Consider submitting a paper for presentation at your field’s Annual Meeting, a regional conference like CAMWS or CAPN, or a graduate student conference during the first year of writing. Stay on top of deadlines: normally February to March for Annual Meeting panels, May for Annual Meeting individual abstracts, and throughout the year for other conferences. Plan to submit an abstract to your Annual Meeting the year you go on the market; this means submitting an abstract up to 12 months before you apply for jobs.
Now is the time for you to reflect intensively on the question of what you will do after graduate school, and to craft a plan that includes both going on the academic job market and seeking a job beyond the classroom. Find out what support your graduate school offers in this area and make use of it. Get to know the resources for humanities PhDs available online; contact PhDs in your department who have gone on to various jobs; talk to friends and family.
Think now (and discuss with your partner or family, if applicable) about whether you are willing or able to pursue the life of an adjunct or visiting assistant professor (VAP), since statistically speaking, these are the academic jobs you are most likely to secure in your first round of applications, and possibly the second and third and fourth rounds as well. If there are constraints on your ability to move, learn the scope of the academic jobs available to you in your chosen region(s). With some investigative work, you will be able to find out whether the relevant adjunct and VAP posts provide a reasonable wage. Remember to consider what you need by way of health insurance.
Identify two or three jobs beyond the classroom that attract you, that suit your sense of who you are and who you want to be. As Anna Fels points out in her 2004 study of women, achievement, and ambition, Necessary Dreams, it is crucially important to develop the habit of imagining what you might do, what you want to achieve, and how you will succeed, whether you define success as balancing work and family, publishing books, changing the world for the better, making a living, or something else. Her work (and the experience of many PhDs pursuing a variety of careers) suggests that if you set aside time now to develop the habit of imagining a fulfilling career outside the academy, you’re more likely to find a good, satisfying job after you leave graduate school. If you are offered an academic position, the time you spent thinking about non-academic careers will help you better relate to your undergraduate students; and you will serve as a more knowledgeable, savvy, and supportive mentor to your graduate students.
GETTING CLOSER: HEADING TOWARD YOUR FINAL YEAR IN GRADUATE SCHOOL
Your first chapter is approved; you’re making headway; you need one more year of financial support to finish your dissertation. You may be offered teaching that covers your expenses. Even so, consider the range of alternatives.
Familiarize yourself with fellowship opportunities and the sometimes complex and lengthy applications they require. This means researching external grants and fellowships, especially post-doctoral fellowships—the latter being a great way to gain time to write before the tenure clock starts ticking. Deadlines fall as early as August/September and continue through the winter, so move fast. Post-doctoral fellowships can be difficult to track down, but it’s well worth the effort, especially on those days when you’re making slow progress on your dissertation. Consult your graduate director, fellow students, and your graduate dean’s office for information about internal and external sources of funding. Remember to look beyond your university’s typical “dissertation fellowship fund” (if one exists) for competitive grants open to applicants from all over the university.
Sources for dissertation funding and post-doctoral fellowships are available in some predictable places:
- my own organization, ACLS (note the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship)
- National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
- Social Science Research Council (SSRC)
- Institute for Citizens and Scholars (formerly known as the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation)
- Carnegie Corporation
- Getty Foundation
- American Academy in Rome/Berlin
- Fulbright program
- American Association of University Women
- Spencer Foundation
- Sloan Foundation (particularly for the sciences and social sciences)
Keep a sharp eye out for fellowships offered at Humanities Centers and various specialized institutes. Mellon post-docs are offered through various universities and humanities centers, sometimes chosen according to a theme (“globalism,” “race,” “borders,” and so forth) which changes yearly or every two years. For now, you will have to hunt these down university by university. ACLS also sponsors the Leading Edge Fellowship program, which places PhDs in non-academic positions in non-profits such as cultural institutions, presses, and the like.
Grants and fellowships pop up in less predictable places too: check publications like the Chronicle of Higher Ed for advertisements and do a few thorough searches on the internet.
Sign up for any and all services offered by your university notifying students of these opportunities. One useful resource is the IRIS database. Ask faculty where they and recent graduates have applied for post-doctoral support. Google “society of fellows” to learn more about opportunities at Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, and elsewhere. Read the grants and fellowships notices in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, the SCS newsletter, the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, LA Review of Books, and any relevant newsletter in other disciplines.