34, no. 1 (Fall 2002): 1-6 To the Editor Search

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The JIL count does not pretend to be a census of academic job opportunities in the modern languages. Not every four-year institution uses it to announce openings on its English and foreign language faculties, and few two-year colleges use it at all. Virtually all positions listed in the JIL are full-time appointments, so it does not reflect the substantial market for part-time temporary teachers. Over time, however, the List has served as a useful indicator of changes in characteristics of full-time academic employment opportunities in four-year colleges and universities.

Figure 1 shows the number of positions announced in the October JIL in English and foreign languages from 1975 to 2001. In comparison with 2000, the number of positions in foreign languages is little changed, rising from 666 to 675. Following the sharp rise and fall in listings between 1985 and 1992, the pattern from 1992 to 1998 was one of comparative stability, except for 1994, when the number rose 25.6% only to return to the previous level the following year. In the past two years, the number of positions was about 13% more than in 1998, a rise that on the basis of the October List, looked as though it would continue. Figure 1 also shows how the number of position announcements declined during the recession of the early 1990s, and we can expect a similar pattern this year, given how closely the job market follows national economic cycles.

Table 1 shows the number of positions advertised in foreign languages in the October 2001 List and in all four issues of the printed JIL since 1975–76. Although the total for 2001–02 is 19.3% less than in the previous year, the news is not all bad. Positions described as definite tenure-track assistant professorships declined only by two and constitute just under half of all October listings (fig. 2). We also note that a growing number of departments are advertising positions in the summer JIL, which comes out in June. These listings—104 in 1999–2000, 112 in 2000–01, and 122 in 2001–02—have not previously been recorded in our totals, and their announcement at this late date in the academic year can be hopeful for job seekers still seeking.

According to data from the federally sponsored Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED), there were 641 degrees granted in foreign languages in 2000. Figure 3 shows the number the SED has reported since 1958. In 2000, the SED recorded twice as many new doctorate recipients in English and foreign languages as there were definite tenure-track assistant professor positions in the October 2001 JIL. The exact ratio for foreign languages was 1.9 recipients to 1 position. The picture looks a little brighter if we recognize that the pool of tenure-track listings is not restricted to assistant professorships. The total number of tenure-track positions listed is 512, or 82% of all jobs listed.

We know from the MLA’s placement surveys, ten of which have been conducted from 1976–77 to 1996–97, that fewer than half the PhD recipients are likely to be hired on tenure-track lines in their first year on the market. The percentage of tenure-track placements in these surveys, highest at 49.6% in 1986–87 and lowest at 34.8% in 1981–82, has averaged about 44% since 1991–92 (Welles 8). Analysis of the survey of placements of graduates receiving degrees from 1 September 2000 to 31 August of 2001 is currently under way. However, conditions facing applicants are even more difficult than the SED and the MLA data show. The number of people seeking appointment as a tenure-track assistant professor each year is of course much greater than the number of new PhDs, since those who do not succeed in their first attempt usually stay in the market for at least two years.

The data from SED show the distribution of PhDs by language for 2000 (Doctorate Recipients 75; app. table B1): Arabic 15, Chinese 21, French 143, German 83, Italian 16, Japanese 18, Russian and other Slavic 43, Spanish 218, and other languages 73. The figures for 1999 were proportionally very similar. Table 2 shows the percentages of major languages and language groups represented in positions announced in the October 2001 List. Table 3 shows trends in the October listings by language since 1982. The large share claimed by listings in Spanish may be exaggerated; the field is in the anomalous situation of having a shortage of job seekers. Many Spanish departments renew searches they have been unable to fill in prior years; a backlog of unfilled positions accumulates, showing up in subsequent issues of the JIL.

The percentages of different kinds of expertise described in the position listings in the October 2001 JIL are close to those of the year before. Of the 675 positions advertised, 87.6% ask for expertise in literature, 63.4% ask for expertise in language, 55% ask for expertise in both literature and language teaching, 32.6% ask for expertise in literature only, and 8.4% ask for expertise in language teaching only. The remaining 4.0% make explicit reference to neither skill. Table 4 shows the distribution of expertise in language and literature sought by different degree-granting types of departments. It should come as no surprise that the request for both language and literary teaching capacity is most frequent in BA-granting departments and that the request for literary specialization increases the higher the degree offered by the department.

Table 5 shows the difference between listings for tenure-track and non-tenure-track positions. Listings that ask only for expertise in literature are more likely to be tenure-track positions than are listings that focus on language teaching. It is consistent with this difference that listings that ask only for expertise in language teaching are more likely to be at the rank of instructor or lecturer. For several years foreign language listings that ask for familiarity with electronic technologies have appeared frequently enough to deserve a separate count. In October 2001, 24.3% of all listings said that electronic skill was either required or desired. For the years 1998, 1999, and 2000 the figures were 23.4%, 25.0%, and 22.3%, respectively.

A careful look at the specific requests of hiring departments should be a good guide for graduate students about the kinds of knowledge and skills that are in demand. Although there seem to be more requests for second language acquisition specialists and those with expertise in technology, a general knowledge about language and literature is the norm. As the essays in this Bulletin attest, the teaching in language and literature, albeit expanded by new approaches and subject matter, is very much on the minds of forward-looking departments. Research and scholarship are still requisites of the job, and as you will see in the articles immediately discussed below, the first question asked in an interview is usually about the applicant’s dissertation.

Both prospective candidates and members of search committees will find in the articles of this issue specific advice about the preparation for and behavior in the initial job interview. Charles Stivale reviews the form most first interviews take and offers recommendations about what and how much to say, what kinds of questions to ask, what to wear, and how to handle difficult situations. Alain-Philippe Durand deals with the exigencies of the telephone interview, where there is only voice and language with which to present yourself and your work to search committee members and by which to judge their responses. He suggests ways for the candidate to create a favorable impression and points out that one advantage of the candidate’s invisibility is access to written and Web-based materials for consultation during the conversation. Preparation is still the key for any interview, and since long-distance interviews are becoming more common, candidates are wise to be ready for them. That phone interviews are typically used by search committees of two-year colleges is mentioned in “Considering Community Colleges: Advice to Graduate Students and Job Seekers from MLA’s Committee on Community Colleges.” Candidates may wish to consult this report to broaden the job search and increase career options.

Those about to enter the profession may profit also from learning about current issues of curricular change. Three essays focus on connecting the teaching and learning of language, literature, and culture to achieve a deep linguistic and intellectual understanding of the other, foreign culture. Addressing the graduate curriculum, Peter C. Pfeiffer gives particular attention to the integration of language study and literature study to help students become self-reflective scholars and teachers. What is learned from literature, language at advanced levels, and courses in pedagogy is expanded and confirmed by serving as classroom teachers. The goal is to develop in students a high level of cultural and linguistic literacy so that they may confidently express themselves not only as teachers but also as professors. Katherine Arens urges departments to take advantage of what is new—student demographics, academic preparation, the position of the humanities in our society—and regard it as an opportunity to rethink the curriculum. Rather than mindlessly expand the canon, department members should look at the curriculum and reform it systematically. Arens provides a six-stage outline of the process, from taking stock of what faculty members and their fields can contribute to the assessment of outcomes and publicity about its success. She argues that curriculum reform should be regarded as a legitimate professional activity and rewarded appropriately. If such reformers are made to feel they are doing important and creative work, their department can become an environment that fosters teaching, learning, and research. Les Essif, describing his French department’s efforts to free itself of course sequences organized by century, questions the value of a curriculum based primarily on the past and recommends that faculty members be more open to new approaches made accessible through theater, cinema, and cultural studies. A more thematic or performative approach creates a shift from traditional teaching toward inquiry-based pedagogy in which both teacher and student learn collaboratively to “acquire broad knowledge of the foreignness of French culture and the specificity of French history . . . through a focused, coherent study of a particular cultural phenomenon.”

The next three essays look at language, literature, and culture study from different perspectives but link with the previous section in their insistence on a foreign language as the tool for learning about important human experiences. These various takes on language on the American campus, which stress the slipperiness of identity, the value of literature, or the implications of morality, all lead to self-discovery in students. Kamakshi Murti, a south Asian woman teaching German in an English-speaking environment, finds that her own identity is enough to destabilize the perceptions of native and nonnative in her students. She argues that nonnative teachers can be cultural mediators challenging the rigid categories of identity to bring about productive discussion and unexpected understandings about the self and the other. In her essay on teaching an introduction to French literature, Kimberly Nance describes methods she uses for helping students connect literature with their own knowledge so that they see it as a link to interpreting their world and themselves. Reading literature heightens their awareness of the power of language, which makes them better users not only of French but also of their own language. As partial fulfillment of the institutional mission, Saint Olaf College’s students must take an upper-division ethics course, which ideally is taught in the major field of study. Mary Cisar describes the rationale, the careful development, and the first offering of an ethics course in French based on the works of the Canadian writer Gabrielle Roy. The course encouraged students to read literature from a variety of perspectives and also helped them apply ethical theory and examples to their own situations and provided a way for them to understand their study of French as part of an educational whole.

The essays in honor of Claire Kramsch, the winner of the 2000 ADFL Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession, are a rousing finale to this Bulletin issue. Much of what is said in Kramsch’s praise reiterates key points made in the articles published here about the need for programs that integrate the teaching of language, literature, and culture in ways that strengthen knowledge of the whole culture; about pedagogy as an intellectual research field; about the benefits of reading literary texts for different purposes and from a variety of perspectives; and about the advantages to the nonnative speaker of cultural difference and foreignness. It is as if each author here has been touched in some way by Kramsch’s work. Peter Patrikis celebrates Kramsch by affirming her promotion of the literary text “to enrich and enliven the classroom, making the act of reading reflective and self-reflective, and creating a common culture of interpretation and debate within each classroom.” Frank Trommler concludes his encomium by praising her “ability to sensitize us to the great intellectual and cultural experiences of linguistic foreignness” and her effective advocacy “for the intellectual weight of foreign language pedagogy in the academy.”

Works Cited

Welles, Elizabeth B. “Employment of 1996–97 PhDs in Foreign Languages: A Report on the MLA’s Census of PhD Placement.” ADFL Bulletin 31.2 (2000): 6–21. [Show Article]

Tables

Table 1
Positions Listed in the Foreign Language Edition
of the Printed Job Information List, 1975–76 to 2001–02

Year	October	December, February, and April Combined	Total
1975–76	373	1,102	1,475
1976–77	323	939	1,262
1977–78	381	955	1,336
1978–79	385	905	1,290
1979–80	412	882	1,294
1980–81	420	844	1,264
1981–82	377	761	1,138
1982–83	463	725	1,188
1983–84	444	747	1,191
1984–85	499	906	1,405
1985–86	695	882	1,577
1986–87	723	941	1,664
1987–88	800	1,008	1,808
1988–89	863	961	1,824
1989–90	782	827	1,609
1990–91	756	697	1,453
1991–92	606	608	1,214
1992–93	510	580	1,090
1993–94	508	531	1,039
1994–95	638	536	1,174
1995–96	538	584	1,122
1996–97	593	525	1,118
1997–98	606	442	1,048
1998–99	590	562	1,152
1999–2000	672	589	1,261
2000–01	666	704	1,370
2001–02	675	473	1,148

Note: Before 1997–98, if the same position was advertised in two or more issues of any year’s JIL, it was counted two or more times in the total for that year. Beginning in 1997–98, most duplication has been eliminated. The year 1997–98 was the first for an online version of the JIL. The year 1998–99 was the first for weekly updates of job listings and for the nonprint option for job listings. The nonprint option applies to the February and April editions only. From 1999 on, nonprint ads are added to the count.

Foreign language totals in October 1997 include three positions from the supplement.

Fig. 1 Positions Listed in the October Job Information List, 1975–2001

Fig. 2 DefiniteTenure-Track Assistant Professor Positions and All Positions Listed in Foreign Language Edition of the October Job Information List, 1982–2000

Fig. 3 Doctorate Recipients in English and Foreign Languages, 1958–2000

Source: US Survey of Earned Doctorates

© 2001 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.

ADFL Bulletin 34, no. 1 (Fall 2002): 1-6

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