the tenure track, and the spaces in between

In adding blog links to my blog (for no good reason, I prefer to key folks' blog addresses into my template by hand to Blogrolling), I have noticed some things. I was noticing two distinct trends in the blogs I read.

The first is that in my "On the Tenure Track" section, a significant number of these women are starting their first year in tenure-track jobs. It's been wonderful to experience their successful job searches vicariously through their blogs, and I'm sure that following their exploits on the tenure track will be equally gratifying. Congratulations Another Damned Medievalist, Dr. Four Eyes, Professing Mama, and terminaldegree!

As for the Living Liminally, I should explain that I'm not crazy about the word "liminal." I promised that I have never used it in any of my academic writing. To me, it's like the late 90s/early 00s version of "dialectic" and other over-used, misunderstood has-been academic buzzwords.*So, I'm using this phrase somewhat tongue-in-cheek to describe people like me, people who are connected to the academy in some way, but are not on the tenure track. There are a lot of us in this position, for many different reasons, and it's not surprising that these folks' blogs make up a large part of all my blog reading. The spaces in between often have the best views.

Completely unrelated observation: I read the blogs of a number of medievalists, but it always takes me three or four tries to spell that damn word correctly.

* I used to harass a newly-minted Yale Ph.D/visiting prof who expressed a penchant for pretentious humanities-speak by openly mocking his use of "liminality" and similar words. He was so excited about his oh-so-liminal research that he didn't notice me snickering at him. Anyway, I digress.