they teach them.

What direction or type of publishing would you advise a new Ph.D. to conduct?

Book, book, book! Rightly or wrongly, many hiring committees tend to look much more favourably on those candidates with a book or a manuscript than on those candidates without one. This does not mean that you should stop publishing articles (especially if you are publishing them in well-regarded journals), going to conferences, or teaching (all of which are valuable assets in the job hunter’s quiver). Rather, you should focus your energies to ensure you get your manuscript completed as quickly as possible.

What issues affect most the development of a career: family, school resources, popularity of field, reputation of alma matter, etc.?

This is a very difficult question to answer because the issues that influence—both positively and negatively—one’s career development vary from individual to individual. Even when two individuals face the same issues, those issues can have widely disparate affects on their careers depending on a wide variety factors (down to, and including, the temperament of said individuals). That said, I will comment on the question of one’s alma mater and family.

While having completed your Ph.D. at a highly ranked institution can not hurt your career, ultimately it is your contributions that will carry more weight and get you noticed. In other words, your actions will influence your career development more than the institution from which you gained your Ph.D.

I have two small children and I would be lying if I said they did not impact on the time I have available to write and research. However, I believe the benefits of family far outweigh the disadvantages. The support from a partner, children, and wider family provide cannot be overvalued, nor can the fact that they stand as a constant (and at times loud) reminder that there is more to life than your research. Both the support and the reminder are immeasurably important to career development. Family support will help you through the evitable tough times you will face as you travel down the rocky road that is an academic career. The reminder will save you from burnout.

What advice would you give to an undergrad interested in working on a Ph.D. in history?

Make sure that you know what you are getting yourself into. Doing research for your Ph.D. will not be the history equivalent of The Big Bang Theory. While you will have fun and meet a lot of interesting people, you will also do a heck of a lot of work, most of which you will conduct by yourself. (That is not really shown on TBBT, now is it?) Doing a Ph.D. can be very lonely, not to mention frustrating and alienating. In all likelihood many of your friends and family will not understand what you are experiencing, no matter how hard they try. A few of them might also question the value of what you are doing altogether. Others will wonder why you cannot just finish this “Ph.D. thing” in a year or so. In relation, doing a Ph.D. can place significant stresses on your relationship with your partner. I was very fortunate to have a very supportive wife. However, our relationship was still negatively affected by my (ultimately successful) attempt to complete all my coursework and comprehensive studies in a year and a half. We barely saw each other.

Do not expect to gain a tenure-track position immediately after gaining your Ph.D. While some lucky individuals do graduate from Ph.D. straight into a tenure-track position—and I know one of them—most people do not. Expect to be unemployed or underemployed for sometime. Also expect, if necessary, to work outside your field altogether.

What advice would you give to a new Ph.D. unable to find employment in a history department?

First, do not get down hearted and do not give up. The current economic climate is tough and that fact, combined with the large number of new Ph.D.s being minted every year, means that competition is fierce. As such, you have to expect rejections, and often quite a few of them (I’ve had 20+ so far). Keep building your academic dossier with publications and—if possible—part-time teaching gigs. Sure it is not the tenure-track position we all dream of, but a well-developed dossier helps you get on track to gaining such a position. Second, be honest with yourself. Do you really want to work in academia? Both public and private employers highly value the research, analysis, writing skills, and experience that you have. Often the jobs these employers are looking to fill with someone with your skill set pay well and provide intellectual challenges (and, therefore, job satisfaction). Importantly, taking such jobs does not require you to completely divorce yourself from academia. You can still research, publish, and teach. Sure this work will be conducted on your own time, but it leaves the door open for a return to academia – often with valuable new skills and knowledge– should the right position come along.

Blog CXII (112): Eight Questions: Chinese History

Denise Ho is assistant professor of history at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of East Asia and the history of China. She studied at Yale College, where she also began learning Chinese. After graduation, she spent two years teaching for the Yale-China Teaching Fellowship in Changsha, Hunan Province, and a year working and interning in Washington at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. She completed her PhD in modern Chinese history at Harvard in November 2009. Before joining the faculty at the University of Kentucky, Ho was a visiting lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a teaching fellow at Harvard. Her work has been published in The China Quarterly, and she is working on her first book manuscript: Antiquity in Revolution: Museums, Exhibitions, and the Politics of Culture in China. Ho has also blogged about her research, and on teaching and learning about China in Kentucky, on The China Beat.

What is the greatest strength of your field? In the history profession?

One of the wonderful things about studying Chinese history is that the field is so vast, the language so complex, and the contemporary interest so great that I will never be bored. In teaching a course on modern China, one always gets to add to the syllabus. Among those you teach, even students who may not have a prior interest in China (whether they are entering freshmen, non-traditional students, or retirees taking courses) will be curious and think it relevant to their lives. Universities are hiring in East Asia in general and China in particular, many institutions are building Chinese programs for the first time, and one therefore gets not only to teach, but to build institutions. Right now in Kentucky, for example, the University of Kentucky just approved majors and minors in Chinese and Japanese, Western Kentucky University has an up-and-coming China program, and the University of Louisville is working on an Asian Studies major. Even smaller liberal arts colleges nearby, Transylvania University and Center College, have hired their first Chinese language instructors within the last two years. At a time when so many university budgets are contracting, it is a rare privilege that both institutions and students believe that your teaching is necessary.

It is also an exciting time to be a scholar in modern Chinese history. One and two generations ago, our advisors would study Chinese in Taiwan, and have limited access to archival materials or the opportunity to do oral history. Today we benefit from the opportunities to study abroad in China, to conduct research even in local archives, and to learn from and learn with talented students from China. I think that the next generation of China scholars will be even more interconnected, and increasingly completely bilingual; I imagine that it will be the rule (rather than the exception) among future scholars that they will have completed degrees in China, or spent significant periods under the direction of Chinese scholars, such as when John King Fairbank studied in Beijing. And of course, the digitization of historical records has and will continue to transform our research, much the way it has transformed the work of our colleagues in other fields.

In my own work, I am interested in the history of the People’s Republic of China, which in many ways is only just beginning to be treated as history. It is an exciting field, and we have colleagues coming out of several major institutions in the United States (especially the University of California at San Diego) and Europe, and an increasing number of students in China. Historically, study of the Mao era has been the purview of our cousins in political science, sociology, and anthropology, and we are certainly benefiting from the interdisciplinary nature of this work. For those who are interested in learning more about this field, I would suggest looking at edited volumes like Brown and Pickowicz, Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China; Strauss, The History of the PRC (1949-1976); or Kirby, The People’s Republic of China at 60: An International Assessment. In Chinese, the East China Normal University Center for Research on Contemporary China has also published volumes of essays, entitled 中国当代史研究.

What is the biggest issue facing your field? The history profession?

The issues facing my field are in many ways separate from the ones I think are facing the history profession, in part because we are so fortunate to be teaching in a field that both the general public and indeed, the government, think are critical to America’s future. As for my field, I think that one of the major drawbacks to studying contemporary China is the limits on research. These limits are both in terms of materials and in terms of the ability of our colleagues in China to publish. Firstly, access to archival materials is still limited. I am fortunate to work mostly in the Shanghai Municipal Archive, which is quite open and has an electronic catalogue. But to work in most Chinese archives, one needs to have an official sponsoring work unit and one needs to have the archive’s permission to research his chosen topic. Many of us have benefited from increased access, but others researching sensitive topics (or topics thought to be sensitive) may be denied access, or never even able to know what materials they are being denied. Further, digitization has been both a blessing and a curse; on the one hand you can look through much material that has been scanned, but on the other hand the process of scanning the material may have resulted in “sensitive” material not getting scanned. As for the second issue, it is important to remember that our colleagues in China are still working and publishing in an environment with constraints. Overall however, I am optimistic about the future of the field and a great deal of my optimism comes from being inspired by my fellow Chinese historians.

What is the most interesting work being done in your field? Why?

I think that one of the most interesting aspects of current work is local studies. When I was an undergraduate at Yale, Jonathan Spence taught a seminar on the history of Shanghai, which he also had offered in years past as a history of Beijing and Shanghai compared. A lot of what we’ve learned about China comes from the history of such big urban centers, from the history of places where there has been considerable foreign contact like Shanghai, and from the places where there were the most materials. Although I am guilty of being Shanghai-centered in my research, or what we might call 海派, I think that some of the most interesting work has been the study of local places. Students who are interested might look at Stephen Platt’s Provincial Patriots or Yeh Wen-hsin’s Provincial Passages, to name two examples of alternate ways of thinking about modernity in China. An extended and related way of thinking about the study of local places is of course the doing of oral history. One recent example of such a study is Gail Hershatter’s The Gender of Memory, which relies on many years of oral history interviews to understand how rural women experienced revolution. For an insightful essay on how to do such work, students might read the blog posting by Di Yin Lu on Dissertation Reviews: “Doing Oral History in the PRC.”

How valuable is teaching in the professional development of a career?

I’ve noticed that most of the other guest bloggers have been faculty at the associate level, so my response should be taken with the caveat that it is coming from someone in the earliest stages of the tenure track. My first response is that graduate students should have teaching assistantships with a variety of faculty (to get a sense of whose teaching style you’d like to emulate), to teach at least one course that is a general survey or outside of your own field of expertise, and to find a chance to teach your own course at least once before finishing your PhD. In my own experience, I was quite fortunate to teach for two instructors at Harvard who were truly thoughtful about teaching, Peter Bol and Mark Elliott. The course was the introductory survey to the history of China, and we had a team of about seven teaching assistants. Each week we’d meet for two hours with the instructors and they would find out how each of our sections was going, and then one of us would present a lesson plan for the following week. It was only later that I learned that such faculty commitment is the exception rather than the rule.

In general what I wish I had known is how much the students at my PhD-granting institution would be different from the students that I currently teach. My teaching in grad school was based on the assumption that my students would be highly motivated and interested in the subject. One of the things that I’ve had to learn at Kentucky is how to create interest, how to create more structure, how to create a syllabus that is considerate of how many of our students are working full-time, how to aim at a broad range of levels of preparation, and how to motivate as well as to teach. I realize that most centers of teaching and learning focus on the undergrads that are currently being taught, but I think that more could be done in grad school to help PhD students anticipate their future classrooms.

What direction or type of publishing would you advise a new Ph.D. to conduct?

Once again, I am this new PhD, and so far have only one journal article to my name, though I have a second article, a chapter in an edited volume, and two book reviews in the pipeline. My sense so far is that having a publication allows you to be a known quantity, and also affirms to your home department that you are establishing yourself in the field. As I’ve stated above, historians of China are lucky in that there are more new jobs opening up to us, and it is often the case that one gets hired before finishing the dissertation. So unlike the other bloggers here I wouldn’t necessarily counsel PhD students to publish. From my experience on searches, I would say that an article would help, but wouldn’t be a deal-breaker. What is sometimes a deal-breaker is whether the dissertation is close to completion…so finish that dissertation!

What issues affect most the development of a career: family, school resources, popularity of field, reputation of alma matter, etc.?

One of the challenges of being a new professor of Chinese history is being at a school where there may not be that many resources for your field, whether they are library resources, other colleagues, or funding to travel to China for archival or field research. But of course, this is the consequence of these institutions hiring in China studies for the first time and building China studies programs—perhaps the reason that you have this job in the first place! Leaving Harvard’s library, its dozens of China faculty, and its deep pockets can feel, as I can attest, like being cast out of Eden. I myself was lucky in that I did have a start-up package, access to some conference funding, and a modest library budget, and realize that this is more than many of my colleagues hired at the same time (2008-2009 job market cycle).

Nonetheless, it is hard not to feel isolated, even though I have a supportive department and two fantastic colleagues in Chinese literature. The advice I would give is that you have to make your own networks. Take advantage of the internet and exchange work with your grad school friends, make time to read their work and talk on Skype as you work through revisions. Join the regional AAS, get on the mailing lists of nearby universities, and go visit their East Asian Studies Centers. It may seem prohibitive to drive three or four hours to attend a talk, but this is what your Asian studies network is now. Finally, I have found it invaluable to attend the Association of Asian Studies annual meeting. You will get feedback, you’ll feel invigorated, and you’ll remember why you choose this field in the first place. Even if you don’t have funding from your university, or if you’ll end up paying out of your own pocket, you have to go. Grad school was one continuous annual meeting, now you have four days to drink from the firehose. The same logic applies to going to the archive; even if you don’t have funding, you have to go.

What advice would you give to an undergrad interested in working on a Ph.D. in history?

Go learn languages. The first piece of advice I would give is for the undergrad to go and live abroad for at least a year, and try to get at least newspaper reading knowledge under their belt. Acknowledging the fact that learning Chinese is a life-long endeavor—I still feel like a beginning student—starting graduate school will be so much easier if you aren’t still learning to read. Other side benefits of spending the time to learn languages is that you’ll really immerse yourself in the history and culture of the place, and you’ll have some time to learn and think more about whether it is really for you.

Second, I’d suggest that you learn as much about a PhD as possible, using your home institution as a place to start. What a PhD student does is very different from what you do, so talk to your teaching assistants, listen in on the graduate student conference, and attend a few academic talks to get a sense of what professors do. You might also consider asking your teaching assistant or your professor if they would give you feedback as if you were a graduate student, and see how you respond to it. When I was a junior in college one of my TA’s, unsolicited, informed me that he would evaluate my paper on early American social history as if I were his colleague. He proceeded to tear me apart, but I guess I wasn’t dissuaded.

Third, for those specifically interested in Chinese history I’d suggest doing a master’s in East Asian studies first. This is something I wish I had done, to get a better sense of the field, to get my language skills up to speed, and to be socialized before I was thrown in. There are of course many reasons not to do this, including that it is time-consuming and expensive. But a career in academia isn’t a race, and many programs will have scholarships. If you decide it isn’t for you, than you are in a much better position to change careers with an East Asian studies master’s than with a history master’s.

Finally, go for a Ph.D. in history if you can’t imagine doing anything else, if you think you would love it for the experience, and if you can come to terms with the fact that you may not be employed as a professor of Chinese history after 6-8 years of preparation in a doctoral program. It goes without saying that you should not go unless you are accepted to a top program and are funded. Full stop.

What advice would you give to a new Ph.D. unable to find employment in a history department?

Hopefully it will not come to the “new Ph.D.” That is, part of the national conversation in history departments has to be that our doctoral students are coached throughout their course of study on how to find jobs inside and outside of academia. I’ve suggested to my department that part of our graduate training should include an “outside outside field,” i.e., something like public history, library science, distance learning, or some kind of internship, so that everyone has a Plan B. I think it is our responsibility to our students to let them know how difficult the market is, to prepare them as best as possible for that market, and to give them an outside option. Students who would like to learn more might find Basalla and Debelius’ “So What Are You Going to Do With That?”: Finding Careers Outside Academia helpful.

If it is indeed a “new Ph.D” I think the answer depends on what that person’s goals are. Again, graduates with a Chinese history PhD will have a range of options that are enhanced by their linguistic abilities. Classmates of mine, for example, have joined the State Department in the Office of the Historian, as foreign service officers, and have found non-academic employment in China as consultants or as administrators in international education. Some people who have chosen this option have even found ways to remain active in the field, publishing their dissertation or parts of it, and continuing to organize panels and do research on their own time.

If the goal is still to find academic employment, I think that there must be a fair and balanced evaluation of what the student’s other life goals are, including any financial or familial restraints. The job market is so competitive and so much is based on chance and not ability, that the extent of “trying again” needs to be balanced against the student’s other goals and his or her tolerance for disappointment. One of the tragedies of this profession is that there are people who are brilliant at research, talented and passionate teachers, and who would be excellent colleagues who will not be able to secure a job. One of the best pieces of consolation I received in 2009 was that, no matter what happened on the job market, I would still “be an intellectual.” By extension, there are other jobs in the world that will use one’s skills as a teacher and a researcher, but they may not be academic ones. You have much to give the world, and if it is not in academe, it will be in a role that you yourself will define. Remember the old man who lived at the frontier 塞翁失马; you have yet to find out what fortune may come of this misfortune.

Blog CXI (111): Eight Questions: African American History

The next post in the Eight Questions series comes from Chad Williams who is an associate professor of history at Hamilton College.  Williams specializes in modern U.S. and African American history. He did his undergraduate work at the University of California, Los Angeles.  He then earned his master's degree and Ph.D. in history from Princeton University. Williams' specific teaching and research interests include World War I, African Americans in the military, war and society, African American intellectual history and the African diaspora. His first book Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2010) won the 2011 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award from the Organization of American Historians and the 2011 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History. This book studies how the First World War helped shape African Americans' identity as Americans.  One reviewer noted: "Williams’s study does an excellent job of weaving these complex ideas in a clear narrative. The narrative is written in a clear and accessible way."  A recipient of a 2011 Dean’s Scholarly Achievement Award, he has published articles and book reviews in numerous leading journals and collections. Williams has earned fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Ford Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. He is currently completing a study of W. E. B. Du Bois's historical writings on World War I.

What is the greatest strength of your field? In the history profession?

The greatest strength of African American history continues to be its methodological and conceptual breadth. African American history has always been at the cutting edge of developments in the historical profession. The field of African American history is characterized by intellectual creativity and the unique ability of historians to craft new frameworks for understanding the black experience. For example, Thomas Holt's recent book Children of Fire offers a fresh take on the African American history survey by eschewing a traditional linear narrative and instead adopting a generational approach. African American history pushes the boundaries for how we view and study history more broadly by revealing the full human complexity of peoples of African descent.

What is the biggest issue facing your field? The history profession?

The dearth of tenure-track employment opportunities remains the biggest issue facing the profession. I think this challenge is especially acute for scholars of African American history. On the one hand, there is fierce competition over the small number of positions offered each year in African American history, unfortunately leaving many highly qualified candidates without employment. At the same time, job searches in United States history often do not give specialists in African American history a serious look. This is due to the continued, and quite frankly, pernicious assumption that African American history somehow falls outside the scope of American history proper. I cannot keep track of how many times I have been asked, "Can you teach an American history survey course?" The most significant issue facing the field of African American history is thus the continued need to not be seen merely as a "sub-field" of American history but as absolutely central to how we think about history as a whole.  

What is the most interesting work being done in your field? Why?

The current vogue of the "long civil rights movement" has certainly spawned a wealth of recent scholarship that has broadened the temporal and geographic scope of the African American struggle for equal rights and citizenship. However, the proliferation of “long civil rights” scholarship also threatens to obfuscate as much as its reveals. In the search for agency, resistance and activism, historians of the “long civil rights movement” run the risk of losing sight of the full complexities of black life. Indeed, the everyday actions and daily motivations of African Americans have been shaped by a multitude of factors, the quest for civil rights among them, but not always the most determinative.

Some of the most exciting work that both addresses and goes beyond the “long civil rights movement” framework examines black life during the interwar period, the era of the so-called “New Negro.” Historians have explored the seemingly familiar terrain of the post-World War I years and shed new light on the complexity of the black experience. Books such as Davarian Baldwin's Chicago's New Negroes, Anastasia Curwood's Stormy Weather, Erin Chapman's Prove It On Me, and Minkah Makalani’s In the Cause of Freedom have offered wonderful reinterpretations of issues such as black migration, urban consumer culture, African American marriage, gender and sexual politics, and radical black internationalism.

How valuable is teaching in the professional development of a career?

I view teaching as incredibly important. A small liberal arts college will obviously emphasize teaching more than a research institution in hiring and promotion decisions. But irrespective of the institution, quality teaching can only serve as a boon to ones career, while poor teaching may in fact be a detriment. I also find that teaching helps sharpen my scholarship, allowing me to test out new ideas and think them through with my students. So beyond simply career development, teaching should be a key component of your intellectual development as a historian.

What direction or type of publishing would you advise a new Ph.D. to conduct?

Given the current realities of the market, establishing a publication record should ideally begin in graduate school. While finishing the dissertation and obtaining your Ph.D. is obviously the main goal, I would encourage doctoral students to consider opportunities for early publication. Aiming to publish a peer reviewed article is ideal, even if it is not in a top tier journal. Don't waste time waiting months for a reply and the strong possibility of rejection. Most important, begin the process of transforming your doctoral thesis into a book. Even before embarking on the exhausting journey of securing a publisher, seriously think about what type of book you want to write, as opposed to simply how you plan to revise your dissertation.  

What issues affect most the development of a career: family, school resources, popularity of field, reputation of alma matter, etc.?

Of all the numerous intangibles that can affect an academic career, institutional support looms large. This can encompass a number of different things, such as funding for research, resources for course development, assistance in spousal hiring, and the active promotion of a collegial environment. In the case of scholars of African American history, the importance of institutional support goes hand in hand with the issue of intellectual community. We all ideally want to work in environments with supportive colleagues whom we can share ideas with, learn from, and who take genuine interest in our scholarship. Finding such a place can be a challenge for African American historians, who often must look beyond their place of employment for a sense of community.

What advice would you give to an undergrad interested in working on a Ph.D. in history?

I have never flat out told an undergraduate interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in history to think again. If someone has a true passion for the study of history I would wholeheartedly encourage them to consider graduate school. With that said, they must have a clear understanding of the challenges that lay ahead, especially the gloomy reality that immediately securing a tenure-track appointment will be extremely difficult. I would therefore emphasize that it is no longer tenable to approach graduate study, in history or any other discipline, with a narrow set of career goals. Think creatively. Graduate school should be seen as a once in a lifetime opportunity to mature as a holistic scholar and develop a broad array of skill sets that can be put to use both inside and outside of academia.

What advice would you give to a new Ph.D. unable to find employment in a history department?

The inability of new Ph.D. recipients to consider employment opportunities beyond the traditional tenure-track appointment in a history department route is a failure of the current system of graduate training. The AHA's recent focus on encouraging historians, especially recent Ph.D's to consider careers beyond academia narrowly defined is welcome and long overdue. Because graduate school lends towards specialization, most Ph.D. holders do not even realize they are qualified for jobs outside of academia. Working with museums, foundations, and teaching at the secondary level are all more than viable options. Curriculum development is a potentially exciting opportunity as well. While various aspects of African American history are now regularly taught at the secondary level, many teachers lack both the knowledge base and resources to effectively convey the complexities of their subject matter. There is a need for qualified historians to engage in this type of work.

Blog CX (110): Eight Questions: Religious History

The next entry in the "Eight Questions" series comes from Angela Lahr.  Oxford University Press published her first book, Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares: The Cold War Origins of Political Evangelicalism (2007).  A reviewer in Church History called it a thoughtful and thought provoking analysis." Another writing in The American Historical Review, observed: "Lahr's book is significant and persuasive contribution to our understanding of the origins of political evangelicalism in the twentieth century, and it should receive a wide readership."  Lahr is currently an Adjunct Professor of U.S. History at Finger Lakes Community College.  Before that she was a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Westminster College for five years.  She was also a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M University--Commerce for a year.  She earned a BA in history from the University of Evansville and recieved her MA and Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University.

 

What is the greatest strength of your field? In the history profession?

A recent AHA study of history departments shows that the history of religion is one of three fields – along with diplomatic history and military history – to have increased over 6 percent in departmental representation over the last five years (Perspectives on History, September 2011). At its best, the history profession seeks to understand the human condition as it evolves over time. Religious historians who study the role of belief systems in societies highlight a fundamental component of the human condition. Because of its focus on what people believe, why they believe it, and the impact of those beliefs on individuals, cultures, societies, and institutions, historians who research religion can also be an asset in demonstrating the connections that exist between other fields (both topical and geographic). 

What is the most interesting work being done in your field? Why?

According to the 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 28 percent of American adults have left the faith in which they were raised. Among its conclusions is the claim that “religious affiliation in the U.S. is both very diverse and extremely fluid.” (http://religions.pewforum.org/reports) “Very diverse and extremely fluid” could also be used to describe other periods of American religious history, and explaining how and why religious landscapes differ and remain the same over time is one of the tasks of historians. This survey underscores a basic challenge for historians of religion. How does one communicate and explain the belief systems of the past to the present? This challenge is undoubtedly not new, nor is it unique to the field of the history of religion, but it continues to confront historians nonetheless.

Some of the most interesting work historians of American religion are doing recognizes the role of fluidity in understanding the belief systems of the past. These historians address the changing belief patterns of individuals and groups and evaluate the significance of those changes. Others examine the causes and consequences of the fluidity of belief systems across porous borders. Studies on religion and the Atlantic world have long taken up this challenge. In his recent book, Darren Dochuk discusses the influence of migrating Bible Belt evangelicals on Sunbelt conservatism (From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism). Other scholars have tackled the impact of immigrant groups on the religious practices of communities and on larger cultural and political forces.

How valuable is teaching in the professional development of a career?

Institutional support (or the lack thereof) can greatly impact the value of teaching on a professional career. Aside from that, teaching can be as valuable as one makes it. It can be frustrating. It can be time-consuming. It can inspire new questions and spark new areas of interest. It can improve and clarify speaking and writing skills. It can be rewarding.

What issues affect most the development of a career: family, school resources, popularity of field, reputation of alma matter, etc.?

Career development is a process that is largely unique to each individual, depending on a combination of personal goals and values on one hand and the state of the field and quality of education on the other. Obviously, individuals who earn a degree in a sought-after field from a top-tier school and who are willing/able to move anywhere for a job will have more opportunities. Speaking from my own experiences, changes in my personal and professional goals have also profoundly impacted the direction of my career.

What advice would you give to an undergrad interested in working on a Ph.D. in history?

Make sure that you are well aware of the state of the job market and ask yourself if you are prepared to face the worst-case scenario after earning a Ph.D. – not being able to find your “dream job.” If you decide that you are prepared, do some serious research into the discipline, your field of interest, and the reputations of the Ph.D. programs you are considering. Then, develop a back-up plan . . . and a back-up plan for your back-up plan. Don’t stop there. Make some efforts at working toward your “Plan B” so that if you do need to fall back on it you won’t have to start from scratch.

What advice would you give to a new Ph.D. unable to find employment in a history department?

Be realistic. At some point you should assess available opportunities outside of academia and take stock of the skills that you have acquired in attaining your Ph.D. Which of those are transferable? Focus on highlighting those skills to find employment elsewhere. Earning an additional degree is always an option, but other well-known opportunities include positions in public history, the government, secondary teaching, library work, and college administration (among others). Be prepared to be patient. You may have to start out in an entry-level job.

Blog CIX (109): Eight Questions: Medieval History

John D. Hosler is currently an associate professor of history at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. He holds a B.A. and two M.A.s from Iowa State University and the Ph.D. from the University of Delaware. He is an historian of medieval military history, particularly in England and its sphere of influence, with interests in generalship, the conduct of warfare, military historiography, the art and theory of warfare, and the influence of warfare on political history. He is the author of Henry II: a Medieval Soldier at War, 1147-1189 (2007) as well as articles in Haskins Society Journal; the Journal of Medieval Military History; and the collection Mercenaries and Paid Men: the Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages. He is currently writing his second book, titled John of Salisbury: Military Authority of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, which is under contract with Brill Academic Press.

What is the greatest strength of your field? In the history profession?

The vitality of medieval military history is remarkable and has been for the last twenty years. There is a tremendous interest in the subject and its scholars can boast of robust publication numbers. Several trade presses (Ashgate, Boydell, and Brill, for example) have actively pursued and published studies and collections on medieval war, and there is now the highly-acclaimed Journal of Medieval Military History. Contributing in large part to this phenomenon has been a renewal of interest in the Crusades since the events of September 11; while I am not certain that one has anything to do with the other in a historical sense, the terrorist acts certainly renewed interest in Western vs. Middle Eastern conflicts. Undergraduate students routinely fill classes on warfare, and we have seen noticeable numbers of graduate students in the audiences at our conference sessions. Perhaps best of all, medieval military historians are collectively a friendly and collegial group that encourages student aspirations and shares its knowledge broadly and openly. I should know: in 2000 I was one of those students who, prodded by a number of helpful, established scholars, decided to study medieval war!

What is the biggest issue facing your field? The history profession?

Medieval  history is most threatened by an ongoing phenomenon we call “the death of the past”; that is, the general belief in higher education that history before 1500 is less interesting to students, less informative to the discipline, and therefore expendable. For years colleges have reduced the number of medieval courses and faculty, with much of the impetus coming from fellow historians. Those courses that have survived are expected to cover huge swaths of history. In my department both my ancient and medieval surveys are expected to cover one thousand years of history in a single semester, respectively. Our American surveys, on the other hand, cover small slices like 1787-1861, 1877-1932, or 1932-present (there is an implicit—and entirely false—assumption that too little can be known about, say, 1272-1312 to warrant such a catalog listing). In addition, retiring medieval faculty lines are not being replaced but are “retagged” into other historical fields. As a result, medieval history (along with ancient history and classics, both of which, one could argue, are actually in worse shape) is slowly disappearing from college catalogs and faculties. For example, my undergraduate institution, Iowa State University, has over 28,000 students but only one medieval historian. Some will scoff at all of this as a bit of whining—and I am sure that my own colleagues tired of my “whining” long ago!—but there is no denying that preferential treatment is given to modern history, and the discipline will need to eventually come to grips with it.

This unfortunate situation is not necessarily due to the shifting of interests to newer methods or thematic approaches to history—think gender studies, for example—because one could spend an entire career studying gender in the Middle Ages. Rather, it often stems from the ignorance and prejudices of modernists and, particularly, Americanists who refuse to include medieval studies within those subject areas and interdisciplinary studies. Over the years I have routinely heard the common beliefs: everything before 1500 “is already known”; pre-modern historians have “relatively few sources to read”; “international studies” should not include pre-modern history; and so on. This has unfortunately carried over into graduate programs: there are hardly any historians of medieval war who teach in doctoral programs in the United States. As with many problems in higher education, those enabling this “death of the past” (whether intentionally or not) are oblivious to actual student interests and demand. Most medieval historians, I suspect, will tell you that their classes are quite popular and usually fully-enrolled.

In terms of the profession at large, history is under threat from shifting local and national emphases towards applied research and the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Research and teaching that does not result in an immediate payoff is lightly regarded, and the phrase “lifelong learning” is rarer on campuses these days. History is not the only discipline watching its perceived importance decline; all the humanities and many of the social sciences face demotion as institutions and governments increasingly favor students as “customers” and education as “job training.”

What is the most interesting work being done in your field? Why?

The hottest work in medieval military scholarship today is in the area of prosopography. It centers on the identification of individual soldiers, which then enables more in-depth analyses of the profession of arms in the Middle Ages. A chief example of this is The Soldier in Later Medieval England project; based at the University of Southampton, its staff have assembled a free, online database of nearly 250,000 records of English soldiers serving in the period 1369-1453. Three edited collections of essays and a monograph, all using in some measure this vast resource, have already been published since its completion in 2009. The unambiguous conclusion from these studies is—much to the surprise (and, in some cases, chagrin) of modern military historians—that medieval warriors were professional soldiers in every sense of the word.

How valuable is teaching in the professional development of a career?

A solid record of teaching is essential (and by teaching I mean independently-instructed courses, not courses for which you were the teaching assistant). Depending on the field, a doctoral student or adjunct/visiting professor should teach both halves of their basic surveys at least twice: U.S. History I & II and Western Civilization I & II. And everyone, regardless of field, should also teach World History I & II, which is not only replacing Western Civ around the country but is also frequently being taught by Ph.D.s in American history. An upper-level course or two added to these surveys makes for a fine vitae. Versatility is the goal here: hiring committees want teachers who can cover the freshmen sections, and you will teach more of these courses than anything else over the span of your career. At my mid-level state university, each semester I teach three sections of world history and one upper-level course for the majors. Notice the 4-4 load: it is becoming more common these days, not less…

That said there is the law of diminishing returns. Once you have taught 10 sections of U.S. History, I daresay that teaching 10 more adds little to your vitae; moreover, too much teaching will inevitably impact your research output. Now, if you are contemplating community-college jobs or teaching-intensive small liberal arts colleges this is less of a negative, but if you are interested in any school with a research burden (i.e. calculated for raises and/or tenure) you need to dial down the teaching upon reaching the totals advised above. Otherwise, you might become that adjunct who is an awesome teacher but never published anything…and got beaten in a job search by a shiny new Ph.D. with an article and two book reviews.

Some qualification is needed with this last point. By now most of us are aware of the massive problem with universities hiring contractual lecturers, asking them to teach heavy course loads, and paying them peanuts and no benefits. The scarcity of full-time positions means that new Ph.D.s often labor for years on the instructor track just to pay rent—and this forces them into the “too much teaching” issue that I mention above. This is obviously a major problem, and I do not presume to have the answer for it. All I can suggest is that while you are toughing out such contracts try to keep up with your research so that you can someday transition to a full-time gig.

What direction or type of publishing would you advise a new Ph.D. to conduct?

Carpe diem! New Ph.D.s should seize every potential publishing and speaking opportunity that comes their way. So, when asked the questions:

• “Would you like to review this book that is somewhat out of your research field?”

• “We are thinking about publishing the proceedings of this conference—would you like to submit your paper for inclusion?”

• “I know two months is a short timeline, but would be able to revise your paper by then?”

the answer should be “YES!” Journal review boards, conference organizers, and publishers are looking for dependable scholars who can meet deadlines and accommodate disparate needs. I know several historians who turn down such offers because they imagined their research appearing elsewhere; as a result, their work was not published in time to get a job and/or tenure. Over-committing, in my opinion, is one hallmark of a good young scholar.

I would also urge new Ph.D.s to create opportunities for themselves. One of the first things I did upon getting my Ph.D. was to contact the review boards of my field’s major journals and offer to write reviews, not only in my primary research specialization of Anglo-Norman military history but of books on medieval England and France, church history, the Crusades, and other areas. Presuming that you are dedicated and actively reading, you should be able to cover a similar scope. Active and reliable book reviewing (meet your deadlines!) will eventually open up opportunities in reviewing articles and books, joining editorial teams and boards, and publishing.

In addition, new Ph.D.s should be cognizant about the state of publishing in their discipline. In my field of medieval warfare some of the best research does not appear in traditional academic journals. Instead, collections of essays are now ubiquitous, and the good publishing houses peer-review the submissions. Slowly—very slowly, I should say—tenure and promotion committees are recognizing this change, and while journal articles still reign supreme book chapters do count towards tenure. In a similar vein, I would urge new Ph.D.s to think hard about publishing their first book with a university press. Obviously, one should not turn down an offer from the Yales and Oxbridges of the world, but there are several excellent trade presses that are highly ranked, peer-reviewed, and, often, better-suited for one’s specific project. Typical tenure-track faculty members have between four and six years to get the dissertation published as a book, but waiting two or three years for that perfect university press contract may mean publication happens after one’s tenure file is submitted. Obviously the particular tenure requirements of one’s institutions should be taken in account.

What issues affect most the development of a career: family, school resources, popularity of field, reputation of alma mater, etc.?

High on my list would be the issue of family. I made a deliberate decision to finish my Ph.D. before having children and it made a world of difference. A full course load is difficult enough by itself, but toss in the other activities upon which history doctoral students should be embarking (giving conference papers, traveling and conducting research, and writing book reviews and that elusive first article) and one’s schedule fills up quickly. Family slows down research. In addition, most students are constrained financially, and even those on full tuition waivers typically receive them for only a set number of years. It is crucial to finish the Ph.D. in a reasonable time span: remember, most graduates today are not finding tenure-track jobs, so spending a decade or more on a degree that results in a failed job search can be financially and emotionally devastating.

I would also warn against hubris when applying for jobs. Some grad students believe that the reputation of their program or major professor will be a major factor, but I would argue that this is only true in some cases. Medieval history, as a victim of “the death of the past,” is certainly an exception. Due to the paucity of medievalists on campuses, the hiring committee will likely reflect an assortment of fields outside the Middle Ages: in this case, no one will have heard of your adviser, much less know the scholarly impact of his/her work. At small and community colleges, the committee may even include one or two non-historians. In other words, do not bet the farm on your adviser’s letter.
My final suggestion (for those who get appointments at research institutions) would be to think about your second book. I know the dissertation is a huge project that dominates your life for years, and it will likely be your first book. But once it’s finished you will need to do something else, and many historians have a difficult time deciding upon a new project without the aid of their adviser—the result has been a number of historians who have failed to get tenure or who never moved beyond the associate professor rank.

What advice would you give to an undergrad interested in working on a Ph.D. in history?

My suggestion would be to explore other career options. There are so few jobs these days that I cannot with good conscience recommend the Ph.D. track to a student without reservation. Only those with a burning passion for historical inquiry and the emotional/psychological fortitude to cope with disappointment, failure, and a massive debt load should attempt it.

That said, I would encourage those who do become doctoral students to discern a dissertation topic quickly; then, you should find ways to orient as much of their coursework around that topic as possible. Papers written for writing seminars should address aspects of the dissertation, for example. This helps to build your research base, which not only allows for an easier transition into the dissertation itself but also expanded conference and publishing opportunities. The scarcity of positions has really raised the bar for applicants’ vitaes, and few students will get appointments without having something in print. Grad students who put off conferences and the writing of smaller publishable pieces (such as encyclopedia entries and book reviews) until their coursework and comprehensive exams were completed, thinking that they would present or publish after beginning their dissertation research, have a harder time finding jobs. Finally, doctoral students should remember that the dissertation is not meant to be your magnum opus: anything beyond two years spent actually writing it is, in my opinion, time that could be better utilized getting published.

What advice would you give to a new Ph.D. unable to find employment in a history department?

The skills of a Ph.D. holder are routinely misunderstood and underappreciated by potential employers. In many cases, however, the applicants themselves suffer from a similar handicap: they are unable to cast their learned skills and personal abilities in a non-academic context. History Ph.D.s can conduct research, read and write critically, teach and instruct, meet deadlines, read foreign languages, and absorb and interpret large quantities of information—all of these are desirable skills in the private and public sectors. My best advice would be to give consideration to how these skills would benefit the business or institution to which you are applying. For the former, think about how your particular skills and/or knowledge create value for the business; for the latter, think about how your skills advance the mission statement of the institution.