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Conservative ‘Gay Pardon’ for the dead is a strategic distraction that harms the living

November 3, 2016

On 21 October, Conservative Justice Minister Sam Gyimah was instrumental in the failed second reading of the Sexual Offences (Pardons Etc.) Bill. The private members bill sought to clear the names of men convicted for historic homosexual offences that are no longer crimes. Introduced by Scottish National Party MP John Nicolson, who is openly gay, the […]

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Conservative ‘Gay Pardon’ for the dead is a strategic distraction that harms the living

November 3, 2016 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

On 21 October, Conservative Justice Minister Sam Gyimah was instrumental in the failed second reading of the Sexual Offences (Pardons Etc.) Bill. The private members bill sought to clear the names of men convicted for historic homosexual offences that are no longer crimes. Introduced by Scottish National Party MP John Nicolson, who is openly gay, the bill would have expanded the number of offences for which pardons—and more importantly, ‘disregards’, which effectively erase convictions—could be extended to living men as well as to the dead.

Speaking for some 25 minutes in the House of Commons, Gyimah ‘talked out’ the time allowed for debate, a parliamentary strategy that effectively killed the bill. Gyimah accused that the bill could lead to pardons being claimed by men convicted of offences that remain crimes, ‘including sex with a minor and non-consensual sexual activity’. But these are scare tactics. Nicolson’s bill unambiguously excluded non-consensual offences or those committed with anyone under the age of 16. To be clear, Gyimah’s justification for killing the bill was not that it would actually grant pardons to men convicted of non-consensual or underage sex offences, but that such men might claim to have been pardoned.

The previous day Gyimah had announced the government’s own strategy for pardoning men convicted for homosexual offences. Rather than righting the wrongs of the past, the government’s preferred approach to pardons exploits LGBTQ issues and people for political gain, a perverse outcome of the Conservative government’s ongoing attempt to appear progressive, inclusive, and LGBTQ-friendly.

Continue reading at History Workshop ... 


This post was originally published at History Workshop on 23 October 2016. It was subsequently published at the Policy and Politics blog at the London School of Economics and as 'In Britain, the Conservative Party’s “Gay Pardon” for the Dead Harms the Living' at Slate for US audiences.  

Why I Oppose a General Pardon for Historical Convictions for Homosexual Offences

August 4, 2015

UK Labour Party leadership contender Andy Burnham recently proposed automatic pardons for all men convicted of historical homosexual offences that are no longer crimes. This has been an ongoing conversation in the UK, which in 2013 granted WWII Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing a posthumous royal pardon. The issue reappeared in the lead up to this year’s […]

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Why I Oppose a General Pardon for Historical Convictions for Homosexual Offences

August 4, 2015 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

UK Labour Party leadership contender Andy Burnham recently proposed automatic pardons for all men convicted of historical homosexual offences that are no longer crimes. This has been an ongoing conversation in the UK, which in 2013 granted WWII Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing a posthumous royal pardon. The issue reappeared in the lead up to this year’s May 7 general election, when Labour’s then-leader Ed Miliband came out in favour of case-by-case pardons for living individuals and also posthumous cases. David Cameron and the Conservatives soon followed suit, likewise promising that if were they to form the next government, men convicted of historical offences would be pardoned. Burnham’s announcement has reinvigorated this question of whether all men should have similar convictions deemed spent, pardoned or erased.

A well-publicised petition supported by Turing’s family, activists like Peter Tatchell, and celebrities like Benedict Cumberbatch and Stephen Fry demands that a royal pardon be extended to all men convicted under ‘anti-gay’ laws. More than 600,000 people have signed the petition demanding the state ‘Pardon all of the estimated 49,000 men who, like Alan Turing, were convicted of consenting same-sex relations under the British “gross indecency” law (only repealed in 2003), and also all the other men convicted under other UK anti-gay laws’. As a historian of Britain’s LGBTQ past I cannot sign this petition nor support anything more than pardons for living individuals.

Continue reading at Pink News...


This post was originally published at "NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality" on 4 August 2015 and subsequently republished at The Huffington Post and Pink News.

The Case of the Sultry Mountie, or, We Need to Talk about Cecil

July 15, 2015

I never knew my great uncle Cecil Bengry. Affectionately known as Cic’, this bachelor uncle seems to have lived in the background of other people’s lives. Even the pictures of Cic’ in old age that I found among my own grandfather’s (his brother) papers are faded and overexposed, their physical condition seemingly recreating the fog that […]

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The Case of the Sultry Mountie, or, We Need to Talk about Cecil

July 15, 2015 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

I never knew my great uncle Cecil Bengry. Affectionately known as Cic’, this bachelor uncle seems to have lived in the background of other people’s lives. Even the pictures of Cic’ in old age that I found among my own grandfather’s (his brother) papers are faded and overexposed, their physical condition seemingly recreating the fog that surrounds Cic’s life. We know that he spent most of his life caring for others: animals on the ranch, his mother in her old age, and his brother’s grandchildren in his own later years. They remembered Cic giving them treats of ‘sugar sandwiches’, and knew him as well as anyone could, yet they didn’t know if he had an education, if he had friends, even what he did during the day. He is remembered simply as ‘always there. Good to us.’ Though always around, Cic’ somehow remained unknown. When he died, Cic’ left only one record behind: a small cigarette tin of photos. Inside, along with a child’s glass marble and a few family pictures, were snapshots of numerous men, including one of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer I call the ‘sultry Mountie’.

Unlike every other photo in the tin box, the picture of the Mountie included no information: no caption, no name, no date. He simply stands there, anonymous, leaning casually against a wooden rail with hips thrust forward, looking confidently and directly at the camera. Posing for effect, he invites observation and perhaps objectification. I struggled to understand this image and the homosocial collection of photos with which it came. The tin of photos inspired me to organize, with Amy Tooth Murphy, workshops on what we called ‘Queer Inheritances’ at the London Metropolitan Archives in December 2014. We wondered: How do we discern a queer life from incomplete personal effects whose existence and content are often mediated by other family members? How do we, as queer inheritors, navigate lives lived before many could proclaim to be ‘out and proud’? Ultimately, I wondered, was Cecil queer?

Continue reading at NOTCHES...


This post was originally published at "NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality" on 26 May 2015 and subsequently as 'The Case of the Sultry Mountie: Doing Family History Queerly' on the Huffington Post on 24 June 2015.

Before Grindr, or, The Dangers of the “Gay Bachelor”

October 7, 2014

In June 1967, opposition Conservative UK parliamentarians encountered a new and threatening queer danger. They feared that the Sexual Offences Bill then before them — a measure that would partially decriminalize male homosexual acts — might appear to sanction, and even promote, homosexual activity. Conservative MP Sir Cyril Osborne therefore proposed an amendment that would make publicizing and publishing lists of […]

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Before Grindr, or, The Dangers of the “Gay Bachelor”

October 7, 2014 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

In June 1967, opposition Conservative UK parliamentarians encountered a new and threatening queer danger. They feared that the Sexual Offences Bill then before them — a measure that would partially decriminalize male homosexual acts — might appear to sanction, and even promote, homosexual activity. Conservative MP Sir Cyril Osborne therefore proposed an amendment that would make publicizing and publishing lists of homosexuals, in other words printing “gay bachelor” or queer personal ads, a new “serious punishable offence.”

Even if the government was on the verge of partially decriminalizing male homosexual acts, Osborne’s proposed amendment would nonetheless criminalize what he saw as the commercial promotion of homosexuality.It demanded that,

Anyone who indulges in activities tending to promote acts of homosexuality between consenting adults through the publication of lists of names and addresses of known homosexuals or otherwise, shall be guilty of a criminal offence and shall be liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term of five years or a fine of £5,000.

In other words, were the act to pass, anyone who “promoted” entirely legal acts of consensual homosexuality would themselves be committing a criminal offence. Punishment for this new commercial crime would in fact be even more stringent than existing laws for most homosexual offences; acts of gross indecency were then punishable by up to two years imprisonment.

Continue reading at NOTCHES...


This post was originally published at "NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality" on 7 October 2014.  

“Coming Out” in the Classroom: When the Personal is Pedagogical

June 10, 2014

I’ve never come out to my students. I’ve never stood at the front of a classroom and told my students that I’m gay, and I’ve never told them witty anecdotes about my husband. That isn’t to say that I’m not completely out both professionally and personally (as google will immediately tell anyone). All of my […]

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“Coming Out” in the Classroom: When the Personal is Pedagogical

June 10, 2014 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

I’ve never come out to my students. I’ve never stood at the front of a classroom and told my students that I’m gay, and I’ve never told them witty anecdotes about my husband. That isn’t to say that I’m not completely out both professionally and personally (as google will immediately tell anyone). All of my academic bio pages highlight my work in queer history, and when introducing myself to new classes I describe my research on homosexuality and capitalism. Few students would be surprised to know I’m gay.

Still, I’ve wondered what impact explicitly identifying my sexuality would have on teaching, learning, discussions and the overall atmosphere of the classroom. That being said, my teaching so far has mostly included broad surveys of traditional European political history, courses whose structure and content was largely already determined for me. While I had the freedom to reorganize some lectures to explore topics in gender and sexuality, my own sexual identity has had little overlap with what I teach, at least so far. But looking ahead, I wanted to know how others navigate this potentially challenging terrain. So, I put the word out to friends, colleagues and mentors whose sexual identities are various and not always static. Each has chosen either to come out or withhold identifying their sexuality in the classroom for a variety of reasons, personal, pedagogical and political.

Continue reading at NOTCHES...


This post was originally published at "NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality" on 10 June 2014.

Male Order: Tom of Finland and the Queer Iconography of Postage Stamps

April 14, 2014

On April 13, 2014, Itella Posti Oy, the Finnish postal service, announced the release in September of what are possibly the most openly erotic postage stamps to appear anywhere in mainstream circulation. The series of three stamps commemorate the work of Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991), better known as Tom of Finland (link NSFW). The Finnish stamps are remarkable for their unambiguous […]

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Male Order: Tom of Finland and the Queer Iconography of Postage Stamps

April 14, 2014 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

On April 13, 2014, Itella Posti Oy, the Finnish postal service, announced the release in September of what are possibly the most openly erotic postage stamps to appear anywhere in mainstream circulation. The series of three stamps commemorate the work of Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991), better known as Tom of Finland (link NSFW). The Finnish stamps are remarkable for their unambiguous and deliberate depiction of homoerotic images, nudity, and dom/sub sexuality that Itella lauds as “confident and proud homoeroticism.” They are also remarkable for their memorialization of a queer man through explicit depictions of the erotic art for which he became an icon to other queer men around the world from the 1950s onward. But looking at the Tom of Finland stamps, and recognizing postage stamps as an incredibly accessible and widely distributed site for history and commemoration, it is worth considering how other queer men and women have recently been featured. How do postage stamps contribute to a public history of queer lives and sexualities?

Continue reading at NOTCHES...


This post was originally published at "NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality" on 14 April 2014.  

The Erotics of Shaving in Victorian Britain

April 10, 2014

Beardedness, or alternatively clean-shavenness, has long been an important signifier of manliness, inscribing crucial gender and sexual meanings onto the male body. But fashions in shaving are notoriously unstable, even in the nineteenth century, that idyll for the hirsute among us. Beardedness in nineteenth-century Britain, in fact, only reached its zenith in 1892, while the frequency […]

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The Erotics of Shaving in Victorian Britain

April 10, 2014 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Beardedness, or alternatively clean-shavenness, has long been an important signifier of manliness, inscribing crucial gender and sexual meanings onto the male body. But fashions in shaving are notoriously unstable, even in the nineteenth century, that idyll for the hirsute among us. Beardedness in nineteenth-century Britain, in fact, only reached its zenith in 1892, while the frequency of clean-shaven faces, lowest in 1886, continued to increase in popularity for the next 80 years. The necessity and expense of daily visits to the local barber, however, prohibited many from indulging in such luxury and before savvy marketers rooted the fear of the five o’clock shadow into men’s minds, a few days’ growth was often acceptable. Indeed, before the advent of the safety razor, many men might have agreed with the proverb: “It is easier to bear a child once a year than to shave every day.” Beardedness, and its intermediate variations, nonetheless had (and continue to have) definite implications for manliness and sexuality.

Continue reading at NOTCHES...


This post was originally published at "NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality" on 10 April 2014.  

Incoherent or Invigorated? The History of Sexuality

January 10, 2014

(Originally published at NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality on 10 January 2014) By what metric do we measure the vitality of the History of Sexuality? If the overwhelming attendance at the launch of the new IHR seminar asking ‘What is the History of Sexuality?’

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Incoherent or Invigorated? The History of Sexuality

January 10, 2014 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

By what metric do we measure the vitality of the History of Sexuality? If the overwhelming attendance at the launch of the new IHR seminar asking ‘What is the History of Sexuality?’ is anything to go by, it is far from dead, and scholars remain eager to further question what the field is, what it can be, and where it will go.

[Full disclosure: in addition to being an editor of this blog, I am also a co-convener of the IHR seminar and its social media dude.]

Tuesday evening I arrived at Senate House with fellow Notches editor Amy Tooth Murphy. At the door to the Court Room we stood gawping in surprise. The room was full beyond capacity with some folks spilling outside to stand or sit in the hall. Certainly a small flurry on twitter demonstrated interest in the upcoming seminar, but we never imagined this level of enthusiasm.

Continue reading at NOTCHES...


This post was originally published at "NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality" on 10 January 2014.

Chick-fil-A and the History of Queer Boycotts

August 28, 2012

Recent furor over Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy’s funding of organizations explicitly opposed to same-sex marriage has made consumers across the political and social spectrum evaluate how their spending habits are in fact political decisions. Opponents of marriage equality and some free market supporters have asked what gay men and lesbians hope to achieve by calling for boycotts […]

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Chick-fil-A and the History of Queer Boycotts

August 28, 2012 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Recent furor over Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy's funding of organizations explicitly opposed to same-sex marriage has made consumers across the political and social spectrum evaluate how their spending habits are in fact political decisions.

Opponents of marriage equality and some free market supporters have asked what gay men and lesbians hope to achieve by calling for boycotts against Chick-fil-A. Many see economic action against Cathy and Chick-fil-A as anti-Capitalist, even un-American, arguing incorrectly that it violates his freedom of speech. The history of queer economic activism, however, demonstrates just what is at stake, and what boycotting can achieve.

Even before the modern homosexual rights movement gained momentum in the 1970s, gay men and lesbians recognized the relationship between economic forces and human rights. Already in 1963, in response to UK tabloid press sensationalism that vilified homosexuals, author Douglas Plummer called on gay men and lesbians to boycott publications that demonized them. “If homosexuals stopped buying those particular newspapers,” he foresaw, “some circulations would drop by many hundreds of thousands of copies.” Plummer recognized the economic clout that homosexuals might have, but before a larger coordinated community existed, his call for economic action went unanswered.

Following the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion, in which gay men and lesbians stood against police raids and harassment in New York, a greater community began to form. This wider community soon saw economic action as a strategic tool against state and legal oppression. Just five years after Stonewall the Los Angeles Police Department responded to the threat of a boycott against Hollywood businesses by revising its policies toward gay Angelenos.

And in 1977 the most famous gay boycott demonstrated the potential of economic action to oppose anti-gay sentiment and further build a cohesive community. In January, Dade County (Miami) passed an ordinance to prohibit discrimination in the areas of housing, employment and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation. In order to overturn it, Florida Citrus Commission spokeswoman, entertainer and former Miss Oklahoma Anita Bryant formed Save Our Children, which collected sufficient signatures to force the issue to a voter referendum. The stage was set for the first time for coordinated national action among a broad spectrum of gay men and lesbians.

Responding to Bryant's anti-gay positions and her links to the Citrus Commission, calls for a boycott of Florida orange juice rang out across the nation. As today, gay leaders and ordinary citizens were mixed about the tactic of using a boycott to oppose personal beliefs and business interests. Some questioned the desirability of silencing Bryant or threatening her employment through economic action against her employer. Others worried about a boycott's effects on economically vulnerable farm workers. In California, however, columnist Harvey Milk, who would become the first openly gay man elected to public office in the United States, called on the city, unions, and gay leaders to boycott Florida orange juice. He argued that buying orange juice amounted to “supporting a person who is preaching hatred towards every Gay person.” Milk, who continued to promote gay equality while he sat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, would be assassinated the following year.

According to Herndon Graddick, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Cathy and Chick-fil-A are responsible for some five million dollars in donations to “anti-gay” organizations like the American Family Association and the Family Research Council as well as support for organizations that promote therapies to “turn” homosexuals straight. Chick-fil-A's support for “the biblical definition of the family unit” has now made this an issue not only for gay men and lesbians, but for a broader range of consumers. The debate is not restricted to those whom it most directly affects, but instead to anyone who might use their money to support Cathy's business and his cause, or to deny them funds by boycotting Chick-fil-A and spending their money elsewhere.

Economic action against Chick-fil-A is unlikely to dissuade Cathy from supporting or funding groups dedicated to fighting marriage equality. But despite the media interest and apparent success of former Arkansas Governor and Fox News contributor Mike Huckabee's August 1 “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,” history shows us that queer economic action and boycotts can in fact have broader successes beyond the immediate issue at hand. Economic action against Chick-fil-A implicates all consumers of fast food, asking them to make decisions with their dollars either to support marriage equality or to fund Cathy and anti-equality groups. The explosion of support across social media suggests increasing demand for marriage equality beyond just gay men and lesbians.

In the end, the boycott against Florida Orange Juice and the backlash against Anita Bryant failed to prevent the overturning of Dade County's anti-discrimination ordinance. In the immediate context of Miami, the boycott seemed to have failed. But most local and national gay and lesbian organizations nonetheless highlighted the action's success in creating a national movement devoted to gay and lesbian human rights that contributed to the mobilization of a national consciousness.

Twenty years after the Stonewall Rebellion, protesters on Fifth Avenue in New York rallied together around the cry “We're Here, We're Queer, and We're Not Going Shopping.” By 1989 they recognized that their choices as consumers could be strategically employed to support some businesses or boycott others for their employment practices, marketing and advertising or promotion of social and political causes. In 2012, a US election year, consumer choices are even more political as they become mainstream news and affect policy statements among future candidates.

Like the Florida orange juice campaign, which solidified a national gay and lesbian political movement, non-violent economic action against Chick-fil-A is likely to have greater impact beyond protesting the specific policies of this fast food restaurant and its executives. It may in fact galvanize a broad coalition of gay men, lesbians but significantly also allies in support of marriage equality in the US. This concrete expansion of the movement for marriage equality beyond those whom it affects directly to include progressive men and women, religious leaders, and average folks everywhere may turn out to be the greatest strength of this economic action.


This blog was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
28 August 2012.  

McArts Degree

September 15, 2011

Throughout the fall term last year, every time I entered the Arts Building of my campus I had to walk over the words “McArts Degree.” In the first week of term someone had painted them in two-foot-high, whitewashed letters at the entrance to the building. They were impossible to miss. It dominated the small outdoor […]

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McArts Degree

September 15, 2011 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Throughout the fall term last year, every time I entered the Arts Building of my campus I had to walk over the words “McArts Degree.” In the first week of term someone had painted them in two-foot-high, whitewashed letters at the entrance to the building. They were impossible to miss. It dominated the small outdoor plaza. These words remained there, confronting me and everyone else who entered the building, until they were finally obliterated by the snow and cold.

This message affected me every day that I went to the university.

I can only imagine how this message felt to undergraduates (or even graduate students) who saw it every single day. I've earned a PhD, been selected for a Postdoc at a respected institution, and proven myself to my intellectual peers. And yet, I still felt that this simple insult took something away from me. But what about new students? What message might they take from this prominently placed message at their university?

This year I came back to the university after a summer away and the first thing I remember noticing was that the words were not there. In their place, using half-foot-wide masking tape, someone had marked out the words “Use a Condom.” I was thrilled. Not only were the offensive words gone, but someone had co-opted this space for a useful and important message that new undergrads away from home should hear often and loud.

Days later my optimism was undermined by a new insult. Painted in even larger blue letters, and obliterating the healthy message advocating safer sex, was another jibe at arts majors: “I have an Arts degree. Can I take your order?”

I’ve written elsewhere on the History Compass about the denigration of the humanities. It is a pervasive problem. Messages like these tell students that the arts and humanities are impractical, selfish studies without the merit of science programs and professional schools. Funding priorities that sacrifice the arts and humanities further reinforce this message (while making it more and more difficult to teach them well.) At the History Compass we're particularly concerned about this.  Jean Smith has written about the value of history specifically, while Angela Sutton has sought to debunk the myth of the humanities as a financial burden on institutions.

At their worst, these messages of denigration and attacks on funding are mutually reinforcing. In a culture that dismisses and denigrates the arts and humanities, it is hardly surprising that those with the authority to do so remove their funding and deprioritize them further.  In the UK, Middlesex University closed its History and then its Philosophy Department. The Conservative government has advocated removing state funding entirely. In the US, SUNY Albany cut language and theatre programs. And in Canada, the $200 million Canada Excellence Research Chairs initiative included no scholars in the Arts and Social Sciences. Not one. Bombarded with messages such as these, it's hard enough to contemplate study in the humanities. It's even more difficult when your own studies are dismissed as merely a "McArts Degree."

What can we do?

Happily, the best course of action is to prove these accusations wrong. Our many successes are our best response. They are examples of the value in the arts and humanities. But we must also confront these attacks. I hope to be able to write an update to this blog soon, where I can congratulate my university for recognizing the harm of this kind of message and removing it.


This blog was originally published on History Compass Exchanges on
15 September 2011.  

School’s Out: A Postdoc’s Life
(Year I)

March 31, 2011

Wow, is it really the end of the (Canadian) semester? Well, almost. Classes end next week, my students’ final is a week later, I’m at a conference by the end of the month, a stop at home, and then Europe one more week after that. Whew…not a moment too soon! Everyone here is feeling the […]

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School’s Out: A Postdoc’s Life
(Year I)

March 31, 2011 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Wow, is it really the end of the (Canadian) semester? Well, almost. Classes end next week, my students’ final is a week later, I’m at a conference by the end of the month, a stop at home, and then Europe one more week after that. Whew…not a moment too soon!

Everyone here is feeling the strain, and straining for the relief that the end of term promises. The winter has been unseasonably cold and long in Saskatoon. Many of us are looking forward to research trips abroad. And of course, grading responsibilities and other duties tend to hit hardest at the end of the term.

Reflecting on the year behind me though, I’ve gained so much at the University of Saskatchewan. I’m surrounded by generously supportive colleagues who have never wavered in helping me adjust to the unfamiliar life of a junior scholar. I can’t speak highly enough of our Chair, support staff, History Department faculty and grad students, and my fellow postdocs, all of whom have welcomed me and answered innumerable questions and requests with poise and kindness. My postdoc supervisor, a kind and gentle elder scholar, has become a mentor and friend. And with their collective help I’ve gained professional experience, credibility, increased my publishing output, and laid the foundations for a potential future in academia. I owe them more than I can express, and this blog post is in part a thank-you.

But this year has also been a challenge, and I definitely feel I’ve needed the entire year to settle in to Saskatoon. When I arrived I looked forward to having the best of both worlds as a postdoc: I could interact with the faculty while still relating to the graduate students. In reality, it wasn’t so simple, and the postdoc doesn’t immediately fit in either group. That’s the part you have to learn on the ground. A postdoc is (at least at first) a solitary experience. It takes a painfully long time to build up relationships and connections in a new department when you’re neither student nor professor. I’ve felt completely welcomed in my department from the first day, but it really is only in the last month or two that I have really felt a part of the department.

Teaching plays a big role in building relationships and sustaining that feeling of being part of something. My own work and research is largely independent, but teaching is a collaborative exercise. I’ve welcomed the advice of current profs, discussed teaching strategies with grad students, and simply been in the department more as an instructor. Without teaching this term, I might be further along in my research and revisions, but I’d also be more dislocated and detached from any intellectual or other community at the university.

A postdoc, however, really is the most incredible opportunity, particularly these days as competition for professional positions in academia becomes ever more fierce. But future employment aside, a postdoc is also an amazing opportunity to evaluate your own goals and values. How does academia look from the inside when you’re no longer a student? How does it feel to be at the front of the class with no safety net or anyone to defer to?

The smartest things the organizers of my current postdoc did was to make it two years long. If it were ending now, I’d feel as if the rug were being pulled out from under me just as I was gaining balance. I’m incredibly fortunate, having built these connections and friendships, professional skills and intellectual output, still to have a second year to continue forward. So, here’s to A Postdoc’s Life, Year II!

(To be continued…)


This blog was originally published on History Compass Exchanges on
31 March 2011.  

Publishing your Dissertation

March 17, 2011

A few weeks ago the University of Saskatchewan Department of History held a “Publishing your Dissertation” workshop. Organized by the graduate students, the workshop was an important opportunity to treat grad students not just as students but as junior historians, as future professionals. And the benefit was not limited just to them, the postdocs were […]

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Publishing your Dissertation

March 17, 2011 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

A few weeks ago the University of Saskatchewan Department of History held a “Publishing your Dissertation” workshop. Organized by the graduate students, the workshop was an important opportunity to treat grad students not just as students but as junior historians, as future professionals. And the benefit was not limited just to them, the postdocs were avid participants as well. None of us are writing dissertations and manuscripts purely to earn a credential, but rather as a first step in a professional trajectory that will include publication and dissemination of our research.

The most important and inspiring statement of the day was a comment made by our department Chair, Valerie Korinek. She concluded by assuring the audience that they had already made the first step to publishing their manuscripts simply by participating in the workshop. By attending, by engaging, we had taken ourselves and our work seriously on a professional level, and this was truly the first step to publishing our work as professional historians.

I was inspired by Prof. Korinek’s comments more than I expected.

The workshop included a variety of speakers, and should be a model for similar events at other universities. One postdoc spoke of the experience of revising his dissertation into a manuscript and the process of seeking a publisher. A junior professor who was currently involved in press negotiations described her more advanced relationship with a publisher. And finally our department chair spoke from the perspective of a published author and also as a senior historian. She described her successes, what she’d do differently, and what we needed to do to position ourselves as professional historians. We also heard from executive editors from the University of Manitoba Press who relayed to us their guidelines and what they looked for in a publishable manuscript.

I’ve been sitting on my dissertation for a year or so now. Partly because I was devoted to looking for employment, and partly because I needed a rest, I just haven’t returned to it till recently. But in the last six months I’ve made some small revisions, done a bit of extra research, and asked scholars outside my dissertation committee to read it and offer feedback. So, I’ve been thinking about the next step, but until the workshop I was unable to make the leap. Anxiety, fear of rejection, uncertainty about my own skills maybe, all of these fears kept me from moving forward until now.

But I already knew which press was the best fit for my project. Even though the Manitoba editors were helpful, I knew that my project and priorities fit better with a large US university press. I researched the press’s online presence, so I also knew the other titles in its series, the editorial contact, and the submission requirements. I didn’t know what goes into a book proposal, but I learned that at the workshop. The UBC Press even gives examples of successful book proposals. (Read them, they are invaluable guides.)

So, using these as a model, I wrote my own book proposal, asked a former professor for a letter of introduction to the executive editor, and threw caution to the wind. Now, the press is interested in my work, I have a schedule for draft submission, and a goal. I also feel more and more like a professional historian with something interesting and important to say.

Perhaps I flatter myself, but I hope some of you will read this post, check out the UBC Press submission examples, and then write up your own book proposal. Maybe you’ll send it off to a publisher. And maybe you’ll get a positive response too. Good luck!


This blog was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
17 March 2011.

Is Wikipedia the Devil? Or the Devil we Know?

March 3, 2011

Students rely on Wikipedia. Professors can pretend that their threats of Fs on assignments matter, but in reality it offers little deterrent. Students can and do weave facts, information, opinions and interpretations that they find online into their papers. If the material seems reasonable, or general, or cited elsewhere, it might not even draw our […]

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Is Wikipedia the Devil? Or the Devil we Know?

March 3, 2011 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Students rely on Wikipedia. Professors can pretend that their threats of Fs on assignments matter, but in reality it offers little deterrent. Students can and do weave facts, information, opinions and interpretations that they find online into their papers. If the material seems reasonable, or general, or cited elsewhere, it might not even draw our attention, particularly when we have to grade 50 or 75 or 90 term papers on a weekend. What is the solution?

One answer, probably the most common, is to scold and threaten. We tell our students that Wikipedia is an inappropriate and unacceptable source for historical research and writing. We threaten them with Fs and rewrites. Another answer is to explain to students why Wikipedia is an unreliable source. It lacks appropriate documentation of sources, and is written by individuals with uncertain research skills who base entries largely on sometimes-dubious secondary material. And then we threaten them with Fs and rewrites. But is there a third solution? We know our students use Wikipedia. Can we use this to our advantage? Can we teach them about online sources and how to determine the credibility of what they read and discover?  Can we undermine their reliance on Wikipedia, while at the same time use it as a teaching tool?

All term I’ve told my students that Wikipedia is an inappropriate source for university work, and that recourse to it in their work is forbidden. This seemed to work, and their term paper proposals and other writings have so far remained fairly clean. Then I read the midterms. All material necessary for complete answers to all midterm questions was available in lectures, documents, and text readings. But when I graded the midterms, I began to find unexpected references to statistics and details I was unfamiliar with appearing in more than one exam. I googled particular terms and discovered that even when provided with all materials necessary for a complete A-range response on the exam, my students still used Wikipedia as a study tool. And they clearly made notes that they then memorized, preferring the statistical “facts” to the focus on interpretation that I emphasized.

After frustration and disappointment passed, I thought about what I could do. Forbidding Wikipedia is only a partial success, and impossible to enforce completely. Promising to deliver instant Fs on any work relying on it seems too draconian. Certainly there has to be something to learn here, something that we can apply to the classroom?

Over at the Cliotropic blog Shane Landrum has one idea. Noticing that Women’s History was significantly underdeveloped on facebook, Shane is exploring the idea of assigning Wikipedia building and cleanup assignments:

If you teach history courses on women, gender, or sexuality, or on the history of any racial or ethnic minority in the United States, it’s worth considering adding a Wikipedia assignment to your syllabus. … Students could learn a lot about what we know and how we know it from editing the articles, and I think it also would teach them to be more skeptical the next time they try to use Wikipedia as a reference.

As Shane points out, others are already building similar assignments in exciting ways. A historian of ancient Rome has worked out many of the logistics:
I’ve used the “stubs” feature of Wikipedia to generate a list of 120 topics relating to ancient Roman civilization that need full articles. Then I’m requiring the 120 students in my upcoming Roman Civilization class to each write one article. This will hopefully teach them how to do original research in the library on obscure, narrowly focused topics and then create something of lasting value to others. The students will also be required to each review three of their fellow students’ articles in order to learn about the collaborative editing process. I’m a little nervous about its success, but I’m hoping to be part of the solution to the issues raised by Wikipedia, rather than contributing to the problems.

I’m convinced that there’s something to this. I’m wary of validating Wikipedia as a legitimate source through assignments like this, but I can see the immediate value offered by giving students the opportunity to do original research for publication in a venue they can already identify with. And maybe if they realize that the people writing entries are no more expert than themselves, they’ll have a greater awareness of the risks of using Wikipedia as a source.


This blog was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on 3 March 2011.

Interview: Paul Deslandes on the History of Male Beauty

February 17, 2011

Paul Deslandes, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Vermont, is a scholar of modern Britain and the history of gender and sexuality. He has published widely on the history of masculinity, male sexuality and British education. Deslandes is the author of Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience, 1850-1920. His current research […]

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Interview: Paul Deslandes on the History of Male Beauty

February 17, 2011 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Paul Deslandes, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Vermont, is a scholar of modern Britain and the history of gender and sexuality. He has published widely on the history of masculinity, male sexuality and British education. Deslandes is the author of Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience, 1850-1920. His current research explores the history of male beauty in modern Britain.

In his recent History Compass article “The Male Body, Beauty and Aesthetics in Modern British Culture,” Deslandes explored the historical significance of male beauty. Across studies of sport and physical culture, disability and WWI disfigurement, and queer history, he argues, awareness and understanding of beauty and aesthetics offer insights not only to histories of masculinity but histories of British society as a whole. For this reason, Deslandes argues, historians must pay greater attention to physical appearance, value placed on male beauty, and the adornment and manipulation of the male body to better understand the British past.

I had the opportunity to interview Professor Deslandes about the arguments in his History Compass piece, its broader implications, and place within his current research.

In your History Compass piece you exhort historians to pay closer attention to questions of aesthetics, appearance and body adornment. What do these issues offer to historians of gender generally and masculinity specifically?

On a basic level, paying attention to the aesthetics of the attractive man, masculine physical appearance, and male body adornment (the focus of my History Compass article) reminds us that obsessions with beauty affected men and women equally in the past. Of greater concern to me, of course, is the way in which a focus on the physicality of gender expression might allow us to think more systematically not only about Judith Butler's, now well-known, concepts of performativity but also about the ways in which gender and beauty ideals were literally inscribed on the face and the body. For historians of masculinity, who in recent years have turned their attention to reconstructing the 'lived experience' of male gender identities, the study of physical appearance and the personal experience of beauty and ugliness might help us to understand how militarism, athleticism, and imperialism (three areas that historians of masculinity have explored in great detail) influenced standards of attractiveness and personal gender expression. Finally, examining languages of beauty and ugliness (and, by extension, the dynamics of personal attraction) might allow historians of gender to examine more fully how our subjects expressed desire, even in source material that might, on the surface, appear to be wholly unrelated to sexuality.

What can fuller understandings of male aesthetics and beauty contribute to other historians who explore the “history of science, race and war, and … British society as a whole”?


I see great potential in these areas of study. Explicit and implicit references to beauty permeate the writings of nineteenth and early twentieth century biologists, physiognomists, phrenologists, and 'racial scientists'. While some scholars have published innovative and nuanced studies of these fields (I am thinking here, most notably, about Sharonna Pearl's recent book About Faces: Physiognomy in NIneteenth-Century Britain), relatively few have paid significant attention to the language of physical attractiveness (and the aesthetic comparisons that were made between 'superior' and 'inferior' peoples) in the massive volume of books, pamphlets, and articles that Victorian and Edwardian scientists produced. Similarly, while historians of eugenics have touched on some of these themes in recent studies, new histories of the eugenics movement will, in the future, need to pay much closer attention to aesthetics and beauty. Finally, historians of war stand to gain much by paying greater attention to beauty, in a similar manner to how Ana Carden-Coyne has explored these subjects in her recent book, Reconstructing the Body: Classicism, Modernism, and the First World War. Histories of wartime propaganda, injury and disability, military medicine, post-war memorials, and, even, the battle experience would all be enriched in substantial ways by paying closer attention to the aesthetic languages and experiences of combat, death, and disfigurement.

In your History Compass article you refer to youth, particularly in regard to men’s magazines. How might agedness also inflect our understandings of and research into the history of masculinity?

The vision of masculine beauty that dominated in the period under consideration in my article was one in which youth was valorized and celebrated--in advertisements, beauty manuals, magazines, photographs, and, later, film--as the ideal of physical attractiveness. This does not, of course, mean that physical appearance was not of concern to middle-aged and elderly men. In fact, an entire industry of beauty products for men, intended to eradicate baldness, correct poor posture, and hide or eliminate belly fat, were directed at male consumers over the age of forty. Historians of masculinity must, in my opinion, take seriously the aging process and the impact that it has had on male understandings of the self and impressions of physical appearance. While some historians of old-age have deliberated on these issues, I see great potential in the study of the middle-aged. Men in this age group were (and still are) often the most reflective historical subjects, precisely because they were forced to confront graying hair and growing paunches, and the sense of displacement that these physical experiences produced. In thinking about masculinity, it is also necessary to take very seriously intergenerational relations and tensions, as I attempted to do in my book Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience, 1850-1920. Relations between men of different age groups allow us to understand how concepts of masculinity were contingent not only on class, racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual identities but also on one's stage of life.

The history of masculinity is now a valid subfield among an established cohort of scholars. Where do you see it going in the future?

I have been extremely heartened by the growth of scholarship in this area of study, much of it very good. Historians working in the field have tackled a broad range of new subjects in recent years. Homosocial institutions continue to garner considerable attention but in ways that reveal not only the relational nature of gender but also the rituals, symbols, and everyday experiences of members. Some of this work has produced new insights about the relationship between men and domesticity (here I am thinking about Amy Milne-Smith's work on gentlemen's clubs) or encouraged scholars to rethink exemplars of British masculinity (most notably the Royal Air Force flyer during the Second World War-the subject of Martin Francis's new book The Flyer: British Culture and the Royal Air Force, 1939-1945). I am also encouraged by the number of historians of British politics who have chosen to focus on masculinity in their considerations of governing styles and campaign rhetoric. The field continues to be enriched by practitioners of what some have called the 'New Queer History'. The emphasis, in much of this work, on the connections between sexual desire and fantasy (as well as actual sexual practices) and certain masculine types, styles, or poses (I am thinking here about the ubiquitous guardsman) has yielded a number of very important insights.

In the future, I hope to see more studies that mine personal diaries, letters, and memoirs for evidence of the 'lived experience' of masculinity. As this sort of deep research is completed, our picture of masculinity is bound to become both more complete and more complex. Particularly important will be efforts to reconstruct the experiences of men with non-normative sexual desires and also those who were neither white nor middle-class. I would also like to see historians do much more on male/female relationships (both romantic and non-romantic) and pursue more detailed examinations of the history of heterosexuality. One area that I am particularly excited about (and which has taken off more fully in the United States than it has elsewhere) is the field of transgender history. We stand to learn much about masculinity as social construct, lived experience, and cultural practice by examining the lives of subjects whose gender identity and/or expression was different from their biological or birth sex. As is only fitting for a historian of male beauty, I see great potential in the future for those who are interested in studying masculinity as an aesthetic expression. A corollary to this, of course, is an emerging field that deserves further consideration--the material culture of gender. By examining the accoutrements of gender that were required by men to shave, dress their hair, bath, and prepare their bodies to be clothed, we stand to learn much more about the relationship between often nebulous concepts of identity or subjectivity and the very tangible world of products and objects.

How does this piece on the significance of male beauty fit in with your current research?

Writing this piece provided me with an opportunity to reflect on the state of the field, historiographically speaking. I am in the process of writing a book that examines the culture of male beauty in Britain from the 1840s to the present. This project begins with the rise of photography as a cultural practice and ends with a consideration of the impact of the internet on both conceptions of masculine beauty and the material culture of attractiveness and physical fitness in twenty-first century Britain. While preoccupations with physical fitness figure into this book, this is not principally a study of the physical culture movement or athleticism (areas that have been ably covered in studies by Michael Anton Budd and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska). My study departs from this approach, in part, by focusing much more directly on the male face. It also, however, attempts to provide more comprehensive coverage (and, hence, an overarching narrative) of masculine attractiveness by exploring topics ranging from the Victorian beauty industry to the rise of the teenage fan magazine in the 1950s and 1960s to gay pornography in the 1970s and 1980s. Along the way, the book I am writing will narrate individual stories about figures like the late nineteenth- century beauty entrepreneur Alexander Ross, the First World War poet Rupert Brooke, facially-disfigured soldiers, the plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, the twentieth-century artist Keith Vaughan, and David Beckham. The focus in this book is on showing how the study of male beauty can illuminate larger themes in British history while also establishing how standards of facial and bodily attractiveness changed or remained the same over a one-hundred and sixty year period.


This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
17 February 2011.

Where we fail our students: Writing Skills

February 3, 2011

I firmly believe that one of the great benefits of an education in history is the development of writing skills. I strive for that in myself, and encourage it in my students. Writing skills will continue to benefit them beyond my classroom, in other disciplines, and beyond the academy. I’m certainly not alone in this […]

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Where we fail our students: Writing Skills

February 3, 2011 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

I firmly believe that one of the great benefits of an education in history is the development of writing skills. I strive for that in myself, and encourage it in my students. Writing skills will continue to benefit them beyond my classroom, in other disciplines, and beyond the academy. I’m certainly not alone in this belief, and almost universally I hear from other professors, lecturers, and TAs how important writing skills are to them as well. But what do we really do about it? We mark up papers, we make ourselves available for consultation, and we direct students to university writing centres. Is that really enough?

But doing more comes with its own pressures. I realized this recently when I decided to devote an entire lecture period to discussing writing issues. Initially I planned only to devote 15-20 minutes to addressing the most egregious writing problems I discovered in recent student assignments. But by the time I created slides with examples, I realized that more than half the class period would be required simply to go through them all, leaving inadequate time for “real content”—as in the history part.

I went back and forth all day, worrying that I was somehow doing my students a disservice by devoting less time to EU formation or Soviet politics or whatever else was scheduled that week. The importance of the “real content” of history has been so ingrained into us, I realized, that I felt like I was somehow cheating, or not doing my job, because I was going to spend an entire class period helping students with writing concerns, and working with them to build their written communication skills.

Many of us put hours into grading, where we correct grammar and spelling errors, suggest ways of clarifying arguments, and highlight awkward writing so that students can later improve it. How much does this accomplish? Do students really look closely at these suggestions or incorporate them into their work? Short of assigning drafts and revisions, it sometimes seems that there is little we can do to help students improve their writing skills.

What I realized is that if we value writing skills, and if we truly believe that improving our students’ written communication skills is one of the goals of history education, we need to work actively toward that goal. It’s not enough to correct papers and expect students to studiously incorporate suggestions into work in their next course when it’s another professor’s problem. Nor is it sufficient to shuffle them off to the writing centre (though these are valuable and often underutilized resources). Instead we have to make the teaching of strong writing skills part of our own project as well.

In smaller courses, or larger courses with TAs, we can ask students to work on a paper throughout the term, handing in drafts and revisions, each contributing to their grades. We can also reward genuine effort and writing improvement in their grades as well. In courses like mine which are officially too small for TAs but too large for everyone to submit multiple drafts, we can devote lecture time to writing skills, and turn some class time over to actual writing exercises. At the moment I devote one day a week to document discussion, but in the future, I plan to turn one of those classes each month over toward writing development.

Too often we fail our students in this area. They earn poor or failing grades because they are unable to express themselves effectively. But too often we also fail to teach them the skills the need to be able to communicate better. What have you done to focus on writing skills in your classroom? As a student what have you found most useful? How do we make a history education about both content and skills?


This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
3 February 2011.  

Re-teaching Gender and Sexuality

December 17, 2010

Issues related to homosexuality are currently at the forefront of public discourse. Globally, but particularly in the United States, marriage equity, military service, queer youth and bullying are not just matters of policy debate, but have engaged popular concern and action as well. Seattle columnist Dan Savage’s recent ‘It Gets Better Project’, for instance, has […]

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Re-teaching Gender and Sexuality

December 17, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Issues related to homosexuality are currently at the forefront of public discourse. Globally, but particularly in the United States, marriage equity, military service, queer youth and bullying are not just matters of policy debate, but have engaged popular concern and action as well. Seattle columnist Dan Savage’s recent ‘It Gets Better Project’, for instance, has captured an extraordinary degree of public interest, using short video clips of ordinary people, celebrities and global figures to help draw attention to bullying and suicides among queer youth.

But it is another short online video, titled ‘{THIS} is Reteaching Gender and Sexuality’, which is in part a criticism of the ‘It Gets Better Project’, that challenges us to reconsider our understandings of sexuality while drawing attention to the plight of queer youth. In the ‘Reteaching’ video, queer youth appear in their own right, speaking for themselves, demanding immediate social and cultural change, not just the promise of something better somewhere down the road. But far more than draw attention to bullying and structures of oppression, they want us instead to recalibrate how we define sexuality and sexual identities. As two speakers put it, ‘I can like boys and girls. … I can be none of the above’.

So how does this relate to history? Well, we can be part of the re-teaching project, in fact, we already are.  In our case, it’s not re-teaching, it’s simply telling the histories of our subjects in the context of their own worlds, rather than through the limitations or needs of our own.

I recently reviewed Barry Reay’s New York Hustlers: Masculinity and Sex in Modern AmericaReay’s main argument is that the world of hustlers (male prostitutes) and trade (men who had sex with other men without identifying as gay) illuminates how  sexual practices and identities   throughout much of  the twentieth century challenge rigid heterosexual-homosexual binarisms. Reay positions himself against scholars who overlook this rich sexual fluidity and flexibility of the mid twentieth century in favour of narratives that lead only to the creation of a recognizably modern gay identity.

Other scholars have identified sexual flexibility among working-class men and military men across the twentieth century in Britain and America. But such studies still tend to be couched in terms of understanding how we got to modern understandings of gay identity, an identity defined as wholly different and separate from heterosexuality. Reay instead follows the lives of men who fail to neatly fit these categories. Nor do they conveniently remain consistent in their sexual practices over a lifetime. The fluidity of their sexual object choices, in fact, sound remarkably similar to the queer youth described above.

Reviewing this book made me think about how we can teach (or re-teach) gender and sexuality. Reay’s study need not be confined to gender, sexuality or queer history courses. His work offers insights into urban history, twentieth-century America, histories of crime, migration and ethnicity.

Gender and sexuality should, and must, appear in courses other than those devoted wholly to gender and sexuality. But so too should religion and faith, military and war, economics and commerce, ethnic and minority groups, and the list goes on. Of course we can’t do the fullest justice to each of these in every course, but we can create a culture of inclusivity in the classroom. And inclusivity applies to students as well as historical actors. Ultimately, including one can create a place for the other.

Clearly categories which organize our world are changing, but categories that organize our teaching need to change too.


This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
17 December 2010.  

On Being A Teaching Assistant (TA) In Grad School

December 13, 2010

Grad school funding comes in many forms. Some students are lucky enough to be awarded fellowships (scholarships that don’t need to be repaid). Others rely on student loans. Most graduate students will at some point encounter TAships, or teaching assistantships, where they act as discussion leaders, graders, and tutorial instructors for a larger class run by […]

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On Being A Teaching Assistant (TA) In Grad School

December 13, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Grad school funding comes in many forms.

Some students are lucky enough to be awarded fellowships (scholarships that don’t need to be repaid). Others rely on student loans.

Most graduate students will at some point encounter TAships, or teaching assistantships, where they act as discussion leaders, graders, and tutorial instructors for a larger class run by a professor.

Being a TA is often a first chance to teach, to be in a position of authority, and to evaluate students’ progress. It’s a big responsibility and one that takes time to grow into.

By the time you’ve reached grad school you’ve had plenty of professors, lab instructors, and TAs. You’ve seen good teachers and you’ve seen bad teachers. But it’s an entirely different matter when you are at the front of the room and everyone is looking at you.

Being a TA is often a first chance to teach, to be in a position of authority, and to evaluate students’ progress. It’s a big responsibility and one that takes time to grow into.

While some people are natural leaders, they still have a lot to learn, because being a TA is not just about teaching.

Authority


The biggest challenge to new teachers is establishing their authority in the classroom. This is especially difficult for new TAs who might only be a year or two older than their students. When I began TAing, I was actually younger than most of my students for the first couple years!

The important thing to remember is that you are an instructor, not a friend. Your job is to impart valuable information, help students grapple with challenging subjects, and evaluate their success. If your primary concern is whether the students like you, it becomes impossible to complete your responsibilities effectively and professionally.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t have great rapport with your students. Ideally, your class sections should be something you and your students look forward to. You will build relationships with some students over several classes, and even beyond their degrees. Some students will in the future become your friends. But when you teach you need to remain professional and objective.

Grading


If anything stresses out new TAs, it is grading. Evaluating other students is an entirely new task for most, and doing it fairly and consistently takes practice and confidence.

It is important both for your students and for you to have a grading rubric that explains what constitutes an “A” paper, a “B” paper, etc. This establishes your expectations for students, but also helps you to conceptualize what you will expect for each grade range. In time you won’t need this but to begin with, it is a valuable tool benefiting everyone.

Perhaps the biggest stress, however, is how to deal with students who appeal their grades. Some students simply want to know how to improve their work, while others can be confrontational and aggressive. In either case, it’s important to have clear and established policies for how to deal with the situation.

I put as many comments as possible on assignments so that students knew exactly how their grade was determined. I’m also a strong believer in the power of red ink. Students are invariably surprised to find a grade higher than they expected after seeing so much ink on their papers. Few complain.  I also never let students speak to me about grades without a 24 hour “cooling down” period.

Teaching


Teaching is probably the easiest part of being a TA. For the most part, at least in the humanities, you will be clarifying themes, going over assignments, and explaining concepts to students that have already been introduced by the professor. It is not your responsibility to teach new material. You are the TA; an assistant, not a professor.

The important thing to remember is that you already have several years more experience and knowledge than your students. You might not know every detail of the material they are learning, but you know how to find it. And it’s OK simply to say that you’ll look something up when a question stumps you. Looking something up and coming back to students with an answer shows you’re engaged and taking them seriously. You earn respect.

When you first TA, your supervising professor and senior TAs will be invaluable resources. They will likely already have grading rubrics, assignment templates, and support materials. Seek this out, save it, modify it, and most of all enjoy yourself!


This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 13 December 2010.  

Making Long Distance Relationships Work During Grad School

December 1, 2010

Baby, please don’t go Anyone can find themselves suddenly having to endure the challenge of maintaining a relationship across borders. Changing schools, going on an international exchange or even starting afirst job can change our lives and relationships dramatically. By maintaining open communication with your partner, balancing work and romance and prioritizing time for love, however, you can […]

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Making Long Distance Relationships Work During Grad School

December 1, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Baby, please don’t go


Anyone can find themselves suddenly having to endure the challenge of maintaining a relationship across borders.

Changing schools, going on an international exchange or even starting afirst job can change our lives and relationships dramatically.
By maintaining open communication with your partner, balancing work and romance and prioritizing time for love, however, you can sustain a long distance relationship through the challenges of grad school.

But, more than almost any other group, graduate students are among the most likely to endure that pain of separating from those they love.

Students especially prone to relocation include those in research-intensive programs, those in the humanities where extensive archival work is required, and those who must undertake on-site investigations abroad.

In grad school, you have to plan for change and uncertainty. Research trips sometimes involve months abroad. Fellowships might require solo relocation of up to a year or more.

But even though long distance relationships may seem inevitable for grad students, they aren’t insurmountable!

Whatever issue you’re facing, remember that many couples have been there before and have made it work. We caught up with some far-away couples and took off with their best tips.

Meet Erin and Shane


Erin and Shane* met as undergrads in Canada but eventually went on to different grad schools. Erin went to the U.S. while Shane remained in Canada. Living in different countries for an extended period, they have always had to prioritize communication.

According to Erin, “Technology is the key! We schedule time to talk on webcam for at least an hour every night [using] Skype.” And, when Shane finished his coursework, he was able to spend weeks and even months visiting Erin while completing his degree—something nearly impossible in non-academic long-distance relationships.

Meet Karen and Adam


Karen and Adam are separated by an ocean—the Atlantic, to be precise. Karen studies in Europe while Adam remains in Canada and they prioritize spending time with each other as much as possible. For Karen and Adam, trips to visit each other aren’t seen as a cost to one, but as an investment by both in their relationship.

If one can travel but can’t afford to fly abroad, the other helps pay. This works, according to Karen, “because the visit is a benefit to both of us. We’re not paying to travel but to spend time together.”

Meet Jason and Michael


Jason and Michael met while Jason was on a research trip abroad. Michael, who is not in grad school, had to stay behind when Jason returned home to complete his studies. Since then, they’ve struggled with periods of more than six months without seeing each other. But, like Karen and Adam, Jason and Michael find every chance to be together.

While grad students may be perpetually poor, one perk of higher academia is the necessity to travel extensively—for research purposes, naturally.  “We useconferences, research trips, and other work-related travel to see each otheruntil one of us can finally move abroad.” Jason and Michael also have built-in summers, an extended Christmas and spring break—all of which give grad students extra time to enjoy with loved ones.

No one likes long distance relationships


They’re hard, emotionally draining and difficult to sustain over long periods. Research, readings and papers are all a part of the grad school experience. But, too often, so are the challenges that come with long-distance relationships.

By maintaining open communication with your partner, balancing work and romance and prioritizing time for love, however, you can sustain even a long distance relationship through the challenges of grad school.


This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 1 December 2010.  

How To Find Your Home, Sweet Home Away From Home At Grad School

November 25, 2010

Finding your “Home, Sweet Home” can be an ordeal when you go away to university. And since most new grad students will need to move away to new universities, it’s an almost necessary part of the graduate school experience. As a graduate student you will have a demanding schedule, erratic timelines, and loads of work and […]

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How To Find Your Home, Sweet Home Away From Home At Grad School

November 25, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Finding your “Home, Sweet Home” can be an ordeal when you go away to university.

And since most new grad students will need to move away to new universities, it’s an almost necessary part of the graduate school experience.

As a graduate student you will have a demanding schedule, erratic timelines, and loads of work and readings that you’ll most likely work on at home.

But hunting for housing is different for grad students. We have unique requirements, but also unique opportunities to secure a home.

We can all use online sites like Craigslist or Kijiji to find accommodation in new cities.

Similarly, newspapers, magazines, and other notices are available to anyone. But that’s precisely the problem.

As a graduate student you will have a demanding schedule, erratic timelines, and loads of work and readings that you’ll most likely work on at home. You need a home environment that allows this kind of focused and concentrated work.

If you are financially and emotionally capable of living on your own, it might be easier to find a studio or one bedroom apartment. But if you’ll need to live in shared accommodation, a bit more planning is required.

University residences


Don’t think that university residences are just for undergrads. Many universities that offer graduate programs also have residences devoted to graduate students.

Here you can be placed with more mature students, and those who are similarly motivated to succeed in grad school. Be sure to research deadlines for application, which will be separate from your general application to graduate school programs.

Roommates


If looking for off-campus housing, you’re in a new position as a grad student to find opportunities. Many landlords look specifically for graduate students and young professionals to rent to. They appreciate the maturity and focus that such renters display. And even among potential roommates, many will want the stability, maturity, and calm that a grad house offers. Everyone likes to let loose on the weekend, but grads need to focus all week.

Where do you find these housing opportunities?

Graduate student societies’ housing lists


Most graduate student societies offer lists to their members searching for off-campus accommodation. You can advertise if you are looking for a roommate, and also search for housing. These ads differ very little from other ads, and there are no guarantees that you’ll find the ideal living situation. But the list is self-selected to include only graduate students, or grad-friendly accommodation. It’s also unavailable to most other apartment hunters, so your chances of finding something in the final crunch before school starts can increase by using this resource.

Departmental listservs


Once at grad school you’ll find yourself on all kinds of email lists. Some of these may seem a hassle or might not offer you much right away, but graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scholars will often post to these lists when looking for housing or roommates.

Make sure to get on your department’s email listservs as soon as possible so that you will be in the loop. Besides watching for housing opportunities to appear, you can also put a message out to your department if you find yourself in a jam without housing. You’d be surprised at the power that the collective connections of your department can offer when you need it most!


This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 25 November 2010.  

3 Ways To Build Your CV During Grad School

November 8, 2010

A curriculum vitae, or CV, is not a resumé. (Recommended reading: When it comes to grad school, what’s the difference between a resumé and a CV?) Rather than being a list of your work achievements, it documents academic and intellectual development. One of the most important elements on your CV will be your publications. Articles in scholarly […]

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3 Ways To Build Your CV During Grad School

November 8, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

A curriculum vitae, or CV, is not a resumé.

(Recommended reading: When it comes to grad school, what’s the difference between a resumé and a CV?)

Rather than being a list of your work achievements, it documents academic and intellectual development.

One of the most important elements on your CV will be your publications. Articles in scholarly journals and edited collections by other authors are the most valuable.

It is a record of your scholarly activities and an advertisement of your skills. Like your resumé, you will include information about your education and employment.

For grad students, this often focuses on teaching assistantships (TAships) and teaching opportunities, research assistantships (RAships), and other employment that relates to academic studies.

But there are three distinct areas you will want to build on your CV during grad school. In my own CV I’ve worked hard to expand sections on conferences, publications, and a range of extra-curricular activities.

Conferences


One of the easiest ways to beef up your CV is to present papers at academic conferences. Initially, these could be local or regional graduate student conferences.

Grad conferences are a great way to ease into public presentations with strong support from colleagues and other grad students. However, once you’re comfortable, make sure you start presenting on panels at professional conferences in your field.

Besides the obvious networking and profile benefits, every time you present a paper at a conference, it ads a line to your CV. The higher the profile of the conference, the stronger it looks. And attending conferences in different regions and countries will show up on your CV as broad engagement with scholars across the world in your field. If your paper takes any awards or honours, you can also add to your CV.

In addition to formal conference papers, your CV can also include invited talks, panels, and anywhere else you appear as a speaker. If you give a guest lecture in a course as a TA, you can use that too!

Publications


One of the most important elements on your CV will be yourpublications. For most grad students, this section remains relatively small until you are more advanced in your program.

Articles in scholarly journals and edited collections by other authors are the most valuable, but there are other opportunities to publish pieces relevant to your studies.

Book reviews are a great way to beef up your CV.

Leading academic journals use experts in a particular field to review books, but smaller journals, online journals, and graduate journals are all good places to contact about writing reviews.

They allow you to write about the newest books in your area of study without doing extra research.

You also get free books!

In the cases of both conferences and publications, it’s OK to list confirmed activities as forthcoming even though they haven’t happened or been published yet.

Extra-curricular


When it comes to grad school, extra-curricular activities are still valuable, but are used to demonstrate something different than on a resumé. While it’s always a good idea to show that you are a well-rounded individual skilled at both scholarly and non-academic activities, you will also want to use your extra-curricular activities to reinforce strong impressions of yourself as a scholar.

If you study digital humanities, you can highlight blogging activities and online publishing.  If your work in public history, volunteering with local historical agencies and sites is an obvious overlap. For those whose work relates to race, class, or gender, work or volunteering with labour groups, women’s groups, or humanitarian organizations can bolster your experience as well.

Service in the form of departmental and campus activities will also help to demonstrate your commitment to your institution, department, and colleagues in ways that could be helpful for scholarship, TA, and job committees down the road.


This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 8 November 2010.  

Why (and how) do we teach history?

November 5, 2010

One of my responsibilities as a postdoc at the University of Saskatchewan is to teach one course per year. This isn’t entirely new to me. I TAed for a dozen years, and was the instructor of record for a course last year at the University of California. But I’m still pretty junior in terms of […]

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Why (and how) do we teach history?

November 5, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

One of my responsibilities as a postdoc at the University of Saskatchewan is to teach one course per year. This isn’t entirely new to me. I TAed for a dozen years, and was the instructor of record for a course last year at the University of California. But I’m still pretty junior in terms of running my own classes.

In anticipation of teaching a course in twentieth-century European history this coming term, I’m thinking about how I want to structure the course, organize themes, and what I want to impart to my students. Essentially, the purpose of the course will affect its structure. But what is the purpose of the course? Why do we teach history? And how does this affect our delivery?

These are questions I’ve struggled with throughout graduate school, and now beyond. I want to nurture in my students an engagement and passion with the subjects and themes that have drawn me to history: the power of lived experience, the importance of minority positions to broader social concerns, and the possibility of positive change. But is that all I want my students to take from my classes? No.

What’s perhaps even more important, I believe, are the skills they can learn in a history class. Students learn to critically engage with sources by asking questions about who created them and for what purposes. They also learn how to communicate effectively, strengthening their oral communication skills in seminar situations, and honing their written communication skills in essays and exams. Students also build their critical thinking skills as they are asked to evaluate historical situations, events, and individuals’ motivations. They need to grapple with understanding the forces of change and continuity, and the competing interests which direct them.

So this brings me back to the class I’m planning. If I want students to take best advantage of my course to gain and improve their skills, how can I best facilitate that?

I’m very ambivalent about the lecture model of education. Part of this is because I have so little experience giving lectures, but also because I believe it too easily allows students to remain passive rather than active learners. That isn’t to say that lectures don’t have a role in education, allowing students the opportunity to gain insights and direction from experts in a particular field. And we’ve all certainly had excellent lectures from whom we’ve gained a lot. But I think they are limited in what they can offer most students.

I believe strongly in the seminar model, which I’ve used very successfully in my past teaching experience. My students learned a great deal from close reading and discussion of sources and documents—and so did I. That course, however, included only about a dozen students, an ideal number for engaged and active learning. In January, I’ll be teaching more than 50, far too many to sit around one table.

So my solution is to hybridize, creating a combination of lecture and seminar opportunities. Since we will meet three times a week, I’m planning to devote two days to lectures, which will frame the material, establish common background, and create a base upon which we can further explore particular themes. Fridays, then, will be turned over to self-directed groups who will discuss pre-circulated questions based on primary and secondary readings related to that week’s lectures. There is no way to engage all 50 students at once in a seminar, so groups will comprise 6-8 students, and a rotating group leader who will facilitate conversation. I will circulate, observe, answer questions, and interject only as needed.

I’m excited about this model: a compromise which allows me to work effectively with 50+ students, but which also creates and environment where each one has to engage with sources and communicate his or her thoughts. Since I truly believe that the benefit derived from studying history isn’t always about the content, but rather about the skills we teach students, this model seems a stronger method to achieve that.

But I’m curious to hear how others have handled these medium sized courses that are too large to be true seminars, but small enough to offer some opportunity to go beyond traditional lectures to promote active and engaged learning. What have you done? What has succeeded, and what has failed?


This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
5 November 2010.  

A Postdoc’s Life: Can you publish too much?

October 25, 2010

I’ve written before on the issue of publishing, and whether graduate students should actively publish their work. Consensus would seem to show that yes, they should, so long as they do so strategically and effectively without compromising the timely completion of their own degrees. But what about postdocs? We’ve already finished our degrees. We don’t necessarily have […]

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A Postdoc’s Life: Can you publish too much?

October 25, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

I’ve written before on the issue of publishing, and whether graduate students should actively publish their work. Consensus would seem to show that yes, they should, so long as they do so strategically and effectively without compromising the timely completion of their own degrees.

But what about postdocs? We’ve already finished our degrees. We don’t necessarily have a concrete deliverable (dissertation) expected of us at the conclusion of our contracts. What should postdocs consider when thinking about publishing more articles, or even a monograph?

This is a concern of mine for several reasons right now. I have two peer-reviewed articles already in print, another that is forthcoming, and I am thinking about submitting a fourth. At the same time, I want to start thinking about whipping my manuscript into shape to get that all-important first book out there. I’ve been soliciting advice on both these issues for some time, and have been given a great deal to think about, and to balance, as I try to navigate my postdoctoral path.

The first issue is actually not unlike that encountered by graduate students. If you are spending all your time churning out articles, reviews, and other writing, you might not leave yourself time to revise your manuscript. Now, of course this varies from discipline to discipline depending on the relative importance of articles and monographs, but in history, a book counts for a lot. And if you never get to it, or you end up giving away all your chapters as articles, you are potentially jeopardizing future opportunities that a book might offer.

The other issue, the one that caught me more off guard, is timing. When should you seek to get a book contract? When should you aim for your book to be published? (Remember of course that from submission to publication we’re still talking in terms of years of lag time and continued revision and preparation).

I was advised by one professor to seek out a book contract as soon as I could. It would make me more competitive for future postdocs and that golden dream, the tenure track assistant professorship. But, she warned, once I had the contract, linger on it and negotiate as much time as I could before final submission and publication. The danger, she advised, was having a book in print before getting that first job. Disrupting the natural order of things in this way could have multiple effects.

Of course a book, particularly a successful one, is a great boost to one’s professional credibility and could increase chances of landing that job. But, it could also backfire, she worried, advancing one too far down a career trajectory without yet even having a career. If a book is a common requirement for tenure, she warned, having a book in print before getting even a first job could disrupt the normal hiring process.

Similarly, another professor at another institution warned me to avoid publishing my monograph too soon. He worried that, depending on the institution where I might be hired, the requirements for tenure would only count from the time I would be hired. Pre-employment publications could help me land the job, but might not be counted toward advancement and promotion once hired, effectively necessitating the speedy production of a second monograph in short order!

So, here I am enjoying the first months of my first postdoc. I don’t know whether this will be followed by another postdoc, an academic job, or paths I haven’t yet fully considered. But I am considering writing my book proposal and starting down the path toward its future publication. For those of you in this position, or those who have lived through it, what have you been advised? What are your plans? Are you anxious about publishing too much, or too soon?


This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
25 October 2010.  

Location, Location, Location: Does Environment Affect Your Work?

October 12, 2010

We write a lot on the History Compass Exchanges about tools, methods and issues relevant to scholars undertaking major projects. It’s something we’re all working on and struggling with, whether it be the completion of a dissertation, revisions of an article, or the drafting of a book manuscript. Jean Smith has asked, for example, whether […]

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Location, Location, Location: Does Environment Affect Your Work?

October 12, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

We write a lot on the History Compass Exchanges about tools, methods and issues relevant to scholars undertaking major projects. It’s something we’re all working on and struggling with, whether it be the completion of a dissertation, revisions of an article, or the drafting of a book manuscript. Jean Smith has asked, for example, whether we can write our dissertations in “15 minutes a day.” Jean has also identified the integral link between thinking and writing. That piece has struck a chord with me this week as I struggle to find a place to think, a place to work. As I’ve been settling into a new city, snuggling into my own apartment for the first time in years, and visiting home for Thanksgiving, I’ve become acutely aware of how my own work environment profoundly affects my ability to think and to write.

Where should I work? I struggle to determine how much time to spend at the university and how much time to work from home. As a postdoc, I am expected to spend a significant part of my time at my university office. But, because it is in another building, isolated from the History department, I find myself gravitating toward working at home. At home, I’ve created a warm and inviting space where my references are near at hand, and plenty of tea is available. Even the lighting is more conducive to effective work – natural sunlight punctuated by a good desk lamp, as opposed to harsh fluorescent bulbs overhead. I'm old fashioned, I guess. I like the feeling of working in a quiet private library, rather than an impersonal office.

But beyond these work/home struggles, I’ve become even more aware of how important my surroundings are for effective work completion as I visit my childhood home for Thanksgiving. My own apartment is organized around a few key possessions and is relatively minimal (but for the hundreds and hundreds of books). My university office, on the other hand, is mostly defined by my office-mates’ possessions. And my parents’ home is a jumble of clutter. I find myself loathe to work at the office, and virtually incapable of anything productive in my parents’ home.

So this week has been an interesting opportunity to observe my own tendencies with a certain degree of self-awareness across these three sites. On the one hand I feel somewhat a failure for being unable to buckle down and get into my work while visiting my hometown. But I’ve also felt like a cheater in my new city, eschewing my university office for the comforts of my own little flat. I’m  grateful, however, for the awareness this comparison has offered me about my own work habits. Why is it necessary to fight these tendencies? Instead of lamenting where I cannot work, why not focus on being effective where I can work?

How does your environment affect you and your work? Have you found ways to overcome an inability to focus in new environments and spaces? Ultimately, where do you work best?


This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
12 October 2010.  

Why The Graduate Secretary Should Be Your New BFF

September 28, 2010

There are few people more important to your life in graduate school than the graduate secretary of your department. This person is more important than most of your professors, more important than your boyfriend or girlfriend, more important than your mother! The graduate secretary can mean the difference between a successful and happy graduate school experience, […]

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Why The Graduate Secretary Should Be Your New BFF

September 28, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

There are few people more important to your life in graduate school than the graduate secretary of your department.

This person is more important than most of your professors, more important than your boyfriend or girlfriend, more important than your mother!

The graduate secretary can mean the difference between a successful and happy graduate school experience, and one riddled with trials and tribulations where you just don’t know what to do or where to turn.

Building a strong relationship now with the graduate secretary will benefit your studies, your stress level, and your degree.

In many departments, the graduate secretary, especially if s/he has years of experience, is a font of institutional knowledge. This person knows when you should apply for fellowships, when the department hires TAs, where students have found other funding opportunities, as well as the proper procedure for completing graduate exams, filing theses, and managing your committee.

The graduate secretary is an institutional guru.

In my department at the University of California, our graduate secretary had more than 30 years of experience and acquired knowledge about the ins and outs of departmental and university policy. She knew more than most professors and upper administrators about how to get things done effectively and efficiently. She also knew how to get things done in a way that would most help students.

When I needed the right form, I went to her. When I needed advice on how to time my program and plan my courses, I went to her. And when I ran into funding problems, I went to her. She solved every one of these issues.

She is also a warm, kind, and generous person who did everything she could to make graduate school a less stressful and more enjoyable experience.

Even before you arrive at grad school, you will already be in contact with the graduate secretary. Very likely, this is the person to whom you sent yourapplication for admission, scholarship applications, and who will organize TA duties and office space. The graduate secretary will know all about you even before you’ve arrived in town.

So, when you do arrive in town, this is one of the first campus visits you must make. Just show up with a smile, a hello, and quick thanks for help already received. It is fundamentally important that you know who your graduate secretary is so that you are comfortable contacting him or her when the need arises.

Building a strong relationship now with the graduate secretary will benefit your studies, your stress level, and your degree. It may also foster one of the most important relationships at grad school, and leave you with a friendship that goes even beyond your degree.


This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 28 September 2010.  

Head of the (middle) class?

September 27, 2010

The Guardian reported today on the fear that the humanities were becoming increasingly gentrified. Reports in Britain show students from lower-income backgrounds avoiding programs like history and philosophy in favour of career-oriented studies. Why? The study shows a fascinating, and terrifying, situation. Not only are low-income students systemically barred from higher education and advanced degrees on account of […]

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Head of the (middle) class?

September 27, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

The Guardian reported today on the fear that the humanities were becoming increasingly gentrified. Reports in Britain show students from lower-income backgrounds avoiding programs like history and philosophy in favour of career-oriented studies. Why?

The study shows a fascinating, and terrifying, situation. Not only are low-income students systemically barred from higher education and advanced degrees on account of their economic resources. But we are simultaneously creating a culture around the humanities where the lowest income students are unable to take same the risk as their more affluent colleagues to pursue degrees in history and other humanities disciplines.

The study upon which the article was based spoke to enrollments and class issues in the UK, but it felt familiar even to me despite having been raised and educated to MA level in Canada and then to the PhD in the United States. The article’s discussion of working-class students’ fear of studies that might not lead in any obvious direction spoke to my own educational history.

I loved the humanities, and excelled in them throughout secondary school. But what could I do with an English degree or a History degree? With that in mind I found a compromise: I would study languages (German) and business for an international management degree. This worked for a time. I enjoyed studying German, and learning to communicate in another language opened up conceptual worlds to me I hadn’t imagined. But it was a still a compromise. The enjoyment I derived from studying German balanced against the loathing I felt for most of my business courses.

In the end I dropped out of business school to undertake studies in History. But even then, after two further years of study, I still feared I’d never find employment with the material I enjoyed, and so I left the humanities and returned to business. After many more flip flops and combined degrees I ended up completing degree requirements in all three areas: German, History, and Management. But History won as I soon went on to an MA. But some of the same concerns and struggles followed me there, as they have with other working-class colleagues who went on to graduate studies in History.

In Britain, the Guardian reports, the question of class and education is particularly significant because tuition rates are widely expected to be increased dramatically over the next few years. Increased tuition rates will, naturally, be felt strongest by those least able to pay them. And even if student funding sources are expanded, this does little to overcome what appears to be a mental obstacle preventing non-elite students from seeing the humanities as a viable option.

But what about North America where tuition rates are already on the rise? What about my former institution, the University of California, where tuition rates are growing astronomically to help offset the system-wide financial disaster? Under these kinds of circumstances, how do we maintain access for all to humanities studies?

But it’s not really about access. Grants, scholarships, and loans can be expanded for the lowest income students, after all. How do we actually convince them that the humanities are in fact a viable option, that they offer career paths, that they contribute more than ideals. And then, how do we create an academy where we can mean it, and believe it ourselves?


This post originally appeared at History Compass Exchanges on
27 September 2010.  

It’s a Postdoc’s Life

September 9, 2010

I’ve landed! I’m a Saskatooner, no, scratch that. I’m a Saskatoonian. Hmmm, not sure about that one either. I don’t know yet what we call ourselves here. But I’ve got an apartment and a local café. I know where to buy wine (critical) and how to find my office (essential). No more the uncertainty or […]

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It’s a Postdoc’s Life

September 9, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

I’ve landed! I’m a Saskatooner, no, scratch that. I’m a Saskatoonian. Hmmm, not sure about that one either. I don’t know yet what we call ourselves here. But I’ve got an apartment and a local café. I know where to buy wine (critical) and how to find my office (essential). No more the uncertainty or instability of an unemployed academic for me. No thank you! I’m now officially a postdoctoral fellow in History at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. The “Paris of the Prairies”…my Lonely Planet guide tells me.

Blogging has taken a back seat for a couple weeks in favour finding an apartment, buying furniture, and getting to know my department. But now I’m back with a new focus on post-doctoral life, projects, and survival.

The first thing I’ve discovered as a postdoc is that you have to hit the ground running. The term only started a few days ago, but already I’m on track to give the first talk at the department’s research seminar in a few weeks. I’ve also been brought on as the Saskatchewan organizer of a yearly bi-university, multi-provincial graduate history conference. This in addition to giving a paper in Montreal next month, and submitting a journal article in November. No rest for the wicked!

The second thing is that no one knows quite where the postdoc fits in the academic pecking order, or what benefits the postdoc can derive from this unsure status. And of course it varies from department to department, university to university. With apologies to Britney Spears for the paraphrasing: I’m not a girl grad student, not yet a woman professor. So, neither student nor faculty, I’m still working on finding out who to ask for conference funding, or how much of my extended healthcare is covered.

But after 6 months of uncertainty and break from academia, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m thrilled to be back in an environment I know and thrive in, with kind and generous faculty support, and welcoming colleagues who have already made me feel at home in Saskatoon.

And Wikipedia tells me that I’m actually a Saskatonian now.


This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
9 September 2010.  

How To Find A Super Supervisor For Graduate School

August 31, 2010

Once you get to grad school, the choice of primary academic supervisor to guide your research and writing is critical to your success. Students who lack a supportive supervisor often fail to thrive, while those with strong supervision and support have an undeniable advantage. Very often for a master’s degree, but certainly for a PhD, […]

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How To Find A Super Supervisor For Graduate School

August 31, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Once you get to grad school, the choice of primary academic supervisor to guide your research and writing is critical to your success.

Students who lack a supportive supervisor often fail to thrive, while those with strong supervision and support have an undeniable advantage.

Very often for a master’s degree, but certainly for a PhD, you will need to contact your potential supervisor, or interesting professors, long before you even apply to grad school.

Your supervisor will be your intellectual mentor, your first access point for issues and problems at grad school, and hopefully your biggest cheerleader (and reference writer) once you’ve completed your studies.

Finding that super supervisor, however, requires pro-activity, research, planning, and strategy.

Very often for a master’s degree but certainly for a PhD you will need to contact your potential supervisor, or interesting professors, long before you even apply to grad school.

Establish email contact early and, if possible, meet him or her to discuss your goals at grad school and your research interests. Find common areas of interest and places where your work might overlap. Your supervisor will ideally also be a great networking and work contact throughout your graduate studies.

When I was in the process of selecting PhD programs, I learned that the professor I was most interested in working with was attending a conference in Portland, Oregon. I was living in Vancouver.

So, I contacted her, set up a meeting, and drove to Portland to have breakfast with her. It solidified my interest in working with her, and proved to her I was dedicated and proactive. I ended up working with her for five great years at the University of California.

I was fortunate in both my masters and PhD to have amazing supervisors. But I have friends who left programs because of bad fits with supervisors, or had to change to other, more supportive professors mid-program.

Avoid this situation by planning early and making strong connections. Changing supervisors, while not uncommon, can be disruptive to both your degree and your confidence.

But if you discover that you just can’t work with your supervisor, don’t be afraid to discuss it with colleagues or other trusted professors. Keep the conversation professional, but open a dialogue about other options if necessary.

Ultimately, you are in control of your own success, and pro-actively choosing the right people to work with is your responsibility. Finding a super supervisor will set you up for a super grad school experience as well.


This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 31 August 2010.  

How To Decide Whether To Stay At Home Or Go Abroad For Grad School

August 17, 2010

You might not have gone far from home for your undergraduate studies. Perhaps you only went as far as the nearest major city. Or, like me, just to your local hometown university. Is a degree abroad with experts in the field worth the added expense and challenges? Sometimes it is. But for grad school, it’s […]

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How To Decide Whether To Stay At Home Or Go Abroad For Grad School

August 17, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

You might not have gone far from home for your undergraduate studies. Perhaps you only went as far as the nearest major city.

Or, like me, just to your local hometown university.

Is a degree abroad with experts in the field worth the added expense and challenges? Sometimes it is.

But for grad school, it’s almost inevitable that you will have to consider universities away from home. But what if away from home is also away from your home country?

After completing undergraduate studies at home in Alberta, I applied to study abroad for both my master’s and my PhD. A number of factors influenced my decision to remain in Canada for my master’s, but go away to California for my PhD.

Moving to another country for grad school is an enormous change and commitment. How do you decide whether to stay at home or go abroad?

Program of study


Finding the right program, or even just a school that offers your program, can take you to places you never imagined you’d live. The program might only be offered at some institutions, and those universities might be a province away, or even a country away.

Sometimes you have to weigh the strength of a program, and prestige of professors there, in your decision. Is a degree abroad with experts in the field worth the added expense and challenges? Sometimes it is.

I could have completed degrees in history anywhere, but for my doctorate I wanted to work with a world leader in my field. She was based in Santa Barbara, California, so I learned more about the program there and ultimately ended up working with her for five years.

Cost of living


Many countries have very different costs of living than Canada. Sometimes this can be advantageous to Canadians studying abroad, and other times, it can create a more costly situation, making it impossible to study there. Despite being accepted to leading U.K. universities, I was unable to attend because of the prohibitively high cost of living, even after securing funds to cover tuition and fees.

But the cost of living isn’t always consistent. Different cities and regions of countries have widely varying costs of living. I couldn’t afford to study in London, but might have been able to afford other, less expensive cities. And when I went on to do my PhD in Santa Barbara, the cost of rent was astronomical compared to what a friend paid who completed her PhD in North Carolina.

Tuition and fees


It is important to know that tuition and fees are set at different levels for domestic and foreign students. These costs can be as much as double or more for foreign students wanting to study abroad. These extra costs influence the decision to study abroad. But so too can differing funding structures in other countries.

When I applied to study the U.K., I was offered almost no financial support, scholarships, or funding. But when I applied to PhD programs in the United States, my acceptance to the university came with a multi-year funding package that covered my tuition and fees, health care (critical to have when studying abroad!), as well as wages as a teaching assistant. This funding and work package was the deciding factor in being able to complete my education in the U.S.

Going abroad for graduate school could be a great decision, especially if it is made with adequate planning and careful preparation. Never be afraid to contact departments and professors, wherever they are, to ask about the program, the people, and the policies of your potential university.


This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 17 August 2010.  

Does ‘Publish or Perish’ apply to graduate students?

August 12, 2010

Publish or perish has become a truism in academia where the pressure is always on to write the next article, get a contract for the next book, or edit a journal issue. But what about graduate students? Do they face the same pressure to publish or perish? Or do they perish if they publish…without planning? […]

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Does ‘Publish or Perish’ apply to graduate students?

August 12, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Publish or perish has become a truism in academia where the pressure is always on to write the next article, get a contract for the next book, or edit a journal issue. But what about graduate students? Do they face the same pressure to publish or perish? Or do they perish if they publish…without planning?

The reasons to publish are obvious: to increase your academic profile, to put your work before your peers, to network with other scholars, and most of all to make yourself more competitive in this dire academic job market. Anything to set you apart from the hundreds of other under-employed scholars is critical.

But are there also dangers in publishing as a grad student?

Preparing an article for publication can help marshal your thoughts, offer new insights for your work, and motivate you to achieve deadlines that can also be applied to your dissertation. But it can also distract you away from your most important task as a graduate student – writing your thesis or dissertation. If writing articles and reviews allows you to procrastinate and avoid your primary task as a graduate student, they are more harmful than helpful. If your degree goes long, it costs both time and money that could be devoted to other tasks. And if you fail to proceed toward completion of your dissertation in a timely manner, it can be a black mark against you in scholarship competitions, and with postdoc and job committees evaluating you before completing your degree.

Another concern grad students must consider when publishing is the quality of the work they put out there. Your first publications will follow you for some time. It will be a matter of record, and you might not want your earliest work and ideas to define you too soon. I would tend to discount this argument, particularly if you publish in respected, peer-reviewed journals. These publications will vet your work with experts in your field who can give invaluable insights to shape your work and make it stronger. Used effectively, this not only gives you the opportunity to publish a superior article, but affords you the chance to make your dissertation even stronger as well.

In a related concern, one which has been expressed to me, is that committees are more willing to forgive errors or points they disagree with in a dissertation or manuscript under revision. If, however, they find fault with material in a published article, they are more likely to hold on to these criticisms and weigh them against you in postdoc and job determinations. Of course, strong publications position will position you well for the job market. As L.L. Wynn pragmatically noted at the Culture Matters blog:

When hiring committees are trying to narrow down a large pool into a short list, they’ve got to pick between a lot of bright young graduates with highly rated dissertations, enthusiastic referees, and clever ideas. So what distinguishes candidates?  Often it comes down to bean-counting – grants, awards, publications. Publications really make you stand out, especially if you’re very junior.

Finally, as philosophy professor Gualtiero Piccinni has pointed out on a "Brains" blog post on graduate publishing, "Students should be aware that where they publish is at least as important as whether they do, especially if they aspire to a job in a research institution." A well-written and researched article in a respected peer-reviewed journal will be worth more than a more quickly turned out piece in an online graduate journal. This isn't to say that other or non-traditional publications are not valuable. But before publishing anything, you will need to consider how this publication will position you for your future aspirations and activities.

Ultimately, as long as it is well-placed, and doesn't distract you from completing your degree, effective and planned publishing as a graduate student can only benefit you.


This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
12 August 2010.  

Getting Ready For Grad School: Grades, Exams And Application Deadlines

August 11, 2010

Even though the Fall 2010 term hasn’t even started, it’s already time to start thinking ahead about admissions in 2011. A year in advance might seem early. But in addition to advancing your education, grad school is also about research and networking. And that starts in the application process. Even if your program has a […]

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Getting Ready For Grad School: Grades, Exams And Application Deadlines

August 11, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Even though the Fall 2010 term hasn’t even started, it’s already time to start thinking ahead about admissions in 2011.

A year in advance might seem early. But in addition to advancing your education, grad school is also about research and networking. And that starts in the application process.

Even if your program has a late final application deadline, be sure to apply early for programs you are most interested in to ensure your best chances at acceptance and other benefits.

You need to research universities and network with potential supervisors. You need to start planning for exams, taking those last courses, and double-checking deadlines.

Two areas prospective grad students worry most about are their grades and when to apply.

Grades


If you are thinking of grad school, as a rule of thumb your grades should fall in the B range for most master’s programs, and at least a high B for doctoral programs. Of course higher grades demonstrating excellence in your undergrad studies will weigh in your favour.

At the same time, however, in more competitive programs, higher grades, co-curricular activities, demonstrated research or discipline-specific skills, and involvement in your department are all strengths you will want to cultivate.

Many people worry about whether or not their grades are sufficient to gain entrance to grad school. While it’s true that high grades will help, they aren’t the only factor, and blemishes on a transcript can be overlooked with supportive letters of recommendation, a strong personal statement, or a good connection with a potential supervisor.

For example, if you’ve got great grades and are applying to graduate history program, as I did, but have a C in statistics, as I had, it is unlikely to hold you back.

Standardized examinations


For some programs you will also need to plan, research, and prepare for standardized examinations.

Because an A might not mean the same thing between universities, departments, or even individual professors, standardized exams offer a way for universities to evaluate and compare candidates. While they may be flawed, they are still used extensively to evaluate potential graduate students. So, if you have other blemishes on your record, be sure to study up and excel on these exams if you take them.

If you are interested in medical school, you’ll need to prepare for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). For law school, the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), and business school, the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT).

And if you want to study in the US, you’ll likely need to prepare the Graduate Record Examination (GRE).

These exams are not available at all locations, and may not be available all year round. If you need to take any of these, be sure to plan in advance, both for preparation, and to book the exam.

Application deadlines


Deadlines for submitting grad school applications are generally in the late fall and winter. Be sure, however, to note the deadline of your particular program, as different programs will have different deadlines, even at the same university.

At the University of Toronto, for example, the 2010 application deadline forphilosophy is January 7, linguistics is January 15, and geology February 1.

Some departments have room for flexibility. Also at the U of T, theimmunology program suggests that applications be filed by January 15 for September admissions. This is to ensure full eligibility for entrance awards, other scholarships, and prioritization for supervisor choice.

The final deadline, however, is June 1. But applying as late as that in any program risks not finding space, funding or supervision.

So, even if your program has a late final application deadline, be sure to apply early for programs you are most interested in to ensure your best chances at acceptance and other benefits.

And long before you even apply, email potential supervisors with whom you would like to work. This step isn’t critical in all fields. But very often your supervisor will ideally become your primary contact, your intellectual mentor, and your biggest promoter in the department.

Contacting professors in the planning stages of your graduate studies will pay off for years if you end up working with a strong and supportive supervisor.


This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 11 August 2010.  

On The Personal Factors That Can Affect Success In Grad School

August 4, 2010

Academic advisors might warn students about heavier workloads, research expectations, and the increased competitiveness of grad school, but the personal upheaval is largely unspoken of. Success in grad school is determined not only by academic achievement but by personal factors as well. Along with practical advice on the ins and outs of grad school, prospective […]

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On The Personal Factors That Can Affect Success In Grad School

August 4, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Academic advisors might warn students about heavier workloads, research expectations, and the increased competitiveness of grad school, but the personal upheaval is largely unspoken of.

Success in grad school is determined not only by academic achievement but by personal factors as well.

Along with practical advice on the ins and outs of grad school, prospective graduate students need to know the personal challenges they will face when pursuing advanced degrees.

Anyone who can get into grad school likely has the intellectual skills to succeed. But learning how to negotiate the new pressures on your personal life in grad school is an equally important skill.

So, along with practical advice on the ins and outs of grad school, prospective graduate students need to know the personal challenges they will face when pursuing advanced degrees.

Many graduate students, even at the masters level, have to undertake research trips or participate in conferences that take them away from home. Lasting anywhere from a weekend to a year, such trips are an amazing opportunity but can also be incredibly disruptive personally. While these trips can be expensive and lonely, they are also intellectually rewarding and exciting opportunities to travel.

Relationships can suffer from the enormous time commitments and potential travel requirements for success in grad school as well. For the lucky, partners might be able to join you at conferences and research trips. But for most, the time spent away on lengthy research trips poses a significant challenge to stable relationships.

Relationships are affected by more than just travel commitments at grad school. A graduate program will require more time, more personal investment, and more focus than undergraduate studies.

It’s not just school. You have to treat it like a full-time job. And this job requires lots of overtime! Balancing this enormous commitment with a relationship is hard. To do so successfully, you’ll need to prioritize and also limit the time you spend on your education. You’ll also need to identify and devote specific days and times to your relationship. Without planning, both will suffer.

Also, plan for the unexpected.

I moved to London, England, in February 2007, to undertake only a few months of research for my degree. In the end, I ended up staying more than two years!This move abroad took me away from my family and my friends, and even my professors, but it helped me to become an expert in my field and also build a relationship with a partner in England.

As in my own experiences, you will find that relationships, travel, research and finding the finances to manage these all become important considerations when thinking about going to grad school. They continue to be factors you need to consider throughout your studies as well.

Grad school offers amazing opportunities to advance your education, gain important credentials, develop professional contacts, and sometimes even to travel. It is, however, an enormous commitment in terms of time and money, and the decision to embark upon grad school should be made only after extensive research and advice.

The advice and experiences you’ll find here are a great place to start, but be sure to talk to professors, academic advisors, and career counsellors as you consider or prepare for graduate school.


This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 4 August 2010.  

Review of Reviews: Should Grad Students Review Books?

July 29, 2010

I’m of two minds regarding grad students writing book reviews for publication. On the one hand, they give you regular and consistent publication credits, access to the newest monographs in multiple fields, and of course free books. They are never as valuable as peer-reviewed articles, but they do keep your CV active and up to […]

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Review of Reviews: Should Grad Students Review Books?

July 29, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

I’m of two minds regarding grad students writing book reviews for publication. On the one hand, they give you regular and consistent publication credits, access to the newest monographs in multiple fields, and of course free books. They are never as valuable as peer-reviewed articles, but they do keep your CV active and up to date. On the other hand, unless the books are directly related to your field of study, reviews divert your attention away from completing your own research and writing. As a grad student, however, there can be few opportunities to publish, particularly in major journals. Book reviews offer an opportunity to get your name out there.

But how can you be considered for review opportunities? And how do you get the most out of them?

My best luck has come simply through word of mouth. Friends, colleagues, and sometimes even scholars I don’t know have recommended me for particular titles. Journals also have book review editors whom you can contact to express your interest and describe your specialization. I’ve never contacted journal editors, but I have recently submitted my details to H-Net lists, which offer the opportunity for a larger online profile as their reviews are published quickly and archived on the internet. I’m certain, however, that most of my review opportunities came out of scholarly conferences, where other scholars have come into contact with my work. Build you profile in the profession, and opportunities of all sorts will begin to flow toward you.

I’ve written 4 book reviews in journals ranging from the Journal of British Studies to Urban History, have two forthcoming in even more divergent journals, and have just committed to writing a review essay of three books for another journal. Each has been a completely different experience.

Those that overlapped with my own field of research were the easiest to write. I was most familiar with the literature they drew upon, the sources they used as the bases for their arguments, and felt more than capable of identifying strengths and pointing out weaknesses. These reviews sharpened my own scholarly skills and allowed me to contribute to the profession in a public and meaningful way.

But I’ve also reviewed books outside of my specialization and only peripheral to my own knowledge base. Similar to concerns expressed by medievalist blogger Squadratomagico, I have  encountered books that may have been good enough, but were also unoriginal and unexciting. These types of reviews were definitely harder, sometimes to the point of debilitation. I sometimes had to reposition myself as an educated non-specialist to comment on how understandable, useful, interesting, and applicable such books were. It was challenging to offer something useful to readers as a non-specialist commenting on a field in which I did not participate.  Though I knew little, I learned a lot.

Of course, at the same time I was writing my own dissertation, and it necessarily suffered somewhat from these moments of anxiety, distraction, and lapses in confidence. Worst of all perhaps, writing reviews allowed me to procrastinate while still feeling productive. I was getting work done after all (wasn’t I?), just not on my dissertation. In the end, I completed my dissertation, but lost weeks of work time to the stress of reviewing books.

I was only a grad student then, so publications of any sort were valuable. The Tenured Radical, however, offers some sage advice about focus and priorities once we're on the job market:

Whether it is submitting an article, finishing revisions on an article that has come back with reader's reports, writing a book proposal and sending your manuscript out, whatever. You need to show that you are moving forward in your career. … the further out you are from graduate school, the higher expectations are about your scholarly trajectory. Do not agree to write any: book reviews, encyclopedia entries, or anything else that fills up a curriculum vita with entries that have nothing to do with original scholarship.

On the whole, however, I would have to conclude that in grad school the benefits of reviews outweigh the challenges as long as you can manage your time, prioritize more beneficial work, and complete more important tasks.

If you choose to take them on, the lesson I’ve learned is to budget time for reviews. Make reviewing a specific task, like completing a chapter by a certain date, rather than an imprecise activity that can grow to consume whatever time you allow it. Reviews can be a dangerous opportunity to procrastinate, but used effectively, they can also stimulate your thinking, offer new insights in your own work, and increase your professional profile and publications credits.


This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
29 July 2010.

This Is What They Don’t Teach You In Grad School

July 20, 2010

You can only learn how grad school works by actually experiencing it. Many future (and even current) grad students are not sure what to expect at grad school, how things are different from undergraduate studies, or sometimes even how to access the information they need to succeed in this new environment. This new series will […]

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This Is What They Don’t Teach You In Grad School

July 20, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

You can only learn how grad school works by actually experiencing it.

Many future (and even current) grad students are not sure what to expect at grad school, how things are different from undergraduate studies, or sometimes even how to access the information they need to succeed in this new environment.

This new series will offer advice, experience, and ideas for students already in grad school, as well as those thinking about making the jump or just exploring the option.

It doesn’t have to be this way!

Welcome to a new TalentEgg series! While TalentEgg’s Career Incubator is primarily devoted to articles for undergraduate students and recent graduates embarking on their careers, we also know that many readers won’t stop at an undergraduate degree.

Many will go on to grad school for professional degrees, other master’s degrees, and even doctorates. This new series will offer advice, experience, and ideas for students already in grad school, as well as those thinking about making the jump or just exploring the option.

The series will be written by two TalentEgg writers, each with their own unique experiences in grad school.

Danielle Lorenz


Danielle Lorenz will begin grad school at Carleton University in Ottawa this fall, where she will pursue an MA in Canadian Studies with a focus on Indigenous Studies.

Danielle is just embarking on her grad school adventure, learning the ropes and sharing her experiences with readers as she navigates this new world. In addition to articles on applications and funding, Danielle will also write about life as a new graduate student and offer regular updates of her progress in grad school.

Justin Bengry


At the other end of the spectrum, Justin Bengry recently completed his PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in History with an emphasis inFeminist Studies.

Justin has finished nearly a decade of grad school and wants to share how to succeed and what to be wary of in higher education. He will focus on relationships with supervisors, conducting research and also how to succeed at grad school.

Throughout the summer and fall we will also cover issues and questions surrounding application procedures, fellowships and grants, TA-ing duties and responsibilities, relationships with supervisors and everything in between. This will be an ongoing series of articles, the timing of which will be designed to match your trajectories for applications, anxieties, and needs throughout the academic year.

Feel free to comment on articles with your own ideas and questions for areas you’d like to see us cover!


This blog was originally published at TalentEgg on 20 July 2010.  

Memory, Identity and Politics in Sarajevo

July 15, 2010

As an historian I’ve probably gained more sympathy and understanding of the importance of my discipline from my travels and experiences outside the classroom. There are moments of sudden and profound understanding that have given me chills. I first experienced this on my first trip to Germany. Walking among the trees down the former East […]

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Memory, Identity and Politics in Sarajevo

July 15, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

As an historian I've probably gained more sympathy and understanding of the importance of my discipline from my travels and experiences outside the classroom. There are moments of sudden and profound understanding that have given me chills. I first experienced this on my first trip to Germany. Walking among the trees down the former East Berlin's Unter den Linden I was overwhelmed by history, the power of space, and the profound social and cultural transformations that this street had seen and now represented.

With many more trips to Europe, and the experience of many more sites of historical unrest and change, I thought I had become dulled to such emotive responses to history. And then I took a week-long road trip across the Balkans in a rented Fiat.

There’s something about the immediacy of knowing this place was under siege so recently, experiencing war within the period of my own memory. It’s easy to assume that war ended in Europe in 1945, but throughout Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia war ravaged society not even a generation ago.

The stark reality of this hit when driving through towns that couldn’t afford to replace bombed out buildings and past farmhouses still pockmarked with bullet holes. After the relative wealth of Slovenia and parts of Croatia, the tell-tale signs of war in rural Croatia as we approached the Bosnian border were jarring. And later, in Mostar, the ruins of office buildings and apartment blocks in the downtown core was a stark reminder of what many around us had experienced so recently.

But the experience that stays with me is Sarajevo. Mostly recovered, you might not see many signs of war in its streets these days. Until you look down to the sidewalk and see the so-called Sarajevo Roses, small mortar shell craters filled with red cement, much of the city today seems largely unscathed, its scars mostly hidden from the public and from tourists.

And then I found the shell of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina just around the corner from our hotel. An Ottoman style building on the banks of the Miljacka river, the library was a repository for the history of Bosnia, and as such became a deliberate target of Serb incendiary bombardment on 25 August 1992.

The fact that the Serbian army would destroy a repository of a nation’s written culture and history speaks to the power of history to define a people and their identity. Bosnia’s rebuilding of the library and recollection of materials lost in the subsequent inferno is equally telling of the need to assert a collective history and culture in an area fraught with competing identities. What I found most poignant, besides the hulking ruin itself, was a plaque mounted on its wall, even during the process of reconstruction:

On this place Serbian criminals in the night of 25th-26th August, 1992 set on fire National and University’s Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over 2 millions of books, periodicals and documents vanished in the flame.

Do not forget, Remember and Warn!
This plaque is striking. When I saw it, the building was under reconstruction, but the plaque remained. Its tone and identification of the perpetrators of the library’s destruction names names. It asks Bosnians never to forget the loss, but also never to forget who caused it. But, appearing in English, it is also a call for foreigners not to forget what happened on this site of twentieth-century history as well.

As an historical actor itself, the library remains a poignant voice on multiple levels of self-identification, memory, loss, and self-representation of a people to the rest of the world. For more on the library, its history and destruction, and the move to rebuild its collections see:

* UNESCO site about the library.
* A 1995 article from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions titled "Libraries are not for Burning."

Photo: National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Justin Bengry)


This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
15 July 2010.

On Luck, or How we Succeed in Academia

July 3, 2010

I’m in a more contemplative mood of late.A single event has changed the trajectory of my life. I was ready for one path, preparing for the struggle and strain of starting again, and then…and then I got lucky. Among those of us applying for a particular job or postdoc, any one of several dozen applicants […]

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On Luck, or How we Succeed in Academia

July 3, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

I’m in a more contemplative mood of late.A single event has changed the trajectory of my life. I was ready for one path, preparing for the struggle and strain of starting again, and then…and then I got lucky.

Among those of us applying for a particular job or postdoc, any one of several dozen applicants would be perfectly qualified and able to fulfill the terms of almost any appointment. Still, impressions at an interview, good or bad days, and nerves at a teaching demonstration or job talk all influence the final outcome. And none of these are static indicators. A lot comes down to luck.

I’m thinking about this more lately because of the great luck that has befallen me. After living on credit cards and borrowed money, increasing my debt, and sinking further into despair, a lifeline was thrown to me. Luck has chosen to take me to the University of Saskatchewan for a two-year postdoc.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t feel that I lack control over my life. I’ve created the conditions in which luck could find me. I’ve worked hard to get here. I’ve published, taught, and made connections across three countries. I’ve bled to get here.

But so have hundreds of others. Some of them are more qualified than I am for positions; some might be less qualified. But in this case I’m the lucky one. Some small thing distinguished me from them in this competition. It could have been key phrases in my proposal, the combination of areas I research, particular “synergies” with existing faculty members. I don’t know. But it worked to my advantage.

But this experience has made me think about the profession of academia, its randomness, and luck. I take credit for my hard work for five years to get here. I give credit to those innumerable friends, colleagues, and family who have supported me intellectually and personally even longer. But in the end I’m no different than 100s of other aspiring academics, thousands of other scholars, tens of thousands of other men and women who want to make a living engaging with intellectual questions.

The experience has humbled me. I’m lucky. I have security and stability for two years. My shoulders have dropped at least two inches with that assurance. I’ve started sleeping the full night through for the first time in months. It didn’t have to be this way. I was ready to forge a different path. Success is luck. And in this job climate and economic downturn, we all need a little more luck.


This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
3 July 2010.

History Matters: Gay History, Queer Theory, and What to do with the “Hard Stuff”?

June 17, 2010

I recently reviewed Charles Upchurch’s Before Wilde: Sex Between Men in Britain’s Age of Reform. In the period roughly spanning the first three quarters of the nineteenth century Upchurch has uncovered a range of voices discussing male same-sex sexuality. In the press, courts, letters, and other documents he finds an active discourse in this period largely overlooked […]

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History Matters: Gay History, Queer Theory, and What to do with the “Hard Stuff”?

June 17, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

I recently reviewed Charles Upchurch’s Before Wilde: Sex Between Men in Britain’s Age of Reform. In the period roughly spanning the first three quarters of the nineteenth century Upchurch has uncovered a range of voices discussing male same-sex sexuality. In the press, courts, letters, and other documents he finds an active discourse in this period largely overlooked by historians who have favoured  the earlier subculture of the “mollies,” or the later period of sexological discourse and scandalous trials like those of Oscar Wilde. Family relations, economic considerations, class and status, among others, Upchurch argues, inflect this discourse.

I enjoyed the book. I learned a lot. It certainly didn’t radically reposition the historiography, but it responded to gaps in the literature with solid evidence and exhaustive archival research. By all measures of historical scholarship, I believe, it is a good, solid book, one which Upchurch can be deservedly proud.

Then I read other reviews online.

I found others who hail it as a masterpiece of profound merit that illuminates the truth of history that has been occluded by dangerous queer theorists like Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. Larry Kramer, celebrated playwright and gay-rights activist, offered effusive praise of the book in his Huffington Post review that sums up this distinction:

This is a very important book. It may even be a historic book, one with which gay history can arm itself with more sufficient factual veracity as to start vanquishing at last the devil known as queer studies. Queer studies is that stuff that is taught in place of gay history and which elevates theory over facts because its practitioners, having been unsuccessful in uncovering enough of the hard stuff, are haughtily trying to make do.
He goes on to malign,
…Foucaultian and Butlerian (to name but two) nightmares with the obtuse vocabularies they invented and demanded be utilized to pierce their dark inchoate spectacles of a world of their own imaginings.
Kramer, and others, who demand the “hard stuff” of history—just the facts ma’am—are drawn to Upchurch’s solid base of social history. His work gives voice to the excluded, reclaims untold stories, highlights the role of minority subjects in greater narratives of politics and the state. For many outside the academy, this is what should be the stuff of history.

But if Kramer is anything to go by, then, even educated, informed, and engaged individuals aren’t actually getting the distinction between history and other related fields upon which we may build our work. Kramer wants history, and maligns Philosophy, English, Sociology, and Interdisciplinary Studies for not being History. But the history he wants is social history, and a relatively narrow version of social history at that. To be fair, Upchurch does offer a more complex and sophisticated discussion that goes beyond mere politics of visibility.

These issues bring up hard questions for us as practitioners of history. I struggle with my love of history and my dedication to this craft. I want to write sophisticated, rigorous, intellectually powerful works of scholarship. But I also want them to be read and valued by more than a handful of like-minded colleagues. I value social history's relevance and appeal to wider audiences, but I also feel that so many of us have gone further than what social history alone offers.

How do we respond to well-intentioned, but potentially disruptive, individuals like Kramer, who love history, but fear the history they don’t understand? Who want history, but don’t quite know what it is anymore? How do we tell our advocates that we’ve changed, that we are everything they value, but more?


This post was originally published at History Compass exchanges on
17 June 2010.

No Respect! Are Humanities the Rodney Dangerfield of Academia?

June 3, 2010

The recent bloodbath in humanities programs has left me reeling. Most recently there was The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. According to the Times Higher Education, there has been a unit at UCL covering this subject since 1966. This world-renowned centre currently operates with 29 staff, including 12 academics, and […]

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No Respect! Are Humanities the Rodney Dangerfield of Academia?

June 3, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

The recent bloodbath in humanities programs has left me reeling.

Most recently there was The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. According to the Times Higher Education, there has been a unit at UCL covering this subject since 1966. This world-renowned centre currently operates with 29 staff, including 12 academics, and 54 students, including 25 PhDs. This is a significant scholarly presence that has long led international scholarship in the history of medicine. No more. It will be phased out over the next two years.

Then there is the case of Middlesex University. Having already closed its History department in 2006, Philosophy is now on the chopping block. Opposition to the closure has gained support from scholars and public intellectuals around the world including Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, and Slavoj Žižek. But it’s clear from stories like this that humanities programs are considered expendable, suitable victims of cost-cutting measures.

Closer to home, Canada recently invested $200 million in the Canada Excellence Research Chairs initiative. It attracted 19 world-renowned scholars to Canada, but included no scholars in the Arts and Social Sciences. Not a single, solitary one. (It also included no women!)

The connection between these stories, and others we could collect, is a denigration of the humanities. Funding priorities, department closures, and the suggestion that humanities scholars are a drain on limited resources illustrate this over and over again. There are a number of reasons for this, of course, ranging from the recent economic downturn, the ongoing corporatization of the academy, but also just an ongoing, general devaluing of the humanities.

But why do we suffer this fate? Why don’t we garner wider support? Are we too isolated in the ivory tower? I think there’s something else at play. In one way, I think we’re victims of our own success.

History remains among the most widely popular disciplines among the general public. Period films are huge money-makers, and the History Channel has been a success for more than a decade. Yet historians feel constantly under siege. Of course there can be a world of difference between popular and academic history, but it’s often a fuzzy line. We’ve done an amazing job of making our discipline interesting and accessible to non-specialists.

The consequences of this are perhaps also our biggest challenges.

Non-specialists have no problem telling me the “truth” about history, the ways people interacted in the past, the priorities my research subjects held, and the motivations of past historical actors. This is based on intuition, “common sense,” and also genuine interest. But it also positions non-specialists on an equal footing with scholars, people who have devoted at least a decade to complex questions and research. Few would tell my colleagues in nuclear physics or genetic biology, who have the same level of training as I do, the “truth” about their field, the interaction of subatomic particles, or the molecular makeup of DNA strands. But they immediately, whole-heartedly, but unmaliciously tell me all about history.

They are invested in the discipline but don’t respect its practitioners.

This equal playing field in the public’s mind diminishes the need for specialists, and their funding, and their departments. I worry that this kind of casual denigration of the humanities is what “filters” up to non-specialist government, administration, and funding bodies who enact the same assumptions in funding, hiring, and administrative decisions.

Perhaps this goes some way to explaining the bloodbath. But what is the solution? How do we remain relevant and respected? How do we bridge popular and academic history without losing the unique skills and insights that specialists offer? How will we survive?


This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
3 June 2010.

4 reasons to extend your degree

June 1, 2010

Sometimes it’s just not the best idea to finish your undergraduate degree in four years. You might need more time. Whether it’s because you want to take an extra credential or major, do a co-op or work placement, travel or study abroad, or you just need to slow down the pace, extending the length of your degree is […]

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4 reasons to extend your degree

June 1, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Sometimes it’s just not the best idea to finish your undergraduate degree in four years. You might need more time.

Whether it’s because you want to take an extra credential or major, do a co-op or work placementtravel or study abroad, or you just need to slow down the pace, extending the length of your degree is a serious but viable option.

It can even make your degree stronger if you plan it effectively and use the opportunity to your advantage.

Here are four reasons you might want to extend your degree, and how you can use them to position yourself better after that degree is done.

Extra major


Completing a double major or adding a credential to your degree can make you more appealing on the job market. If you like languages, you may be able to combine it with business studies for a degree tailored to international business. If you like music, history or sociology, combining these with an education degree opens doors to be a music or social studies teacher.

Double majors and extra credentials show employers and grad schools that you are driven and motivated. And pragmatic combinations position you well for competitive fields.

Co-ops, internships and volunteering


Many of us finish our degrees with the classic problem: lots of education but no experience. But how do you get experience in the first place? You get it during your education as a part of your degree!

Co-opsinternships and volunteering are becoming an increasingly valuable addition to many undergraduate degrees. Some offer you the opportunity to earn while you learn, but each helps build contacts and network in your chosen career. Or you can just use them to give a career option you may be interested in a trial run.

If you choose this path, by the time you finish, you’ll already have practical skills, a stronger resumé and important references.

Travel


Taking time to travel is one of the most valuable experiences in life. Extensive experiences abroad show employers you are adaptable, pro-active and confident. But travel is often expensive and time consuming.

Study abroad programs and international internships offer another chance to live in another country, experience another culture, and gain a sensitivity to international issues and global concerns. They may last the summer, a semester or an entire year abroad. Some even allow you to count courses toward your degree.

But if you continue to take courses while living abroad, they may not all transfer back to your home institution. Always plan foreign study with an academic advisor.

Personal reasons


The transition to university can be a difficult one, especially for students studying in a new city or province. And the pace of courses in your program might be more than you expected. It’s OK to slow down. Many of us also have to earn an income while going to school. Undertaking a full course load at the same time might seem like a necessity in order to finish, but it could do real harm if your grades suffer, or if you fail classes. Repeating them only takes more time and money.

Be sure to look into summer courses, which you may be able to use as prerequisites for other classes, or as required elements for your degree.

It is important to plan ahead since extending your degree can be costly and confusing. Some programs require that students follow a set plan, and many courses have prerequisites that aren’t offered every semester. Make sure to weigh the benefits and consequences of remaining longer at university.

Will you be able to pay for that extra year or semester? Do you want added student loans? Sometimes the answer is yes, but before making any decision,discuss your goals and options with a counsellor or your department advisor.


This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 1 June 2010.  

Young yoga entrepreneur teaches fellow yoga enthusiasts to practice their passion

May 28, 2010

Many of us have a passion for something, but we never really take it seriously as more than a hobby. But what if our passion and our work were the same thing? Entrepreneurs can live their passion every day and incorporate it into a career. Turning your passion into your career, however, is a challenging […]

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Young yoga entrepreneur teaches fellow yoga enthusiasts to practice their passion

May 28, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Many of us have a passion for something, but we never really take it seriously as more than a hobby.

But what if our passion and our work were the same thing? Entrepreneurs can live their passion every day and incorporate it into a career. Turning your passion into your career, however, is a challenging task requiring focus, motivation, hard work, and a measure of luck.

Asia Nelson is a certified advanced yoga instructor, yoga teacher trainer and director of her own company, Pranalife Yoga, based in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. She has been a certified yoga instructor since 2003 and started Pranalife Yoga in 2006.

Q. How did you develop an interest in yoga?
A. I first got into yoga accidentally. During undergrad, I’d signed up for a Tai Kwan Do class and they made me spar a green belt on the first day. I thought, “This isn’t for me,” and when I couldn’t get a refund for the class I transferred into yoga because I thought it sounded interesting. It was probably the most life-altering “accident” of my life thus far!

Q. What inspired you to start your own yoga business?
A. Truthfully, I hated Cubicle Nation so much I had to come up with some way to make a living that didn’t involve working for someone else. I spent some time considering my skills and passions and what opportunities I saw to apply them, and Pranalife was born.

Q. What aspects of entrepreneurship appeal to you most? Which are the hardest?
A. The hardest parts of entrepreneurship are in some ways the most appealing. My major purpose in life is to grow, so every challenge is positive for me. For example, my favourite part of being an entrepreneur is being self-led, which is also one of the hardest things to do well long-term. Sometimes it’s just easier to be part of a team, but I thrive on the discipline needed to succeed in entrepreneurship, which I think is one of the toughest fields out there.

Q. How have you applied your education and training to your business?
A. I hold an honours BA in English literature and an MA in rhetoric and communications design. I draw from what I learned in my degrees for everything from staying disciplined to research and writing skills to the mental acuity needed to get things done well, even when they’re not fun (which would describe 90% of the last half of writing my MA thesis).

Right out of my MA, I held a job as an interaction design advisor for a marketing company and, although my fit with a cubicle was terrible (I get hives at the idea of an office job), I gleaned incredible knowledge about how to suss out customer desire and innovate on business design from having had that role.

Q. What is unique about your yoga business?
A. Everything I do is about moving from good togreat. This shows up most strongly in my Teacher Training. I’ve done a number of things with the Teacher Training to build a truly great program for my teachers.

Most yoga programs cost $3,000-$5,000 paid up front. You do the entire training in one shot and, when you’re done, you’re on your own. If it turns out you don’t actually want to teach, well I guess you’re out a few grand and a few hundred hours.

Not with Pranalife. I divide the training into 60 hour modules to cut down on the up-front cost and to give them time to practice what they’ve learned before going further.

I’m passionate about supporting my instructors and I do so in innovative and useful ways. The result is that Pranalife yoga certification means you’re going to be great, and you’re now part of a business with integrity.

Q. What has been your greatest obstacle in developing Pranalife?
A. I’m a perfectionist and an overachiever so if I’m not careful I end up doing everything myself because I assume it’s the only way to get it done right. At times I’ve become the bottleneck in my own business, and so I’ve been learning how else to run things so that I don’t get in my own way.

Q. What has been your greatest success with Pranalife?
A. The yoga teacher training is what I’d call my most successful pairing of my passion with my skill set. It does well financially, it excites and challenges me, and it creates amazing experiences and opportunities for others interested in and dedicated to yoga.

Q. What advice would you give other young entrepreneurs embarking on a similar path?
A. Entrepreneurship is for a certain breed and very few people do it, or do it well. Be sure it’s really what you want to do because it’s very demanding. If you can be content with a stable job that brings you decent money and a pension, then you’ll probably default to that at some point, so just do that.

If reading that last sentence makes you afraid to risk it, then I’m right. If reading that pisses you off and makes you want to prove that you’re an entrepreneur, you probably are. There’s only one way to find out.


This post was originally published at TalentEgg on 28 May 2010.  

Making the Grade

May 20, 2010

I’ve always been ambivalent about grading. I question how much students really learn from exams. I know, for example, that I forgot everything I ever learned about the Revolutions of 1848 until I actually had to relearn and then teach them again myself. I question whether undergraduates really need to learn the content of exams. […]

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Making the Grade

May 20, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

I’ve always been ambivalent about grading.

I question how much students really learn from exams. I know, for example, that I forgot everything I ever learned about the Revolutions of 1848 until I actually had to relearn and then teach them again myself.

I question whether undergraduates really need to learn the content of exams. Is it not better for them to complete a course having gained better critical thinking skills, improved communication and writing skills, and an appreciation for history rather than by supplying a flawless (but regurgitated) retelling of the events of 1792 in France?

And I question the effect that grading has on instructors, who must toil through 50 answers to the same question about China’s Cultural Revolution. Of course there are some shining stars, but many answers reflect relatively passive learning and a bit of studying the night before. I love teaching, but I’m never more depressed than after reading student exams and realizing that my love of history and language is only mine and seldom theirs. It is only reflected back to me in a few exciting papers, and rarely from only the students with the highest grades.

But why should my students have the same priorities and passions as me? Just because they are in a history class doesn’t mean they need to love history. History is really just the means, the method, a pedagogical tool. I’m not in the business of creating mini-Justins (aside: Oh, what a world it would be!), rather I want my excitement for knowledge and learning to impart a sense of curiosity and opportunity among students.

Grading quashes that for both of us.

Duke University English professor Cathy Davidson seems to feel the same way:

I loved returning to teaching last year after several years in administration . . . except for the grading.  I can't think of a more meaningless, superficial, cynical way to evaluate learning in a class on new modes of digital thinking (including rethinking evaluation) than by assigning a grade.
I encountered Davidson’s work while reading about her experiment with peer-evaluation techniques. Earlier this month Inside Higher Ed reported on the success of her course “Your Brain on the Internet.”

On her blog, Prof. Davidson explained her grading methodology as “crowdsourcing,” basically peer review, with evaluations based on performance contracts with the students. The course was already organized as a seminar led each week by students, she explained, but where formerly students had only been responsible for reading each other’s work, they would now be required to evaluate it. If the “crowd” deemed it satisfactory, it earned that week’s points. If not, students had the option to revise and resubmit.

Davidson was overjoyed with the outcome:
Whether in conversation or in the presentations, my students often took the best writing on a topic and then took it to a new level, with greater complexity and greater attention to a range of possibilities (rather than polemic) that quite literally any published work on the same topic.
But not surprisingly, critics to this method have appeared. This week, Leonard Cassuto, a professor of English at Fordham University responded in Inside Higher Ed. While he recognized the benefit to questioning grading methodologies, he ultimately felt it was the professor’s responsibility and duty to rank students in a meaningful way. Davidson's  method was unhelpful, he worried, when all of her students earned As.
I think avoiding grading (or some comparable form of rigorous evaluation by the instructor) shirks necessary responsibility, avoids necessary comparison, and puts the humanities at even greater risk of bring branded "soft" than they already face. […] The bottom line question is this: if everyone gets As, does that mean that Yale Law School will simply accept them all?
In the end, Davidson’s class comprised just 16 students, and on a larger scale her methods would, I expect, distribute grades differently. I am, therefore, excited about Professor Davidson’s experiments in teaching and grade evaluation, and I think there is a great deal of space (and need) for innovation. But Professor Cassuto identifies important reservations about the effect such methods could inadvertently have on students who wish to go on.

Davidson’s experiment does, however, bring up a number of questions: Does peer evaluation imperil the humanities? How can we more effectively evaluate students? On what should we evaluate them? Perhaps this offers an excellent opportunity to apply digital technologies more fully to the humanities classroom? And in the History classroom, is there space for this kind of evaluation method?


This post was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
20 May 2010.

The Strange Case of Postdocs in Canada

May 6, 2010

Are they students? Are they staff? Universities in Canada can’t quite seem to decide just what exactly a postdoc is. To be fair a postdoc is in a strange in-between place; s/he is no longer a student, but not yet a professor (even though he or she may conduct original research and teach undergraduate and […]

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The Strange Case of Postdocs in Canada

May 6, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Are they students? Are they staff? Universities in Canada can’t quite seem to decide just what exactly a postdoc is. To be fair a postdoc is in a strange in-between place; s/he is no longer a student, but not yet a professor (even though he or she may conduct original research and teach undergraduate and even graduate students). This might not seem such an important issue at first glance. But there are enormous work-related, benefits, and tax implications that hinge on the definition of a postdoc. And as a postdoctoral fellowships becomes an almost mandatory step toward tenure-track positions, the implications loom large for many of us.

After 10 or 15 years of post secondary education, for many PhDs the next step will be a postdoctoral fellowship. Not only do these fellowships potentially afford  time to revise dissertation manuscripts for publication, design  courses, and solidify professional networks, they act as another step forward toward tenure-track positions. Ideally they come without teaching requirements, but might include teaching responsibilities from one or two courses per year or more depending on the fellowship. But as faculty hires plummet, and PhD numbers expand, this step is becoming increasingly necessary in order to remain competitive.

So far this doesn’t seem so bad. We all know that academia is becoming ever more competitive and positions ever fewer. Nothing shocking there. The issue, however, is that for many postdocs the issue of defining their position is critical. Many postocs while not enjoying the tax benefits of students also miss out on employment benefits offered faculty and staff.

The issue came to a head last year when after Le Devoir reported that Quebec universities, which had offered postdocs the tax exemptions given to students, had been instructed by the Canadian Revenue Agency to stop doing so. Now disallowed from the benefits of students and without access to those of staff, postdocs got the worst of both worlds, along with a substantial, unplanned, and significant loss of income owing to increased taxes.

Many fear that in order to gain any tax exemptions, postdocs might be defined as some kind of student or trainee. The Ryerson Free Press suggests that a new category of trainee might institutionalize and formalize yet another time-consuming step to professional stability that does little to help postdocs, but everything to maintain universities’ access to qualified but low-payed labour. And both statuses might come with new fees and costs for debit-ridden individuals already strapped for cash in the years before achieving tenure-track appointments. Both the Ryerson Free Press and the Protect Canadian Postdocs site, in fact, are already reporting postdoc “trainee” fees being levied at the University of Toronto.

This issue has become so fraught that two scholars at Canadian institutions have created the Protect Canadian Postdocs website to follow developments and highlight the situation faced by postdocs at their own and other universities. Untenured, they choose to remain anonymous to avoid aggravating their university administrations and threatening their own careers. With less to lose, Tom Spears of the Ottawa Citizen last month likened some postdocs to “indentured servants, with lots of degrees.” Now many fear that in addition they may become cash cows for cash-strapped universities.

No doubt great benefits come with postdoctoral work that gives recent PhDs a foothold on the academic ladder. But postdocs' relationship to universities needs to be explicitly determined to avoid even further creating an underclass of high-skilled, low-payed teacher-researchers in the Canadian academy.

A number of sites and online petitions have sprung up in protest:

Canadian Postdoc Tax Petitions

Petition to Maintain the Competitiveness of a Postdoctoral Researcher in Canada


This blog was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
6 May 2010.

Love among the Books: Relationships in Academia

April 8, 2010

We might only learn the practical elements of survival at grad school by, well, surviving grad school. Some of the most important handy hints and warnings never make it into orientation materials and grad handbooks: Research trips can be lonely – you might gain weight. Conferences can be dull – it’s ok to skip panels. […]

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Love among the Books: Relationships in Academia

April 8, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

We might only learn the practical elements of survival at grad school by, well, surviving grad school. Some of the most important handy hints and warnings never make it into orientation materials and grad handbooks: Research trips can be lonely – you might gain weight. Conferences can be dull – it’s ok to skip panels. And no one tells you that grad school can make relationships hard, really hard.

Relationships often involve long distances. But, if you find yourself in a successful relationship of any length during grad school, it is almost inevitable that you will be separated from your partner for a lengthy period. Research trips sometimes involve months abroad and fellowships might require solo relocation of up to a year or more. And unless you land a job in a convenient location immediately upon graduation, the reality of term positions and adjunct work, not to mention the current job market, means that you might have to move to places you never expected to see let alone live. And on the job market, balancing career opportunity with relationship priorities can continue to be challenging.

This is where I have found myself, in a fulfilling and committed relationship, but one which emerged toward the end of a research trip. I was able to spend two years in the UK with my partner, but with the knowledge I’d have to leave. I’ve returned again after completing my PhD, but am faced with going back to Canada in a couple weeks until such time as work or funding make it possible to return. Confronted by the reality that it will get harder before it gets easier, I’ve surveyed friends, and friends of friends, who have successfully made a go of it. What’s the trick to making these long-distance grad school or academic relationships work?

Erin and Shane* met as students in Canada, but went on to different grad schools with Erin relocating to the US. Living in different countries for an extended period, they have always had to prioritize communication. They devote at least one hour every night to online cam chats using skype. And when Shane finished his exams, he was able to spend weeks visiting Erin while writing his own dissertation, something nearly impossible in non-academic long-distance relationships.

Karen and Adam similarly live apart and also emphasize communication. They prioritize spending time with each other as much as possible, and treat trips to visit each other like an investment in their relationship, and not a cost to one partner. So, if Karen is free but can’t afford to fly abroad, Adam chips in to help since they both benefit. They also work each other into research and conference trips, using their careers as opportunities to bring them together more often.

So, while grad school can make many relationships almost impossible, it also opens up a world of possibilities available only to a lucky few. As junior scholars we are poor, but travel a lot, and can potentially bring our partners. We can take random days off to enjoy a sunny Tuesday afternoon in April together simply by working on Saturday instead. We have built-in summers and extended Christmas and Spring breaks, all of which give us time to enjoy with our partners. I’m learning from these surveys and friends that even though I’m returning to Canada in a few weeks, with no definite plans to return to my partner in the UK until work or funding permits, there are ways to make it continue to work.

* All names are altered.


This blog was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
8 April 2010.  

History Matters: The High Stakes (and Higher Value) of History

March 26, 2010

The Texas State Board of Education’s changes to the state’s social studies curriculum have highlighted the political motivations behind the histories that are taught in schools. In response to the board’s conservatism, the left wrings its hands in dismay, the right smiles with vindication, and centrists ask to restore some kind of balance. But we […]

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History Matters: The High Stakes (and Higher Value) of History

March 26, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

The Texas State Board of Education’s changes to the state’s social studies curriculum have highlighted the political motivations behind the histories that are taught in schools. In response to the board’s conservatism, the left wrings its hands in dismay, the right smiles with vindication, and centrists ask to restore some kind of balance. But we should be concerned about more than political allegiances. There is more at stake than “correct” or “balanced” or “fair” histories. We need to question not only the power of political factions to promote particular visions of history, but also the profit motives that have made some histories more saleable and therefore more powerful than others.

Many are decrying the board’s revisions for putting a “conservative stamp” on the state’s curricula. According to the New York Times, they endorse the superiority of American capitalism, question the history of secular government, and promote Republican political philosophies. Even just a cursory look over other recent commentary on the subject shows how high the stakes are and how strong the divide remains, even outside Texas. Famously conservative Phyllis Schlafly welcomes a turn away from the imposition of liberal “revisionist histories,” while on the other side Diane Ravitch accuses Texas of promoting ignorance. Other commentators worry about wider effects on education. If textbooks modeled on the Texas state curriculum are successful, they could enter classrooms throughout the country. Such is the power of a large state to influence how history is taught across the country.

Ok, how surprised should we be that history is a fraught and disputed subject? Of course it is. It’s invested with diverse meanings that inform personal beliefs and collective identities. We are heavily invested in history, and that shows up in the Texas textbook debates. Nor should we be surprised that groups on either side of the political divide are deeply concerned about what appears in textbooks, each accusing the other of promoting a particular agenda. Both sides, of course, are correct to question what appears in textbooks. We should constantly re-evaluate received knowledge, question “obvious” wisdom, and be prepared to refashion textbook histories. The point that critics and commentators alike miss in this debate, however, is the sale of history. Money over content.

I would like to be able to blame extremists for the bastardization of history. But I can’t, at least I can’t completely. Even those with whom I disagree, whose positions I abhor, are using an existing opportunity to put forward their values and beliefs. That isn’t the fundamental problem here. The content of textbooks is up for debate not because zealots have undermined history, but because publishers want or need to make a profit off of it, and worse still may be less concerned about content than contracts.

Textbooks will be rewritten because Texas represents an enormous market. And books that meet that market’s “needs” stand to gain enormous readerships, and perhaps lucrative ongoing contracts. Their potential influence and authority in schools and among pupils will not necessarily be based on their historical and intellectual rigor, but on their ability to sell to the Texas market. So, the problem might not be so much that history is politicized. That is, after all, why history is important. The problem is that politicized history is up for sale.

Further Reading:

For an overview to this issue see the History News Network roundup of coverage.


This blog was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
26 March 2010.  

After the Academy: Changing the Culture of Humanities PhD Programs

March 11, 2010

As many of us struggle to define our professional identities after graduate school, it is clear that we could do more to aid this goal before we finish our degrees. But we cannot do it alone. Several comments from my last “After the Academy” post brought up important issues in this regard. We need departmental […]

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After the Academy: Changing the Culture of Humanities PhD Programs

March 11, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

As many of us struggle to define our professional identities after graduate school, it is clear that we could do more to aid this goal before we finish our degrees. But we cannot do it alone. Several comments from my last “After the Academy" post brought up important issues in this regard. We need departmental support for options beyond the academy. We also need to foster a culture that values these options. How should we train and support graduate students to take the fullest advantage of non-academic and non-tenure track opportunities while remaining committed to a rigorous program of study that prepares them for university careers as well?

Fellow History Compass blogger Jana Remy had one suggestion. She wished to see as much enthusiasm for announcing non-tenure track appointments on her department’s mailing list as tenure track jobs. This is really a simple practice to change, but it could powerfully impact the culture of a department. Announcing hirings of graduates in government, business, journalism, and public history positions (among the many, many other possibilities out there) treats those positions and career paths as genuine choices, possibilities, and even successes. When departments, faculty, and graduate students fail to celebrate these successes, those silences say something. We need to transform the culture of our departments to recognize and celebrate opportunity, rather than shielding us from options.

Even fields within history, however, do not always get there due. Commenter Lizzie added that greater respect for public history could open doors as well. My alma mater, UC Santa Barbara, is home to the oldest public history program in the country and the journal The Public Historian. It offers one the leading programs in public history available, but beyond students enrolled in the public history program little attention is given to career opportunities in this direction. As Lizzie suggests, promotion of public history programs and internships could go a long way.

I see an opportunity here to add “skills” requirements and certifications to history PhDs. The UNC Chapel Hill Department of History has already begun a similar project, replacing multiple language requirements with training in a research skill or theoretical perspective for students whose research does not require multiple language proficiencies. A university like UCSB, with strengths in public and oral history, could go even further, offering certificates in public history or oral history training to students who have completed sufficient coursework and/or fieldwork. If I can complete a Doctoral Emphasis in Feminist Studies (and I did), I should have the option of similar accreditation for public history or oral history from a department with those strengths. This could provide a model for other departments with other strengths to offer graduate students skills in a manner easily recognized outside the academy.

Wider access to public history skills could forge networks and links to be mined upon graduation. Oral history certificates could offer credibility for journalism, government, and social justice work. Internships in any of these would offer that elusive “real world” experience in addition to the academic credentials we already have.  A culture within history departments that publicizes, values, and celebrates these options would make it easier for us all to access them and take advantage of greater career opportunities. Are there other “skills” we could seek or policies we could promote in our departments to support and encourage a range of graduate career options?

Also see:

National Council on Public History

Doing Public History: A UK site that explores use and concerns of public history from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Public History IndeX: A UC Santa Barbara blog that examines issues concerning practitioners of public history.


This blog was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
11 March 2010.  

After the Academy: Whither next?

February 25, 2010

Whether it’s Stockholm Syndrome, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or Survivor’s Guilt, those of us considering a career outside academia find it nearly impossible to imagine just what life after the academy might actually look like. Part of this is because we find it hard to envision a career path beyond the university. We spend at least […]

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After the Academy: Whither next?

February 25, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Whether it’s Stockholm Syndrome, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or Survivor’s Guilt, those of us considering a career outside academia find it nearly impossible to imagine just what life after the academy might actually look like. Part of this is because we find it hard to envision a career path beyond the university. We spend at least a decade sheltered in our departments, surrounded by and receiving our career socialization from other scholars. At the same time, academic departments are rarely the most supportive environments for discussions of non-academic career paths. Having just completed fourteen years of university in the middle of a major recession, I nonetheless see this as a time of opportunity rather than desperation. But I still ask myself, whither next?

I would love an academic job. I’m also a realist, and realistically it's lean times. Most of us with PhDs will ultimately find employment outside the academy. Graduate school trained me to use proper Chicago citation style, how to manage a classroom, and the intricacies of navigating foreign archives, but I had little preparation for life beyond the university walls—until now. I’m suddenly tallying my “transferable skills,” creating professional networks in multiple arenas, and forging an online presence to promote myself as a scholar? a writer? a researcher? a photographer? It’s daunting and exciting. And there’s a wealth of online support.

Interviewed for Sabine Hikel’s “Leaving Academia” podcast, Krista Scott-Dixon relayed her own trajectory to a non-academic career. She discovered that it wasn’t a precise occupation she was searching for. Naming a job title didn’t resonate with her. Instead, she realized that seeking a path that allowed her to do the values that were important to her, rather than the tasks that she was trained for, would lead to her ideal future. She’s now a web/magazine editor and research director.

These sites like Hikel’s that have sprung up to support a generation of scholars who are moving beyond academia clearly speak to an important issue. Names of some, like “Sellout,” make clear the associations and fears they seek to dismantle. As soon as we start talking about leaving the academy, there’s a sense of failure, or of accepting failure by discussing possibility. This needs to be overcome! And advice like Scott-Dixon’s makes it easier to speak openly about PhD grads' possibilities, whether inside or outside academe.

I found Scott-Dixon’s advice especially resonant. Beyond the generic “professor,” many of us have not actively formulated a career goal, myself included. But I do know what I value: social justice, the power of language, desirable location, and challenge. Thinking in terms of values spoke to me more than most things I’ve read about possibilities beyond the Ivory Tower. But it’s not an answer, it’s just a signpost, and this series “After the Academy” will trace where the sign(s) point.


This blog was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
25 February 2010.  

Out in the Academy: Researching Queer Histories

February 11, 2010

February is LGBT History Month here in the UK, which focuses attention on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans issues in the present, and also the experiences of queer Britons in the past. This yearly program to promote diversity and LGBT histories reminds us just how rich queer history actually is. But it is still taken as a truism by […]

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Out in the Academy: Researching Queer Histories

February 11, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

February is LGBT History Month here in the UK, which focuses attention on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans issues in the present, and also the experiences of queer Britons in the past. This yearly program to promote diversity and LGBT histories reminds us just how rich queer history actually is. But it is still taken as a truism by many that the lives of gay men and lesbians remain absent in the archive, that their stories are “hidden from history.” While it is true that the stories of many gay men and lesbians cannot be found in the traditional archive, we are nonetheless discovering their footprints across the historical record.

Traditional archives have, in fact, been at the forefront of this work in the UK. The National Archives has actively participated in identifying LGBT sources across its collection. Together with the London Metropolitan Archives it is also creating guides to better access these histories in other collections. A number of specialist archives also record the histories of political action, legal reform, and campaigningwomen’s and lesbian histories; as well as newspaper and media coverage of homosexuality in the twentieth century. But, even beyond these, researchers of queer history have at their disposal so much more.

As Jean Smith recently reminded us in another Compass posting, we need to look outside the traditional archive for fuller and richer histories of the past. Scholars of queer history in Britain are fortunate to have access to an enormous range of oral history collectionsnational survey testimony, and other repositories of gay and lesbian history. And in my own research, I have discovered film archives, theater collections, local archives, and personal collections teeming with possibilities after a little digging.

I write this post because I was almost dissuaded from undertaking dissertation research in queer history. This was not because of homophobia or reduced funding on account of my subject. I began graduate school believing, like many, that queer histories were largely marginal, inaccessible, and poorly recorded in the archive.  But after arriving in the UK, exploring the archives, and jettisoning the entire PhD project I had initially proposed and the prospectus my committee had authorized (after many sleepless nights), I was able to embark upon the project I was passionate about and which became my dissertation. I had thought that an LGBT history project was not viable as a dissertation. I was wrong. And I hope that programs like LGBT History Month will remind other junior scholars of the range of research possibilities that are available to us, and also of the innumerable histories remaining in the archive but still untold.


This blog was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
11 February 2010.  

Out in the Academy: Why Teach Queer History?

January 28, 2010

Recent events at the American Historical Association’s annual conference in San Diego have raised questions about how we as historians consider homosexuality and LGBTQ issues, both in our own research and teaching as well as the professional as a whole. At the AHA, queer scholars, scholars of sexuality, allies, and other supporters expressed concerns about events […]

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Out in the Academy: Why Teach Queer History?

January 28, 2010 . By Justin Bengry . Leave Comment

Recent events at the American Historical Association’s annual conference in San Diego have raised questions about how we as historians consider homosexuality and LGBTQ issues, both in our own research and teaching as well as the professional as a whole. At the AHA, queer scholars, scholars of sexuality, allies, and other supporters expressed concerns about events taking place at the Manchester Grand Hyatt because of its association with Douglas Manchester, a prominent supporter of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. Many observed a boycott of the hotel, finding accommodation elsewhere and avoiding panels at the Hyatt. Others participated in mini-conference sessions specifically addressing LGBTQ issues and histories.

This interest in contemporary gay and lesbian issues at our national conference also forces us to consider how we, as historians, address gay and lesbian histories on a smaller scale in our own work. After all, it is in the university with our students where many of us will have the greatest impact. This is not to say that we as historians should make it our mission to teach a particular politics in the classroom. Our students come from a wide variety of backgrounds, faiths, and political positions. We can respect these perspectives, and the positions of our students, even as we seek to explore questions of contemporary relevance that might be fraught with personal passions and politics.

At one AHA mini-conference session on Proposition 8, Jennifer Manion (Connecticut College) evaluated historians’ engagement with LGBTQ lives and histories. Even as queer history has grown as a subfield in the last two decades, and an increasing number of dissertations explore gay and lesbian questions, too often professors’ treatment of LGBTQ history is little more than neglect. Few textbooks incorporate more than a couple paragraphs on gay and lesbian lives. Arguably, for many professors, fitting queer topics into already full syllabi means dropping another subject in favor of what many colleagues, chairs, and tenure committees might see as only a relatively small, marginalized group. But, argues Manion, even ongoing interest in a few important or successful books like George Chauncey’s Gay New York has amounted to little more than tokenism, rather than a genuine reconceptualization of what and how we teach.

Which brings us back to the first question: Why teach queer history? Very often, history is in fact the study of the present. Our research and publications can inform heated questions that society must still deal with. Is this not also the case with same-sex marriage? And is it not incumbent upon us to include gay and lesbian histories in our courses, syllabi, and overall department catalogues? Opposition to issues like gay marriage might be based on personal values, faith, and other perspectives. It is not our job to “correct” these positions. But, opposition can also be based on false histories, lack of knowledge, and ahistorical arguments that deny the past. A reconceptualization of our teaching strategies that incorporates gay and lesbian histories into courses as part of the diversity of our nations and communities, rather than as a theme week or small graduate seminar, necessarily promotes understanding and sensitivity to difference in the past, and perhaps the present too.

For the AHA's response see: here and here.

For other responses to the AHA and the Hyatt boycott see:

http://tenured-radical.blogspot.com/2009/11/status-of-american-historical.html

http://www.historiann.com/2010/01/09/historiann-exclusive-classy-claude-at-the-aha-in-san-diego/

http://tenured-radical.blogspot.com/2010/01/guest-post-aha-blew-it.html


This blog was originally published at History Compass Exchanges on
28 January 2010.