{"id":1595,"date":"2013-11-25T08:32:56","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T15:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/?p=1595"},"modified":"2013-11-25T10:48:43","modified_gmt":"2013-11-25T17:48:43","slug":"what-alt-ac-can-do-and-what-it-cant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/what-alt-ac-can-do-and-what-it-cant\/","title":{"rendered":"What Alt-Ac Can Do, and What It Can&#8217;t"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This is a cleaned-up, lightly edited version of a talk I gave on November 22, 2013, as part of a panel on \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/convention2.allacademic.com\/one\/theasa\/theasa13\/index.php?click_key=1&amp;cmd=Multi+Search+Search+Load+Session&amp;session_id=197799&amp;PHPSESSID=vr2gv77n6aidmia3c2oqpc1gs0\">Digital Humanities and the Neoliberal University<\/a>\u201d at the American Studies Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Our original proposal for this session read like a lot of attempts to grapple with controversy in the digital humanities.\u00a0\u201cIs digital humanities complicit with the neoliberal impulse in the modern university?\u201d it asked.\u00a0\u201cSome say it is, citing A, B, and C. Others say it isn\u2019t, citing X, Y, and Z.\u201d The framework, if unoriginal, had the benefit of being easy to write.<\/p>\n<p>My copanelist Natalia Cecire pushed us to think beyond this clich\u00e9.\u00a0\u201cLet\u2019s start with the premise that it <em>is<\/em>\u00a0complicit,\u201d said Cecire, citing Alan Liu\u2019s\u00a0\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/liu.english.ucsb.edu\/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities\/\">Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?<\/a>\u201d\u00a0\u201cElse why would it be so obviously attractive to the neoliberal university? Let\u2019s start with that and talk about what we then do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Borrowing Natalia\u2019s framework, I want to complicate a discourse about labor that has emerged from and become identified with the digital humanities. The term for this work is\u00a0\u201calt-ac,\u201d which stands for &#8220;alternative academic.&#8221; <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_1595_1('footnote_plugin_reference_1595_1_1');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_1595_1('footnote_plugin_reference_1595_1_1');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_1595_1_1\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[1]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1595_1_1\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">My critique is not altogether new. Liana M. Silva\u00a0aired some of these concerns\u00a0in April. Martha Nell Smith has levied similar critiques of DH centers\u2019 hiring practices, and Bethany Nowviskie has&nbsp;&#x2026; <span class=\"footnote_tooltip_continue\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_1595_1('footnote_plugin_reference_1595_1_1');\">Continue reading<\/span><\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1595_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1595_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>\u00a0Jason Rhody, a senior program officer for the NEH\u2019s Office of Digital Humanities, <a href=\"http:\/\/storify.com\/nowviskie\/altac-origin-stories\">coined the term<\/a> in 2009 to describe the scholarly work performed by many of us in and in the orbit of the academy who do not hold traditional faculty jobs but do perform scholarly labor. <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_1595_1('footnote_plugin_reference_1595_1_2');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_1595_1('footnote_plugin_reference_1595_1_2');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_1595_1_2\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[2]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1595_1_2\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">For a history of alt-ac and a snapshot of how graduate programs might equip students for these jobs, see the excellent &#8220;Humanities Unbound: Supporting Careers and Scholarship Beyond the Tenure&nbsp;&#x2026; <span class=\"footnote_tooltip_continue\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_1595_1('footnote_plugin_reference_1595_1_2');\">Continue reading<\/span><\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1595_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1595_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Alt-ac\u2019s need not be digital humanists, but digital humanists have found the term to be particularly congenial, since many of us happen to hold these hybrid jobs, and since a founding principle of digital humanities work \u2014 that one can think through and articulate humanistic principles in unconventional ways \u2014 complements the nontraditional, praxis-based scholarship that many alt-ac\u2019s perform. Alt-ac\u2019s need not be Ph.D.s, but given the current status of the academic job market, many Ph.D.s have seized on the alt-ac movement as a beacon of hope in an otherwise fairly depressing situation.<\/p>\n<p>Had I been aware of the term alt-ac in graduate school, I\u2019m sure I would have gravitated to it. The notion that we can celebrate and encourage work that generally escapes the regard of the academy would have appealed to me, a frustrated Ph.D. candidate who suspected that a traditional faculty role would be too solitary, competitive, and insular for her. And, indeed, I delight in my current role at UCLA, where I teach, do administrative work, and build projects in a digital humanities-focused job that was explicitly advertised as alt-ac.<\/p>\n<p>So for awhile I celebrated every time a university, scholarly society, or philanthropic organization touted alt-ac jobs for Ph.D.s.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.historians.org\/publications-and-directories\/perspectives-on-history\/october-2011\/no-more-plan-b\">\u201cNo more Plan B,\u201d<\/a> said the American Historical Association.\u00a0\u201cYes!\u201d I said.\u00a0\u201cNo more Plan B!\u201d I admired (and still do admire) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.acls.org\/programs\/publicfellows\/\">ACLS\u2019s public fellowships<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.clir.org\/fellowships\/postdoc\">CLIR\u2019s postdocs<\/a> for Ph.D.s who want to work in libraries. The alt-ac movement has already had the salutary effect of prompting academics to think twice before they classify a non-professor\u2019s work as non-scholarly, and in doing so it has broadened and strengthened our ideas of what the humanities can be.<\/p>\n<p>For many grad students, alt-ac has been a revelation. It\u2019s so important for Ph.D. students to know that you can, in fact, work as something other than a faculty member with your Ph.D. And you can love this work and feel that you\u2019re using what you\u2019re learned in your program, too.<\/p>\n<p>You can! But increasingly I feel that you shouldn\u2019t <em>have<\/em>\u00a0to. And that\u2019s what has discomfited me as I hear universities and scholarly societies making what I perceive to be a slip between suggesting alt-ac as a possibility for some Ph.D.s and touting it as a solution to the academic jobs crisis.<\/p>\n<p>For one thing, there aren\u2019t enough alt-ac jobs. I\u2019ll wager that I watch these jobs as closely as anyone else out there, out of a desire to place our graduate students, and I see maybe a couple dozen jobs a year that I feel comfortable recommending to our students. There is no way that the number of alt-ac jobs out there can absorb the current number of job-seeking Ph.D.s.<\/p>\n<p>So, many humanities Ph.D.s will head to cultural heritage institutions, like libraries, archives, and museums. But of course there aren\u2019t that many of these jobs, either. Moreover, these institutions are peopled by professionals who have trained to do these things and will, if you ask them, confess that they\u2019re not delighted about the influx of Ph.D.s and the attendant credential creep.<\/p>\n<p>An alternate, or complementary scenario is that we\u2019ll create more of these alt-ac jobs. Perhaps we\u2019ll see that happening at universities. That would make sense, since if digital humanities continues to catch on, we\u2019ll need more people who can help accomplish big projects while lending them the benefit of deep humanities training.<\/p>\n<p>But let\u2019s talk about what a job like mine is and what it isn\u2019t. It <em>is<\/em>\u00a0fulfilling work \u2014 challenging, consuming, and rewarding. But it is also\u00a0flexible, in the neoliberal sense. I could be let go. Alt-ac\u2019s like me generally don\u2019t have a voice in faculty governance. (Sometimes they do, but usually not.) My job is relatively cheap. I\u2019m fairly compensated for my work, but my position represents a relatively short-term commitment for the university, not the indefinite investment of a tenure line. My position is a 12-month (as opposed to nine-month) job, with an allotment of vacation time and sick leave, meaning I fill out time sheets and ask permission to do things like go to conferences. I have a boss. I don\u2019t own my work in the way that faculty members do. When a faculty member writes a book, it\u2019s hers. Her name is on it, she owns it. I do work that I love but that I will likely not take with me when I\u00a0leave.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t cry for me, ASA. As I said, I love my job, and I\u2019m well-suited to it. But I do hope to give you pause as you consider what a university would look like if it were populated by many <em>more<\/em> people like me: flexible employees, carrying out a great deal of administrative work, whose time is managed by someone else, who do research when they can carve out the time, whose work belongs to someone else, and who have no voice in faculty governance. The picture begins to look a lot like a corporation.\u00a0These alt-ac gigs can be great jobs, but they differ in some fundamental ways from faculty jobs as they have been traditionally\u00a0understood \u2014 and not because we\u2019re doing different work, but because we\u2019re doing that work on very different terms. <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_1595_1('footnote_plugin_reference_1595_1_3');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_1595_1('footnote_plugin_reference_1595_1_3');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_1595_1_3\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">[3]<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1595_1_3\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">We can, of course, dress up these jobs with some of the trappings of faculty lines: research time, teaching options, and travel funding, for example. These are all vitally important amenities, and I&nbsp;&#x2026; <span class=\"footnote_tooltip_continue\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_1595_1('footnote_plugin_reference_1595_1_3');\">Continue reading<\/span><\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1595_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1595_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });<\/script>\u00a0I think we begin to see why so many administrators have embraced the alt-ac model, and why we need to ask ourselves whether this is the future we want for scholarly labor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s better than\u00a0adjuncting!\u201d you might say, and indeed it is. But with that argument, we accede to the narrative of inevitable casualization, and I hope we want something better for ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps our Ph.D.s will go on to do other things entirely. Perhaps they\u2019ll work in all kinds of interesting industries and bring their humanistic training to bear on all kinds of interesting problems. I hope they do. <strong>But we should be mindful that as we encourage an exodus of Ph.D.s from the professoriate, we are <em>not <\/em>simultaneously replenishing the ranks of the tenure-track faculty.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Many of my students tell me that they suspect alt-ac is right for them, that they, like me, feel called to\u00a0apply their skills to practical problems and to work in close collaboration with people of varying backgrounds and skill sets. For their sake, I\u2019m so happy that alt-ac exists as a category of job. How healthy, how liberating to understand that intellectual labor doesn\u2019t have to fit one mold. How exciting to be able to tell them that to do this work is not to fail.<\/p>\n<p>So alt-ac, yes! We should celebrate the possibilities, excitement, and challenges of this work, and we should use this new term to forge alliances with humanistic thinkers of all stripes and backgrounds. But a solution to the academic jobs crisis? I\u2019m afraid we need to look elsewhere for that.<\/p>\n<div class=\"speaker-mute footnotes_reference_container\"> <div class=\"footnote_container_prepare\"><p><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_label pointer\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_1595_1();\">Footnotes<\/span><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button\" style=\"display: none;\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_1595_1();\">[<a id=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_1595_1\">+<\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/div> <div id=\"footnote_references_container_1595_1\" style=\"\"><table class=\"footnotes_table footnote-reference-container\"><caption class=\"accessibility\">Footnotes<\/caption> <tbody> \r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_1595_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_1595_1_1');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_1595_1_1\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>1<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">My critique is not altogether new. Liana M. Silva\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.lianamsilvaford.com\/2013\/04\/29\/altac-will-not-save-us\/\">aired some of these concerns<\/a>\u00a0in April. Martha Nell Smith has levied similar critiques of DH centers\u2019 hiring practices, and Bethany Nowviskie has dealt with a number of these concerns in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nowviskie.org\/2013\/new-deal\/\">\u201cToward a New Deal.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0I am moved and inspired by this vision of a WPA for the humanities, but I feel that my fundamental objection to some of the rhetoric about alt-ac \u2014 that it rests on the flawed assumption that the academic jobs crisis is caused by an overproduction of Ph.D.s \u2014 has yet to be answered.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_1595_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_1595_1_2');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_1595_1_2\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>2<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">For a history of alt-ac and a snapshot of how graduate programs might equip students for these jobs, see the excellent &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/libra.virginia.edu\/catalog\/libra-oa:3480\">Humanities Unbound: Supporting Careers and Scholarship Beyond the Tenure Track<\/a>,\u201d prepared by Katina Rogers for the Scholarly Communication Institute.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_1595_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_1595_1_3');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_1595_1_3\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>3<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">We can, of course, dress up these jobs with some of the trappings of faculty lines: research time, teaching options, and travel funding, for example. These are all vitally important amenities, and I am exceedingly glad that I benefit from them; in fact, I benefit from them precisely because of the work of alt-ac advocates such as those who participated in the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mith.umd.edu\/offthetracks\/\">Off the Tracks<\/a>\u00a0meeting on digital humanities labor. But these perks don\u2019t change what I see as two crucial differences between alt-acs and faculty: tenure eligibility and a voice in faculty governance.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n <\/tbody> <\/table> <\/div><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function footnote_expand_reference_container_1595_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_1595_1').show(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_1595_1').text('\u2212'); } function footnote_collapse_reference_container_1595_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_1595_1').hide(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_1595_1').text('+'); } function footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_1595_1() { if (jQuery('#footnote_references_container_1595_1').is(':hidden')) { footnote_expand_reference_container_1595_1(); } else { footnote_collapse_reference_container_1595_1(); } } function footnote_moveToReference_1595_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_1595_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } } function footnote_moveToAnchor_1595_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_1595_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } }<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a cleaned-up, lightly edited version of a talk I gave on November 22, 2013, as part of a panel on \u201cDigital Humanities and the Neoliberal University\u201d at the American Studies Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C.\u00a0 Our original proposal for this session read like a lot of attempts to grapple with controversy in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,105,3,17,11],"tags":[297,298,299,296,234,123,295,219],"class_list":["post-1595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-life","category-career","category-digital-humanities","category-research","category-teaching","tag-alan-liu","tag-alt-ac","tag-altac","tag-american-studies-association","tag-digital-humanities-2","tag-education","tag-neoliberal-university","tag-ucla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1595"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1604,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595\/revisions\/1604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}