Andrew Hibel, HigherEdJobs: The Annual MLA Convention is taking place January 8-11-2015 in Vancouver, British Columbia. For those who don’t know what MLA is, please briefly explain the association, the purpose of the convention and the typical audience that attends.
Margaret Ferguson, UC Davis and MLA: With approximately 28,000 members who live in the U.S., Canada, and nearly 100 other countries, the MLA is one of the world’s largest scholarly associations. It facilitates intellectual exchanges among its members, most of whom are college and university faculty members or graduate students. There are also more than a hundred secondary school teachers and many independent scholars in the association. The annual convention features nearly 800 sessions in which members discuss their scholarly work, their teaching, and their professional concerns. The convention offers many opportunities for career development: members can attend workshops on the job-search process; extend their intellectual horizons and professional networks; and meet with representatives from the many publishing companies that come to the convention to exhibit new books and to discuss future projects with MLA members.
This year, the convention will be in Vancouver for the first time. I chose ” Negotiating Sites of Memory” as my presidential theme in part because I wanted to honor Vancouver’s First Nations people and their many contributions to the city’s status as one of the most multicultural and multilingual cities in the world. My Presidential Forum, which features five scholars speaking on sites of memory important to their work, is open to the public, as are a number of other sessions, including “Visual Cultures and Young People’s Texts in Canada” and “Canada and the United States West Coast as Sites of Memory”; more than 200 panels and roundtables engage with the convention theme. I’ve organized two sessions in connection with my Forum; these are on new work in Native American Studies across the Americas and on the question of how we today can remember what’s truly “not modern” in older fields of inquiry such as the Middle Ages and the period sometimes known as “the Renaissance” but also called “the early modern era.” One of the speakers in the latter session will illuminate those mainly European period concepts as she speaks about “Woodblock Printing and Popular Knowledge of the Global World in Ming China.”
Hibel: What interested you in a leadership role in the association and why would you recommend people become involved in the MLA? What are the benefits of involvement in this association?
Ferguson: I went to my first MLA convention in 1970, when I was a graduate student. I quickly realized that membership in the association would give me a new and valuable angle of vision on intellectual, professional, and social issues that mattered to me. As a young feminist scholar and activist, I was interested in the surveys and reports of the MLA’s Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession (CSWP), which was formed in 1968 and which argued forcefully for changes in hiring and promotion practices that discriminated against women in higher education. My mother, Mary Anne Ferguson, served on that commission from 1970 to 1973, and her excitement about the frank and wide-ranging discussions the CSWP had during its meetings increased my desire to participate in MLA committees. In my experience, the MLA offers its members more paths than specialized professional societies do to engage with academic workforce issues and with how the humanities are perceived by the public–and by governmental officials who make educational policy.
Hibel: The MLA Convention is unique compared to some other conventions because formal interviewing happens at the event. For individuals who may be experiencing the convention for the first time, what is your advice on how to prepare for interviews before the convention and tips on what to do once they arrive?
Ferguson: I recommend that those new to the interviewing experience at the convention explore the “Career Resources” section of the MLA’s Web site. Over the years the bulletins of two MLA-affiliated organizations, the Association of Departments of English and the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages, have published many essays with helpful advice about convention and campus interviews and the entire job search process. Many of these began as presentations at the preconvention workshops for job seekers that the ADE and ADFL have arranged annually since the 1980s. A selection is freely available here.
It’s very helpful to have one or more practice interviews before you go to the convention. The MLA urges PhD-granting departments to offer mock interviews to their graduate students. One question that we often pose in practice interviews in my department is “Where do you see your field headed in the next five years, and how do you plan to contribute to its possible new directions?”
Because the typical MLA interview gives job candidates a very short time to demonstrate their strengths and because it’s almost impossible not to worry about how you’ll handle such a stressful situation, my graduate students who have had interviews at recent MLA conventions have suggested some tips for relieving stress: one is to do breathing exercises; another is to take a walk outside the hotel. Advance planning also helps. Arranging to meet for meals, attend sessions, and socialize with a small group of classmates and friends makes the convention less daunting–and is a good thing to do.
Hibel: Are there certain standard or predictable questions that are asked in most MLA interviews?
Ferguson: You can expect to be asked at least one question about how you would teach a course that the hiring department currently offers in your area of expertise. Sometimes, there’s a variant of this question: “Could you teach XXX, which we need someone to teach but which is marginal to your area?”
There are also likely to be questions about how you would design and teach a course that’s not currently on the hiring department’s books. Most interviewing committees are eager to learn not only how a new colleague would contribute to the department’s existing curriculum, including its introductory or general education courses, but also how a future colleague would bring fresh curricular and pedagogical ideas to the table.
Some other common teaching questions are:
- How would you teach a major work in your field? (They might name one.)
- Tell us about a moment when you were successful as a teacher? Not successful?
- How do you modify your teaching depending on the size of the class?
- What are your strengths / weaknesses as a teacher?
- How do you get students excited about books in your field? (This is an especially common question for candidates in “older” literary periods.)
Most interviewing committees will also ask candidates about their current and future research projects; such questions, like those on teaching, will usually reflect some knowledge of what you’ve said in your written application materials. Some common scholarship questions are:
- Tell us about your dissertation. (Be prepared for follow up questions or specific questions about your project.)
- What does your dissertation contribute to the field?
- How do you see your field changing in the next five years?
- What research projects do you have in mind beyond the dissertation project?
- How does your scholarly writing influence your teaching and vice versa?
It seems to me that a key question that underlies the convention job interview scenario is whether the candidate can talk engagingly about her or his academic experiences and interests. You don’t have to show that you know everything!
Almost all interview committees invite the candidate to ask questions about the job, the department, or the school.
I also want to mention that there are certain questions that candidates should expect if they are being interviewed for jobs in specific kinds of institutions or in specific fields. The chair of my home department, Elizabeth Miller, who is a prize-winning scholar of Victorian literature and a young veteran of more than 25 experiences of being interviewed at the MLA, gave me a list of general interview questions that I’ve drawn on above and also some questions that candidates might be asked if they are being interviewed by departments in certain kinds of school: a liberal arts school interviewing committee, for example, might ask candidates if they understand the “mission” of a liberal arts college, and a similar question might be asked by interviewers from a college with a religious affiliation. My sister Jean Ferguson Carr, who is a scholar of literacy, women’s studies, the history of the book, and 19th century English and American literature and who currently directs the Composition Program in the University of Pittsburgh’s English department, gave me some sample questions for candidates interviewing for jobs in composition and writing studies programs–one of the few areas of the humanities where the number of tenure-track positions is increasing rather than declining. She says that “interviews usually begin with questions about the candidate’s work and its relation to the field (and we’re interested in how candidates talk about ‘the field’)”; then the interviewers move to questions about how a candidate’s work might inform graduate teaching and direction of graduate student projects. These are followed by questions about undergraduate teaching: “we’re interested in specific courses, in how candidates think about the shape of an undergraduate major, in how new interests (digital pedagogy, service learning, community literacy, professional writing) inflect the teaching of writing. We often ask what undergraduate students seem to have difficulty learning to do”–and how the candidate addresses such difficulties, through sequenced assignments, for instance. My sister also reports that interviewers regularly ask questions about a candidate’s interest and experience in program work–especially in “the teaching of teachers.”
Hibel: Do you have a list of three top dos and don’ts when it comes to interviewing not only at the MLA convention but when a candidate comes to campus?
Ferguson: The two kinds of interviews are so different that I can’t generalize about them. But I can offer one do and don’t for each kind! For the short interviews that happen at the convention: DO listen carefully to and try to answer each question you’re asked (interviewers notice if you don’t actually address the question!). But you can also take the initiative sometimes to steer the conversation: focus, for instance, on a part of a question that you’d really like to answer and then offer to move on to the other parts; or answer a tough question in a speculative way but also offer to talk about something related. DO make eye contact with everyone in the room as you respond to questions. Some candidates focus only on the person who has asked a question; your job is to engage the interest of the whole committee as much as you can.
For the campus interview, DO remember to ask questions about your interlocutors’ work or teaching interests, even if you’re just walking from one campus place to another. Candidates are sometimes so eager to show what they know that they forget that their interlocutor also wants to share information and ideas and that a major purpose of the campus interview is to find out whether you would be a congenial colleague. Your interviewers won’t expect you to have memorized every detail about everyone in the department, but they will notice if you only talk about yourself. DON’T use the Q & A after your job talk to mention everything you might have had to cut to fit the time allotted; instead, answer the question as best you can and make room for others to speak.
Hibel: How do candidates balance discussing their research interests, their interest and philosophy of teaching, and their overall passion for the position and institution without it sounding rehearsed or too technical like a dissertation defense?
Ferguson: In my experience, convention interview candidates don’t have much opportunity to do this kind of balancing work! The interviewers decide when to shift the topic, and it’s usually according to a fairly tight schedule–for example, 10 minutes for questions about the research project and writing sample; 15 minutes for teaching; 5-10 for the candidate’s questions. The statement that the candidate has prepared on his or her dissertation project SHOULD be pretty polished; I’d rehearse until my response was fluent and comfortable. It’s really hard to be concise and precise without rehearsing.
Hibel: Even if you may not be involved in a formal interview, networking at sessions, lunches, in the exhibit hall, or other places is important. For candidates who are more reserved or may not think of themselves as strong networkers, what do you suggest they do in order to gain confidence, make connections and build relationships?
Ferguson: Having myself been a shy conference-goer for most of my career, I know how hard it is to network as if you were a born extrovert. One strategy I adopted early on was to look at the list of presenters in the convention’s program for the name of a scholar in my main field of interest whose work I’d read and found interesting. If you follow this path, you can go to the session in which that person is speaking and formulate a question that you can ask in the Q & A. Short questions–even requests for further elaboration of a point–often give presenters a welcome chance to explain something they didn’t have time for during their talk. If you can’t think of something to say on the spot (or don’t get called on), talk to the scholar after the session ends or, if that doesn’t work, email her or him. Even a small question or a brief statement about how hearing a person’s presentation made you think about something in a new way can open the door for future communication and begin the important process of meeting specialists in your field who aren’t at your home institution. I also suggest attending sessions organized by members of the MLA Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Profession and by the Graduate Student Caucus, where you can meet peers from other universities who are actively involved in the MLA. You can stay in touch with them through their discussion group on the MLA Commons [link removed no longer active], the web platform launched two years ago, and you can begin to raise your own questions and help shape future convention programs.
Hibel: Most interviews end with the interviewer or the panel asking candidates if they have questions. What types of questions should candidates ask?
Ferguson: The most interesting questions I’ve heard during my years of being on interview committees tell the interviewers that the candidate is curious about how she or he might contribute to the department’s common good. Such questions necessarily arise from a more than superficial acquaintance with the kind of information you can find on a departmental Web site and on related ones. Looking at what a college or university says to potential undergraduates or graduate students about its distinctive features often provides material you can use to form a good question about a department’s goals–and the challenges it is currently facing. If you see that the department has required introductory courses–or senior “capstone” courses–that different faculty members teach (or help supervise), you could ask about the goals of such courses and how they might have changed in the last few years–or be in the process of changing now. Most departments are trying to solve problems; if you can pose a question about what the interviewers see as the main challenges the department faces over the next couple of years, you can often learn something from what different interviewers say about how you might be able to contribute to the department’s work over and beyond what you’ll do by teaching courses in your own area of expertise.
Hibel: Is there a different follow up protocol for interviews that happen at MLA? Should the candidate send an email right away, while still at the conference? If a candidate runs into an interviewer at a session or event, should the candidate attempt to network or acknowledge the interview?
Ferguson: A short email of thanks sent soon after the interview is what the MLA’s official documents recommend, and I agree with them. When I’ve served as a department or search committee chair, I’ve appreciated such emails; but let me add that I have not expected them to contain new information or remarkable displays of wit, especially of the kind called “esprit d’escalier”: the brilliant response that comes to you too late, when the interview or class or date is over. If a candidate runs into an interviewer later in the convention, it’s good to acknowledge the acquaintance (and it’s therefore wise to go over the names of your interviewers after meeting them so you can be prepared for a chance encounter in an elevator!). Attempting to network, unless the interviewer initiates a substantive conversation, seems inappropriate to me.
Hibel: You’ve had a highly successful career in higher education as a professor, author, leader and other roles. What aspect of working in academia are you most passionate about and why?
Ferguson: I’ve been passionate about my teaching throughout my career. I’ve been lucky to have talented and engaged students at each of the public and private universities I’ve worked for; and I’ve been delighted when two or more of my former students have collaborated on organizing a conference session or writing an article. Many of my scholarly publications have dealt explicitly with the history and processes of education at various levels of instruction–how a person’s access to what his or her society defines as literacy is affected by the social categories of gender, race, and status, for example, or how Renaissance teachers’ strategies for teaching rules of grammar for English were modeled–as ours still are today–on rules for teaching Latin grammar and rhetorical tropes in ancient and medieval schools.
One of my major initiatives at the MLA, moreover, was the formation of an Executive Council subcommittee that that works to identify and support partnerships between high school and college teachers of language and literature. The “K-16 Collaborations” subcommittee works on building bridges between secondary school teachers and their colleagues in two- and four-year colleges on topics pertaining to the teaching of languages other than English (many of which are spoken within the U.S. and Canada) and to the “English Language Arts,” as they’re termed by the Common Core State Standards. After my term as president ends in January, I hope to continue to work with high school and college teachers who share my belief that we can do more than we’ve done so far to communicate with each other about pedagogical strategies and also about the goals we share as humanities educators today.