by Robert Launay I have taught the history of anthropology since 1978, give or take a year (who’s counting?). At the beginning and the end of my career, I have had to cope with the same question: why should students have to study the history of the discipline? The rationale underlying such a question has …
By Kathe Managan This fall, with my AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) card in my wallet, I attended my third new faculty orientation and learned about the policies of tenure and promotion at a university where I have been teaching since 2018. That’s because I only recently made the transition from a non-tenure track …
+ Read More Careers and Caregiving: An impossible juggling act?
By Marco Lazzarotti We have a tendency to perceive the passage of time as traced by the path of an idealized academic career. In this vision, an academic career is perceived as an obstacle race, or perhaps an elimination race—with well-defined paths and obstacles carefully laid out before us. As we inexorably move down this …
+ Read More Bifocal Glasses: Too old for an academic career?
By Laura Miller. Expectations for academics are sometimes based on stereotypes. One idea is that people reach the apex of their creativity and intensity before diminishing energy and relevance after the age of 60. I suspect that “relevance” has more to do with academic trends than with research productivity. Less energy may be a genuine …
+ Read More It’s not all downhill: On becoming an older scholar
Post by blog member Kerim Friedman. As one gets older, one’s experience of time simultaneously collapses and expands, creating a parallax effect. Amidst the daily routine of the school year, time seems to pass ever slower, each semester much like the next, erasing any sense of the passage of time. At the same time, the …