And for my next trick....

For the better part of 20 years, I have worked to write like a historian.  For the last 7 or so, I've worked to write like a historian who wants academics in allied fields to read their work.  My interdisciplinary writing group has helped with this -- pushing me to reconsider some conventions in my field, to explain things that I wouldn't need to explain to an audience of historians, to adopt some new practices in presenting my research.  I think I've been somewhat successful in this.  I've published more interdisciplinary and multi-discipline journals than in traditional history journals since getting tenure.  But now I'm wondering if I have over-stepped my abilities.

Last year I started working on using one of my history projects (on gender-based harassment in public spaces) to connect to current policy and practice on public transit.  I submitted an abstract to the "Women's Issues in Transportation" conference and got encouraging responses from reviewers.  The questions they raised helped me draft a full paper, which my writing group then helped me work into something I could submit.  Now I am faced with three more sets of comments from conference reviewers, asking for revisions before the final round of papers is picked for the conference.

I've never been through this intense a process for being accepted to present at a conference.  I've never even had a full paper draft reviewed, let alone multiple reviews calling for revised drafts.  The reviewers' comments have been rolling around in my mind for weeks, but today is the day when I intend to roll up my sleeves and start the revision.  But I'm feeling a bit stuck, still finding myself feeling defensive in response to some of the comments.  The requests for a clearer definition of harassment is fine, a desire for more description of methodology is annoying but familiar (how do you write "I read everything can find, think about it, make lots of lists, and write until I think I have some insights to offer"?).  The one comment that gets me, though, is this: "It needs to be framed more like a scholarly paper."

Hackles up.

The implication that textual evidence is some how not real data, not scholarly, seeps through this reviewers' comments, even though they are trying to be supportive (they did say the background of the project is "interesting").  The reviewer then goes on to tell me what a "traditional" paper should look like (intro, theory and method, findings and interpretation, discussion...).  I've read my fair share of these kinds of papers.  I even written one, but they don't work well for qualitative research.  I've got an 8,000 word limit; I'm going to use the bulk of them to explore the evidence, not describing the process.  I'm going to show you what I found.  If you want to know how I found it, read the footnotes!  Gah.

I guess part of my frustration is that I was conscious that this conference is full of quant people and I intentionally "scientificized" my early drafts, but apparently not enough for some.  It is not currently a paper many history people would recognize as standard history writing (or topic).  For example, I actually make suggestions for new policy.  Gasp!  Historians never tell you what to do.  That is your job (after we've told you how we got to this place and what other people have done).  But, apparently, it is still not a fully social science paper.

I could follow the scientific paper structure, but I feel like a fraud.  This is not how I was trained to write or think.  More than that, this structure works against what history can bring to the table (the whole point of my paper!).  I'm trying to write about how we got here, bring lessons from earlier generations of activists to current issues, to fill in around and contextualize the numbers.  X women may report being groped on a subway car.  But what might those experiences mean to women, transit officials, or society?

So... here I go to try give them just enough that they will see me as "scholarly" while selling them on the idea that narrative-based arguments add value to their numbers.

Really? But... but... but...

A casual conversation with a senior colleague in the hall a week and a half ago has got me turned inside out. He is a relatively new full professor (which means he has not yet gone into hibernation like our older fulls) and he asked when I would be coming up for promotion. I told him that I was thinking about asking to go forward next year (which would mean, after the year+ process, I might be promoted in Sept. 2013). He asked about my current projects and suggested a somewhat different strategy than I have been pursuing -- including starting the process to come up for full in a few weeks, when the senior members of the department will meet to vote on such things.

I was very resistant, feeling that it would all be a bit safer in another year, once I had a book contract firmly in hand -- especially since there is no time pressure for this promotion, unlike coming up for tenure. He made the argument that I could do it now and be making full professor money with full professor privileges for doing the same work I'm doing now. Hmmm...

So, on top of other angst in my life, I threw "what to do with my career" into the mix. I actually pulled out my c.v. on Thursday and spent a long time tweaking the white space and thinking about the work represented there. Then I annotated it, printed it off, and stuck it in the box of my colleague. I challenged him to give me an honest assessment of what I look like on paper. After all, if people like him aren't eager to push my case forward, there is no case. I cannot be my own advocate.

Well, he thought it/I looked solid as is and would be "outstanding" if the "revise and resubmit" I already have from American Quarterly turned into an acceptance, something that could theoretically happen between now and the middle of summer when my materials would be sent out to external reviewers. So now he is taking my c.v. to my other senior colleagues in the discipline. But he is a persuasive guy with five times as much energy as any of the others. I can't really kid myself, if he tells them he wants to put me forward, the others will most likely say yes.

It is just now sinking in for me that the email I sent tonight, giving him the okay to put my c.v. in front of the others, is pretty much equivalent to me doing the formal ask to go forward... In other words, I think I just asked to be promoted -- after having not really thought much about it (or a particular time frame for it) until just this past fall. I've just been plugging away at this and that (which somehow added up to 16 conference presentations since 2004!), publishing things when the right venue appeared, and continuing to work in a very unsystematic way on a sprawling second book. Could that really lead to a promotion? Considering the agony of tenure/assistant professor promotion it is really hard to believe...

This time...

I want to go here. I didn't make it last time.


I'm really going to do research in the GLBT Historical Society, but the archives are only open a few hours here and there, so there will be time for playing as well.

Women's Bldg., SF -- one of the topics I'll be researching!