Bibliography
Apr. 13th, 2010 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilySurvival in the Academy – A Guide for Beginning Academics - Gerald Phillips, Dennis Gouran, Scott Kuehn, and Julia Wood
You can probably guess why this appealed; it came out of the biblio of the Academic Job Search Handbook, which was rather useful. I have to say, however, that the kind of things that this talks about are fairly well-covered in other books, and are now slightly out of date; this was written in 1994, and so (for instance) the references to teaching with technology are now hopelessly antiquated. Sadly, some of the observations on academic politics and the influence of the corporate model are not, but that's neither here nor there. This is also a book targetted at people in the communication(s) world (the 's' is apparently the locus of some controversy), so the section devoted to various forms of communication and fields of research therein aren't of interest to anyone not in that area.
That said, it's an interesting format; one of the four authors writes a given chapter, and the other three write a response to it. It means you get plenty of different voices without feeling overwhelmed by repetitive material.
Let me give a quick overview, and then we're done here. Chapter one talks about the nature and history of the university, starting from the European model and onward; actually, this history of higher ed in the US was rather illuminating for me, as was the explanation of which sorts of institutions one might want to work at. Chapter two hands 'issues facing all beginning academics', which is a rather cynical discussion of campus politics and the need to think about things like where one stands on political correctness, inclusivity and so forth (again, this now feels strangely dated). Chapter three discusses issues facing women and minorities in academia; this has been done better in books specifically devoted to the topic, but is a good overall summary.
Chapter four talks about how to get a job, and chapter five how to cope once you first have a job; there's a length discussion of how to best manage the job market and how to cope with jumping the tenure hoops (most important of which is, know what the tenure hoops are). Chapter six discusses professionalism, and that was quite an interesting look at the obligations an academic has, for instance to be culturally literate, to provide sophisticated content, to be a good colleague and so forth. Chapter seven addressed teaching, discussing various methods and how to apply them to communication specifically; again, more specialised books do a better job, but it's not a bad overview.
Chapter eight begins with the important point that 'doing research' and 'getting published' are, in fact, not the same thing, and then goes on to discuss the considerations involved in both. Chapter nine examines the role of criticism in academia, both in terms of the student-teacher relationship and the researcher-peer relationship, as well as other places that criticism may be helpful, and how best to receive and process any criticism you might get. Finally, chapter ten looks to the future and emerging trends in academia - again, hopelessly out of date now, but it is a bit scary to look at this and think how many of the same battles are still being fought.
You can probably guess why this appealed; it came out of the biblio of the Academic Job Search Handbook, which was rather useful. I have to say, however, that the kind of things that this talks about are fairly well-covered in other books, and are now slightly out of date; this was written in 1994, and so (for instance) the references to teaching with technology are now hopelessly antiquated. Sadly, some of the observations on academic politics and the influence of the corporate model are not, but that's neither here nor there. This is also a book targetted at people in the communication(s) world (the 's' is apparently the locus of some controversy), so the section devoted to various forms of communication and fields of research therein aren't of interest to anyone not in that area.
That said, it's an interesting format; one of the four authors writes a given chapter, and the other three write a response to it. It means you get plenty of different voices without feeling overwhelmed by repetitive material.
Let me give a quick overview, and then we're done here. Chapter one talks about the nature and history of the university, starting from the European model and onward; actually, this history of higher ed in the US was rather illuminating for me, as was the explanation of which sorts of institutions one might want to work at. Chapter two hands 'issues facing all beginning academics', which is a rather cynical discussion of campus politics and the need to think about things like where one stands on political correctness, inclusivity and so forth (again, this now feels strangely dated). Chapter three discusses issues facing women and minorities in academia; this has been done better in books specifically devoted to the topic, but is a good overall summary.
Chapter four talks about how to get a job, and chapter five how to cope once you first have a job; there's a length discussion of how to best manage the job market and how to cope with jumping the tenure hoops (most important of which is, know what the tenure hoops are). Chapter six discusses professionalism, and that was quite an interesting look at the obligations an academic has, for instance to be culturally literate, to provide sophisticated content, to be a good colleague and so forth. Chapter seven addressed teaching, discussing various methods and how to apply them to communication specifically; again, more specialised books do a better job, but it's not a bad overview.
Chapter eight begins with the important point that 'doing research' and 'getting published' are, in fact, not the same thing, and then goes on to discuss the considerations involved in both. Chapter nine examines the role of criticism in academia, both in terms of the student-teacher relationship and the researcher-peer relationship, as well as other places that criticism may be helpful, and how best to receive and process any criticism you might get. Finally, chapter ten looks to the future and emerging trends in academia - again, hopelessly out of date now, but it is a bit scary to look at this and think how many of the same battles are still being fought.
