tenure tracking

Music: Brightblack Morning Light: [self-titled]

I am very fortunate to have landed a job that will provide a modicum of security if I can make good on the quid pro quo. Making good, in part, means that I have to keep publishing two peer-reviewed things a year in so-called "top journals." That kind of pressure is somewhat irritating, if only because "top journal" reduces only to three or four (depending on which colleague you ask), and these journals do not seem to include a number of those journals that I regularly read. Fortunately, during tenure review you can make arguments about journals and what not (for example, I find myself reading Rhetoric Society Quarterly more than Quarterly Journal of Speech, but the latter is considered more important).

Regardless, I try not to worry about the mercies of peer review. What has me a little more (or less) concerned is the prospect of "letter writers" for third-year and tenure review. I'm sure those of y'all who just went through or have long been through the process have some wisdom to impart about this, but, here's the trouble: one is supposed to develop a list of ten full professors who can fairly and accurately assess the quality of one's work and its "contribution to the field." (Said list cannot be directly submitted, but must be developed by a colleague who presumably comes up with the list without my input . . . I think.) Such a list should be comprised mostly of full professors from "peer institutions" (viz., research extensive and "equal" or "better than" the colleges' bloated fantasies about its status; not to be down on the college, I'm just saying we're not as all powerful and Sauron-like as we might have been in the 80s). From the way I understand it, the chair of my department will contact this list of ten people and see who has the time to review my tenure packet; those who have the time and who think they can fairly assess read my materials and write a cover letter about my value as a scholar. How scary is that?!!

Now, I can easily think of ten full professors who could assess my work and its (mis)contribution to the field. But the one stipulation that makes this problem troublesome is this: you cannot have worked or co-authored with or worked with or under said professors.

Suddenly this list becomes a challenge! Most of the folks who have commented positively on my work who are of the "full" variety are my colleagues, my co-authors, or my friends. In a field as small as ours, as the saying goes, "birds of a feather flock together." What is super great about being in a small field is that you'll sometimes have a big name email you out of the blue to say, "hey, dug your essay, and lets have lunch at the next conference." That's how I met, for example, Tom Frentz and Janice Rushing (with the Shaunster running interference!). But being in a smaller field also means that I know just about everyone who is into my particular "groove." The names who immediately come to mind are people I've written with or worked with or are currently writing with! Damn!

So, I was instructed to start thinking about people to tap for this thankless honor. And then I started thinking: uh-oh, I have "enemies" (only of the "mild" variety) as well. Friends have shared with me blind reviews of their work in which they are severely criticized for citing my work (I recall vividly a blind review of a friends' work in which "Gunn's research on Walter Benjamin is some of the worst in the field"—ouch). Recently at a conference I apparently walked into a charged bar scene in which, just prior to my arrival, scholars were critiquing my work and calling for my head on a platter (they didn't intone their calls in my presence, however). So I worry, too, about tapping one of these secret castrators as well. In other words, part of trouble of being in a small field is that your (playful? largely harmless?) enemies have to keep their disapproval of your work on the down-lo to keep the peace.

Anyhoo, I have about seven names that I've jotted down. A number of them are fulls who interviewed me and who commented positively on my work (not at the places in which I didn't get the job, though). A couple of them are reviewers of manuscripts who signed their names to positive reviews. And more than three of them I would consider mentors/friends who I've managed neither to publish with nor work with somehow. Alas, it's a short list. Any of my academic peeps out there know of a full professor who writes glowing tenure reviews of everybody, regardless if they publish articles on psychics, zombies, and taking a poo--indeed, regardless if the reviewed scholar's work is (for) shit?