The American Historical Association Annual Meeting: To Boycott Or Not To Boycott?

As many of you are aware, in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 in California, the decision to hold the the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA) became controversial. This is because the meeting will be held at a hotel owned by someone who helped to finance the campaign to repeal reforms that had extended political marriage to same-sex couples (nothing required churches to perform those marriages.) Your favorite Radical is, as we speak, making final preparations to depart for South Africa, where such discrimination is viewed in the national constitution as the equivalent of racism and is banned. What I think is also important to note is that South Africa is reputedly still a very homophobic country where, if it were put to a vote, discrimination against GLBTI (the I stands for "intersex" and is always included by South African queer activists) would be perfectly legal, although the return of institutionalized racism would not be. One legacy of colonialism is the strong association among many black South Africans between homosexuality and the general deformation of indigenous societies by white European domination. And yet, according to the reading I have done to date, the political legacy of apartheid is such that human rights are not viewed as something one puts to a vote. The fact that the vast majority of South African citizens are deeply homophobic is not, according to the constitution, justification for enshrining it in law that would re-classify South Africans in invidious ways that their -- and our -- history has shown to be disastrous.

Ironically, although I am permitted to marry in my own state (unless and until the Catholic and Mormon Churches decide to mount one of their odious homophobic campaigns here), that doesn't do me much good if I leave the state. If, for example, my partner and I are in a car accident in the state of New York on our way to JFK tomorrow, being married in Connecticut doesn't help us at all.

My nightmare? Ending up in a Catholic hospital after a dreadful accident in someplace like Nebraska, unable to make my own decisions: the only person who knows exactly when and under what conditions I wish to die is having all of our retirement money siphoned off by a self-righteous hospital administrator who wants me to live against my express wishes. The only thing that does help is having the money to hire a really good attorney, which we did two years ago. She drew up fourteen documents (seven each) which give both partners in our not-marriage a variety of reciprocal rights in relation to the other, and we can call her at any time of the day or night and have her threaten to sue, sue, sue. So that could work -- or some Bush-appointed judge might decide to wipe his behind with our paperwork while we wend our way to the Supreme Court.

But back to the AHA: the other thing to keep in mind this January is that Doug Manchester, the meddling capitalist douche bag who owns the Manchester Grand Hyatt (as opposed to the meddling Mormon and Catholic bishop douche bags who cannot confine their meddling to their own flocks), is also staunchly anti-union, an issue that I am happy to say that the Committee on LGBT History of the American Historical Association (currently led by Ian Lekus) has linked to the anti-GLBTI bias. You can read the excellent press release issued by the CLGBTH here.

For my mind, I would like to repeat something that I have said before: I'm not sure that it is the responsibility of the American Historical Association to respond to its members on the left any more than to its members on the right. But even though the AHA could not have anticipated Prop 8 or its outcome, the San Diego location has two problems that they could have anticipated. The first is that it's expensive as all get out. Both the AHA and the OAH need to address the fact that conference expenses escalate dramatically when vacation destinations (that I understand are intended to attract us) are chosen. While this has always been difficult for some members, for several years to come, most of us will be financing all or part of our conference expenses out of our own pockets, and comparatively few of us have deep pockets. Going coast to coast for a major conference now costs in excess of $1500, even if you are traveling in a budget-conscious way. That represents about a tenth of a good graduate student stipend, after taxes, and a hefty chunk of an assistant professor's salary.

So it will be hard to know who is boycotting and who is staying home because they simply can't afford it this year. It's time to start aiming for second cities, my friends on the Executive Committees of both organizations, for practical reasons if no other. Second, while Prop 8 was not even on the boards when this destination was chosen, Manchester's anti-union activities were -- or should have been -- well-known, which might have caused the Executive Committee to anticipate the possibility of an ugly strike that would cause at least part of the membership to feel they could not cross picket lines to attend. As a matter of fact, it is hard to imagine going many places in southern California where this is not going to be an issue.

As to the various forms of boycott recommended in the CLBTH press release, do what you must, but I have grave reservations about the power of boycott to affect the massively wealthy, and I often feel it is almost unseemly to, in effect, equate not going to the bar of Doug Manchester's hotel to, say, not riding the bus in Birmingham. Is it a good idea to deprive all of those workers of the tips that allow them to paste together their budgets? I'm just asking. We on the left have a somewhat over-inflated view of how much expressions of individual virtue mean to anyone except ourselves. (There are, for example, probably people who snarled at a certain point, "I am never visiting that %$&@* Radical's blog again!" and you know what? I've never missed them.) So it is, of course, an honorable thing to act on your principles in the matter of the AHA Annual Meeting. But try not to quarrel with your friends about it. And just know, that if you happen to go to the bar at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, you are still welcome at Tenured Radical.

A slightly self-censored version of this post suitable for forwarding to parents, administrators and senior colleagues can be found at Cliopatria.

The Job Market Is A Lot Like The PBS NewsHour, And Other Advice For Skype Interviews

"Of course I can teach the second half of the U.S. History survey, Mr. DeMille "

As I have suggested in earlier years, the day of the convention interview may be coming to an end.  It has been spitting blood and teeth for at least twenty years, as the academic job market has taken a pounding with only occasional, and unusual, seasons of activity that cause the professional association newsletters to write perky articles about recovery.

Even when I was a graduate student, a person could expect to pick up more than one interview at a conference.  Three interviews were considered a tipping point after which it was clear that something you were doing was ringing a bell and there would be a job with your name on it.  Even visiting jobs sometimes merited sending a small committee to the AHA:  the job that washed me in the holy water of the Ivy League and sent me catapulting into a real career was a three-year non-TT gig at a school that sent a committee to the AHA.

However, the economic crash, the near-freeze in new hiring that followed in 2015-09, and the cautious thaw in pared down academic budgets in 2015-04 may have put a permanent dent in sending hiring committees to the annual conference, even though the professional organizations don't like it (go here for a great 2009 blog post by Robert B. Townsend of the American Historical Association in response to the last time I declared the death of the conference interview.)

Let's face it:  searches are expensive and time-consuming.  Depending on where the candidates are coming from, where your campus is and whether you are served by a major or a minor airport (when was the last time you tried to buy a plane ticket to or from Tulsa?  Columbus?  Flagstaff?  Williamstown?  Burlington? Ithaca? Corvallis?) a visit to campus from one candidate can cost up to $2500.  Most colleges have shaved a hundred bucks off each visit by making the faculty purchase their own alcohol, but there really isn't any way to budget less without asking the candidate to bring a sleeping bag.  One way to save real money, and a few precious days of winter break, is to not send three to five faculty to the annual conference.  This will result resulting in saving your institution a minimum of $3K, and as much as $8K.  And think what kind of money it could save the job candidates?  There are so few jobs that hardly anyone has even two interviews anymore.

So Miss Desmond, get ready for your close-up.  It's time for the Skype interview.

I did a Skype interview last spring, for a job that no one could have interviewed  at a conference for, and it does pose certain challenges that I will address below. But it also has great advantages.  Other than liberating a big chunk of the budget (either for more useful things or for hiring another dean), one great advantage to ditching the conference interview is that departments could be liberated from the tight calendar on which searches are approved and carried out.  We would, of course, also have to liberate ourselves from the idiotic idea that the "best" candidates, like the best local peaches, are only available at a certain time of year.  The latter could be a more difficult task, but look at it this way:  doctoral candidates defend at all times of year but departments hire as if all doctoral candidates defended in May.  Furthermore, given that most schools have two to three terms, and students drift in and out at will, why couldn't a faculty member begin work in January?

Great.  Now that we have that straight we can begin.

Here's what you need to think about when you are on the search committee:

• In case you don't really understand Skype, it is essentially a videoconferencing device (a telephone, in other words) that you can download and use for free on any laptop.  This means that it is easy to use, and you don't need to have people from IT involved.  What you do need is to position the screen in some way so that the candidate can see your faces to the extent that this is possible.  Have someone in another office Skype into the room in which you will do the interviews so that you can prop the laptop up on books and gauge how well your faces can be seen.
• There is a good chance your faces can't really be seen.  Therefore, it's a good idea to wear different clothes, space yourselves boy/girl/boy/girl, and whatnot, so that the candidate has an idea who is talking at any given time.  Even so, repeat your names occasionally.
• Even if the visuals aren't great, the candidate can see you well enough to know whether you are picking your nose, texting, passing notes or whispering with your neighbor.  Do not do anything you would not do with the candidate in the room.
• Do not suggest that a candidate go to an internet cafe for the interview.  This is wrong, since there is no possible way that the candidate can control for the atmosphere, the quality of the equipment, or even being able to get online at the correct time.  If a candidate cannot possibly do Skype at home or in a university technology studio, then settle for a conference call.
• Do consider taking advantage of how inexpensive these interviews are, and expand your semi-finalist list.  I have never been on a search where we haven't knocked people off the conference interview list for marginal reasons; and I have never done a set of conference interviews where at least a third of the candidates didn't knock themselves out of the running in the first five minutes.  I have never done a search where at least one semi-finalist who was intriguing but sort of a mystery didn't hit the ball out of the park unexpectedly when asked about hir teaching, or turn out to be interesting in some way that was not revealed in the dossier.

And if you are the candidate:

• Consider setting the stage.  That's right -- all they are going to see is your big ol' head and whatever is behind it, so use that to your advantage.  Prop your computer up on as many books as you need to pile up to ensure you are looking directly into the camera, and then decide on your backdrop.  What books are central to the thesis?  Is someone on the committee an author whose work needs to be featured -- with lots of lovely post-its bristling out of the top?  How about a green, leafy plant, that makes you look like a mature, relaxed person?
• They can only see you from the waist, or maybe mid-chest, up.  Be conservative around the face, since your head will fill half the screen:  facial jewelry that is larger than you have ever seen any of the untenured faculty in your department wear into the classroom needs to go for the Skype interview.  A big heavy ring in your septum is going to make them wonder about what they can't see.  On the other hand, everything below screen level they can't see so -- let it all hang out!  I mean literally!  It can be your little joke.
• In every interview, particularly the preliminary ones, you need to get certain things about yourself on the table, regardless of how inept the interviewers are.  And yet, in the moment, those things can be hard to remember.  The Skype interview allows you to -- write them down! A Sharpie, some note cards, and a small bulletin  board (or a dry erase white board)  that can be placed behind your laptop are a worthwhile investment.  The survey you would be expected to teach?  Sketch it out, with key texts.  A little anecdote that dresses up a methodological problem in your thesis?  A phrase like "Soup kitchen/condom/fireman" will remind you of exactly what you wanted to say about it.
• While I don't necessarily recommend this, some of us, when especially nervous, find that a quick swallow of vodka does the trick.  Guess what?  They'll never smell it on you.
• Be bold.  Answer questions aggressively, and make sure you address your answers to the person who asked them, even though the people at the table may look like little flesh-colored balloons with wigs on.  You have to exaggerate turning your head, since you can see them just by flicking your eyes:  women, in particular, get annoyed when they ask a question and the candidate appears to be directing hir answer to the men in the room. 

Above all, be prepared to do a Skype interview if you are going on the market.  I have known several job candidates recently who were taken by surprise by this, and did not have computers that had cameras in them.  You can buy a serviceable webcam over the internet for as little as $25 and spend a couple hours learning to use it so that you are ready to go when the search committee calls.  While it isn't OK for the committee to force you to do an interview in a public place, it also isn't OK for you not to be ready to do an interview because you haven't bothered to prepare for what is an increasingly common way to do screening interviews.  When they call, they may want to schedule for next week -- or for Friday.  The web cam is as essential to your job market success as a good interviewing outfit.

You may have discovered already that many of the links embedded in this post are to other posts I have done on the job market in past years.  Read them and learn. Good luck.

The Sunday Radical Roundup: Libraries, Lefties, and Lonely Lovelorn Ladies

This Week In Library Fun: Amidst the excitement about the reopening of the St. Agnes Branch of the New York Public Library, other libraries in the system are slashing their hours on February 16 in response to budget cuts from City Hall. (Why does the mayor always take out the neighborhood libraries in a budget crisis when he could fire twenty or thirty cops and get the same $$? I ask you.) Changes affect nearly all branches except those on Staten Island and the privately endowed research libraries in Manhattan. Go here for new hours. At least for now, scholars and organized crime families will continue with the service they have, but there could also be no starker example of the distance that is growing between the actual public sphere and the privatized public sphere.

On The Left, On The Left: Tom Manoff, a former civil rights activist who has been the classical music critic for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered since 1985, has a terrific interview with feminist author Jane Lazarre up on his website. Lazarre, the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, is currently working on a book about her father Bill, who fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Not only is Lazarre (the author of Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons) her typically thoughtful self about writing, race and politics, but the interview also gives a few hints about what I predict (you heard it here first) will be a blockbuster book about the American left. Want to interview Lazarre yourself, or better yet, book her for a reading during Black History Month or Women's History Month? You can reach her through her agent, Wendy Weil.

While We're Still On The Left: Go here to sign the petition to the American Historical Association Council, asking them to use INMEX, a conference booking group that works with unions "to ensure its clients are booking their events in destinations that are free from labor disputes and helps steer professional associations away from meeting venues that are likely to be disrupted by a boycott, a picket line or a strike." I know this makes INMEX sound like a protection racket, but trust me! It's the right thing to do. If this works, all we need now is to make conferences more affordable -- I know more than one graduate student who bled green in San Diego without being offered a single flyback. And has anyone looked at the rates that are being charged for rooms at the OAH annual meeting?

That Ever-Elusive M.R.S. Degree Just Got Tougher: I am waiting for Historiann to fire with every muzzle-loading fowling piece at her disposal on this story by Alex Williams from today's New York Times. It's about the the woes suffered by female college students who can't find a boyfriend because -- there aren't enough boys on many campuses to go around! At the 60% female University of North Carolina, Saturday night "has grown tiresome: they slip on tight-fitting tops, hair sculpted, makeup just so, all for the benefit of one another, Ms. Andrew said, 'because there are no guys.'" And the ones that are available, it appears, are a little soiled, since they are either previously owned or are cheating on the girl friend they have. Tales of taking what you can get and having the man you did catch snapped up right under your eyes help Williams sing the heterosexual blues: "Thanks to simple laws of supply and demand, it is often the women who must assert themselves romantically or be left alone on Valentine’s Day, staring down a George Clooney movie over a half-empty pizza box." Worse, girls feel terrible pressure to -- what do they call it now? Give it up? -- in order to seal the deal.

I mean, please, Alex: this is a throwback to Cold War domesticity, where we pretended there were no gay and lesbian people on campus and that if a girl didn't leave college with a ring on her finger she was damaged goods. In the face of budget cuts, tuition increases, a market crash that took college savings with it, and a crisis in lending to college-bound students, could you have written a more shallow piece about higher education? Could you? And girls, if the details of what you are doing at college are not as (or more) important than what you are doing on Saturday night, and you really can't do without a man, swap that English or psych degree for a Physics major, why dontcha? Boys never make passes at girls who sit on their asses. Or do what both genders do at Zenith and other liberal arts colleges -- keep the English major and trade in your sexual preference for a couple of years. Or trade in your gender!

Finally, For Those Of You Not On The CLGBTH Listserve: How many times do I have to tell you to join? Sheesh. This week, we have a CFP for a conference in Vancouver, BC, “'We Demand': History/Sex/Activism In Canada," August 25-28, 2011. From the organizers:

On August 28, 1971 over two hundred lesbian and gay activists gathered on Parliament Hill to demand the federal government bring an end to laws and practices that criminalized, marginalized, and stigmatized lesbians and gays. Acting in solidarity with their central Canadian allies, Vancouver activists staged the same action on the steps of their city’s Court House. It was the first recorded national political action undertaken by gay liberationists and lesbian feminist activists in Canada.

”We Demand” marks the fortieth anniversary of the 1971 action. The conference seeks to showcase current work on all aspects of the history of sexuality in Canada, from pre-contact to present times.

Keynote speaker: Ann Cvetkovich, author of An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures.
Other confirmed speakers include Mary Louise Adams, Karen Dubinsky, Gary Kinsman, and Steven Maynard.

We are currently accepting proposals for panels, individual papers, roundtable discussions, poster sessions, and other means of communicating ideas and generating discussion. We welcome submissions from scholars, archivists, educators, public historians, and past and present political activists from all sexual fronts.

Panel and round table submissions should include a session title, a brief description of the panel or round table, abstracts for each paper of no more than 250 words, and a brief biography or one-page c.v./resume for each presenter and for the session chair. Individuals should submit a 250-word abstract plus a brief biography or one-page c.v./resume. Those submitting proposals for other types of presentations should contact the organizers for further instruction. The deadline for submission is 1 June 2010.

Please send queries and submissions to: wedemand2011ATgmailDOTcom.

Guest Post From an Activist Historian: The AHA Blew It

A report on the American Historical Association Annual Meeting in San Diego guest posted by Jennifer Manion of Connecticut College.

To welcome back the start of another semester, let’s start with a multiple choice quiz:

For LGBTQ historians of an activist bent, this year’s AHA was:

a. alienating
b. disappointing
c. energizing
d. all of the above

For this activist historian the answer is “d.” So many things went so wrong in the AHA’s attempt to skirt around the local LGBTQ/labor boycott of the host hotel without appearing to support the politics of the hotel’s owner, Doug Manchester, who financed the initial petition drive to get Proposition 8 onto the ballot in California. For those of you living in a cave, the passage of Prop 8 overturned the legalization of gay marriage in California. The constitutionality of Prop 8 is now being contested by Perry v. Schwarzenager in federal court. Regardless of the ruling, the losing side will surely appeal it to the Supreme Court.

Before I go down that long slippery road listing of all the authoritarian, undermining, and dismissive actions of the AHA leadership, allow me to recognize their good intentions and acknowledge one quite significant positive outcome of this mess – more scholarship on the history of sexuality and LGBTQ people was featured in the conference program than ever before. How can this be a bad thing? Many (but not all) of these panels were featured in a special “Mini-Conference” on same-sex marriage to promote conversations about the history of marriage. It is unclear if any but the usual crowd of (mostly) queer historians who work the “sexuality-themed panel circuit” at the AHA actually went to them. But I like to think that they did. This, my friends, is pretty much where the goodness ends.

The AHA could have tried – or tried harder – to get out of its contract with minimal or no penalty. Other professional groups who had contracts with Manchester managed to do so. But let’s give the AHA the benefit of the doubt here: organizers in San Diego were not very organized when they first requested at the 2009 meeting that the AHA pull out of the Hyatt. Once the AHA decided not to pull out of the Hyatt, local organizers basically refused to collaborate with the LGBTQ historian activist set. I’m guessing the AHA was similarly iced.

One consequence of this is that several (to my knowledge) LGBTQ historians decided, agonizingly, that they could not attend the AHA this year. They would not violate the boycott on principle and could not stand to be outside, protesting, and missing the special historic and timely mini-conference on same-sex marriage inside. As one California-based historian (who is considering not renewing his membership to the AHA) said, “if the AHA would not respect the boycott, I would have to boycott the AHA.” Others decided to attend the AHA but refused to enter the Hyatt out of courage, conviction, and respect for the boycott. Ian Lekus, the chair of the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender History (an AHA affiliate) took this position. Already on the program myself, I settled on the strategy that I would enter the Hyatt for panels as necessary but not spend any money there. This was before the “official boycott” position was communicated to us by local activists, stating that a person should not “meet, greet, or eat” in the Hyatt. If local organizers were clearer about this in advance, I expect that more historians (myself included) may have adopted this stance.

That said, the rest of this essay will focus on actions the AHA could have taken to substantiate their claim that despite not being able to get out of the contract, they would actively support the effort to inform conference participants about the situation, promote the discussion of the history of sexuality and marriage, and open the special mini-conference to interested people not registered for the conference.

1. The AHA absolutely should have moved the mini-conference out of the Hyatt. This is the single most significant action they could have taken to support LGBTQ historians who were squeezed in the middle of this controversy. The mini-conference was open to the public for free. This gesture (a wonderful one at that) ended up being meaningless because the local LGBTQ activists at whom this invitation was targeted would not violate the boycott to enter the Hyatt. This also forced many LGBTQ historians (disproportionately represented in the mini-conference) INTO the Hyatt.

2. The AHA should have communicated clearly with all meeting registrants via email about the boycott in advance of the meeting rather than only those participants in the mini-conference. All registrants should have received an email stating the situation regarding the boycott: politics, finances, the AHA position, alternative housing options, resources for members who (voluntarily) wanted to support the local organizing effort and/or stand in solidarity with the membership of the AHA’s own Committee on LGBTQ History. I didn’t even realize that everyone was not getting this information until the meeting itself. The separate mode of communication to mini-conference presenters regarding the “problem” of dealing with the boycott was deeply problematic, presuming that only participants in the mini-conference would want or need to know. Did this presume our sexual orientation as well? Our political stance? What of all the LGBTQ historians not involved with the mini-conference? Committed activists of all orientations? Hetero-historians who study the history of marriage?

3. The AHA should have worked more sensitively and collaboratively with the longstanding Committee on LGBT History. CLGBTH issued a very informative and thoughtful press release in early November – this could and should have been sent out to AHA meeting registrants and prominently placed on the conference webpage. The suggestions could have been honored by the AHA rather than ripped apart and discounted in the official "talking points" bulletin they issued at the meeting. Nice one.

4. The AHA should have dropped the militarism, authoritarianism, and the divisive anti-gay activist position. I don’t care if the purpose of the security guards outside the door of my panel (and seemingly all of the panels in the mini-conference) were there to protect me. They made me nervous. Chairs of panels in the mini-conference received a “special” email in the days leading up to the conference. The tone of the message was bizarre (to put it nicely) or condescending, dictatorial, and ignorant (to be real). I heard (through the gay grapevine) that these documents were drafted by hired consultants to help the AHA deal with the situation. GET YOUR MONEY BACK. I would have helped the AHA devise its strategy for free. The documents listed the “official” AHA position regarding the boycott to share with audience members should questions arise (presuming I did not find these positions objectionable). They offered advice on how to regain control of the room should some hostile protestor storm the session to contest our presence in the Hyatt (presuming I would not welcome the perspective and presence of a gay activist). There was, apparently, a potential war on the horizon, between mini-conference panelists and local gay activists (this was the first I heard of it). The AHA was there to mediate and protect, I suppose, but all they did was generate anxiety, frustration, and anger for many of us. I thought to distribute the documents to some CLGBTH members for feedback, only to notice the “NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION” line running down the side of the documents, further signifying that I unknowingly was in the midst of a battle. Then, clarity. The angst of this situation was caused by the feeling that I was being enlisted for a side I was not on. I may be a historian, but the violence, harassment, and discrimination I face on a regular basis stems from my gender identity and sexual orientation. Those angry gay protestors are the people who fight for my dignity and humanity everyday. They – not other historians – have my back. Except for the few historians who are also angry gay protestors and I already know all 10 of them.

I actually understand why the AHA did not cancel its contract with the Hyatt. But a series of misguided, insensitive, and just plain bad decisions on the part of the AHA leading up to the meeting made it worse than it needed to be. We LGBTQ historians with an activist bent were experiencing an alternate reality from most other conference attendees who were generally oblivious to all of this. I educated friends and colleagues who were outside of my circle. They were shocked and appalled by what I told them – and wished the AHA communicated more directly with everyone registered about the boycott and the work of the CLGBTH. Lots of them stayed in the Hyatt, unaware of the politics involved. They simply jumped onto the AHA website and scooped up available hotel rooms at the host hotel, the way people do. The AHA did nothing to promote or supports its position that we could effectively prevent Manchester from profiting from our use of his hotel if we got people to not book rooms, eat, or shop in there.

At the Saturday afternoon protest, organizer Cleve Jones railed against LGBTQ historians who attended the conference as the lowest of the low, the first LGBTQ people to violate the boycott since its inception nearly two years ago. Admittedly, I shirked, wondering if I belonged there, if he was right. To some extent he was – AHA participants surely funneled tens of thousands of dollars right into Manchester’s pockets that weekend. As righteous, dogmatic, and uncompromising as he is, however, Jones is not the gatekeeper for the movement. Onward I marched – stung by the passive complicity of my liberal colleagues and well-meaning professional association – annoyed by the sloppy organizing efforts of the locals – moved by the integrity of my queer historian colleagues who honored the boycott – and energized by the company of those historians who, with passion and conviction, are dedicated to the political project of doing LGBTQ history. And we danced hard.

Note: Guest posts are welcome at Tenured Radical. They may be posted anonymously, but you must make yourself known to me.

American Historical Association Meeting 2011: End Of Conference Notes

I'm so glad we had this time together.....

This morning I woke up to a dusting of snow.  I was in a friend's house in Cambridge, and I toodled out for my regular breakfast at Darwin's.  At 7:15, it was just me and the old geezers (you know who I mean:  the men whose friendships have been organized for decades around meeting each other for breakfast and the New York Times on Sunday morning.)

I passed the time prior to leaving for South Station reading an article in The New Yorker about a boomlet in the debt collection industry in Buffalo.  Debt collection may, in fact, be the city's remaining major industry.  It reminded me that while things in higher education are not good right now, they are a whole lot better than they are, say, in construction or heavy industry.

However, this does not make the cutting of funds to the arts and humanities tolerable or right, and we must start to fight back more effectively.  Out at the Other Conference, Inside Higher Ed reports, Teresa Mangum of the University of Iowa brought this up at what sounded like a great panel.   How do we think about the defense of our work in the current environment, one that is effectively articulating us as obsolete by shrinking the number of people who can make a living at it and, as a consequence, reducing what is actually available to maturing citizens?

Mangum said that humanities faculty members may also need to rethink how they talk about the crises of funding not only in higher education but in society. “I don’t want to blame the victim, but again and again I see faculty members in the humanities speak on campus and in public in ways that belittle the larger public and sometimes the sciences and other disciplines," she said.


Mangum said she understood that these comments are made "in frustration" over cut after cut and a feeling of not being understood or appreciated. But she said that the attitude is problematic. Right now in Iowa, she said, there are families "lining up at food banks."


“I don’t want to debate the meaning of class relations in a novel without knowing that the food bank in my community is running out of food," Mangum said. "We need to register more powerfully what our role is in this larger culture, what our values are as people teaching in the humanities." The knowledge and perspective gained from the humanities, she said, "can be the place where we learn compassion."

I particularly like what is implied here, which is that compassion is the glue that binds communities together and moves them forward. While it doesn't preclude such things as ambition and competition, which can be productive for the individual and the collective, compassion would counter what I think is the most destructive dynamic in the current environment, blame.  The need to find fault rather than seek structural solutions that actually contribute to to solving problems seems to dominate our discussions about the academy.  Why shouldn't graduate students blame tenured faculty for the obstacles to realizing their ambitions, when the real cause -- pouring money into tax breaks for the wealthy, deregulating financial industry, and pouring our national treasure into unwinnable and illegal wars -- are so impossible to cure?

The only answer to that question, from my perspective, is that it doesn't change anything.  This is why, probably of all the things I did at the annual meeting this year, meeting with the LGBTQ Historians Task Force Open Forum was perhaps the most engaging.  A group formed to address issues in the organization that combusted last year at the San Diego meeting, it reminded me that the current several generations of out queer scholars, ranging from Jonathan Ned Katz who has been integral to launching OutHistory.org to numerous young people who are just entering the job market, are inveterate organizers.  Many of us who are now tenured scholars, like myself, Marc Stein, and Jim Green came out of organizing backgrounds; most of us are running something.

The Task Force (not to be confused with the NGLTF, which now calls itself The Task Force) has done a ton of work, which I won't reveal on this blog, since it isn't ready for prime time.  Stein and Leisa Meyer did an outstanding job of running the meeting, with Susan Stryker contributing via Skype (Susan's voice was piped through the ceiling, which meant that as she spoke, we all gazed reverently upwards, lending a moment of camp to an otherwise orderly proceeding.)

I can't tell you how refreshing it was to be in a well-functioning, multi-generational, consultative and well-led group.  Thank you.

One other comment to close (this is for you, incoming prez Tony Grafton, from whom we in the blogosphere expect Great Things)*:  now that the MLA  and AHA are meeting at the same time, would it not be a good idea to have some of these brainstorming sessions from each conference teleconferenced in to the other convention?  I would have loved to have seen that MLA session.  And while this Task Force meeting would not have been the right one, I can imagine sessions in the future where MLA queers might want to brainstorm with us about common professional issues and strategies for moving our intellectual work and teaching forward in this unfriendly educational environment.
______________________

*Go to Historiann for liberal quotation from and commentary on Grafton's opening presidential salvo in this debate.

Embedded At The American Historical Association

History flash mob at Au Bon Pain, 8:45 AM

Dateline Boston. Perhaps the most frequently asked question I heard yesterday at Day Two of the American Historical Association Meeting was "What am I doing here?" I don't know what the attendance figures are, but despite the lousy job market and reduced conference budgets, the Hynes Convention center and the bars at the three conference hotels are jammed.

What is peculiar here is that in order to get from place to place a historian has to navigate miles of passageways filled with upscale shops. Yes, history fans: we can honestly say that this is the first time in the Radical's memory that an AHA has been held in a shopping mall. It isn't quite as disorienting as the year the OAH was held in a casino but it is right up there.

One theory as to why they have held the meeting in a mall is the incessant sartorial comparisons with MLA. My suggestion for next year? Make personal shoppers available to guide historians to appropriate stores.

The good news is that everything is on sale. The bad news is that because it is a hermetically sealed environment, everything is overheated and dry: moisturizer, chapstick and a water bottle are items as essential to scholars this weekend as they are to the beachcomber. Aside from the inconvenience of not being able to roll from the bar to an elevator and from there to bed, this is a good year not to be staying in the conference hotel. During a fire alarm a few minutes ago, when convention staff insisted that the book exhibit be evacuated into the all, I chatted with one person who claimed not to have gone outside at all in the last 48 hours, which is entirely possible to do without intending it.

It's Safe To Go Back To the Annual Meeting; A Radical Guide To Days 1 and 2 of The 2011 AHA

I just want to say:  gays were not involved in logo design or color choice.

Last year there was quite a hullabaloo about the American Historical Annual Meeting out in San Diego. Doug Manchester, who owns the hotel the AHA chose, had given gobs of money to Prop 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative.  He also got a lot of that money by running a union-free work place.  It was what you would call a lose-lose choice for the AHA, and resulted in a lot of people flying out there to picket, and a lot of other people having to give their papers by sneaking in and out hidden in laundry trucks.  (No, not Really!  That was a joke!)  This year there are no worries: you can come into the hotel without worrying that you will have to cross a queer picket line, or worse, that the hotel bar is off limits to Good People.  We historians are meeting in the People's Republic of Boston, a city that is unionized up the yin-yang and where everyone is free to gay marry.  Go here to find out how to gay marry while you are in town; or slip over the Connecticut border and do it there!

But maybe you have never been to an Annual Meeting, you are a graduate student, and you aren't sure what to do after you gay marry.  Sure, you can run around to cool panels with famous people on them, and you should definitely go to your friends' papers and show up at your own panel.  But what else?  Read on:  I can't link everything worthwhile on this great program, but here are a few that caught my eye in the first 48 hours.

Thursday there are some great teaching workshops going on all day. You don't have to be very far along in your grad school career to attend one or more of these since they could keep the first few years of your teaching career from being a confusing hell.  Try How to Create An Undergraduate Course and How To Become An Effective Lecturer on for size, as well as Wise Use of the Methods Course in the afternoon.  Hint:  for those of you with conference interviews, attending these workshops is a bonus, since it might give you some ideas that would allow you to take the teaching part of your interview in a direction that is new and unexpected.  Imagine a conversation that begins with you saying, "Yesterday I heard Derek Musgrove talking about an interesting technique that I would like to try out.  For the survey, I think I would tweak it a little (blah, blah, blah.")

Thursday afternoon?  How about, instead of reading on this blog that, hypothetically, it would be great if historians were trained for careers other than teaching, find out what those careers already look like at Careers in History:  The Variety Of The Profession.

Friday at 9:00 A.M. the Book Exhibit opens.  This is a critical venue for meeting, greeting, and being introduced to others.  Remember the Radical Rules of the Road when in mixed company:

• Greet your graduate mentors but do not cling to them.  In fact it is best, when you see them, to look as though you have somewhere very important to be.  Practice saying into the mirror:  "Gosh, it's really great to run into you -- I'm off to the Chapel Hill booth to meet up with a friend/an editor/someone on my panel.  Have a great meeting!"  Only break this rule if they happen to be with someone very important in your field, in which case, keep a keen eye out for an introduction.  Count slowly to five in your head:  if the introduction is not forthcoming, skate out of there.
• Leave any and everyone before they leave you.  If you see someone's eyes drifting over your shoulder, even slightly, say warmly:  "I've really got to run -- so nice to have had a chance to say hello," then skate.
• If there is someone you know, but are unsure whether to greet or not, casually pick up a book and leaf through it.  If said person greets you, look very surprised and say: "OmygodIcan'tbelieveIdidn't see you!"
• If someone important calls you by the wrong name, let them.  If they do it twice, correct them.  If they keep doing it, forget it. There is one historian, who will remain nameless, who has greeted me for twenty five years as if I were Isabel V. Hull of Cornell, and I no longer correct her. 
• If you run into someone you just did a hotel room interview with, you don't have to act like you are employed by an escort service and pretend you have never met them.  Smile and nod; if you are close enough to speak say hello and say you had a good time in the interview.  Even if you didn't.  
• Have one sentence to say about your dissertation if a senior scholar asks.  One.  "I'm writing about the transgender community in Havana after the Cuban Revolution," for example. Most people are just asking to be polite, although in the rare instance that the person really is interested in it, be conversational -- do not launch into your interview speech.
• Never, never, never ask a senior scholar what s/he is working on unless you are dinner partners.  Your just-to-be-polite question is:  "Are you having a good meeting?"
• Check compulsively, but discreetly, to make sure your fly is not open. 

At 9:30 Friday, there is a workshop on interviewing.  I cannot stress enough how important this workshop is, particularly for those of you who are not yet on the job market.  Interviewing is not just about saying, doing and wearing the right things, although it is that.  It is about reading your audience and responding to the questions that are actually asked while delivering the information you want your interviewers to have.  Much of the workshop consists of mock interviews held in a large ballroom that is not unlike the gang interviewing room in the basement where you might, one day, actually be interviewed.  The people who pose as interviewers are kind and helpful, and will honestly critique your performance.

In the same time slot is Getting A Job At A Community College, which is unfortunate.  But if you have been on the market for several years, if you realize that teaching is your bag, if you are part of an academic couple -- why not find out?  And learn a little more about the kind of institution where the majority of students start their college career?

Other Friday events that look promising are the International History publishing roundtable, which has an all-star cast, including Susan Ferber of Oxford University Press; Social Science Research Council info session; Revisiting the Teaching of Religious History

And of course, if you want to meet Tenured Radical go here.  Women historians and feminists of all genders will want to attend the Coordinating Council for Women in History reception.