Jane Austen and the academic job search

[polly_mer]

https://the-rambling.com/2021/02/13/issue11-spampinato showed up in my Twitter feed.

[Larimar]

I like this article. Yes, I'm a Jane Austen fan.

[hmaria1609]

Thank you for sharing!  I enjoyed it.

Of interest, there's a novel Miss Austen by Gill Hornby (2020). An aging Cassandra Austen goes to visit one of the surviving Fowle sisters and recalls Jane during her stay.

[Parasaurolophus]

Charlotte Lucas is absolutely the right touchstone.

[apl68]

Not a fan, but it's a thoughtful read about how texts written long ago are worth studying today.  The world may be drastically different today, and yet how much have people really changed?

[Morden]

Thank you for this, Polly. I have just forwarded it to our honours advisor.

[ergative]

I feel like there's a similar essay to be written about young clergymen desperately trying to get posts in Victorian novels. Something about Mr. Crawley's position in the Small House at Allington and the Last Chronicle of Barset reminds me of the adjunct plight. The young hero of Margaret Oliphaunt's Perpetual Curate is definitely about someone on the TT market, and the male protagonist of Oliphaunt's Salem Chapel reads a lot like someone who wants to have an R1 job getting a TT position at a SLAC and learning the hard way how bad his fit is.

[polly_mer]

Not a fan, but it's a thoughtful read about how texts written long ago are worth studying today.  The world may be drastically different today, and yet how much have people really changed?

Not much.  The value of literature to daily life is so relevant and yet that's frequently not what students get out of mandatory reading.

[Ruralguy]

You know, I only started to read as a high schooler, and now I've continued. I think I peaked at about 10 books per year or maybe a bit more, which I realize isn't a lot compared to real readers. Anyway, I've slowed quite a bit. Still pick up an occasional tidbit.

I went to an esteemed elite school with a highly regarded core (maybe mostly by them and their alums!) . But honestly, I can't say I got a lot out of those readings. Not that really stuck.  The most interesting thing I've taken from the Odyssey is the amount of science fiction that more or less directly rips it off. I suppose it was cool having weekly conversations about stuff like that, and with people who were smart, but didn't necessarily already know about that kind of thing. But we were reading a lot more than that, and in many different classes, and its 99% a blur. I think at  first I appreciated the works, and now I just appreciate the appreciation.  I'm not an erudite person, but I think I have a reasonable knowledge of culture, history, etc. and that does indeed help put things in perspective, even if its just "getting" an off-hand reference in a movie, or understanding the context of my physical sciences work over the centuries. Again, maybe a fancier way of saying I appreciate my education without necessarily getting a ton of content from it.

[spork]

You know, I only started to read as a high schooler, and now I've continued. I think I peaked at about 10 books per year or maybe a bit more, which I realize isn't a lot compared to real readers. Anyway, I've slowed quite a bit. Still pick up an occasional tidbit.

I went to an esteemed elite school with a highly regarded core (maybe mostly by them and their alums!) . But honestly, I can't say I got a lot out of those readings. Not that really stuck.  The most interesting thing I've taken from the Odyssey is the amount of science fiction that more or less directly rips it off. I suppose it was cool having weekly conversations about stuff like that, and with people who were smart, but didn't necessarily already know about that kind of thing. But we were reading a lot more than that, and in many different classes, and its 99% a blur. I think at  first I appreciated the works, and now I just appreciate the appreciation.  I'm not an erudite person, but I think I have a reasonable knowledge of culture, history, etc. and that does indeed help put things in perspective, even if its just "getting" an off-hand reference in a movie, or understanding the context of my physical sciences work over the centuries. Again, maybe a fancier way of saying I appreciate my education without necessarily getting a ton of content from it.

I.e., knowing where something like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies comes from? Having a certain amount of cultural capital is definitely useful. My wife and I come from very different backgrounds, yet we can bond over the cultural products that we both have some familiarity with.