Blog CXXVI (126): Eight Questions: Ancient History

The next entry in the Eight Question series comes from Daniel L. Schwartz of Texas A&M University.  Schwartz is a historian of antiquity and teaches classes in Roman history, the history of Christianity, and world history.  He holds a BA in Philosophy and Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara; an MA in Christian Thought from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; a post-baccalaureate certificate in classics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and both a MA and PhD in history from Princeton University.  He has previously taught at Bryn Mawr College and been an Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.  He is the author of Paideia and Cult: Christian Initiation in Theodore of Mopsuestia (2012). His articles and chapters have appeared in publications such as the Journal of Early Christian Studies and the anthology Revelation, Literature and Community in Late Antiquity.

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

The greatest strength of Late Antiquity, the Mediterranean and its hinterlands from roughly AD 200-800, is its youth and vibrancy. Late Antiquity developed as a field in response to an approach to ancient history that could be rather narrowly focused on Greece and Rome during specific periods of their history. The differences between the highest points of classical civilization and what developed as Roman imperial power weakened and eventually fell apart in the western half of the empire, led earlier generations of scholars to marginalize the period we now call Late Antiquity. As a distinct field, Late Antiquity has largely been about carving out a space for the study of this period on its own terms. This new-found space has proven very fruitful indeed. The field includes scholars working on culture, religion, politics, and economy over a very broad geographical region: from Celtic Ireland, to upper Egypt, to North Africa, to the Iranian plateau and beyond.

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

The biggest historiographical issue facing the field is how best to discuss the differences between Classical Antiquity and Late Antiquity. Though the field came into existence as a reaction against paradigms of “Decline and Fall” and “Dark Ages,” preferring instead to speak in terms of continuities and discontinuities, several prominent scholars have recently suggested that things have gone too far and the field needs to be reined in a bit. One scholar even prefers to describe the period as “the end of civilization.” In short, those studying political developments, architecture, and economy tend to prefer models of decline, while those studying culture and religion tend to downplay them. This debate promises to persist within the field of Late Antiquity for some time.

The poor job market is clearly the biggest issue facing the history profession in general. Many of the other respondents have already elaborated on this situation, but I would like to comment on it from the perspective of Late Antiquity specifically. While the field has gained considerable prominence in the last few decades, it continues to lack a clear niche in academic departments. The “Dark Ages” heritage of Late Antiquity can still be seen in the fact that the field often falls into this gap between the two departments. Ancient history is often done in the classics department and many history departments have no one working earlier than the Middle Ages. Only rarely will a recent PhD in history be competitive for positions in classics departments, which are generally more geared toward teaching language and literature. Whether you are a graduate student or a new PhD, you can hedge against this problem by preparing yourself to wear a number of hats. Do an MA in classics before starting the PhD or plan on gaining expertise in Medieval history through the course work and teaching you pursue. An interdisciplinary degree plan with historical and linguistic work relevant to the study of Judaism, Christianity, and/or Islam can also make you competitive for positions in religious studies departments.

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

The best work being done in Late Antiquity fully engages the geographical breadth of the field. The period offers a moment when vernacular literatures begin to flourish at the edges of the Roman world: Coptic in Egypt, Syriac in Mesopotamia and the Levant, and Arabic are the prime examples. The scholars using these sources to study the social, cultural, and religious histories of the period discover fascinating accounts of an integrated world in fruitful dialogue across considerable distances. Furthermore, they find that those contacts do not merely radiate from a Roman core to provincial peripheries, but rather indicate robust local cultures with much to offer students of the period.

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

Research universities will always place a high priority on publication and anyone employed in or seeking employment in such a context cannot forget this reality. Nevertheless, teaching is absolutely critical to a career in Late Antiquity. Given the fact that the place of the field within many history departments is somewhat tenuous, teaching can often make the difference in securing employment. Once you attain a position, your ability to successfully attract undergraduate and graduate students is essential. Fortunately, the field’s emphasis on cultural history, especially religion, gender, and class, translates well to the classroom and offers much of interest to students at all levels.

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

The answer to this question has to be career specific since the expectations of your department and university will require you to pursue certain things. At a community college or a teaching college you would do well to pursue several journal articles of your dissertation and hold off thinking about longer projects for a time. You may even want to consider adapting your research to journals with more of a pedagogical bent.

However, if you are in, or aspire to be in, a tier one research university, you will need to focus on turning the dissertation into a book, and rather quickly. Think carefully about the feedback you received from your readers before, during, and after your dissertation defense. Make every attempt to get your work into the hands of people you respect in the field. Test the waters with some conference papers and perhaps a journal article from a section of your dissertation that can be easily extracted. After that, buckle down and make essential revisions, but avoid the impulse to rewrite your entire project. When you send your manuscript to a publisher, the editors you work with will send it out for review. No matter how much work you have done on it, those reviewers will ask for revisions that are specific to the publisher or series. If at all possible, revise for the people who will put your book in print.

When choosing a publisher, you will again need to take into consideration the expectations of your institution. Especially if you are in a smaller field like Late Antiquity, you must keep in mind that you will be evaluated throughout your career by people who know very little about your field. You can save yourself a great deal of grief by finding out what they think counts as a good publisher. Hopefully there will be some overlap between what they recognize and the places you want to publish.

Finally, be confident in your work and aim high. This will require you to work quickly so that you have time to resubmit to another publisher if your work is not initially accepted. However, you just might land your dream press early on and that will put you in an excellent position.

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

All of these issues will have some bearing on how your career develops, but no one issue is decisive. The reputation of the alma mater might get you an interview, but rarely will it get you the job. Your research, writing, and references will be much more important. Being in a less popular field means fewer jobs, but also likely means fewer applicants. Once you get a position, being the only one of your kind in the department can free you to teach what you want without the concern of competition with senior colleagues. Rarely will your department or university have expectations for productivity wildly out of keeping with the resources they provide for meeting those expectations. Generally speaking, if tenure means two books, you will likely find considerable teaching leave. If you are teaching four classes each semester with minimal leave and research support, you will not need to publish as much.

This leaves family, which I think is likely the most significant of the issues listed. Single income families are increasingly rare and managing two careers requires a great deal of coordination. If you or your partner feel compelled to be near extended family, geography presents a huge limiting factor. Your partner’s career may also limit you geographically or leave you taking on greater household and childcare responsibilities due to the relative flexibility of an academic career. That flexibility is one reason why an academic career is so appealing. However, research, writing, and teaching preparation require considerable self-discipline and securing time for these while fulfilling family roles can be a considerable challenge.

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

This is a very difficult question. A simple internet search will produce numerous references to what a horrible mistake it is to go to graduate school in the humanities. The course of study is difficult, the costs consistently increase, and the job market has rarely produced enough positions for all of those completing the PhD.  While the hyperbole has grown a bit tiresome, undergraduates should not consider graduate school without being well aware of what they will face during their degree and while looking for employment afterward.

For a student who understands this reality and still wants to do doctoral work in Late Antiquity, the only sensible advice is to begin studying languages. Ancient Greek and Latin for primary sources as well as French and German for access to modern scholarship are absolutely essential. Furthermore, the interesting work I discuss above in response to the third question requires students to gain additional languages, ancient and modern. Students increasingly need access to Syriac, Hebrew, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, or Middle Persian. Depending on the research topic, Modern Greek, Russian, Italian, or Spanish could also prove critical. The timely completion of a PhD requires considerable language acquisition before day one as a graduate student.

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

My first inclination is to speak to those still in graduate school. One of the reasons this rough job market is so painful is that recent graduates have so much sweat equity in their degrees. If you are still working on the Ph.D., you need to make sure some of that effort goes toward thinking about developing a broad skillset. Consider ways you could use your research and writing skills as well as your historical understanding in library, publishing, government, museum, and business settings. Put some effort into getting experience in one or more of these fields.

Next, advice must go to directors of graduate study at Ph.D. granting institutions. Departments need robust professional development programs that orient students toward the particulars of the academic job market, but also toward alternative careers for those with a Ph.D. in history.

If you are a recent Ph.D. having trouble securing an academic position, you need to ask yourself some hard questions about your passions and the resources you and your family bring to the table. The last thing you want to do is live on credit card debt while hoping that an academic job will materialize. If you are able to make ends meet as an adjunct or have a partner with a solid income, you have quite a bit more flexibility. If you are the main or only wage earner for a family, your options are far more limited. Consider the careers listed above while continuing to look for an academic post. Be open to the idea that you just may find your niche in an unexpected place.

Blog CXXV (125): Eight Questions: Western History

The next entry in the Eight Questions series comes from Eileen V. Wallis in the field of Western History.  Wallis received her BA in history from California State University, Northridge; her MA is in History with a public history emphasis from Sacramento State University; and her Ph.D. is in history from the University of Utah.  She is an assistant professor of history at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.  Her research interests include California and the American West; the Progressive Era; public history; U.S. women's history; and agricultural and environmental history. At Pomona, she teaches classes on California history, public history and women's history.   She is the author of Earning Power: Women and Work in Los Angeles, 1880-1930 (2010).

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

I believe the greatest strength of my field is its diversity. The American West is such a vast topic that there is room for an enormous range of time periods, topics and approaches. One scholar might work on indigenous peoples in the 17th Century southwest, while another might study the 21st century Pacific Coast, and yet they are both, at least in my view, “western” historians. Studying the American West shakes up some of the more rigid ideas within both history and the historical profession about how the United States became what it is today, and where it may be going in the future.

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

I would say that the biggest issue western historians face is the still somewhat slippery concept of “the West” itself. In many ways we are still grappling with the questions Frederick Jackson Turner raised more than a century ago, and that the New Western Historians raised again in the 1980s. What is the west? Is it a process or a place? Where does it start? Where does it end? Is there still an “American West” today, or have the forces of modernization obliterated regional differences? Ask ten different western historians these questions, and in all likelihood you will get ten different answers. This makes for fun arguments at conferences, but it does mean we do not have the same collective conceptual framework other fields have.

For the larger history profession jobs, as several previous posters have already mentioned, remain a major issue. The market for historians of the American West is not quite as oversaturated at it is in other specialties because there simply aren’t that many programs. But many colleges and universities are not hiring historians in the American West, and not replacing those that retire, even as demand for courses is on the rise. California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where I teach, used to have four full-time tenure-track faculty specializing in California history. Now there is just me. Fortunately we have several excellent adjunct professors who help meet demand. But that is of course no substitute for hiring full-time tenure-track faculty.

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

The work I find most interesting looks at the intersections between a range of different variables: race, social class, gender, economics, etc. Scholars are finding that subjects that might seem to be rather narrow can actually have tremendous depth when you look more closely.

The continued racial diversity in the American West, for example, means just about any topic has potential racial and ethnic dimensions. Exploring the experiences of African-Americans, indigenous peoples, Asian-Americans, Latinos, etc., as well as those of Anglo- and Euro-Americans fosters a much richer understanding of the region’s history.

Gender is one of my own research interests. When I entered graduate school in the late 1990s women were still sometimes left out of western history books. When they were included it was often as romanticized symbols, not as historical actors in their own right. Since then, though, topics as diverse as coal mining, the Gold Rush, and the impact of World War II on the American West have also been made richer by adding gender and sexuality into the equation.

I am also intrigued by the continued integration of environmental history with the history of the American west. I live in and study California, a state with a deep and yet conflicted relationship with agriculture. So I am particularly excited about the number of young scholars revisiting agricultural history but now contextualizing it with the broader story of western and global history.

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

Teaching is absolutely critical. New Ph.D.s with a focus on the American West will not end up immediately at a research one university. Most that find positions will be at community colleges or state schools. Here at Cal Poly, part of the Cal State system, teaching is weighed equally with scholarship and service in tenure and promotion decision.

More importantly, teaching is part of what scholars do. This may be my own background in public history speaking, but if we do not put ourselves out there talking to students and to the public then our ability to increase broader historical knowledge is and always will be negligible. If you do not enjoy teaching and if you are not willing to work at being the best teacher you can be in my opinion you should really reconsider a career in academia.

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

The best guidance I received as a Ph.D. student came from my advisor at the University of Utah, the late Dean L. May. He stressed that historians of the American West had to be careful not to be typecast as solely regionalists. He encouraged me to think strategically about what opportunities would be out there in the future. He was the one who steered me towards a focus on California history, where there are often more opportunities for both teaching positions and publishing opportunities.

So I will give the same advice. Choose a topic for your dissertation that, however small, has larger implications for American or perhaps even international history so that you are as marketable as possible. Book projects that take this approach are also much more likely to find a publisher.

That being said, one of the blessings of a focus on the American West is that every western state has a lively history community. There are many smaller scholarly journals that welcome submissions. The first article I ever published, before I had even completed my degree, was in the Utah Historical Quarterly, the well-respected journal of the Utah State Historical Society. So while you are writing your dissertation or revising it for publication look around for opportunities to get your work out there.

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

Reputation of one’s alma matter is still important, but perhaps less so in the history of the American West. There are some fantastic universities out there that don’t even have specialists in the field. I would say the reputation of the faculty who trains you is more important than the school itself. Many of the most important and exciting scholars in western history are at state universities.

Networking is extremely important. Attend the Western History Association’s annual meetings even if you are not presenting. Get out there and meet people. Volunteer on a committee or write a book review for a scholarly journal.

Finally, be prepared to market yourself. Most historians of the American West teach additional fields, so if you have never taught a state history class or a United States survey course try and get some experience under your belt before you go on the job market. At the very least put together some sample syllabi you can show a hiring committee to demonstrate how your broad training will benefit them when it comes to staffing classes.

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

Think long and hard about why you want a Ph.D. in history. Having a Ph.D. is not going to guarantee you a job, and it is an enormous commitment of time, money, and energy. I worked in a museum for a year and a half between getting my MA and returning to school for my Ph.D. While it was hard to give up a steady paycheck and go back to being a starving student I was convinced I needed the Ph.D. to advance in my career, and so it was. I also thus went in with both eyes open. I understood why I was in school, and what I wanted out of it, and that made the slings and arrows of academia easier to bear.

I would add this: read as much as you can while you can! Undergraduates often tell me they are sorely pressed for time, but trust me: when you’re teaching full time it will be much worse. So take this opportunity to read as widely and deeply in the field you are considering pursuing as you can. This will have the added benefit of educating you about the major scholars and new trends in the discipline before you try and select the right program for you.

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

Be patient and be flexible. There are lots of great opportunities to put your history training to work. K-12 education, state and local historical societies, the federal government, museums, historical tourism, and film and television can all use historians and those with historical training.

Blog CXXIV (124): Eight Questions: Urban History

The next entry in the Eight Questions series comes from Daniel Amsterdam of The Ohio State University. He is an urban historian of American politics whose research focuses on social policy, state development and cities. He received a BA from Yale University, a MAT from Brown University and the Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Among other awards and honors, he has been a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was awarded Mellon fellowships by the Council on Library and Information Resources and the American Council of Learned Societies. A piece that he co-authored on recent immigration and suburbanization won the award for the best article published in the Journal of Urban Affairs. His current book project is entitled The Roaring Metropolis: Businessmen’s Forgotten Campaign for a Civic Welfare State. In it he describes how elite businessmen came to embrace a wide-ranging yet politically conservative vision for American social policy in the decades surrounding World War I. After struggling to implement their agenda before the war, they redoubled their efforts, prodded social spending in American cities to new heights, and helped make the 1920s a moment of elaborate government expansion. The book is under contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press. Amsterdam teaches classes on U.S. history since 1877 at Ohio State.

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

The greatest strength of urban history is that it sits at the intersection of an incredible array of fields. Historians of the American city have made seminal contributions to the study of everything from the roots of the American revolution to the rise of contemporary conservatism and countless issues in between: the formation of the working-class and of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie; international and internal migration; African American, Latino, and Asian American history; gender and sexuality; cultural production and culture as a form of resistance; eighteenth-century mercantile capitalism and late-twentieth-century capital flight. The best urban historians are intellectual omnivores.

As for the history profession in general, its greatest strength is that it is rooted in countless instances of generosity. We comment on conference papers, read drafts of one another’s work, review articles, and listen to one another’s intellectual struggles basically for free. One way to think of the unique economy of the profession: we happily give away work that we have spent years of our lives creating for the rock-bottom price of a footnote.

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

The hardships that recently minted Ph.D.s are facing on the job market, and that current graduate students will face in the future, deserve as much attention as they can get. But one repercussion of the current job crisis that I do not think is getting enough airtime is that an incredible amount of scholarly work is going to be abandoned before it is fully completed. The crisis in academic publishing will only compound this. We all know that even the best dissertations are just drafts of future publications and that some of the most important conceptual and empirical breakthroughs come in the transition from dissertation to book or articles. I would like to see the profession searching for ways to help young scholars bring their research to its fullest potential even if the realities of the job market mean that they have to do so outside of tenure-track positions or academia altogether. On our current course, we are going to miss out on a lot of great discoveries and a lot of important ideas. This goes for the field of urban history and for the profession in general.

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

To my mind, some of the most interesting work is being done by scholars who are using the study of cities to upend national narratives. Historians like Kevin Kruse and Mathew Lassiter have examined the politics of Sunbelt cities and suburbs and have fundamentally changed the way that we think about the rise of modern conservatism. William Novak has used the close study of legal regulations in nineteenth-century cities to explode the myth of America’s laissez-faire origins. Urban historians’ main methodology is the community study. It can lead to parochialism. Scholars like these are using it to think big.

I also think that some of the strongest work in the field continues to be done by scholars who do what urban historians can do best: use space as an analytic category. Most recently, Eric Schneider, Alison Isenberg, Colin Gordon and Nathan Connolly have been leading the way in this.

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

Before enrolling in a Ph.D. program in history, I taught in elementary and high schools and earned a master’s degree in teaching. I’m convinced that this has helped me receive attention on the job market that I might not have gotten otherwise and that my past teaching experience has made my transition to life as a faculty member immeasurably easier. Ph.D. programs should consider integrating graduate certificate programs in teaching into their curricula. It is a way to simultaneously improve university instruction, to bolster the credentials of graduate students on the market, and to prepare them for alternative careers in primary or secondary education as well as in public history, which often entails teaching and educational outreach.

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

I am finding the traditional route—working on articles and revising my book manuscript—pretty rewarding. One of the great surprises of my post-graduate-school career is how friendly a lot of editors at journals and university presses are. Most of them are willing to talk and offer advice. I would urge other new Ph.D.s to try to initiate these conversations as soon as they can. I have also found that having a couple small side projects going that are totally unrelated to the main focus of my research keeps me excited about all of my work.

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

Mentors. I had the best mentors in graduate school imaginable. They gave infinitely of their time and shaped my thinking and my work in countless ways (of course, all of the shortcomings in this blog post and the rest of my work—past, present, and future—are my responsibility alone!). I think the single most important thing that a prospective doctoral student can do is to make sure that they enter a program with a faculty who have good professional reputations and who view graduate mentoring as a fundamental and exciting part of their jobs. I am also lucky to have excellent mentors where I currently work. They have made a huge difference in helping me figure out how to begin to achieve my professional goals.

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

I would spend more time interrogating them rather than giving them advice. Will they regret having gotten a Ph.D. if they do not get an academic job? Can they view graduate school as a labor of love rather than as a professional steppingstone? Really? You know it is a ton of work, right? What about the opportunity costs accrued from sitting out of another career for all those years? Really? Okay, but really?

If this inquisition did not discourage them—and they promise not to enter a Ph.D. program if they have to take out a cent of debt to finance it—then I would not discourage them either. I loved graduate school. I would go back if they would have me and it paid enough.

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

If they are still hoping to find an academic position, I might check to make sure that they have found a seasoned member of the profession who has sat on a lot of search committees and who is helping them through the process. If they showed interest, I might also put them in touch with a number of people I know who deserved tenure-track jobs but are now doing amazing things—working in museums, schools, at non-profits, as political activists—and in many cases prefer their current careers to academia. A lot of my friends who have moved into other professions have been surprised by how little time they have spent nursing regrets.

Administrative Post 19

Due to the July 4th holidays and a number of computer issues, there will be no posting this week.  Please return next week when the Eight Questions series returns with a discussion of Urban History.

Blog CXXIII (123): Eight Questions: Economic History

Siobhan Talbott is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, having previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, after receiving her Ph.D. from the University of St Andrews in 2010. Talbott specialises in early modern British and European economic and social history, and is currently preparing her first monograph for publication entitled Conflict and Commerce: Franco-Scottish Relations, 1560-1713.  This study explores the effect of domestic and international upheaval, which characterised the seventeenth century, on Franco-Scottish (and -British) economic, social and political relationships. Her work has won several prizes, including the IHR’s Pollard Prize in 2011 and the Economic and Social History Society of Scotland’s research essay prize in 2009.

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

Economic history is undergoing something of a revival. After a period when the significance of the topic—particularly British/Scottish economic history—has been questioned, the field is enjoying resurgence and a new vitality. This is due largely to the emergence of new methodologies—in my own work I integrate social approaches to economic topics, primarily using private source material including merchants’ account books, letter-books and correspondence to supplement what can be learned from conventional methodologies, which have focused on official records; on customs figures, port books, and government legislation. I think one of the greatest strengths of this field, and the history profession more widely, is its ability to adapt and to explore things in new ways, continually developing our understanding of the past.

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

At the moment, funding is of course a major issue in all fields. It is becoming increasingly difficult to win money from research councils, whether at a junior or senior faculty level—yet universities are placing more and more emphasis on bringing in international funding. The lack of academic posts is also an issue, particularly for young scholars—though I believe that if institutions can weather the storm, the increased competition will make the profession stronger in the long-term. In my own field, there has been something of a reluctance among some scholars to accept emerging methodologies as valid—personally, I think that the benefits gained from these approaches and the more nuanced view we have of topics where these methodologies have been applied should mitigate these concerns.

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

For me, the most interesting work currently being undertaken is precisely this; the integration of different approaches to economic topics. Rather than taking a traditional, purely economic approach, many scholars are considering political, social and cultural aspects of economic topics—including, for example, investigating the formation of commercial communities and networks, or exploring the effect of migration patterns and settlement on economic development. As an economic and social historian, the development of qualitative approaches to subjects that have traditionally been quantitative is work that particularly interests me. I also believe that this approach is resulting in higher levels of student engagement with ‘economic history’, something which has been in decline in many institutions.

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

This depends a little on the precise career path you follow, but teaching is an essential part of traditional academic development. In terms of being awarded academic posts, research remains crucial, but teaching experience is also important—increasingly important in the UK as tuition fees have increased so much in recent years. For personal development too, teaching and designing modules based on your own research can be invaluable in shaping and clarifying your own ideas. In addition, those we teach are going to become the historians of the future—so it is essential to provide high-quality and varied instruction.

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

Primarily, be aware that whatever goes into print will be around for the rest of your career! As a young academic, evidence of a strong publication record is essential, but quantity should not necessarily be pursued at the expense of quality. It is important to publish articles in high-quality journals and books with academic presses who have a good reputation—but in terms of getting your work (and your name) known, publication in edited collections and conference proceedings is also useful. My advice would be to say yes to as much as you can, but don’t be pushed into publishing anything you are not happy with, and try to ensure that what you say yes to will be respected academically. Seek advice from established scholars—including your doctoral supervisor, but also others, both within and outwith your field. Advice from relatively newly-established scholars (maybe someone who has been in a permanent post for a couple of years) can be invaluable—though in my experience, everyone’s advice is different and in the end you should do what you feel is best! Remember also that there are a number of different outlets. More public-oriented publications, such as historical magazines, are a good way of demonstrating public engagement, which is becoming increasingly important.

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

In my opinion, the issue most affecting career development is family pressures. I think it’s an unfortunate truth that academia is, in many ways, best suited to single individuals who are free to move around—both for jobs and for research. If you are serious about developing an academic career, you need to be prepared to move to where the best jobs are, which may not always be possible if you have a family. The popularity of the field is an issue, but can work both positively and negatively—if you are in a field which is very popular, there will be more people competing for jobs in that field; on the other hand, there are likely to be more jobs to apply for—particularly if there is high student demand for modules on those topics. The reputation of your institution is very important—but you must also make sure that you are at an institution that has the expertise necessary for your particular field, and a research culture that will help your career to develop. In terms of resources held at your institution, I think that the growth of the internet and the increasing availability of online resources makes this less important than it might once have been—though it is likely that an institution with expertise in your field will also have relevant resources.

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

To think extremely carefully about the reasons you are pursuing a Ph.D, to be informed about what it entails, and to be realistic about how you will fund it. I believe it is a responsibility of academic staff to ensure that prospective Ph.D. students are fully aware of the realities of pursuing a doctorate, and to make sure they are aware that gaining a Ph.D. is not an automatic route into academic (or any other kind of) employment. Pursuing a Ph.D., particularly in a subject like history, can be very isolated. It is likely to involve prolonged periods of archival research away from home, and travelling to attend conferences and seminars. You will need a high level of personal motivation—it is up to you, and you alone, to ensure that you are being productive. Your supervisor may push you, but you will not be clocking in and out, so you must be sure that you can handle independent study. However, if you are fully informed and sure that this is an avenue you want to pursue, work hard and the rewards can be fantastic.

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

First, it is never to early to start considering the future, so I would advise all Ph.D. students to begin thinking about their career progression right from the start of their studies. If you wish to pursue a career in academia, gaining teaching experience, presenting work at conferences, networking and publishing during your Ph.D. will all enhance your employability by the time you have submitted (though a word of caution—these things should not be undertaken at the expense of actually getting your thesis written!). You must be patient, and be prepared for periods of unemployment, or of having to undertake part-time work (such as part-time teaching) while continuing to research and publish in your own time. Do not compare your ‘life progression’ with your non-academic friends—they’ll be buying houses, getting married and having children, and you’ll be scraping money together for research trips. Stick at it if you can, though, because those hard years will shape your career.

In these difficult times, it is getting increasingly difficult for young academics to find traditional academic employment. Remember that there are many other avenues where you can use your research—be this teaching at school level, working with museums, or working for academic publishers. It may be that you find an avenue that suits you better than working within a history department. Be open-minded.

Blog CXXII (122): Eight Questions: World History

The next post in this series comes from Tiffany Trimmer.  She is currently an assistant professor of history at Bowling Green State University, where she has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on world history, historiography, empire, human rights, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and migration.  She recieved her Ph.D. from Northeastern University in 2007.  Her contribution to this blog comes in the midst of a move to a new job.  In Fall 2012 she begins teaching as assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.  In Wisconsin she will teach courses on world history, global migration, and imperialism.  She is currently completing two research projects: a series of articles about the trans-imperial politics of labor emigration in early twentieth century British Malaya, and a book manuscript on turn-of-the-century academic representations of long-distance labor migration titled Solving the World’s “People Problem”: Social Scientists and Migration Management, 1870 -1939.

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

World historians remind people that the inter-connectedness we think of when we hear the word "globalization" began long before the 20th century. We help people understand how long-term, and long-distance, patterns of interaction have linked their home communities to the wider world. Good world histories humanize the big, nebulous, word-scale processes that have made our present-day world the way it currently is. The migration of peoples, ideas, technologies, and diseases; long-distance trade, and the amassing of wealth versus the continuation of inequality; the formation and expansion of empires and nation states; warfare—these are some of the key processes that world historians explore in an effort to link local, regional, and world-scale narratives about humanity’s past.

History allows a person to investigate what life might have been like for those who came before us. Although there are always available evidence limitations, figuring out what you can about how people lived their lives in different historical eras or regions, and under different belief systems and labor statuses helps us put our own lives in perspective. It is also a fabulously imaginative exercise. The cool thing about being an historian is the paper (and artifact) trail—we get to take up the challenge of piecing together glimpses of the past from what remains behind.

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

World history has been engaged in a re-branding campaign for the past two decades. The goal of this image makeover has been to emphasize the research that world historians do in addition to teaching survey courses. The Journal of World History as well as books like Donald Wright’s The World and A Very Small Place in Africa and Kenneth Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence have been influential in this transition process. Yet more work needs to be done to promote the research side of world history. Innovation and clarification of the field’s research agenda could come via re-examination of some of the core paradigms associated with the field. Wright and Lauren Benton (Law and Colonial Cultures) have both offered re-workings of Immanuel Wallerstein’s world system’s paradigm. More recently, Peter Gran’s The Rise of the Rich challenged world historians to abandon the Rise of the West paradigm (and its civilizational unit of analysis) popularized by William McNeill in favor of explanatory models that focus more on long-distance networks of people brought together by common economic agendas. In addition to publishing more, world historians also need to methodologically innovate their way towards a better reputation. Making the complexity of local-regional-world scale interconnections tangible enough for a wide range of audiences to grasp is our biggest challenge.

Despite the field’s emphasis on promoting new research, not all established world historians believe graduate students or untenured professors should be permitted to write world histories. This has made for some surreal conference sessions at the annual meeting of the World History Association as young scholars in the midst of world historical research were told they were incapable of such a task. Part of this discrimination may stem from the changing definition of what constitutes a world history—a change fostered by the past few decades of re-branding world history as a research field as well as a teaching field. In the era of world history as just a survey course, the perception was that a world history had to be as all-encompassing a possible. More recently, the notion of a world history as an analysis of connections between parts of the world has opened up the prospect for studies that selectively focus on one or more case studies that are then situated within their broader world historical context. A rallying cry of “We’re World Historians Too! Get Used To It!” has become more prevalent as successive waves of Ph.D. students employ world historical methodologies in their dissertation research. Expect the definition of what constitutes a world historical monograph or journal article to keep evolving.

This uncertainty about what is meant by the label “world history” can complicate job search strategies. Newly-minted Ph.D.s debate whether or not they should explicitly market themselves as world historians, particularly if the world history component of the job description seems tied to the teaching requirements more than the research agenda. As a hedge, you can certainly play up the trans-national, trans-imperial, or trans-regional connections highlighted in your research. But I think the best strategy is to have a succinct explanation of what your world historical research and teaching goals are ready to go at any part of the interview process. This does not mean lengthy monologs on what it means to be a world historian. But, if a member of the search committee seems to be working from a definition of world history that does not match yours, find a way to re-frame their usage of the label by discussing a brief, but illustrative, example from your research or teaching.

For the historical profession as a whole, I think there is remarkable continuity in defining our primary challenge: relevance and public outreach. One could trace an intellectual genealogy of sorts from Carl Becker in the 1930s, through Howard Zinn and David Hackett Fischer in the 1960s, to the historians assembled in the 2009 essay collection Recent Themes on Historians and the Public edited by Donald Yerxa. Connecting with wider reading, viewing, and listening publics starts with a good summary of how and why your own research helps people better understand how the world around them got to be that way. Then it requires seeking out venues—op-eds, blogs, volunteer work—that let you connect with people who you would not otherwise meet.

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

My brain short-circuits when I try to make a quick list! Because of our field’s focus, world historians read broadly. Thus, my list is probably going to seem a bit idiosyncratic. But, here goes. Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds’ Drawing the Global Colour Line traces the migration of ideas about white racial solidarity (and corresponding voting and property owning restrictions targeting Blacks and Asians) in the late 19th – mid 20th century “White Men’s Countries” of Canada, the U.S., South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. It does a really good job of illustrating how ideas and policies can circulate among like-minded individuals living on different continents as they react to challenges from the “outside world” (in this case the global labor migrations of the era). In doing so, it fulfills one of the key goals of world history—bringing large-scale, fuzzy ideas down to a concrete level that readers can easily grasp.

Situating the United States within its broader geo-political and cultural contexts is another current trend. There are two books on my summer reading list that accomplish this in different ways. John C. Weaver’s The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-1900 traces the process of settlement and evolving ideas about land use in the same set of countries featured in Drawing the Global Colour Line. Donna Gabaccia’s Foreign Relations: American Immigration in Global Perspective highlights how transnational ties continued to connect immigrants (and through them, the U.S. as a political entity) to the wider world.

Histories of long-distance networks held together by migration, trade, and imperial expansion also continue to be influential. Kerry Ward’s Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company stands out in this regard. Linda Colley’s The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Women in World History traces an individual’s life as she moved across parts of the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and the Indian subcontinent in the 18th century. The history-through-life story approach also shines in Stewart Gordon’s When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors and Monks Who Created the Riches of the East. Gordon puts together a kind of biographical sketch of the region of Asia ca the 700s-1500s c.e. A similar kind of regional understanding, this time for the late 18th – early 19th century Atlantic, comes together in Wim Klooster’s Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History.

Big History, histories of environmental change, and debates about the place of Europe within world history are also perennial favorites. David Christian’s Maps of Time, Fred Spier’s Big History and the Future of Humanity, and Cynthia Stokes Brown’s Big History: From the Big Bang to the Present are helping world historians expand their horizons. A starting point for the second category is Edmund Burke III and Kenneth Pomeranz’s edited collection The Environment in World History. Lastly, Ricardo Duchesne’s new book The Uniqueness of Western Civilization will keep world historians busily debating each other for months to come.

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

The most confounding piece of advice I have ever received from senior colleagues was “teaching is important but do not spend any time on it.” An active publication agenda is vital to staying employed. But becoming a solid teacher is also essential. Teaching requires more than just writing lectures and grading exams. There is also the commitment to steadily improving your presentation skills, establishing the confidence to handle whatever a class throws your way, and developing the flexibility to change teaching styles from semester to semester. Building up these competencies takes actual minutes and hours out of your day. So, look at your week and carve out specific times to write and specific times to prepare for class. Build in a back-up time slot for teaching emergencies so that if teaching prep takes more time than expected it does not threaten your writing time slot.

Given the desire of historians to better connect with the general public, it is ironic that grad students and new professors are sometimes encouraged to short change the development of their teaching skills. When someone in an airport or a dentist office tells you they hate history, ask them why. My completely unscientific sampling of responses from such encounters puts “my professor was so boring!” as the most frequent answer. Teaching is one key way the historical profession can engage with a broader range of people. It also forces historians to articulate the relevance of what happened in the past in a way that captures the imagination and curiosity of people living in the present day. Ask your students if they have ever drank a café mocha. Then tell them that mocha represents the Columbian Exchange in a paper cup. Let the discussion of world history begin…

We are not just deliverers of content. Historians teach people how to contextualize disparate facts in relation to broad patterns of change and continuity, how to make meaningful comparisons, and how to identify and navigate the biases and contradictions within historical evidence. While teaching is not the only thing on my to-do list each day (publish!), I think it should be ok to look forward to that part of my day.

One last note on teaching as it applies to the field of world history: there is no way around the fact that world history survey courses are always works-in-progress. Deciding what to cover, and what will just have to be skipped, is a special kind of intellectual and pedagogical challenge. Balancing world-scale (big-picture) patterns and themes with specific case studies of times and places that students can investigate via primary sources takes experimentation, and frequent tinkering. Keep asking yourself: what overarching story are you trying to tell? how/why is it relevant to people born between 1990-1994? Two good primers on the pedagogy of world history are Peter Stearns' World History: The Basics and David Christian’s This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity. There are also two journals that publish articles on the teaching of world history: World History Bulletin and World History Connected.

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

If your dissertation hangs together coherently, write an article that highlights your favorite examples and summarizes your main arguments. Make a list of the three journals that you consulted most regularly when you were writing your dissertation. Submit the article to the first journal on the list. If it gets rejected, revise and send to the second journal on the list. Persevere. Persevere some more. Once you have successfully placed your article, move on to the book prospectus.

If your dissertation chapters feel like they are going off in different directions (this can occasionally happen with world history dissertations) consider turning them into a series of articles that showcase the different case studies or analytical frameworks that comprised your dissertation. Develop the first article and send it to a journal. Develop the next article while you are waiting to hear back about the first article. Evaluate any parts of the dissertation that are not going into an article as a potential first chapter of a book. Find the angle from the non-article parts of your dissertation, dig out the materials and citations you did not get to incorporate into your dissertation, and plot a course forward. Keep moving your writing forward on multiple tracks. Naturally, this is far from ideal if you are applying to (or have already been hired by) a department that will only tenure for a book. But if you do not have a book-in-the-making when you graduate, keep going anyway. The point is to establish a track record as a publishable scholar.

Also: force yourself to give conference papers on a regular basis. You never know when a conference panel will turn into a special issue of a journal or an editor's request to see a revised version of your conference paper.

Other professors may disagree with this, but I strongly advise against taking a job before your dissertation is finished. The relief of being off the job market is tangible, as is the pay increase. But, in the long term, the requirements that come with the new position will eat away at your writing time and jeopardize your publication prospects.

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

The number of faculty in a department can have a major effect on what you can actually accomplish in a day, a semester, or a probationary period before going up for tenure. The 2008 financial crisis resulted in hiring freezes, and early retirements of senior faculty, that some departments have yet to recover from. All levels of historians working in a department—from the full professors down to the adjuncts—have seen more tasks handed to them as fewer people remain. It can be incredibly hard to avoid new service entanglements that threaten your writing and course prep time. Time management is vital; but not just in the obvious sense of budgeting a set amount of time for each thing that needs to be accomplished. It is not a bad idea to experiment with using it in a slightly more assertive way. Develop a really specific set of writing deadlines, and chapter circulation or journal submission timeframes, and do not be afraid to cite them when other members of your department ask you to take on more work. Sometimes you will lose, but there may be an opportunity for accommodation.

Developing a clear vision of who you are as a writer and teacher of history is vital. Keep refining this sense of your professional self. It will help you fight for your research time. It will help sustain you through rejections from journals and book publishers. It may take some of the sting away when your students write or say mean things about you. It will help you promote yourself each time you apply for a fellowship or go back on the job market. And you will be on the job market multiple times during your career. Moving is sometimes an enjoyable adventure, but if you have a significant other and/or children there's the guilt of asking them to change their lives so you can keep being a history professor. You kind of owe it to them to be a really good history professor.

Which means that part of having a lasting, and satisfying, career as a historian is accepting the fact that you have to just keep going—keep writing, keep applying for research funding, keep expanding your own knowledge base, keep refining your teaching skills, keep striving for a better balance between writing time and departmental obligations. Learn from your mistakes as a teacher, as a writer and researcher, as a colleague.

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

Understand what the job of being a history grad student entails and make yourself as well-rounded as you can before you begin the application process. Volunteer at a historical society or museum so that you can emphasize hands-on experience with primary source materials. Plan out which course's final paper will become your writing sample and throw all your effort into making that paper the clearest, most convincing historical argument you've ever made. Seek out professors who will critique your writing in a detailed and constructive way. Learn from their critiques and keep striving to be a better writer. Ask to see a graduate syllabus. If your campus does not have a graduate program in history, approach the graduate directors of programs you are considering applying to and see if they will share one. Start reading historiographical essays (the historian's version of a literature review) to familiarize yourself with the major authors, arguments, and methodologies currently shaping the historical fields you are interested in. (Ask your professors for citations.) Set aside an hour a week to look through the major scholarly journals in your area of interest to get a sense of the research and writing standards graduate professors will expect you to work towards. Develop your foreign language skills to their fullest potential. If possible, participate in peer tutoring or similar programs so that you can market yourself as ready and able to become a graduate teaching assistant.

Weigh the pros and cons of taking some time off to gain other types of professional experience (and build up some savings). If you end your undergraduate career with a really clear sense of what historical topic you are eager to get to work researching and writing about, the momentum may carry you through. (Use your application's personal statement to describe where you see your research going as you progress through masters and doctoral studies.) But burn-out is real, and graduate stipends generally do not let you live much better than you did as a college student. Sometimes taking a year or two off before applying can help you clarify what it is that makes you not want to be anything other than a historian. A rejection letter might have the same effect. Use the time until the next round of applications to enhance your application and keep refining your writing.

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

Maintaining an institutional affiliation is the key to being taken seriously. Consult with your advisor or department chair about ways that you might hold onto a university email address and an appropriate way to word your email signature. Keep pursuing your publication goals as if you already had a tenure-track job. Volunteer your expertise to historical societies, museums, public school systems, and other venues that will help validate your life's work. Blog and publish op-eds as a way to keep your name and your research relevant. If you are not place-bound, be ready to pick up and go.

One of the most frustrating parts of being on the job market is trying to answer the "is it me, or is it them?" question. Sometimes it is clear why you did not get a job offer (not enough publications, teaching demonstration that went off the rails). Other times, you will never actually know. Keep working towards more publications for your cv, keep refining your teaching demonstration. If your research crosses or combines several specializations, make sure your sales pitches for each type of job are plausible and persuasive. Consider utilizing different letter writers to play up your strengths for different types of jobs. Ask faculty members to bluntly tell you what types of jobs you should or should not be applying for. If you suspect you might have a quirk or an interviewing weakness, go through mock interviews to see if faculty members in your department pick up on it. Keep your letter writers apprised of any professional developments and publications you've accomplished since the last round of recommendations they wrote for you.

Blog CXXI (121): Eight Questions: Agricultural History

Jim Giesen is an assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University where he oversees the graduate program's concentration in Agricultural, Rural, and Environmental History. He also directs the fledgling Center for the History of Agriculture, Science, and the Environment in the South (CHASES) and is executive secretary of the Agricultural History Society.   He earned his BA and played basketball for DePauw University.  He earned his MA degree at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the Ph.D. from the University of Georgia.  Giesen is the author of award-winning articles in Environmental History and Agricultural History and of the book Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South (University of Chicago Press, 2011).  He has recieved teaching awards from the University of Georgia and Mississippi State University.

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

To be honest, I don’t know what my field is. I’m not sure I’ve ever had one and I’m not sure that fields matter like they used to.

I attended the University of Georgia to work with James Cobb, a historian of the South who has worked on the economic and cultural history of the region, chiefly. This is a guy whose work runs from nuts-and-bolts analysis of the political processes behind courting factories to the South in the mid-twentieth century, to examinations of Willie Nelson lyrics. I was attracted now only to the breadth of subjects that he studied but also the variety of approaches he took. To say even that he’s a “southern historian” is a bit thin because one of his primary intellectual concerns has been to describe the ways that the South was and is connected to the rest of the world. I’m not sure training under Cobb made me a southern historian, per se. The other historian who closely influenced my graduate training was Bryant Simon, now the director of American Studies at Temple. Bryant’s three books are on South Carolina mill workers, Atlantic City, and Starbucks. There’s not much that binds those three subjects together. So I guess I’ve been trained to think that being in a field can be temporary and that there is a tremendous amount to be learned from pushing at perceived boundaries. I think you limit what you can learn if you present your work at the same conference again and again.

But of course institutions like fields and boundaries. I’m the executive secretary of the Agricultural History Society, which is one of the oldest professional organizations for historians in the United States. There was a time when people understood what agricultural history was. But today we’re running a whole campaign to recruit new members based on the idea that people who are doing ag history don’t even realize it. “Think you’re not an agricultural historian?” the saying on our postcards goes, “Think again.” All these people out there working on farm labor and immigration, or food history, or rural institutions–they’re doing agricultural history but they don’t necessarily think to join our society, read our journal, or present papers at our conference.

All of this is to say that most days I call myself an agricultural historian, but I know I am also an environmental historian and I was trained as a southern historian. Each of these fields has their own historiography, their own central questions, their own institutional backing. Since I arrived at Mississippi State in 2006, I’ve been trying to put some of these fields together in new ways. Last fall some colleagues and I created the Center for the History of Agriculture, Science, and the Environment in the South (CHASES), which we are working to build into the premier research center for scholars interested in southern science, agriculture, and the environment. The more we get into it, the more I see the lines between all of these fields blur. And I think that’s a good thing.

I still really haven’t answered the question. So let me say this. The strengths of the fields of southern history, agricultural history, and environmental history, are that people are combining them in ways that reveal a great deal about the past that we didn’t know or misunderstood.

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

The biggest issue facing agricultural history is clear: people don’t realize that they’re doing it. From an intellectual standpoint, the result is that people who are doing similar work—asking the same kinds of research questions, teaching the same kinds of classes, evaluating the same kinds of sources–don’t always come together to exchange ideas. Let me give an example. I know of a student at one of the top environmental history programs who is writing her dissertation on an important but understudied government agriculture program. Across the country there’s a student at a top Ivy League school who is working on the same program for his dissertation. Neither of them thought of themselves as agricultural historians. One was environmental, one was cultural. Only when they came together for a special workshop did they realize that they were doing very similar things. Each of them is going to produce a better dissertation because they made the connection at that workshop. I think historians become better the more connections they make outside of their fields.

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

This answer isn’t going to be surprising considering what I’ve written above. The most interesting work bridges fields in interesting ways. Let me provide a couple of examples. Mark Hersey, my colleague here at Mississippi State, trained as an environmental historian with Donald Worster at Kansas. His first book is an examination of the environmental vision of George Washington Carver. There’s no doubt that it’s bona fide environmental history, but it’s also about sharecropping and land use and segregation. It’s a book that historians of the South need to read if they want to better understand the constraints black farmers faced, and that’s a topic most southern historians thought they knew just about everything about.

I’ll flip the perspective for my second example. Albert Way’s recent book, Conserving Southern Longleaf: Herbert Stoddard and the Rise of Ecological Land Management, is a book that environmental historians need to take seriously if they’re to understand conservation in a distinctly non-western context. The environmental history of the South played out differently than it did around Walden Pond or at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, yet until about five years ago environmental historians weren’t taking the region seriously enough.

I also need to add here that there are always pioneers. In the case of southern environmental history among the most important is Mart Stewart. He was writing about the force of nature in the South–and self-identifying as an environmental historian–as early as anyone else and I think he’d be the first to tell you that this didn’t always redound to his benefit. Southern historians—even the editors of the Journal of Southern History–just didn’t know what to make of his environmental approach to coastal Georgia. More and more historians are realizing just how pioneering and important his work has been. Tim Silver is the other. His work on the environmental history of human interactions with nature in the Mountain South remains a model for the field.

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

In terms of the professional development of historians I don’t think it’s easy to separate teaching from research. As an example I’ll use my sister, an elementary school teacher in the Chicago Public Schools (shout out to Oscar Mayer Elementary!). She calls me every now and then to talk about the history that she’s covering in class. What often start as a question about content quickly morphs into a conversation about methods and analysis. The fundamental question “how do we know what we know?” is at the heart of good teaching. And if that’s true for fourth graders, it’s true for college students. I think a graduate class in how to teach history is a good idea. I wish our program had one. And I’m certain that there are techniques and strategies about learning that history grad students should better understand. But beyond that I think there are diminishing returns to training history grad students to be teachers. Make them better thinkers, researchers, and writers and they’ll be better teachers. And after they’ve passed their exams, give them a chance to teach on their own.

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

Despite all of the changes in publishing that have happened over the past few years and the expected change over the next decade, the basic nuggets of advice handed down for generations remain true:

• Never let anything you’ve written sit in a drawer.

• When you have a topic, make it yours by presenting papers and publishing.

• Have thick skin. You’re going to get rejected. Learn from it.

• Expand your project in ways that make you uncomfortable. You might have to learn some cliometrics, or a different language, or weed science. It’s going to make your work better.

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

My honest answer is that this probably depends on the person. I do think that, in almost every case, great work gets noticed. Yes, people with Ph.D.s from Princeton have advantages on the job market. But it’s not because they won a lottery to get a Princeton degree. Their abilities and work had something to do with it. That said, the most important thing to do to land a position where research is valued is to publish. And manuscripts are double-blind reviewed. Your work is judged on its own merit. (Yeah, I know this process is not always perfectly meritocratic but I do believe that it most often is.) The most important thing to do to land a teaching job is to have teaching experience and to be able to document your success. You can get that anywhere.

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

I tell them not to do it. It’s not a growth field. It’s not the best way to spend you 20s (and 30s). Once they convince me that they’re going to do it I tell them precisely what it was that got me through grad school. It’s the only thing that did it, to be honest. That’s smart, motivated people. Find them. Surround yourself with them. Befriend them. Play basketball with them and drink beer with them and, more importantly, talk to them about history as often as you can.

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

It’s the same advice I give grad students who are struggling: it’s okay to not do this. If you’re set against a career change, find out what you’re doing wrong. Call friends with jobs and ask them to look at your CV and cover letter and teaching statement. Ask your letter writers to see their letters. Get lots of advice from all kinds of different people. And then reevaluate.