Questions I was asked on the job market: The Post-Classics Future (a sequel)
About a month ago I published a piece with the Perspectives Daily blog of the American Historical Association about what I call the increasingly common prospect of a “Post-Classics Future” on university campuses across America (and beyond) and my own experience as an ancient historian working on one of these campuses, within a History department.
Robert Aitken’s (1945) statue Future, depicting the Muse of History, Clio, in front of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. Inscribed beneath Clio is the slogan, “What is Past is Prologue”. Photo: Carol Highsmith, (2009): https://lccn.loc.gov/2010630511
The response to the piece has been overwhelmingly positive and many current and retired ancient historians have written to me about how they have experienced or are experiencing the same phenomenon on their campuses. Some, like Professor Emeritus M.C. Alexander (who made the deliberate choice to move from Classics to History), have written about the disciplinary aspects of ancient history in its different homes in US universities and internationally: How is ancient history practiced as “history” or as “classics”?
Others, like Professor Emeritus Stanley Burstein (who worked in a History department), have noted how many ancient historians, within History departments, were fairly well protected (due to the sheer size of History departments) when cuts last hit Classics departments in a major way during the late 1980s (not that they haven’t stopped since then!). In one piece from 2007, Burstein also explores another issue: ancient historians are not being trained to teach the large “World History” or “Big History” classes in History departments, and in many cases, non-ancient historians are determining the place of ancient history in these large survey classes. As he noted then, there hasn’t really been any response to this in terms of how graduate programs train ancient historians, and as I’ll point out below, this is still the case.
Now, the conversation—at times a rather heated debate—over the future of Classics has continued to bubble away, and I don’t have much more to add in terms of the problems that have been diagnosed and the solutions proposed. I think I made it clear where I stand from my Perspectives piece. But I do want to add one thought sequel to the Post-Classics Future I previously described: for the few jobs that do remain, ancient historians and archaeologists, but also philologists, will increasingly find themselves having to become far more interdisciplinary on the non-Classics job market, and may also find themselves teaching well beyond their core of expertise.
When I went on the job market, like many others, I turned to Professor Joy Connolly’s “Job Market Handbook” (now President of the ACLS—she adapted it from another guide by Jacqui Sadashige of UPenn) for some basic guidance, and it served as a lifeline within a somewhat (but not always) typical graduate school context: very little advice was dispensed, and if it was, it was never committed to writing, let alone published for all to read. Joy did so many job seekers a basic service in writing that guide—not least, demystification—and recently, by updating it somewhat. Indeed, she and one of my own professors at Columbia, Prof. Joe Howley, recently engaged in a very productive two-part discussion, with Prof. Nandini Pandey moderating, about the job market at the height of the pandemic, as job after job was cancelled and many an offer was rescinded.
But I would say that my experience as an ancient historian sometimes differed quite a bit from what Joy’s handbook described, not least in terms of typical interview and campus visit questions. Yet what these interview questions do reveal, to some extent, is how the divide between History and Classics—and one of the other homes of Classics: World Languages and Literatures or Comparative Literature—is manifested in academic hiring.
Yet what these interview questions do reveal, to some extent, is how the divide between History and Classics—and the other homes of Classics: World Languages and Literatures or Comparative Literature—is manifested in academic hiring.
It goes without saying that many classical archaeologists, as well as ancient historians trained in History departments, are often excluded from jobs in Classics departments because the price of admission to basic consideration is all too often one around perceived competencies or mastery of skills not essential to their research: Have you taught Latin and/or Greek at college level? Even for graduates whose programs required them to take Latin and Greek surveys, prose composition, and exams in these languages, many will be discounted, not because they don’t necessarily speak the same “language” which Prof. Dimitri Nakassis has so adeptly pointed out—but because they will never be seen as potentially competent enough to teach a language class they probably won’t ever have to teach, unless they’re in a very small Classics department (sidebar: this is a real concern for that kind of search committee—but also a concern that is born out of the very existence of such a department with needs dictated by its own strict disciplinary boundaries, rather than say having the philologists in a world/romance languages department, and the classical archaeologist in anthropology, art history or history).
As a product of an interdepartmental PhD program in “Classical Studies”, and probably due to the nature of my own interests and dissertation, I ended up becoming something of an ancient historian of all trades: (ancient) history is my core discipline, but I also practice real philology and art history (each of which I have published on), and I have also excavated (and now I’m in the process of collaborating on a new dig). I also draw on critical theory quite a bit for my book project. The net result: I interviewed at some very different departments and universities before I ended up where I am now (a History department on a campus without a Classics department or program).
Now, my experience isn’t likely all that typical, but it might be more in line with others who straddle these sub-disciplinary divides in Classics and disciplinary distinctions in universities more generally. Whatever the case, it did mean that I had to face some very different search committees with very different questions, which I think reflects how different disciplines and departments think about themselves, “classicists”, “ancient historians” and “historians”. So, even though it may be taboo (and I really don’t think it should be!) to do so, I’m going to list the questions I was asked according to department/discipline, and also provide some information about the universities involved, without identifying them.
Some qualifications:
I did not interview at any place that might be considered a (Small) Liberal Arts College ([S]LAC)—not that there were actually (m)any jobs in Roman history at those types of schools when I was on the market in the 2018/19 and 2019/2020 cycles (and not that I would’ve necessarily been interviewed there, if there were jobs at such places in those years, of course!).
Most of my interviews went for 45-50 minutes, with the longest two at a whopping 75 and 90 minutes respectively.
How do I have all of these questions in writing, you ask? After each interview I would write down all of the questions the committee had asked me (and I asked them)—if I could remember them—so as to help me remember what we had covered should I actually be asked to go on to the next stage.
Hopefully this might shed a little bit of light on the disciplinary and departmental divides I and others have been discussing, but also just offer a supplement to Joy’s helpful—but incomplete—advice to grads on the market. Perhaps it will inspire others to share their experiences and knowledge, too—my experience is only the sum of two years on the job market, 11 tenure-track interviews and 3 campus visits (as well as one VAP interview). It’s a tiny slice of experience at best, and very particular to me at worst.
Classics Departments (5 departments)—looking for a Latinist/Roman Historian (sometimes with material culture):
These were all major R1 public and private universities.
* unusually progressive department which also had a grad student on the committee—kudos to them! Compare this to one department which did not ask me about teaching at all and only asked about my research, writing sample, and random authors (like an oral exam).
How would you teach a graduate seminar in Roman topography?
How would you teach Latin in our distance learning program? (this was asked pre-Covid)
How do you introduce your students to theories of performativity? What are some specific class activities where you do this?
How would you run our MAT Latin program and run outreach efforts to Latin teachers?
How would you teach elementary Latin? Techniques for reaching students who don’t usually take languages? (x2)
How would you teach Roman civ/history? Further upper level classes on Roman history?
What would you teach as a “blockbuster” first year civ course to help ramp up our enrollments (100-400 students)? (x2)
How would you teach the Latin Literature survey for grads/undergrads?
What grad survey would you teach for our Comp Lit grads who don’t have Greek and Latin? (from the Comp Lit & Classics department)
How would you grow our majors? (x2)
Your research – how does it make interventions in both Classics and other fields?*
How much material culture is involved in your research?*
How would your next project relate to a graduate seminar?*
How would you collaborate on conferences and co-teach courses with other faculty? With which faculty?*
Classics “in transition” (relates to debates about race, representation, social justice, decolonizing Classics) – how would you help the department and graduate students with this transition?*
What is one question you wanted us to ask you, but we didn’t?*
Note: despite the above questions, the majority of the interview time in all of the above interviews was devoted to questions about my research, my dissertation/book project and, in some cases, my “second project” was discussed more than my actual dissertation/book project.
History* Departments (6 departments)—looking for an Ancient Historian:
These ranged from major R1 public and private universities to mid-sized private universities to rural and urban satellite campuses of R1 public university systems.
*two of these were combined History and Art History departments.
What digital initiatives would you use in your teaching and research? How would the digital mapping contribute to your research projects in a meaningful way?
What kinds of comparative aspects of youth have you looked at, i.e. across different cultures?
How would you teach comparative history (ancient / more recent; or different ancient cultures)?
What would I do to attract more History majors?
How would you teach a survey on ancient Greece or Rome?
What’s hot right now in your field? How does your work fit into it?
How would you teach our “World to 1500 CE” course? And how would you engage students within that course? (x2)
How do/would you teach historical thinking / historical methodology course for majors? (x3)
How would you teach our “Craft of History” graduate seminar on historiography (mostly non-ancient)? (x2)
How would you engage our diverse students and promote diversity initiatives in the university? How would you address diversity in the classroom? (x3)
Is your dissertation/book project cultural or social history? How does it make interventions within the historiography?
What are the major trends in Roman studies / ancient history right now?
How you would teach upper-level Roman history?
How would you teach our broad “Ancient Mediterranean” course?
Dream course? (everywhere basically asked this)
How would you make connections to other parts/centers of the university?
Tell us about your educational journey [as in from high school to today!]
What is the nature of propaganda in the ancient world?
How did masculinity work in ancient Rome?
How does material culture figure in your work?
Could you teach a class on ancient Egypt? [My answer: No—not unless it’s Ptolemaic and Roman-era Egypt]
Note: in nearly all of the above interviews, my research was asked about for far less of the interview time than in Classics interviews, or if it was asked about, it was from a genuine place of curiosity and/or ignorance. My “second project” was never asked about. The majority of interviewers had little or no expertise in ancient history; at most, I had one Egyptologist and one late antique historian in the room (and they were in different interviews).
Taking stock of the raw questions above, it seems like many of them are predictable. Classics asks about teaching Latin, then Roman history, but rarely about historiography (outside of one’s own narrow topic) or DEI efforts (only one department asked about diversity—and not in the same way that History departments asked about it, as though it were par for the course). History asks about teaching methodological/historiography courses for Majors, as well as broad, large survey classes—World History—which are their bread and butter, but which also means covering an enormous time span, from pre-history to the medieval period. (Some of the questions were specific to my research and I have omitted others that were even more specific to my dissertation/book project.)
Classics asks about teaching Latin, then Roman history, but rarely about historiography (outside of one’s own narrow topic) or DEI efforts (only one department asked about diversity—and not in the same way that History departments asked about it, as though it were par for the course). History asks about teaching methodological/historiography courses for Majors, as well as broad, large survey classes—World History—which are their bread and butter, but which also means covering an enormous time span, from pre-history to the medieval period.
As I then went onto a few campus visits, the distinctions laid out above, between History, Classics and Comparative Literature, came to the fore even more so, as I had to engage with faculty in conversation all day, for multiple days—in some cases from breakfast at 8am until dinner/drinks until 10pm or so. This did in one case often follow the reliable contours of ancient history or Classics, but in other visits my conversations also spanned everything from critical theory or Cervantes to broader histories of race, immigration and slavery. There were definitely times when I felt out of my comfort zone.
There were definitely times when I felt out of my comfort zone.
But there were also times when I realized that the one historiography proseminar I had taken with all of the non-ancient historians (mostly historians of early/modern USA, but also some of East Asia or the Ottoman empire) in the History department at Columbia (co-taught by Pamela Smith and Gregory Mann), and the friends I had made there, and the informal conversations we then subsequently had years later—all of this had actually really helped me understand how “History” worked in US History departments and it gave me a grammar and something of a foundation to communicate with them. And this was more than just learning how their “archive” is different from our own. But my own PhD program had to petition the History department to get me into that proseminar, and had they not, then I might be a very different type of “ancient historian” today.
So, if ancient historians are not being trained in a History department (increasingly the case!), then their DGS would do well to make sure that they get some exposure to the methodology or historiography seminars taken by non-ancient historians. By the same token, philologists would probably (and some already do this!) do well to take some seminars in Comparative Literature or critical theory—as common as that might sound, I don’t think many philologists always do this, simply because their PhD coursework requirements and exams don’t allow for it. Of course, this exhortation can and should be expanded to other fields, not least Africana/ African American / Black Studies or MESAS. While changes need to be made to undergraduate curricula in Classics, they should also be made at the graduate level.
In terms of ancient history, since most of the PhD granting institutions which produce ancient history PhDs do not usually even offer broad “World History” or “Western Civ” classes, and so these graduate programs should start to re-think how they train their ancient historians to branch out beyond their narrow stretch of expertise. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Yet perhaps this is one area where the borders of “ancient” history (within “Classics”) might need to be exploded, or at the bare minimum, reconfigured and expanded.