Alongside research and teaching, most tenure-track jobs come with some expectation of service.
Strategic Service on the Tenure Track
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Academia
Middle East Studies: More Intellectual Diversity, or Better Public Outreach?
Middle East scholars recently released the results of the new Middle East Scholar Barometer. What does it tell us about Middle East Studies itself? Does it suggest the field is rich and progressing, or in need of an intellectual shakeup?
Business Meetings are part of the “hidden curriculum””
Business meetings are part of the “hidden curriculum,” academia’s unwritten set of rules They’re also important to attend, especially for those scholars most likely to be unfamiliar with those rules. This post explains why – and what more senior scholars can do to get junior ones involved.
And Lo, the Heavens Parted to Reveal an Article on Bad Habits to Avoid in Academic Writing
If you’ve written a guest post for the Duck of Minerva recently, or published a piece at International Studies Quarterly while I was editor, you know that I really hate “heavy noun phrases.” Scholars seem to really like using them. I don’t know why. Perhaps they think it makes their writing sound more sophisticated. There’s an article at PS which is good at diagnosing the problem (but offers bad fixes).
More Academia Posts
Choosing a Cover For Your New Book
This is a guest post from Bear Braumoeller, Professor of Political Science at The Ohio State University. Follow him on Twitter @Prof_BearB. Graduate study in the social sciences is overwhelmingly oriented toward the process of researching and writing a dissertation that will become a book. We very rarely talk about any other aspect of publishing—how to approach an editor, how to design a book with a specific audience in mind, or how to (gasp!) market a book. The latter topic came to mind recently when Professor Matthew Shugart complimented the cover of my forthcoming book and...
Thoughts on making the most of APSA for the alt-ac attendee
Graduation Cap and Diploma on White with Soft Shadow. C/o Bluestocking, 2008 Uyen Le APSA is nearly upon us again, and I thought I should write something profession-related as I got back into blogging. My first thought was to make fun of annoying questions, but I already did that (six years ago...but still relevant). And there is a lot of advice floating around for grad students or others on the market. Instead, I thought I'd focus on an area where my experience is more unique: navigating academic conferences while working outside academia (or alt-ac*) and--in my case--trying to get back in....
A Call for New Guest Ducks
We are looking for you! The fall 2019 semester is upon us, and we’d like to bring on a new cohort of guest Ducks. The Duck remains a unique blog in terms of our ability to cover a wide variety of topics from IPE to the environment to health to human rights as well as traditional IR topics such as security. We also have freedom to do more academic introspection on the discipline and higher education writ large. As a guest blogger, you have the freedom to find your voice and the format and length that suits you without an editor. You are free to muse and use the platform to try out new ideas....
Using Pop Culture in the Classroom: Footloose FTW!
I love this tweet as it puts the usual dynamics on their head: Tip for students going off to college: study 80s/90s pop culture. Particularly Ferris Beuller, Princess Bride, Simpsons seasons 2-5. Your gen x/early millennial profs will try to connect with you through these, and will be confused/sad when you stare blankly at them. Not joking. — David Mimno (@dmimno) August 2, 2019 Each summer, profs are reminded how much younger the students are and then the onus is on them to update their references. This tweet nicely makes fun of profs by suggesting the reverse. As always, I have two...
Academic (S)mothering Part III: Conferencing
Ah, the sweet time your baby becomes a toddler and maybe lets you sleep for more than 5 hours a night. Your teaching is sort of kind of on track, your scant article submissions get a steady number of rejections so why not try to venture back into the world of academic conferencing? Something not too far away and not too expensive, because as a parent you are too responsible to spend your hard-earned money on conference fees and hotel “discount rates”. So, you dust off your formal clothing (all carefully selected in accordance with the misogynist ideals of appropriate female academic attire)...
Remembering Andrew Price-Smith
This is a guest post from Jeremy Youde, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Follow him on Twitter @jeremyyoude. Anyone who studies global health security has a copy of Andrew Price-Smith’s 2001 book, The Health of Nations, on their shelf. It’s a staple of course syllabi in global health politics, and its argument helped to cement the importance of recognizing the complex interplay between international security and infectious disease. Sadly, Price-Smith, the David Packard Professor of International Relations at Colorado College and leader of its Global...
We Are a Bad Guild: Tenure Letter Writing Edition
A key part of the tenure process is for outside experts to evaluate the candidate's research (hard to evaluate their teaching and service from outside). These letters can be quite handy for getting a less biased perspective that a department might have (in either direction). It is especially useful for providing insights in cases where the candidate's subfield is under or unrepresented among the senior faculty evaluating tenure (a real life example: no tenured political theorists and the candidate is a theorist). The basic idea makes sense. That in order to evaluate...
Embargo My Eggo!
Today, I learned that I am out of touch. Ok, that is old news. I got into a twitter conversation about embargoed dissertations. A friend was trying to access and then cite a dissertation that has been out for a few years, and she could not because the dissertation was embargoed. I then raised this on twitter, and got a whole lot of push back. So, let's take a look at this. My basic take is that a dissertation is a contribution to knowledge, and our job is to not only create such knowledge but to share it. I also argued that it is counter-productive to one's career as it makes it hard for...