Given the continued challenges that face the higher education job market in the Humanities in North America, this multi authored volume offers (i) a critical assessment of the current situation of Humanities doctoral students, early career scholars, and those now working in doctoral degree-granting institutions in the U.S. along with (ii) concrete proposals for a way forward. In turn, these proposals (iii) are the starting point for constructive reflections by faculty now working in leading American doctoral programs. The aim for the volume is therefore to initiate and then move forward a conversation among future, current, and recent graduate students as well as those who train them concerning the content, process, and purpose of acquiring advanced research skills in the early twenty-first century university. For this is a time when most everyone in higher ed. knows that a decreasing few who earn these degrees will ever attain work as tenured faculty members while an ever increasing number will, instead, end up either in perpetually insecure contingent faculty positions or, for a variety of reasons, will opt to seek careers outside academia, where the explicit relevance of their training is, at least at present, uncertain and uncharted. The volume asks what the role of these students' faculty, supervisors, degree programs, and Departments ought to be in helping them-and thereby helping these doctoral programs themselves, along with their affiliated faculty-to excel in an economic, and sometimes political, environment that is often not kind to scholarship in the Humanities.
Edited by:
Russell T McCutcheon
Imprint: Equinox Publishing Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Weight: 263g
ISBN: 9781800505438
ISBN 10: 1800505434
Series: NAASR Working Papers
Pages: 148
Publication Date: 20 November 2024
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Foreword Raj Balkaran Preface Russell T. McCutcheon Introduction Russell T. McCutcheon Context 1. “The University Absolutely Had Nothing in Place…”: Life After Grad School with Bradley Sommer Jacob Barrett, Erica Bennett and Bradley Sommer 2. “A Series of Decisions Which Are Going to Affect You Over Time…”: Life After Grad School with Pamela Gilbert Jacob Barrett, Erica Bennett and Pamela Gilbert 3. “What I’m Doing is Pivoting My Career…”: Life After Grad School with Jared Powell Jacob Barrett, Erica Bennett and Jared Powell 4. “Be Thoughtful About What Skills You’re Developing…”: Life After Grad School with Shannon Trosper Schorey Jacob Barrett, Erica Bennett and Shannon Trosper Schorey Manifesto 5. Religious Studies Beyond the Discipline: On Earning and Awarding a Humanities Ph.D. Andrew Ali Aghapour, Shannon Trosper Schorey, Thomas J. Whitley, Vaia Touna and Russell T. McCutcheon Responses 6. The Future of an Illusion Barbara R. Ambros and Randall Styers 7. A Response to the Manifesto David Frankfurter 8. In the Best Scenario… Martin Kavka 9. The Way We Lived Then and Now: The Ph.D. and its Employments Richard A. Rosengarten Afterword Emily Crews Appendices Appendix 1: Tracking Doctoral Graduates in the Study of Religion Russell T. McCutcheon Appendix 2: SBL/AAR Position Advertisements, 2001-2019 Russell T. McCutcheon
Russell T. McCutcheon is University Research Professor and, for 18 years, was the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. He has written on problems in the academic labor market throughout his 30-year career and helped to design and run Alabama’s skills-based M.A. in religion in culture. Among his recent work is the edited resource for instructors, Teaching in Religious Studies and Beyond (Bloomsbury 2024).
Reviews for Religious Studies Beyond the Discipline: On the Future of a Humanities Ph.D.
ReviewsThis landmark publication needs to be read-and read widely. Religious Studies Beyond the Discipline is more than a manifesto: it sparks a conversation, a crucial conversation, that we'd be wise to collectively engage, advance, enrich and put into action. Our very survival as a discipline depends upon it. From the Foreword by Raj Balkaran
