Although I came to hate academic Marxists through my experiences at Stanford, my first tenure track job was at a place dominated by conservative Spanish men. We had nickname for them: "@^$@%." It was a conflictive department, and I was a conflictive person. I should have handled some things differently. My solution was to fight back and to publish like hell. My second book appeared in print about the time I got tenure there. I published in Hispanic Review, PMLA, Insula, MLN. A year later, I left and came to Kansas with tenure.
I've done better in departments where there was outright conflict or I was an outright target than when there were more subtle forms of destructiveness (e.g. "to save all of our jobs, this large service project must be undertaken, and only you can, remember men have to publish, too, and you're not in [your grad school] any more, things are different here...").
ReplyDeleteWho are you anyway? (You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, of course. I respect your privacy.)
ReplyDeleteI am sincerely hoping you can't tell.
ReplyDeleteI will tell you some time - I am betting you do not know me - but I am learning from this blog.