Applying For History Jobs With Africana Studies PhD?

[hazeus]

I'm a first year Africana Studies PhD student. I've had a bit of a rude awakening regarding the realities of the job market. Especially as someone in Africana Studies. My department's placements are...decent, but nothing reassuring. I want to make best of the time I have left to position myself so that I can apply to history TT jobs (yes, there are none I know). I was a high school history teacher before enrolling in my program - so I have that to fall back on, but I'd like to give the job market a shot at least for a year or two before going back to that world.

I've already taken quite a few history courses as many of my institutions history dept classes are crosslisted with ours. If I were to continue doing this or even double down - would that make *any* difference? Do (history) search committees even take a look at your course work? Would my app be thrown out immediately as soon as they see "Africana Studies?"

*If* the situation is not hopeless, what else can I do that would be helpful? Going to AHA and other national history conferences? Having only historians as my advisor? TA'ing in history classes?

Please help.

[Hegemony]

I am not in History, but I am History-adjacent.  I'd say you'd have a good chance if you can show you can teach things like African history or African-American history or the like (as opposed to contemporary Africana Studies). A specialty in the same would have the best chance of being persuasive, and a publication or two, especially if they're in history journals and show familiarity with historical methodologies, which I assume they would. I think that would give you as good a chance as anyone's got in History these days. Some fields are in demand right now, and that's one of them — so strategize and position yourself well, and I think you've got a strong chance.

[Wahoo Redux]

I am way out of my depth on this question, so forgive me is this is a stupid suggestion, but you might try to position yourself as student support, scholarship or diversity officer material.  I'm not sure about the efficacy of such jobs, but they pay well, usually much better than professors.  Your degree might help to qualify you with under-represented groups.  Perhaps work with some student groups during your time in grad school.

Just a thought.   

[hazeus]

I am way out of my depth on this question, so forgive me is this is a stupid suggestion, but you might try to position yourself as student support, scholarship or diversity officer material.  I'm not sure about the efficacy of such jobs, but they pay well, usually much better than professors.  Your degree might help to qualify you with under-represented groups.  Perhaps work with some student groups during your time in grad school.

Just a thought.   

Not a stupid suggestion at all. I actually used to work with underrepresented college students for a career advising program. That particular position was entry level and part time but I'd be grateful to find something like that that paid well.

[clean]

Im going to ask more basic questions, as I dont know.  What is the job market like in general for history?  What are the salaries in general?  Is the market tight or overcrowded?  How much time does it take to get a PhD in this area?  What could you otherwise be earning without a PhD now?  What would you be earning if you stayed where you at the time you start a PhD job?

Is the additional income worth the opportunity cost of this program?

[dr_codex]

OP, you seem already to be aware of this, but the market for Historians is really, really awful. It has been for some time, and looks unlikely to get better any time soon. Undergraduate programs are getting slashed all over, and there's a huge glut of people with doctorates still chasing the dwindling pool of jobs. Last time I looked, the AHA was posting rates under 10%, and I have no reason to think that they have improved.

Obviously, averages are not constant across all programs, and specific doctoral institutions probably have better placement rates, but I would advise anybody, in any program, to have a long, long ponder before embarking on a History degree, especially if the goal is a TT job as a Historian.

That said, somebody who has other credentials might be able to be more competitive. For context, I have a PhD in English Lit, but am tenured in a multidisciplinary, specialized Humanities "Studies" department. We aren't Africana Studies, but we are something analogous. Our next hire will almost certainly be a Historian, but we won't hire anybody who cannot teach graduate courses in our niche Studies field. We have some generalists, and they teach mostly GenEd American History, but what we really need is somebody with a doctorate in our particular strain of History.

So, kind of the opposite advice to your suggestion. As Hegemony points out, other kinds of specialization might open doors that a generic History PhD might not.

As for coursework, yes, hiring committees will look at it, and they will look especially closely if a candidate has a degree from an Area Studies program. It's not that they don't want the credential, but they want to make sure that your "real" specialization isn't Sub-Saharan Literature, Sociology, Linguistics, or Archaeology. (I have a good friend who left her TT position at a highly ranked university when it became clear that while she's an archaeologist, what they wanted was somebody to teach 3/3 in Classics.) An abundance of coursework taken, and especially courses taught, will demonstrate how well you fit their needs, at least to open the door for an interview.

Finally, Wahoo's suggestion that you consider Alt-Ac jobs is sensible. I wish I had been more savvy about this coming out of graduate school. I got very lucky, and landed a career teaching job, but it took a long time, and I might well have put those years to better use.

Good luck!
dc

[polly_mer]

Please help.

5 years in grad school + 3 years on the market is 8 years. Think about how old you will be at that point and what it will feel like to have to start over with something else when it becomes clear that you are in the 90%* of graduate-educated historians who don't get a TT job anywhere.

That is the opportunity cost that clean mentions.  The new recurring theme on some parts of these fora is pushing back on the advice to go do something else when "those folks have invested the better part of a decade in preparing for this job.  It's just cruel to insist they start over doing something else".

You, hazeus, are at a point where you haven't invested those 8 years yet.  This is your real life now and what you do now matters.  Now is a very good time to wait out the economy recovery in a fully funded program (you are fully funded, right?  Otherwise, the advice is to get out now to do literally anything else instead of taking on more debt) while you work on being in a better situation in a couple years.

If you want to be in, say, TRIO programs or career services, then apply for those jobs now with the experience you have.  Look carefully at the institution's long-term prospects in terms of enrollment and finances before accepting any job, but go ahead and start applying now.  Sometimes, it takes a couple years to get the right job. Getting started on climbing the relevant career ladder will be a better use of your time than more history courses or AHA attendance.

I also recommend going through some non-academic job sites and career planning sites to look at skills you can develop now that will position you for applying for a wide variety of jobs later.  For example, I picked up using R for statistical studies, Python for scripting, and LaTeX for creating reports using the outputs.  That's been more useful at many turns for getting a good enough job with skills employers want over the formal degrees that may or may not be explicitly desired.

The advice by people with tenure at large enough places to have real multidisciplinary departments is likely not going to be applicable to you on the market several years from now.  The history market is already glutted and it will get worse as current lecturers, adjuncts, VAPs, and even TT/T folks lose their jobs and will be back on the market immediately.  There's no way that we're going to have lots more academic history jobs in the next couple of years so the market will be even worse when you graduate than it is now.

Having teaching HS history as a fallback is a very common Plan B for those with graduate degrees in history.  Thus, that market is also glutted and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.  If you were a math or physics HS teacher, then that would be different, but HS history is not a near slam-dunk fall back plan.  What's your Plan C?

* We can quibble about exact numbers, but "really, really awful" from tenured people doesn't send the same message as "near certainty of failure for the newcomers to the field".

[archaeo42]

I know quite a few Africanists from grad school. I can only think of 2 (a married couple) that have ended up in TT positions. The rest are employed in university study abroad programs, development programs, administrative positions at university centers (e.g. assistant directors, directors), and Federal government (State, USAID, HHS). Depending on your area of specialization, there may be sectors that you could readily find employment in. Research those to see if a PhD is really necessary. I should add that these people were in anthropology, environmental science, education, and sociology departments.

[spork]

[. . . ]

I actually used to work with underrepresented college students for a career advising program.

[. . .]

Chances of full-time, tenure-track employment as a history professor: effectively zero.

Chances of a full-time university career in fields such as recruitment and retention: far higher than zero.

Also any training in statistics (e.g., working knowledge of SPSS) can position you for a job in institutional planning, research, and/or assessment.

Another possible option: $20,000 and two years will get you a master's degree in instructional design. 

[jerseyjay]

If your Plan B is to try to find a job in a university history department, you are, well, not in a good place. You might as well try to win the lottery, marry Jennifer Lopez, or become a rock star.

To answer your question, could you find a job in a history department with an Africana studies degree: it depends. You could probably find a job as an adjunct, but I don't think you want to do that as a career. My department doesn't actually have any classes on African histories, since those are all taught in the Africana Studies department. Who tend to hire historians for those positions.

At some schools, you might be able to get an interview, but keep in mind that other applicants will have history PhDs and there might be a tendency to hire a historian over somebody else for various reasons: conservatism; wanting somebody to be able also teach other history classes such as world history; worries about accreditation. The point is not that you could not convince somebody of your qualifications, but that with so many historians looking for work, there would be less of a reason to take a chance.

Of course, if you have done fieldwork or taught in Africa and have published widely in history journals, you might be competitive.

But to return to my original point, "competitive" in the history market won't get you very far because there are so few jobs to begin with.

My advice to anybody who wants to go into academia (at least the humanities or social scientists) is, think really, really, really hard. Then think again. Because the history market was really bad when I got by PhD in 2003. It was worse in 2016 when I got my tenure-track job.  ANd I believe it is worse now, and not getting better.

[Parasaurolophus]

Having teaching HS history as a fallback is a very common Plan B for those with graduate degrees in history.  Thus, that market is also glutted and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.  If you were a math or physics HS teacher, then that would be different, but HS history is not a near slam-dunk fall back plan.  What's your Plan C?

I expect it's a little different for someone like hazeus, who has already been a HS history teacher. Although reviving that career after the better part of a decade would take work, it's not the same situation as trying to start that kind of career with no prior experience, no contacts, and no existing credential.`


FWIW, it's my impression that it's very hard for people with a 'studies' degree to break back into a 'core' field, and much easier for someone with a 'core' PhD to break into a 'studies' field. I'm not a historian, so I defer entirely to what they have to say here, but I can tell you that in philosophy, you basically can't get a job without a philosophy PhD (and it would be pretty much impossible with a 'studies' degree). You can, however, get jobs in cognate fields (polisci, classics, law, linguistics, mathematics, neuroscience, etc.) with a philosophy PhD. It's rare (though not as rare as you might think!), but nothing like as rare as in the other direction.

If somebody were trying to break into my field from elsewhere (which, as I said, seems like a fool's errand), then yes, the advice would be that they have to (1) publish in our top generalist and specialist journals, and lots, (2) be well-networked and conferenced in this field, to the exclusion of their home field, (3) demonstrating coursework in the target field at a top university in the target field wouldn't hurt, either. And while publishing in our top specialist journals probably wouldn't hurt them in their home field, I doubt their home field would be impressed by/know what to make of pubs in our top generalist journals.

[polly_mer]

If somebody were trying to break into my field from elsewhere (which, as I said, seems like a fool's errand), then yes, the advice would be that they have to (1) publish in our top generalist and specialist journals, and lots, (2) be well-networked and conferenced in this field, to the exclusion of their home field, (3) demonstrating coursework in the target field at a top university in the target field wouldn't hurt, either. And while publishing in our top specialist journals probably wouldn't hurt them in their home field, I doubt their home field would be impressed by/know what to make of pubs in our top generalist journals.

All of that is the research side of academia, not the teaching side.  For the 4/4 (5/5) TT jobs in history (i.e., most of them per the AHA's statements on the job situation), this is the kiss of death because it's preparing for a completely different job that happens to have the same title.

[dr_codex]

Please help.

5 years in grad school + 3 years on the market is 8 years. Think about how old you will be at that point and what it will feel like to have to start over with something else when it becomes clear that you are in the 90%* of graduate-educated historians who don't get a TT job anywhere.

That is the opportunity cost that clean mentions.  The new recurring theme on some parts of these fora is pushing back on the advice to go do something else when "those folks have invested the better part of a decade in preparing for this job.  It's just cruel to insist they start over doing something else".

....

The advice by people with tenure at large enough places to have real multidisciplinary departments is likely not going to be applicable to you on the market several years from now.  The history market is already glutted and it will get worse as current lecturers, adjuncts, VAPs, and even TT/T folks lose their jobs and will be back on the market immediately.  There's no way that we're going to have lots more academic history jobs in the next couple of years so the market will be even worse when you graduate than it is now.

...
* We can quibble about exact numbers, but "really, really awful" from tenured people doesn't send the same message as "near certainty of failure for the newcomers to the field".

Boy, that a nice little ad hominem argument you've got there, Polly.

Good thing that you came along to clarify that my under 10% getting a job REALLY means more than 90% not getting that job. That's the value of a non-academic career using higher math at work, folks!

But let's not quibble. That would be gauche.

[hazeus]

If somebody were trying to break into my field from elsewhere (which, as I said, seems like a fool's errand), then yes, the advice would be that they have to (1) publish in our top generalist and specialist journals, and lots, (2) be well-networked and conferenced in this field, to the exclusion of their home field, (3) demonstrating coursework in the target field at a top university in the target field wouldn't hurt, either. And while publishing in our top specialist journals probably wouldn't hurt them in their home field, I doubt their home field would be impressed by/know what to make of pubs in our top generalist journals.

All of that is the research side of academia, not the teaching side.  For the 4/4 (5/5) TT jobs in history (i.e., most of them per the AHA's statements on the job situation), this is the kiss of death because it's preparing for a completely different job that happens to have the same title.

Could you elaborate on this?

[tuxthepenguin]

One I will throw out: you might be able to adjunct at a CC while working on your PhD. I don't think the probability of a CC job is that good either (not my area) but it might open a door with CC and small teaching colleges.