Dear forumites:
I was wondering if anyone had any tips on how to deal with feeling as though one's research is not valuable. I have a Ph.D. in literature, but this area no longer holds the allure for me that it once did--Although I love research, I now see it as a waste of time to publish literary criticism. I don't even like to read it anymore. However, I am not trained in much of anything else (I can do cultural studies, but often this takes a literary bent due to my graduate training). I would like to move on to doing research that feels more important, that makes a "real" contribution, but I am not sure how to do that, especially considering this would require specialization that I do not have. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
-Out_of_the_Office
What research do you admire? What counts for you as making a real contribution?
I can easily imagine getting cynical about lit crit, but is there none of it that you still admire? Maybe you need to go back to what got you into it in the first place?
Do you have tenure?
This is a useful realization, if it doesn't get you down too much, in driving towards a more personally rewarding research direction. In my field, there is quite a bit of what is called outcomes funding. The funder asks, "how will society be different as a result of your work?" Then you work backwards from that goal to what you are going to do.
You might try that approach. The outcome should be something meaningful to you. If you need money to do it, it also needs to be very explicitly meaningful to your funder. You can change "society" to another entity if that seems too ambitious or anthropocentric.
With the ultimate goal in mind, you can connect the dots to a proximate result that you can accomplish using your research skills and subject matter knowledge. Chunk the job up in small enough pieces to have students involved. Then your impact is even greater.
I'm an abstract, theoretical mathematician whose work is also of no practical value. What's more, my work is 15 or 20 layers of abstraction from what one might consider primary texts, not just 3 or 4 in the case of someone in literary criticism, so it's accessible to an even smaller audience. Here is how I have found meaning in my research work:
1) Our disciplines teach students to think in various ways, and these modes of thought develop their general abilities even if they don't every use them in their pure form. One has to think about something, and it's rather fake to think about something that's already known. So doing research makes us authentic models of the kinds of thinking we want our students to learn to do. Our research also opens up new questions and lines of inquiry, giving future scholars (especially our graduate students) more opportunities to model authentic thinking.
2) Our research display new examples of the possibilities of human thought and hence add to the glory of humanity and its creator.
I'm a music theorist/musicologist. I understand your feelings about your research. I'm not curing cancer, saving the environment, solving the world's big problems, etc. My audience is small because my work is highly specialized, yet my work is of interest and importance to that audience, and I find meaning in that. In addition, I am using my gifts for and understanding of music, gifts and understanding not everyone has. Your feelings about your research are perfectly natural. Give it time, try to find research topics that interest you, and keep in mind that you are using your gifts, gifts that not everyone has.
I don't suppose literary meta-criticism would seem any more meaningful? (One the plus side, it might have the advantage of helping to guide the literary-theoretical discussions?)
Have you had a look at what's going on in cognate fields recently, especially in direct relation to literature/criticism? What's new with the psychology of text-processing, or the philosophy of literature (there's more going on on the analytic side of things these days, but maybe continental is more your cup of tea; either way!)? Maybe there are more interesting collaborations or contributions to be made on that side of things.
Quote from: pedanticromantic on August 09, 2019, 03:54:09 PM
Do you have tenure?
The most important question. And even if you have tenure, what kinds of research count toward promotion/greater job security where you are working?
Most of what's published in my field (which is not literature) is terribly-written arcane garbage. I've migrated to researching effective pedagogy.
I have, on occasion, presented papers at regional MLA conferences. I can understand why you are frustrated -- scholarship consisting of presentations about language that use made-up language, with no data to support whatever badly-formed argument is being presented.
Another thing I have found is that it is important to find a group of like minded scholars with whom to interact. We get that in grad school (well, ideally we do) but after it is harder to sustain, especially if you are not in a top research university and don't have a generous travel budget for conferences.
I have found that committing to a relatively small group of people of people interested in similar research, who I see on a pretty regular basis and interact with frequently online, makes a big difference. One can feed off their enthusiasm and be included in joint research projects. It does help to find people who you actually like, and can also be friends with.
I was feeling that way too, plus my slightly theoretically bent mind is not as sharp as it once was, so I am not sure how many more of those sorts of papers I can write in my esoteric area, so I changed, at least for now, to writing "popular" books as well as pedagogical and perhaps original fundamental research in an engineering area that relates to my pure science area. I should say that I reached full professor 6 years ago at a SLAC that doesn't emphasize research, so at this point, I can kind of do as I please.
I feel the same way and am in the same field, OP. The questions above about tenure and your context are key since the way to deal with this loss of faith (as I call it) will depend on how much and what kind of research you have to produce.
I am at a liberal arts college with a minimal research requirement for tenure—teaching and service are the priorities. I am in my 40s, so plenty of years left, but am a full professor and have no interest in much of the scholarship and have stopped presenting at most conferences in our field. Happily, however, I got into a large project and have my first book coming out this fall. I realized that this project, which did draw on my background in literature, but led me to become immersed in two other interconnected disciplines, was what I needed to feel fired up about research and scholarship. It isn't going to cure cancer, but it makes a contribution to several fields and has introduced me to fantastic new conferences and colleagues outside of literature that I love working with.
Are you at a place that values the scholarship of teaching and learning? If so, can you get excited about turning something you have done in class, or want to do, into a research project you could eventually publish? Are there opportunities to team teach or teach interdisciplinary courses—these might lead to new collaborations or ideas for research paths?
Have you done much archival work? The book I am publishing incorporates a lot of archival sources, and I found I love nothing better than combing through archives. Of course, it is time consuming and sometimes expensive, but I was able to cobble together some funding for short trips to collect material. Maybe a trip like that would revive your interests and allow you to use your training in new ways?
I think, OP, you've gotten caught up in the general malaise facing the humanities in the age of swollen tuition, wage gaps, and conservative double think. We are constantly forced to defend ourselves, and some people are so superficial that they cannot see the value in studying one of the oldest and most constant human activities, the creation of art and literature.
We also live in an age after the big "discoveries" of people like Derrida, Bloom, Vendler, Fish, Frye, Butler, etc. and it's hard to look at our comparatively limited monographs and forget that those folks produced a great deal of writing, only a portion of which is ever worth the gold medal.
I personally research and publish as a great way to learn new things. And! Importantly, I have found that colleagues really respect the effort. If nothing else, you and I contribute to the great volume of human knowledge and ideas, which is how we've landed in the comparatively safest, most literate, and most peaceful era in human history.
Keep the faith, colleague.
Take comfort in the idea that there are people who actually
....poster rhapsodically subsumed to a higher plane, apparently.....
M.
What research is very meaningful to anyone besides an in group of specialists? Some scholars, including me, don't understand the sub-specialty research, so it appears meaningless.
Some research is more meaningful than others, but rarely, I think is the research very
meaningful to people (including academics) outside of that field. Often even scholars
in the field ignore it with indifference and even scorn. (In philosophy, especially because it is so divided and contentious)
Some research is very repetitive and so derivative that the meaning is obvious but uninteresting.
If you are driven to write or need to publish, then write, regardless of its meaningfulness.
I used to fret about this a lot. But I can't really imagine that my alternatives to a T & R life would have been any MORE meaningful. I'm not in a cancer-curing field. Nor would I have made a great humanitarian aid worker. So I probably would have gone into business or law--the latter of which I actually gave a shot. Talk about not meaningful work!
I really like to research; love to write; and love to teach. And since, at my R1, I could only keep my teaching job if I did the research, I deal with those (increasingly rare) times when I think that what I'm doing doesn't mean anything. At least my research results (on underwater basket weaving) aren't weaponizable; I'm not actively HURTING anyone with my books.
I'm struggling with this issue as well. I'm tenured and have been actively publishing in my subfield for eleven years now. I've finally reached the point where I am the go-to person on my topic of choice, but despite this success I still have doubts about whether my research means anything in the grander scheme of things. Like the previous poster, I love to read, research, and write, so I'm not sure what else I would do. Moving to another topic does not interest me. Ultimately, I have to tell myself that *I* care about these topics and research questions, so I am really writing for myself than for others. If I can find meaning in what I do, then that should be enough.
Don't know if it's useful overall, but this idea came through to me as suggesting a life cycle with a series of variations in it for writing.
My undergrad dance fundamentals class included a visit from a retired dance critic at one point.
He started out by saying, "When I began writing, I wrote for the dancers, to help them see what they couldn't see.
"After awhile, I realized most of the dancers weren't interested in reading about their own dances, they just wanted to make new ones.
"So then I wrote for the audiences, to help them see what they were looking at.
"Then I realized they wanted to see what they saw, not what I saw.
"So now, I write for myself."
M.
Quote from: Deacon_blues on September 06, 2019, 10:29:32 AM
How would you like to affect the grander scheme of things?
That question takes a lot of thought to answer, of course. But if you have a few concrete ideas of what would be rewarding, you could start tying that outcome to some aspect of the scholarship you are doing well now.
The connection could be made through unexpected vehicles. For instance, if you your grander scheme values a sounder society, being a Boy Scout leader teaches skills and values to future citizens (and college students). There are lots of approaches that probably are not on your radar.
Are you still interested in the answers to the questions you are asking? That's really the only criteria you should care about outside of publication requirements. One of the very few things we can control is what we choose to think about. Life is too short to bore yourself.
When I sometimes doubt the public value of my literary criticism, I think about how our discussions in my field do affect the novels and poetry taught in high school and college classrooms. When I was young, for instance, none of us read Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_. But now we recognize all the ways in which it powerfully critiques masculine Romanticism, environmental arrogance, etc. I can think other texts that gain currency in a kind of trickle-down effect from scholarly conversations.
So, while my work on its own does not shape reading lists and syllabi, I'm contributing to a larger conversation that potentially has real effects on what students read, not to mention which texts become affordable paperbacks with notes and introductions.
Quote from: mamselle on September 06, 2019, 06:59:57 PM
"So now, I write for myself."
That's exactly the shift in perspective that I had to make--realizing that I was writing for myself, and not for others. If external validation is not enough to make me feel as though my work is worthwhile, then it comes down to internal validation. Do I care about the topics that I am researching? Do I want to know the answers to the questions that I am posing? If the subject matters to me, then that's enough. Of course, I find myself repeating this over and over again, because the "research is meaningless" dragon refuses to be permanently slayed.
Seems like out_of_the_office has also found that The Fora is not meaningful.
Quote from: downer on September 12, 2019, 08:53:55 AM
Seems like out_of_the_office has also found that The Fora is not meaningful.
Most recent visit was not long after M. subsumed them to a different plane.
My first graduate degree focused on literary criticism, and I also lost interest in it.
I find much meaning in the teaching of literature and writing, especially as gen ed. No, most of students aren't going to be English majors, but after taking my classes they can engage in personal, informal criticism of all media they consume. They can better empathize with others. Learning basic literary criticism makes them more learned and reflective citizens.
I also started writing actual literature, which feels quite meaningful as a way to connect to others.
Quote from: Hibush on September 12, 2019, 09:04:06 PM
Quote from: downer on September 12, 2019, 08:53:55 AM
Seems like out_of_the_office has also found that The Fora is not meaningful.
Most recent visit was not long after M. subsumed them to a different plane.
Actually, I was observing that they seemed to have subsumed themselves...
I hope I didn't kill the thread...
M.
Quote from: zuzu_ on September 13, 2019, 09:24:57 AM
My first graduate degree focused on literary criticism, and I also lost interest in it.
I find much meaning in the teaching of literature and writing, especially as gen ed. No, most of students aren't going to be English majors, but after taking my classes they can engage in personal, informal criticism of all media they consume. They can better empathize with others. Learning basic literary criticism makes them more learned and reflective citizens.
I also started writing actual literature, which feels quite meaningful as a way to connect to others.
This is a great way to reassess personal goals and meaning, and to change what you do to match!
[M.: The
thread seems to be alive still. Don't know about OP. You have a lot of karma points...]
Ok, thanks.
Don't think I could could fill Them Fiona's shoes...
M.
P. S. As to meaningful research, I just act like mine is not useful by wasting time, etc. I really do believe in its significance.
I think.
M.
Well, it's not like most of us are curing cancer.
But if you are curing cancer please stop posting and get back to work.
Actually, I did work at a couple places as an EA that were curing cancer, or working towards it.
They all underwent layoffs....
M.