The Job Market Flashback Part 3

This post is a continuation of my reflection on my experiences on the academic job market.  If you haven’t already read Part 1 and Part 2 about the first two waves of the job cycle, feel free to check them out.  

As Winter break gave way to the start of Spring semester, my job market luck took a turn for the better. I did two screening interviews for assistant professor positions—one at a private University in the Midwest and one at an extension campus of a public university in the South. Both interviews were remarkably unremarkable—although I did awkwardly refer to myself as “just your average straight white guy” in a joke that went over like a lead balloon in one of them—and I hoped to hear back about campus invitations soon after they ended.  In the former case, I was actually very confident that I’d be invited because one of the search committee members was a former colleague and he emailed me to share how well the committee responded to my interview.  It's good to have friends.

Of course, what I expected to happen and what happened were not the same.

After my screening interview with the search committee at the private university, the Dean sent me a list of questions, mostly about how I fit the university’s mission, and requested that I respond to them in writing.  Although my writing time was dedicated to finishing my dissertation, I complied (because… job).  The resulting document was probably three or four pages and a couple of days of writing momentum lost.

During this time, another small college in the Midwest requested a similar essay/letter response to a series of prompts about the institutional mission and position before interviewing me.  I, of course, provided the essay a few days later.  It didn’t matter, not only did they not interview me, they didn’t correspond with me at all.  

Intellectually, I recognize the value of having additional screening tools in the interviewing process, but this was really part of the application, not the interview.  If it’s an interviewing tool, then it should come with some reciprocity (interviewees are interviewing institutions, too).  As it was, this particular college extended the period of time during which an applicant has the least amount of agency for even longer than the normally agonizing period between application and interview. Requesting additional materials makes it seem, at least for this job seeker, that the college is interested in the candidate.  I saw the request as a rare step of positive reinforcement in the otherwise brutal silence-rejection cycle that we call the job market.  Unfortunately, it was more like job fair 2.0, this time with less job fair, artificially inflated expectations, and more wasted time.  Probably better not to have landed that gig, but that’s hard to see when you’re worried about how you’re going to pay for groceries in a few months.

I digress.  After finishing my post-interview writing assignment for the private university in the Midwest, I sent off my essay and expected to hear back from the Dean in a day or two with notification that not only had my brilliant responses landed me the job without need for a campus interview, but that s/he would be hiring me as a tenured Full Professor rather than as an Assistant Professor and that the university would be offering a Mike Trout-esque signing bonus to secure my services.  Because I’m a really good writer, y’all.

I waited confidently for the next few days.  No response from the dean.  My confidence waned a bit as the days became a week, and then more as one became two. At the start of week three, I was convinced that my responses must’ve landed in a spam folder.  I mean, if s/he had them and had read them the overwhelming force of my sheer awesomeness would demand a response, right?  Since there was no reply, the only logical conclusion was that my response essay got delivered to the wrong digital doorstep.  I emailed the Dean to make sure that s/he had my responses.  

About a week later, the Dean replied.  Two short sentences.  The search was cancelled.  Funding for the position was no longer available.

Searches get cancelled every year.  This is a reality of the job market.  It’s also bullshit.  Here, I thought I’d landed a sure thing.  This was a job for which I was a good fit and I had nailed the interview.  Turns out, that and a cup of coffee will get you a cup of coffee (and a little more debt because you probably paid for the coffee with a credit card since you don’t have a job).

By the end of February, my job prospects were less promising than I’d hoped.  The Midwest sure thing turned out to be a big pile of nothing. I’d wasted a few writing days responding to bullshit pseudo-interviews.  And, I hadn’t heard back from the university in South after my mostly positive phone interview.  And I was behind on all of my dissertation deadlines.  Oh, and we had just had a baby.  The job search, new parent, sleep deprived, I’m-never-going-to-be-PHinisheD anxiety was in full fucking swing.

This time seemed to stretch on forever even though it was only about a month.  Things move slowly through committees and bureaucracies.  The academic hire requires three phases of screening—application, screening interview (phone, video chat, conference, etc.), and the campus visit.  Each phase typically includes some deliberation, either by a committee, department, or administration.  That stuff takes time (and the time doesn’t decrease because you keep refreshing the jobswiki… which I did… frequently). 

I’d sent out around fifty applications and the stream of new job ads that began flowing at the end of January seemed to have dried up.  The third “wave” of job market activity (early Spring semester), hadn’t panned out.  Heading into the middle of Spring semester, I was seriously starting to actually worry that not only would I not find work for the coming year, but that I was, in fact, unemployable.  Of course, I wasn’t unemployable and I did find a job for the following year (and the one after that), but we’ll get to that in another post... eventually.

The Job Market Flashback Part 2

This post is a continuation of my reflection on my time on the job market.  If you haven’t already read Part 1, I encourage you to do so before tackling this rant.

Between the convention in November and the start of Spring semester in January, the already bad taste left in my mouth about the job market turned rancid.  The month of December means departments rushing about to finalize grades and prepare for a well-deserved break from classes and students while figuring out Winter writing schedules, prepping courses for Spring, and holiday travel plans.  In short, it means hiring takes a back seat for a while because other stuff has to get done first. 

Intellectually, I understand this.  I too was slogging through grades, writing projects, and holiday plans.  Nevertheless, I habitually checked the job boards only to be disappointed that there once again hadn’t been a rush of new job postings in the last hour (or, you know, the last fifteen minutes…). Before navigating away from one job board to the next, I’d always click refresh just in case I missed the update window by a few seconds.  There were only a handful of new positions posted between the end of Fall semester and the start of Spring, but without the distraction of courses to teach and papers to grade, my attention to the boards was never more acute. This was not good for my mental well-being.  Not one bit.

Near the end of Winter break and the beginning of Spring semester, I attended a small conference with a bunch of rhetoric-type folks in all stages of still-in-graduate school. It was great.  To this day, it was one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended even though I’m fairly certain I pissed off a senior scholar in a panel session—which, as a job seeker was probably not the best move.  

I remember a few things from the conference about research methods, publishing, and so on, but what sticks out most visibly in my memory was a handful of conversations with folks from other universities who were also on the job market. Folks whom I’d met on the various conference circuits.  Folks with whom I’d shared meals and hoisted glasses.  Folks who were, and in most cases still are, my friends.  Folks who were pretty sure they’d be getting the jobs I’d also applied for—and some of them did.

Realizing that most of the folks at the conference hadn’t caught the brass ring yet was a strange mix of terrifying and terrifying.  On the one hand, I was reminded that my small time Ph.D. and silly dissertation project (about stand-up comedy… who cares about comedy?) meant that I had to wait at least until those folks—who were all in better programs and had probably thirty or forty thousand times the publications that I had—had their fill of the available positions before tossing the scraps to the rest of us.  

On the other hand, I was reminded that success in the field is never guaranteed and the elements of a job application that can be controlled are few.  A big name university on a degree or a letter of recommendation from an important scholar doesn’t magically create opportunities. It doesn’t hurt, to be sure, but it isn’t the only factor—or even the most important in the hiring decision.  At that conference, I realized that we were all in the same situation.  Nobody had a job yet (mostly because the typical timeline for hiring cycles means that offers get made in Spring, not Fall).  Everybody was staring into the void of unemployment and fighting off the crushing anxiety of uncertainty—just like me.  This was strangely comforting.

At the conference, I also got a glimpse at how different graduate school experiences affect how people approach and endure the job market.  Typically, we talk about grad school and the market with a kind of universality that elides some unique, and important, sources of anxiety for students and job seekers alike.  The conference gave me some perspective on the difference between my experience as a job seeker from a small program—where I was a comparatively big fish in a small pond (I literally won BGSU’s award for “outstanding graduate student”… the university’s not the department’s)—and my friends who were grinding out their degrees as bigger universities in better programs.

I was one of only a few rhetorical scholars in my program.  That meant that I wasn’t often competing with colleagues in my graduate cohort for placements.  Apart from the cohort level competition for fourth-year funding, we were pretty much all doing our own thing.  

That’s not true at other programs.  

In other programs, folks compete with three or four or more other people from their own cohort—people with whom they’ve survived dreaded Prof. EFG’s unnecessary-but-stupidly-hard seminar, endured a number of too small hotel rooms packed with too many conference goers, occupied less than habitable student housing, or, in some cases, a shared vision of their future—or even a bed.  For those people, I imagine the competition of the job market was less abstract than it was for me.  They knew who had applied for which positions and who was already being interviewed for jobs they desperately wanted.  

This small conference was one of the most powerful reminders that the academic job market involved other people.  It’s not just CVs and impressive letters of recommendation.  It’s people.  People who are every bit as committed to the profession as I am.  People who will miss out on an opportunity if I get one. People who also sit and scream at the jobs wiki when yet another good job posts an update and they didn’t get an interview. 

The conference was strangely cathartic, but also troubling for me as a job seeker.  I sat in panels with smart people who were good scholars from great programs and realized that we were all in the same position.  We were all bearing the weight of the job market. At the same time, I worried that I wouldn’t measure up because I had a much clearer sense of my direct competition. Imposter syndrome is real and the job market amplifies it exponentially. This is also true of Imposter syndrome’s fraternal twin, the envy-fueled resentment that pervades the academy (“What do you mean XYZ got a job a Big State U?  I’m WAY better/smarter/more [self]important than that idiot.  They didn’t even interview me!  S/he must have slept with a committee member.”).  Nevertheless, it helped to see my anxieties reflected back in my peers. I wasn’t crazy.  Or at least, I wasn’t any crazier than anyone else on the market.

Being with other people in the same shitty situation may not have reduced my anxieties about the job market, but recognizing my struggles in their experiences gave me hope that we could all get through it together... as long as there's enough coffee.

Summer Vacation! (Ha!)

Like so many faculty, I’m grading my Spring semester final exams, preparing to submit final grades, and looking forward to Summer.  The uninitiated often refer to this upcoming time as “vacation,” but Summer at the university is only a vacation if you’re a student.  

The professor hustle doesn’t end because May rolls around.  It just changes.  This is particularly true for an untenured professor—which I am.  Sure, I'll travel a bit, go to some conferences, and see family, but there’s shit to do every day, all summer.  Every. Day. All. Summer. 

As an assistant professor working the four class per semester teaching load typical of a teaching university (as compared to research universities where the teaching load could be half or even less), the Summer is the time of year where I can really make some headway into my research and writing.  

During the Fall and Spring semesters, I try like hell to work and write through the semester so that I can maintain a consistent level of productivity, but I usually fall back into incredibly condensed and predictable writing bursts around conference/publication deadlines (like mid-October [ECA] and mid-March [NCA]). I know this is a bad habit—and one that makes me resent writing more than I actually do—and I know that I should write all the time. Every semester, I promise myself that I’m going to finally get it together and work out a healthy writing plan.  I succeed less than I’d like to admit.  Which is to say, I have never succeeded.  Like the student in the back of lecture swiping through Tinder, I fail every semester.  

I have a whiteboard in my office with checklists of things that have to get done.  At the end of this term, it had three columns: grading, writing, and administrative.  Each column has around ten things on it.  The whole damn board is full.  By the end of Spring, the grading was almost done, the administrative stuff was about half done, and one of the writing goals was crossed off.  One.  Because I can’t get my through-the-semester writing shit together, I start every summer already behind.  

Today is the first day of my Summer.  Today is the day I make my writing plan, the day I look at my now mostly open calendar and dream about crossing items off the writing section of the white board, the day I lie to myself about how long it takes to write well (or even how long it takes to write crap).

My writing goals for the summer include an essay revision for a major journal, a book chapter revision for an edited collection, finishing the manuscript of my own book, and revising two essays for journal submission.  Oh, and I need to generate some new writing that will sustain me for the next few years.  No big deal. I figure I’ll knock those out by the end of the month and then have a nice relaxing Summer vacation.

The reality is that I’m probably good for two, maybe three, of those projects.  Last Summer, I kept a record of how often and how much I wrote (professor/grad student friends, this is worth doing).  The contrast between what I did then and what I hope to do now is telling.

My goals this summer will probably require the following writing (in words)

1.     Essay Revision: 3K

2.    Chapter Revision: 4K (current draft is really shitty; Like Cleveland Browns first round picks shitty)

3.    Book Revision: 25K

4.   Submission: 5K

5.    Submission 2: 5K

6.   New stuff: 5K

Total Writing Goal: 47K

Last Summer (June, July, and August), I wrote ~22k words.  If I’m generous and give myself credit for 6K for May (I wasn’t tracking yet) that means I generated ~28K words last summer (May-August).  The difference between my actual productivity last Summer and my goals this Summer is 19K words.  That’s almost an entire extra Summer of writing.  To get caught up on my writing projects, I just need to kick ass all Summer and then kick more ass during a bonus Summer (a pre-tenure sabbatical would nice right about now).

When I look at what I actually wrote—projects worked on/completed (or not) rather than words on pages—the comparison is even more troubling.  I worked on four different research projects last summer: I revised—quite heavily—an essay for submission to a journal, I revised one chapter in my book,  I wrote a chapter for somebody else’s book, and I wrote a book review.  

I submitted the essay revision after working on it for about two months.  I revised, but never really finished the book chapter for about two months. I wrote the chapter for the edited collection in about a month—admittedly, it was based on an essay I wrote in grad school and conferenced but hadn’t gotten around to cleaning up yet so I wasn’t starting from scratch. I finished reading the book to review and drafted my review by the end of summer, but didn’t submit the actual review until September.

I worked on four projects for four months and submitted two of them.  I made progress on the other projects—and I had no illusions that I’d finish my book—but I only actually submitted two things.  

And it’s not like I wasn’t writing last Summer.  I wrote almost every day.  I felt like I was hellaproductive.  Still, I only managed to finish half of the projects I worked on.  Four months of mostly uninterrupted writing time and all I came out with was two measly submissions.  Two. 15k of those 28k words actually went out to reviewers (and onto my CV).  The notion that I’m somehow going to turn out six project this year is ridiculous.

Writing is hard, y’all.

To my fellow academic-writers heading into Summer vacation:  if your goal is to catch up, change it. The reality of Summer is that you never catch up.  Instead, make it your goal to find ways to keep up with your writing.  Take whatever you’re working on, make a list, and then cross out two (or, if your list looks like mine, cross out four).  Find ways to live with your writing.  And, more importantly, find ways to write every day, all summer.

The Job Market Flashback Part 1

In my current context, I'm lucky enough to be the coordinator of our MA in Communication Studies program.  That means that I live in my email and burn away hours putting out little administrative fires.  It also means that I get to spend quite a bit of time mentoring graduate students and having career planning conversations.  This is one of the most rewarding aspects of being a professor.  At least, it is for me.

Having somehow managed to continue getting renewed through my probationary period as a tenure-track faculty member, I've reached a point in my career where my former students--many of whom have gone on to pursue PhDs at great universities--are preparing to face the pain and suffering of the academic job market.  As a result, I've been retelling my experiences as a job seeker and reflecting on the brutality of the job market quite a bit recently with a little more critical (and emotional) distance than I've ever been afforded.  

In this series of job market flashbacks, I'll be recounting my two cycles as a job candidate in hopes of providing a little perspective on the experience.  These posts are probably more for me--as a way of working through the psychological trauma of the market--as they are for anyone else, but I like to tell myself that they're helping refine the stories and glean some lessons that I can pass on to my students.  

These posts are not lists of practical advice.  Those exist elsewhere. I love me some www.theprofessorisin.com (Dr. Kelsky's book by the same name is also really good), and there's always an article or two in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the market for advice seekers.  I encourage you to seek them out.

In this post, I reflect on the "first wave" of the job market cycle--from around August 1 until the National Communication Association annual convention in November--from my first run at the market.

During my first run at the market,  I deftly avoided writing a dissertation (a skill I would later lament), helped my spouse discern an important shift in her career, moved into a new house, lived, for a time, in a chicken coop (seriously), and faced the very real concern that I would not be employed the following year and would have to start paying off my student loans with IOUs and book reviews (that’s a joke, see, because book reviews are basically worthless even as academic currency). Oh, and we welcomed our daughter into the family without any real sense of how much money it costs to raise a child.

Much to the chagrin of my letter writers and references, I sent out more than sixty applications in my first year on the job market.  I applied for anything and everything that I was remotely qualified for and somethings for which I was remarkably unqualified.  Research positions, teaching positions, fetal positions, you name it, I sent them my CV. The result of my effort was a handful of phone interviews, a smaller handful of campus invitations, and three job offers.

In the first “wave” of activity, I conducted one pre-conference phone interview with a small public university in the South for a position that was a tenure-track teaching position loosely categorized as “speech communication.”  The interview was mostly okay from my standpoint, but was nothing to write home about.  We probably spent more time talking about how one of the interviewers was a home brewer because the university was in a dry county than we did talking about my teaching experiences and philosophies.  I was not invited to campus.  Fun fact: one of the search committee members was also on the job market and scooped up one of the better jobs on the West Coast.  I don’t know who they hired or what criteria they used, but it wasn’t me (and given the number of Visiting Professorships in that department, I’m thankful to have dodged that bullet).

That year’s National Communication Association Convention was particularly challenging for me.  I remember feeling the oppressive weight of the job market in full effect while I prepped my presentations, endured the meat market otherwise known as the job fair, and gritted my teeth through the always awkward performance of “academic” that the conference entails.  

It was at this convention that I started responding to over-the-top academic posturing--people trying really hard to be really smart... you know it when you see it--with my best Hulk Hogan double bicep flex pose (no t-shirts were harmed in the making of this ridicule).  I usually, though not always, do this out of the sightline of the guilty party.  To this day, one of my favorite conference memories is dishing about the conference at a pizza shop with my friends only to occasionally break out the “gun show” as we mocked the trite performances of the really smart people that we’d witnessed earlier that day. We were in stitches all night.  As the night wore on, it got to the point where the stories were so predictable that we were laughing about the idea of "posturing" before the mock-flexing even began.  In my memory, there was also a spit take or two.  In hindsight, I wasn't the only one there on the job market.  We were probably just laughing to keep from crying.

(Doesn't he look smart???)

I was invited for only one interview at that convention.  In fact, I’ve only been interviewed once at our annual academic fête.  My interview experience at the NCA in DC was, to this day, the worst interview I’ve ever endured.  The actual conversation was pretty standard, but the context of the interview was soul-crushing.  I learned during my fifteen-minute window that I hadn’t earned the interview by making anyone’s shortlist.  The interview wasn’t about me at all.  Instead, the guy across the table from me had driven down to DC from his university up the East Coast to interview literally everyone who had applied for the position.  When it came time for me to ask questions in the interview, I asked—having completely given up on getting the gig—how many interviews he was doing at the convention. He confessed that he’d spent two days conducting a series of fifteen-minute “interviews” like the one I’d just suffered though.

I never had a shot at that job—which was another generalist tenure-track teaching position at a public university. In hindsight, I should have seen the signs for what they were.  When I arrived a few minutes before my interview—which was to be held at a table outside of the coffee shop in the convention lobby—I noted that another candidate was still finishing up her chat with the interviewer.  About two questions into my interview, I caught the interviewer looking over my shoulder.  Stealing a glance behind me, I saw the next sucker sitting on the floor against the wall waiting to take the seat I was keeping warm.  The conversation may have been hollow and disappointing, but the interview itself was inhumane.  I arrived for the interview feeling as though I’d accomplished something—making the shortlist—and left realizing that I’d sunk even more time into another failed application that went nowhere.  I learned in the interview that even though the position was advertised for a “Communication” professor, the department was really looking for a “Journalism” professor. Surprising as this may be to the uninitiated, these are not the same thing.  What a waste of everyone’s time.

The DC conference was also my first experience with the conference job fair/meat market.  Every year, a number of departments send representatives to sit awkwardly behind tables with position descriptions while eager graduate students and desperate job seekers mill about asking awkward questions like, “where the f@$% is XXX State University?” or exclaiming, “I didn’t even know XXX had a university!” All this while standing in line waiting to hand over business cards and CVs before exchanging smiles and handshakes in order to feel some small measure of control over their otherwise terrifyingly uncertain futures.  

At the job fair, I chatted with maybe four or five departments, but mostly only to verify that no one was looking for a worthless scholar like me (the imposter syndrome is real). I also patiently waited to talk with a department representative from a small liberal arts college in my home state for nearly 30 minutes as the job fair was closing because the job seeker who’d arrived a step or two ahead of me held court at the table while I stood to the side imagining what would happen if he were suddenly and inexplicably crushed by an Acme anvil falling from the sky.  

I felt a strange mixture of pity and rage as this clearly desperate job seeker regaled the poor woman behind the table with a litany of excuses about an extensive gap in his employment history.  Apparently, before he blocked my chances of having any kind of meaningful conversation with the department representative at the job fair, he’d been an asshole in China or Russia or France or somewhere else overseas and felt the need to talk about it until the people around him couldn’t hear anything else through the haze of pretention. When he finally recognized that the job fair had ended and the other exhibitors were closing up shop, my time at the table was about thirty seconds. It went something like this:

“Oh, you study rhetoric? That’s cool. I study rhetoric!  We’re not hiring a rhetorician.”  

Good times.

I was never so jaded about the academy as I was in those few moments after I walked out of the job fair.

Part 2 of this flashback will find its way to a blog near you soon... like this one.  This blog right here.  

Reach Out and Touch Race!

I teach my rhetoric and popular culture seminar by working through a series of concepts on one day and then applying those concepts to an example or series of examples the next day. Over the last couple of days, we’ve been talking about race and culture. After introducing some critical race studies and whiteness studies concepts, I usually then have the class work through a few Lenny Bruce bits that were the basis of a chapter I wrote with Chad Nelson. Since I’m pretty familiar with the arguments in the chapter (having written them), I use the lesson as a chance to give my students a peek behind the curtain into my critical process.

This semester, I’ve supplemented the discussion with Eric King Watts’ essay, “Postracial Fantasies, Zombies, and Blackness.” I intended to use Watts’ critique of the zombie Obama shooting targets as a text to work through on day two (along with the Lenny Bruce bits), but, to my surprise, the theoretical conversation about postracism paid more dividends then the case study (not that Watt’s criticism is somehow less valuable than his lit review. Quite the contrary, it’s really good. My pedagogical skill was the problem, not the criticism).

Of note, Watts—following Coates and Dyson—emphasizes the idea that postracial discourses (denials of race and racism… think, “I don’t see race”) often work by creating a logical progression from race to racism. That is, because race is a thing so too is racism. Or, the social construction of race creates racism. This is a pretty common way of thinking about race and leads it to an apparently simple solution: if we just stop talking about race then racism will wither on the vine. If we stop creating categories then we will stop treating people like shit. Would that it was so. For some reason, even though I encounter legions of bright-eyed undergraduates who insist that they “don’t even think about race” or “don’t see color” racism is still evident (see, for instance, any newsmedia website comment section… or your TwitFaceGram feed).

The reality, and Watts demonstrates this clearly, is the other way around: racism begets race. The social construction of race was always carried out at the behest of racism (and colonialism, classism, etc.). The concept race supports the structures of racism. Without racism, we wouldn’t need race (and make no mistake, culture needs race).[1] Without racism, race would lose both its oppressive capacity and its potential to help critics understand racism (and culture). Without racism, race would be empty, meaningless, and, essentially, unnecessary.

I’m struck by this remarkably simple, conceptual reversal because it solves the problem of the “personal racist” that comes up whenever I discuss race with my students. The “personal racist” is a lot like the “personal Jesus”—the one who you invite into your heart to solve all of the problems of sin (as though the divine requires an invitation—we tend to think pretty highly of ourselves, eh?). Unlike the “personal Jesus,” the “personal racist” is the Klansman in your heart that you’ve expelled because, surely, you aren’t a racist (if you were, you’d have invited that bastard in, burnt a cross on your neighbor’s lawn, and joined a militia on the Southern Border, right?). 

The problem, for me, is that because folks have clearly disavowed their “personal racist” they often fail to see the complexities of racism and race in contemporary culture (see also, me; I fail in this very same way all the time). The “personal racist” puts race before racism by internalizing racism as a personal, individual problem rather than a societal, cultural problem that affects not just me (personally), but all of us together.

I can either challenge, support, or accept racism. Disavowing my “personal racist,” doesn’t challenge racism, at least not at the cultural/societal level. Instead, challenging my “personal racist” permits me to feel good about my relationship to the racism that persists all around me that I have accepted (and allows me to ignore my complacence). It’s only when I forget about my self-serving “personal racist” for a minute that I can start to see how racism is keeping me from myself, my culture, and my neighbor.

Not being (a) racist isn’t good enough and it never was. We must be anti­-racist. The only choice is to challenge racism.

My colleagues of color and fellow scholars of race know this already. I haven’t said anything new here, but I’m still coming to grips with my complacence. Feel free to join me.

---

[1]Of course, we don’t need culture as we know it... which is kind of the point, isn’t it?

All Writing is Returning to Writing (or Blogging...)

I want to get my blog back on the level.  In order to do that, I intend to write a few shorter pieces based on my research (and research that I’ll never actually finish).  I also will be writing a few pieces about writing, research, and teaching. This one is about writing.

Over the last year or so, I’ve spent a fair bit of time reading about writing.  I’ve read books by academics about how to write more than you already do.  I’ve read books by nonfiction authors about how to approach writing like it’s a fucking job (because, if you’re a professor, it is).  I’ve read books by fiction writers about finding “flow” or “the zone” or “focus” or whatever actual productivity feels like.

These books contain multitudes.  Very repetitive multitudes.  There comes a point in the research process where scholars indicate that they have achieved saturation.  I’m not sure I’m there on the writing books, but I’m awfully close.  Here is one of the most important lessons that I’ve encountered across each of these formats:  drafts do different things.

In Bird by Bird, Ann Lamott urges her reader to write “shitty first drafts.”  She writes about getting words on the page and then letting your brain go to work tinkering and fixing and making it less shitty.  The purpose of the first draft is to be a big steaming pile of shit—but it has to be on the page.  

This is freeing in a way, because it helps me deal with my inner critic who insists that that last line was derivative (and that repeating the word that is redundant and clunky).  “It’s okay,” I tell my inner-asshole, “I’ll fix it later.  Right now, I have to get to the next idea.”  Once the ideas are on the page, they can be outlined, analyzed, and revised.  Until that time, they’re just floating around in your head and not doing anyone any good (including you).

In addition to my reading about writing meta-crisis, I’ve also been reading a bunch of Neil Gaiman books[1]—and my InstaTwitFace knows it.  It also knows that I’m an educator and fascinated by learning and self-actualization.  Take these two bits of information, shake them up, ad a twist of social media big brother, and I keep seeing ads for Neil Gaiman’s Master Class video series (for the incredibly low price of $90 you too can be an award-winning author of incredibly deep, creative fiction, graphic novels, and, an episode of Dr. Who or two).  Of course, since the algorithm thinks I should watch the ad, I have—and if I had $90 and time (which is significantly harder to come by), I’d probably watch the videos.  In the ad, Gaiman talks about how the first draft is about figuring out what you’re writing and that the second draft is about acting like you knew it all along. 

This too can be quite freeing.  

I harp on my students about writing “ah ha” arguments—the ones where they write 1000 words of meandering nonsense before arriving at something that resembles an argument and then, convinced of their genius, stop writing a sentence or so later, hit submit, wait a few minutes and then email me to inquire about why they have yet to be notified of their perfect score for the assignment.  The solution to the “ah ha” problem is almost always to move the last paragraph to the beginning and rewrite everything that follows in order to defend rather than find the “ah ha.”  

It sounds so easy, doesn’t it?  It does—at least until you try to do it. Rewriting something word by word, sentence by sentence, idea by idea is hard.  Really hard.

The first draft is your brain crapping on the page.  The second one requires sifting through the crap to figure out what’s worth writing and why it’s worth writing.

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[1]Big fan of The Ocean at the End of Lane.  American Gods is as good as advertised, but was a little slow/drawn out.  Anansi Boys, so far, has been quite fun.  I'm looking forward to digging into Good Omens soon. Art Matters is a must read for a humanist/artist/critic-type.

The GOP Horror Picture Show

What does this guy,

have to do with this guy? 
 

 

I think the answer has something to do with “genres”--the types or categories of literature, film, music, and so on.

In film, genres essentially evolve in the same way.  There is a period of innovation in which the standards for the genre are set.  Next, the genre enjoys a period of replication where the genre becomes a powerful resource for filmic invention and a series of similar films flood the market.  Eventually, the genre enters a period of self-reflexivity in which films begin to “talk back” to the generic conventions that constrain them.  And finally, self-reflexivity gives way to full blown parody, spoof, and send-up. 

Okay, that last little bit isn’t in keeping with classical genre theory, but I think works anyway.  Also, I study comedy, so you knew I was going there eventually, right?

Here’s an example from the horror genre—because I like horror films and because that is how Sharon Croft explained genre when I took film studies at Capital University.

1. Innovation—(1974) Texas Chainsaw Massacre & (1978) Halloween get the slasher genre going.
2. Replication or “Can I get a sequel?”—(1980) Friday the 13^th and (1984) A Nightmare on Elm Street define the slasher genre and generate franchises that still haven’t quite gone away.
3. Self-reflexivity—(1996) Scream begins a slasher franchise that is keenly aware of its participation in the genre and occasionally references not only itself, but also other films in the genre.
4.  Parody—(2000) Scary Movie gets Ghost Face high and makes a pile of money mocking the slasher genre and horror films in general.
5. Rebirth—(2004) Saw picks up the serial killing slasher, adds a creepy puppet, and earns its way into the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful horror franchise in Hollywood history.

So what does this have to do with the Republican nominee for president?

Rhetorical critics, like the one writing this post that you are miraculously still reading, are at times quite taken with the idea of genre.  Speeches are often classified as to how they respond to various occasions, how they function, or which form or forms they prefer.[1]  Beyond speeches, Glenn Richardson has also noted how the genres of popular culture—like uh, I don’t know, horror films—impress themselves upon other kinds of messages (notably political advertisements) in order to convey complex meanings in apparently simple packages.  Essentially, these genres are powerful sources for inventing persuasive messages.  Appealing to a genre activates already existing tendencies in audiences to like or dislike particular kinds of messages and triggers emotions associated with the messages in the genre.  This persuasive potential isn’t lost on the power hungry and politically ambitious.

Given the overwhelming reliance on fear appeals (“Make America Safe Again”) during the Republican National Committee’s quadrennial spectacular scare-a-thon,[2] I find it no small leap to suggest that contemporary conservative rhetoric is particularly drawn to the signs and symbols of the horror genre.  Of course, fear appeals in conservative politics aren’t new (and, I should add, aren’t limited only to conservatives—the DNC had plenty of Donald Trump centered fear appeals), but characterizing Republican-talk in terms of the horror genre might be helpful in understanding the evolution of conservative discourse that created a space where the Donald could take up the standard for the GOP in the general election somewhere other than on The Simpsons.

Think about it.

Genres begin with innovation.  For the sake of argument, let’s assume that contemporary conservative discourse begins with Reagan.  Which is to say, Reagan is the Leatherface of Republican rhetoric, which is also to say, he was terrifying in ways that his rhetorical descendants never really were/are (neoliberalism is a thing, people). 

Bush Sr., then, takes up Reagan’s already existing genre and functions as replication of a well established way of relating to the world.  Consider him Jason to Reagan’s Leatherface—a burgeoning franchise that looks a lot like the original, but is a little more predictable.

Speaking of franchises, Bush part Deux takes the genre out of replication—he wasn’t really like his dad or the Reagan—and into self-reflexivity. His rhetorical reliance on social conservatism (of compassionate conservatism, as his campaigns preferred) was certainly unorthodox, but thanks in no small part to some genetic engineering and his penchant for being photographed near flags, he looked like a president and he occasionally did things that reminded us of his Republican predecessors (like, you know, invade Iraq).  Exchanging the hockey mask for a ghost face, the result (murder of innocents) was the same, but the genre appeared to be reaching its limits and collapsing back in on itself.

And here we are.  Republican slasher film rhetoric appears primed to make its last final generic evolution.  If Trump is the new (orange-tinged) face of conservatism, perhaps his rhetoric is best understood as a generic parody.  It all sounds familiar, comprised of the same old scare tactics and fear appeals of Reagan era rhetoric and its replicants, but it’s hard to take too seriously, almost like everything he says is accompanied by a wink and a nod.  In fact, his incredible reliance on catchphrases, slogans, and talking points—without any of the argumentation—makes it seem almost as though he’s mocking Republicans rather than rallying them.  His fear appeals are ridiculous, laughable, and reprehensible.  

But that’s exactly why they’re appealing.  The horror audience gets a double pleasure from parody because it at once supplies the scare-tactics that they so enjoy, but also rewards them for getting the jokes and catching the references along the way.  Republicans like to be scared, so they tell the same ghost stories with many of the same characters (immigrants, communists, and Clintons), but with Trump they get to revel in the pleasures self-mockery and laughter as they celebrate and pay homage to their rhetorical legacy all the while preparing it for rebirth with a touch of torture porn.

The upshot, although liberal commentators and critics are at once terrified and tickled by the idea of a Trump nomination, his expression of the genre—though potentially lucrative and franchise worthy—isn’t likely to scare audiences enough to have staying power.  Trump’s Reagan/Bush parody isn’t scary enough to move his audience to the polls, but the Republican Jigsaw killer—whoever he is—will be something terrifying indeed.

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[1] For more, read something—anything—by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson.  Joshua Gunn, too, has a few good examples of rhetorical genre in press worth checking out.  Oh, and other people, too.  Just read stuff.  Reading is good for you.

[2] http://time.com/4419725/rnc-fear-violence/; http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/07/despair_and_fear_after_trump_at_the_rnc.html; http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/donald-trump-delivers-dark-fear-mongering-rnc-speech-w430397; http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-rnc-convention-trump-safety-huppke-20160718-story.html; http://www.salon.com/2016/07/19/fear_and_loathing_of_clinton_forget_melania_hillary_hating_took_center_stage_at_rncs_opening_night/;