Editor's note: as with the previous issue various items from the paper version have been redistributed to other parts of the site. If you have difficulty locating anything, please consult the Site Index
The name of our society&emdash;The American Philological
Association&emdash;is notably inexact. A more accurate name would be
"The North American Philological Association," although even that
lacks geographical precision, inasmuch as Mexico shares the continent
with the United States and Canada.
I am not particularly concerned with the question of nomenclature,
except insofar as it draws attention to a certain narrowness in our
intellectual horizons. We are an international society, and also a
multi-lingual one, since French is an official language of Canada.
But there has been very little contact between our association and
classical studies in Latin America. It is time, I think, to remedy
our mutual isolation.
It is with this intention that I have organized the Presidential
Panel at the 1999 meeting in Dallas around the subject, "The Classics
in the Americas." I have invited representatives from Argentina,
Brazil, Cuba, and Mexico to present brief descriptions of the state
of classics in their regions, including information such as the
number of undergraduate and graduate programs available in the
universities; journals specializing in philology, ancient philosophy,
archaeology and the like; classical societies; on-going or special
conferences; collective or interdisciplinary projects; and so forth.
I hope that speakers and audience will make use of the second hour of
the panel to explore practical measures to improve contacts and
cooperation between classicists in North, Central, and South
America&emdash;measures such as reciprocal exchanges of journals and
other research instruments, post-doctoral fellowships, visiting
professorships and exchange programs for students, joint research
ventures, new forms of electronic communication, etc.
Speaking for myself, I had, until relatively recently, little idea of
the breadth of classical studies in Latin America: I could have named
no more than one or two Latin American journals in the classics, for
example. In the last several years, moreover, there have been many
new developments, such as the formation of active classical societies
in several countries, international forums for research, and a host
of new programs and scholarly publications. Obviously, we have
everything to gain from greater knowledge of these activities.
While I believe that there has been a certain parochialism on the
part of the APA in respect to the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking
world in general (classical journals have not usually been disposed
to accept contributions in these languages, for example), the lack of
communication between north and south is not wholly our own fault. In
Latin America, classical scholars have by and large looked to Europe
as the fountainhead of philology, and have prized traditional
approaches to literary and textual criticism. Once again, things have
changed and are changing. There is an openness to new methods in
Latin America, and a lively interest in the scholarship emanating
from the north. For this reason as well, then, it is a particularly
auspicious moment for promoting closer ties among us.
Finally, I should like to mention a possible indirect benefit
deriving from increased contact and exchange across the Americas. The
APA has an expressed concern to attract members of minority groups to
the study of the classics. Greater communication and a greater
presence of Latin American classicists in the United States and
Canada can only help to make the profession appear more viable and
interesting to Latino undergraduates.
I hope that members of the APA will take the opportunity to meet and
talk with the panelists from Latin America, all of whom have
graciously agreed to give their presentations in English. I shall be
happy to help arrange introductions, whether in person, for
example, at one of the receptions, or by mail and e-mail.
Perhaps we can develop, during the annual meeting, plans for a more
formal clearing-house for future contacts.
David Konstan
President
The 1999 Program Committee, consisting of Mark Griffith, Sarah Iles
Johnston, Robert Lamberton, James O’Hara, and me, met twice to
consider submissions for the December meeting in Dallas.
At its first meeting in Boston on April 24, the Committee reviewed
nine General/At Large Panel proposals, one APA Committee Panel
proposal, two Organizer-Refereed Panel proposals, and two Affiliated
Group Category II Charter proposals. Of the General/At Large Panel
proposals, three were accepted, five were rejected, and one invited
to resubmit for the June meeting. The APA Committee Panel proposal
was invited to resubmit. Of the two Organizer-Refereed Panel
proposals, one was accepted and the other rejected. Both Affiliated
Group Category II Charter proposals were accepted. Subsequent to the
meeting the Committee considered and approved one Joint AIA/APA
Panel.
That evening we enjoyed dinner and conversation with the Members of
the AIA Program Committee, where a main topic of conversation between
Professor Susan Kane, Chair of the AIA Program Committee, and myself
concerned ways of fostering more Joint Panels, only two of which were
proposed for the Dallas meeting.
At its second meeting in New York on June 18-19, 1999, the Program
Committee approved the two resubmitted panel proposals and the
special request for a display of the forthcoming Atlas of the
Greek and Roman World. The remainder of the two days was spent
reviewing 306 individual abstracts.
Perhaps a description of our procedures would be helpful. Around June
1st, the Executive Director sends the four committee members and me
copies of the anonymous abstracts numbered according to categories
(A1, A2, B1, etc.). All five members independently read
all the abstracts during the next three weeks, mark them up,
jot notes, write comments, and give a ranking from 1 to 4 (1 =
definitely accept; 2 = probably accept; 3 = probably reject; 4 =
definitely reject). Any member who knows the author of a particular
abstract or is aware of a possible conflict of interest recuses
him/herself from scoring (and from any subsequent discussion). All
sets of scores are sent separately to the Executive Director at least
two days before the meeting for collation. During the meeting, each
abstract is considered. If all the scores are positive or negative,
there is little or no discussion. If, however, any vote dissents from
the majority, the abstract is discussed by everyone (minus those who
have recused themselves) until a consensus is achieved or another
vote taken. There are no quotas or limits (either overall or within
categories) and AV requests are not taken into consideration. Each
abstract is evaluated on its own merits and in accordance with the
stated instructions:
“The first paragraph of the abstract should indicate clearly
the contribution to be made by the paper. The abstract should include
not merely a statement of intent and conclusions, but also a summary
of the argumentation and the most relevant bibliography. The abstract
should make it clear that the paper is suitable for oral presentation
within the time limit (maximum time is 15 minutes) and whether or not
a handout will accompany the paper.”
The Committee considered a total of 306 individual abstracts, down
from 353 (Washington 1998) and 401 (Chicago 1997). Of the 306
abstracts, 161 (53%) were accepted, as opposed to 216 (61%) last
year. Men submitted 202 abstracts (66%), of which 112 (55%) were
accepted. Women submitted 104 abstracts (34%), of which 49 (47%) were
accepted. There were 155 submissions in Greek subjects, of which 86
(55%) were accepted. There were 133 submissions in Latin subjects, of
which 65 (49%) were accepted. The breakdown of individual categories
follows on the next page.
Thanks are due to many individuals who have contributed to this
year’s program: to the organizers of Panels and Three-Year
Colloquia, members who submitted abstracts, individuals who agreed to
preside at paper sessions, the Affiliated Groups whose programs and
panels add much to our meeting, to my conscientious colleagues on the
Program Committee, and to the Executive Directors, John Marincola and
Adam Blistein, both of whom oversaw the complex operations and who,
along with their staffs, helped make the program a reality.
To Robert Lamberton we bid farewell after three years of
extraordinary service on the Program Committee.
Finally, I encourage anyone with suggestions for improving the
program to contact me at whrace@email.unc.edu.
Respectfully submitted,
William H. Race
Vice-President for Program
1999
Total Total
Category Submitted Accepted
GREEK
Epic 31 13 (42%)
Tragedy 22 6 (27%)
Comedy 12 8 (67%)
Other Poetry 16 11 (69%)
Rhetoric / Oratory 14 10 (71%)
Philosophy 13 6 (46%)
Historiography 12 8 (67%)
Other Prose 15 7 (47%)
Language 3 2 (67%)
History 12 11 (92%)
Religion 5 4 (80%)
LATIN
Epic 29 13 (45%)
Comedy 5 4 (80%)
Lyric / Elegy 20 10 (50%)
Other Poetry 18 8 (44%)
Historiography 9 3 (33%)
Rhetoric / Oratory 5 3 (60%)
Other Prose 16 8 (50%)
Language 2 0 (0%)
Roman History 22 13 (59%)
Roman Religion 7 3 (43%)
Epigraphy / Papyrology 5 4 (80%)
Medieval / Renaissance 2 0 (0%)
Other 11 6 (55%)
TOTALS 306 161 (53%)
1998
Total Total
Category Submitted Accepted
GREEK
Epic 23 15 (65%)
Tragedy 24 13 (54%)
Comedy 8 7 (88%)
Other Poetry 29 21 (72%)
Rhetoric / Oratory 8 6 (75%)
Philosophy 19 8 (42%)
Historiography 17 9 (53%)
Other Prose 12 11 (92%)
Language 2 2 (100%)
History 26 17 (65%)
Religion 9 5 (55%)
LATIN
Epic 28 11 (39%)
Comedy 7 4 (57%)
Lyric / Elegy Included in Other Poetry
Other Poetry 50 28 (56%)
Historiography 11 7 (64%)
Rhetoric / Oratory 8 6 (75%)
Other Prose 13 6 (46%)
Language 3 3 (100%)
Roman History 25 17 (68%)
Roman Religion 9 6 (67%)
Epigraphy / Papyrology 4 3 (75%)
Medieval / Renaissance 3 3 (100%)
Other 15 8 (53%)
TOTALS 353 216 (61%)
June 1999 Meeting. The APA is now a member of the Coalition
on the Academic Workforce (CAW), a national organization that
includes many professional associations and is dedicated to
addressing the problem of increased numbers of part time and adjunct
faculty, a problem with serious consequences for the quality of
higher education. We have had representatives at each of the past two
meetings (Marilyn Katz in March, 1999 and Judy Hallett in June,
1999). At the most recent meeting, the CAW agreed to pursue three
projects. (#1) To meet with directors of regional accrediting
associations, in order to express concern on this issue, to share
information, and to bring the matter to the attention of governing
boards of the accrediting associations. Teams (some of them
including APA representatives) will be sent out to the various
regions for this purpose over the next few months. (#2) To
coordinate data collection efforts. It is hoped that each
organization will conduct its own survey, with detailed
questionnaires to be sent to departments all over the country,
seeking information on the numbers, the status, and the duties of
part time and adjunct faculty. (#3) To investigate the possibility
of a CAW organized session at the next meeting of the Association of
American Colleges and Universities. We welcome any suggestions
and advice - - and offers of assistance from members of the APA.
Erich S. Gruen
Vice President for Professional Matters
March 1999 Meeting. The first meeting of the Coalition on the
Academic Workforce, formed in1998, which was attended by Carla
Antonaccio (AIA) and Marilyn Katz (APA) took place in Washington, DC
on March 8. The topics discussed included:
1. Planning a press release and media event for later this year to
announce the existence of the CAW and the organizations which have
joined to form the coalition, and to advertise its goals;
2. The recent report of the American Association of State Colleges
and Universities, which draws on the AAUP-sponsored conference of
1997; the consensus was that the CAW did not endorse the report,
because of its positions on tenure and research, but were encouraged
to see the call for better working conditions, compensation, and
benefits for part-time faculty;
3. Using accreditation as a tool to put pressure on institutions
which are overly-reliant on part-time and adjunct faculty. There was
general agreement to explore this issue further.
We note that in June 1999 Georgia State University decided to convert
a large number of poorly paid part-time faculty and create a new
class of better-compensated instructional faculty. (See the report in
the 11 June 1999 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education:
[http://chronicle.com/weekly/v45/i40/40a01801.htm].)
Marilyn A. Katz
Committee on Professional Matters
Ward Briggs, Carolina Distinguished Professor of Classics
and Louise Fry Scudder Professor of the Humanities at the University
of South Carolina, has been awarded the Founders’ Award for
Outstanding Editing of Primary Sources by the Confederate Literary
Society of the Museum of the Confederacy for his volume Soldier
and Scholar: Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and the Civil War,
published in 1998 by the University Press of Virginia. Briggs is the
first non-historian to win the award in its 30-year history.
Leslie Kurke, University of California at Berkeley, is one of
32 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellows for 1999. These
fellowships are given each year to “exceptionally talented and
promising individuals who have shown evidence of originality,
dedication to creative pursuits, and capacity for
self-direction.” The Foundation cited Prof. Kurke for her work
“at the forefront of cultural poetics, a relatively new
subdiscipline of classical studies that combines the methods of
philology, new historicism, and cultural anthropology, and integrates
the evidence of literary sources and material culture.”
About five years ago, a young man worked for a few months as my
assistant at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). He
was doing a good job, and I would have been happy if he had stayed
with us, but he obtained a scholarship to enroll in a creative
writing program, and off he went. I remember saying at his farewell
party, “Curing cancer is a wonderful thing to do with your life,
but I can understand that the chance to write the great American
novel is just too good to pass up.” Last February, I found
myself saying almost the same thing about myself: I told my
colleagues that it wasn’t easy to give up the opportunity to
help cure cancer, but I had been offered a chance to go home, and I
had to take it.
As you may already have gathered from previous newsletters or our web
site, becoming the Executive Director of the APA is very much a
homecoming for me. Although I have not been active in Classics since
I received my doctorate nearly 20 years ago, I maintained my
membership in the APA so that I could keep track of old friends and
have some idea of developments and directions in the field. In recent
years, after I had established a career in association management, I
often wondered whether I would ever be able to combine my educational
background in Classics with the specific administrative experience I
had acquired. I consider myself very fortunate that I now have that
opportunity.
I consider myself even more fortunate that I was successful in
meeting my first major challenge in establishing a new office for the
APA: finding 2 highly qualified coordinators to join me in providing
administrative support for APA’s many activities. In a situation
where only 3 people (including myself) are responsible for providing
administrative support to the Officers, the Board of Directors, and
over 30 committees and programs, every staff member has major
responsibilities. As you will see, our new coordinators have
administrative and educational backgrounds that make them equal to
the tasks that lie ahead.
Irene (Renie) Plonski is Coordinator for Membership and Publications.
She will also serve as Placement Director. Her duties as regards to
membership will include oversight of Scholars Press’ work on the
database, recruitment and retention, and distribution and processing
of membership surveys. She will produce office publications
(newsletter, graduate guide, etc.) and will work with committees
relevant to her duties (e.g., Publications, Placement, Status
of Women and Minority Groups). From 1983 to 1997 Renie held
increasingly responsible positions at a major local bank. Of
particular relevance were positions that required her to conduct and
analyze compensation surveys and to coordinate outplacement
activities for laid-off employees. For the last two years she has
worked at the Wharton School here at Penn in the Executive Education
Program. In that position she produced the Program’s course
catalogue and assisted with other marketing efforts. She is enrolled
in the Wharton Evening program and has completed about a third of the
courses required for her Bachelors degree.
Minna Duchovnay is Coordinator for Meetings, Programs, and
Administration. She will handle logistics for both the annual meeting
and smaller committee meetings; support the work of the committees in
the Program, Research, Professional Matters, and Education Divisions
as well as the Committees on Governance; and administer our office at
Penn. Minna offers us an extraordinary combination of extensive
business experience with a first-rate education in the Classics. From
1982 until she left the company, she served in ICI’s Management
Information Services Department helping other divisions of the
company to implement new technologies. In 1993 she left ICI to
fulfill a long-term ambition: to attend college. In 1998 she received
her Bachelors degree and this past May her Masters degree in Latin
from Bryn Mawr.
I feel confident that we are off to a good start here at Penn, and
all three of us look forward to giving the APA a strong
administrative base so that it can provide the kinds of services that
members need. There is still a great deal that we have to learn
before we will achieve that goal, and we very much appreciate the
good wishes many members have already expressed to us as well as the
patience that several of you have shown as we learn our jobs. I
personally could fill this entire newsletter with the names of people
I should thank for helping me to obtain what is literally a dream job
for me. For now let me mention only a few individuals who have played
important roles in opening our new office.
First of all, I am grateful to the Search Committee, chaired by David
Konstan, for selecting me out of a number of candidates and to the
1998 Board of Directors for ratifying the Committee’s choice.
This year, David, the other members of the Board, and the members of
committees have been even more supportive, and I very much appreciate
their help and encouragement as I have begun my work at APA. John
Marincola has been and continues to be an irreplaceable source of
information and guidance. I believe that the membership has suffered
little if any interruption in service during our transition from New
York to Philadelphia, and this is due to the large amounts of time
that John spent with me when he really needed to be “closing up
shop” at NYU. John’s predecessors, Bill Ziobro, Harry
Evans, and Roger Bagnall, have been extremely generous with their
time and have let me call on their prodigious memories at crucial
moments.
Dan Gillis of Haverford College has been my Classics adviser and
mentor since I entered the College in 1967, and I am grateful and
humbled that after 30 years he can still give enthusiastic references
for me. Deborah Roberts, also of Haverford and once-upon-a-time my
colleague in graduate school, provided a crucial link to the Penn
Classics Department which has been so generous of time, space, and
resources. In this regard I need to thank first and foremost Ralph
Rosen who actually thought (and apparently continues to think) that
it would be a wonderful idea to give up a couple of offices
(including one designated for the department chairman) to accommodate
the APA. I am also grateful to Ralph’s colleagues, particularly
Sheila Murnaghan, Joe Farrell, Jim O’Donnell, and Brent Shaw,
who have shared Ralph’s enthusiasm, and to Cherlynne
Graham-Seay, the Department’s Administrative Assistant, who
provided a number of vital services during our start-up.
The administration of Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences has
been welcoming and accommodating. We particularly appreciate the help
of Samuel H. Preston, Rebecca Bushnell, Michael Mandl, and Saul L.
Katzman. Anna L. Marcotte and Carole N. Gurkaynak provided invaluable
assistance in recruiting our two coordinators. Our move to Logan Hall
has created a great deal of additional work for that building’s
Business Administrator, Neal Hebert; Financial Coordinator, Sybil
Csigi; and Computer Specialist, Sam Chalfen. All three of them have
been extraordinarily helpful and generous of their time and
expertise. The APA is clearly in the right place when it is in a
building managed by a Classics major (Neal) and a former
Administrative Assistant in the Penn Classics Department (Sybil).
Finally, I need to thank the two people who, in the long run, are
probably most responsible for my becoming Executive Director of the
APA. One of them is, in all probability, unknown to all of you; the
other, though he was both Secretary-Treasurer and President of the
APA, is, I suspect, remembered by only a few.
Margaret Foti is the first and, to date, only Executive Director of
the AACR. In 1983, not long after she was appointed, she decided that
my very few years of unrelated administrative experience and my
Classics Ph.D. qualified me to organize meetings, provide member
services, and support the Board of Directors and committees of a
professional society of cancer researchers. She came to that
conclusion largely because I posted perfect scores on spelling and
grammar tests she regularly gave to candidates for editorial
positions, and because she thought that the first chapter of my
dissertation was well written. This refreshing attitude - that being
literate means you can do anything rather than nothing
- is, I would argue, becoming more common among employers today, but
it was pretty rare in 1983. Whatever I know about managing a learned
society, I learned on the job at AACR. Without Marge’s
confidence that I could learn those lessons and without her
willingness to let me make my inevitable mistakes on her watch, I
would not have almost 16 years of association management experience
to bring to the APA.
Howard Comfort was Professor of Classics and cricket coach at
Haverford College from 1932-1969, and in the few semesters during
which our time at the College overlapped, I followed him wherever I
could: into the classroom or onto the cricket pitch. He was an
inspiring teacher, a first-rate scholar, a patient coach, and a warm
and principled human being. In short, he was what I wanted to be. Now
that I am Executive Director of the society he served as
Secretary-Treasurer, I am finally walking in his shoes. I will do my
very best to live up to that very large responsibility.
Adam D. Blistein
Executive Director
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) announced that it
will receive $3 million from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to
assist scholars to collaborate with university presses in the
electronic publishing of monographs in history.
The new project has five major goals: 1) to foster broader acceptance
by the scholarly community of electronic monograph-length texts as
valid scholarly publication, by creating electronic texts of high
quality in the discipline of history; 2) to promote collaboration
among ACLS, its constituent scholarly societies, university presses,
and libraries in electronic publishing; 3) to create the framework
for a centralized, non-commercial, electronic publication space; 4)
to develop publishing processes that will help streamline production
and make the creation and dissemination of electronic texts more
cost-effective; 5) to establish the viability of publishing
small-market, specialized scholarly texts in electronic format.
The ACLS, as the leading national organization for learned societies
in the humanities and related social sciences, will establish a
consortium of learned societies and university presses to initiate
the program of pub-
lishing these electronic monographs. This new program will over five
years publish and market 85 new electronic books and convert 500
influential backlist titles, along with reviews of those books, to
digital form.
A major aim of the project is promoting greater acceptance of the
electronic book as a valid form of scholarly publication by selecting
works of the highest quality for this new form of publication.
Initially, the ACLS, the societies and presses will seek to identify,
recruit, and solicit proposals from well-established scholars.
Professor Robert Darnton of Princeton University, President of the
American Historical Association, has already committed himself to
producing one of the first books in this new series. Professor
Darnton’s history of the book trade in Enlightenment France will
be, in his words, a “new book . . . [to] elicit a new
kind of reading.”
The University of Michigan’s Digital Library Production Service
(DLPS) will function as an initial distributor for the electronic
publications in this series. DLPS, with extensive experience in
creating and distributing full-text electronic documents, will work
with the presses to develop standards for formatting and advise on
the development of the interface, searching, access, and usage
logging mechanisms for this central publication space.
Editor’s Note: Pamela Vaughn, who recently completed a term
as Chairperson of the Committee on the Status of Women and Minority
Groups, submitted her Committee’s 1997 Report on Placement for
publication in this Newsletter. In preparing her article for
publication, we determined that her 1996 Report had never been
published. Prof. Vaughn kindly provided that report as well, and it
appears below.
The Committee on the Status of Women and Minority Groups (CSWMG)
provides the following summary of the participant reports from the
1996 Annual Meeting. (See the April 1997 issue of the
Newsletter for the summaries of 1994 and 1995.)
To protect the privacy of respondents, the participant questionnaires
were read and summarized by an APA staff person who is not an APA
member, and then entered into a relational database by a second
non-APA member on the APA staff. No APA members opened, processed, or
input any data.
As in previous years, this summary refers when appropriate to the
very useful Report prepared by the APA’s Placement
Service. The report provides a broader quantitative review of the
candidates’ experiences and thus a context for the more focused
CSWMG. This year the CSWMG wishes to extend its thanks to two
Placement Directors for their assistance: to Deborah Francis,who
prepared the 1996-97 Report for the APA’s College of the Holy
Cross office and to Elizabeth Cannon of the APA’s NYU office,
who provided additional analysis of the data at the request of the
committee.
Conclusions. The central observation to be made is that, of the
342 candidates who were present to be interviewed in New York in
1996, 49 (14%) returned responses to the CSWMG questionnaire.
Although the CSWMG is grateful to these respondents for their
comments, many of which will be summarized later in this report, the
14% response rate provides little basis on which to draw general
conclusions or to make suggestions regarding APA policy and
procedures; APA members should keep the limitations of this survey in
mind as they read the report. CSWMG feels that the low response rate
can be attributed, at least in part, to the summer distribution of
the survey coinciding with the relocation of the APA office. The APA
office has graciously accommodated our request for an earlier
distribution this year, and we hope that will increase the response
rate. Finally, as in past years, some respondents have chosen not to
answer some questions, which results in totals and percentages that
appear not to add up.
Demographic Information. The total number of candidates
registered with the Placement Service for 1996-97 was 540 (314 males,
226 females). Of these, 342 (211 males, 131 females, or 63%) were
present to be interviewed. (Source: APA Placement Service Report
1996-97). Of the 49 respondents to the CSWMG survey, 30 (61%) were
males and 19 (39%) females; of those who chose to list an age group
(39, or 80%), most were in the 30-40 age bracket (17 M, 7 F). Few
minorities (6%) were represented in this sample: 2 Asian-American, 1
Hispanic, and no other persons of color. Most (90%) are U.S.
citizens, with others reporting Canadian (1), German (2), Irish (1),
and Netherlands (1). 21% (10) listed sexual orientation other than
heterosexual (3 Bisexual; 3 Lesbian; 3 Gay; 1 None); 6 did not
respond to this question. The percentage of candidates who are
married or in a permanent relationship continues to be high (73% M,
74% F). Most respondents (94%) had the Ph.D. in hand.
The Placement / Interview Experience. It will come as no surprise
that candidates are having to use the Placement Service more
consecutive years before finding employment or deciding on other
courses of action. In 1996 there were 800 interviews scheduled at the
Annual Meeting; 451 went to male candidates, 349 to female
candidates. The average number of interviews per candidate was 2.34
(1.77 M, 2.29 F) (Source: APA Placement Service Report 1996-97).
In 1996 41% (20 candidates) reported having sought employment through
the Placement Service 4 or more times (60% of these males, 40%
females); most candidates (73%, or 63% of males and 89% of females)
received no more than one offer of employment. 78% of those reporting
state that they were offered a full-time position (28 positions
total, 14 M and 14 F), but only 40% of those full-time positions are
tenure-track (11 positions; 6 M, 5 F). Salaries reported ranged from
a maximum of $45,000 to a minimum of $2,500 (including both full and
part-time positions); the top salary reported ($45,000) was the same
for males and females, with the minimum $2,500 (male) and $30,000
(female). Average salary reported was approximately $34,000 ($36,500
for females, $31,900 for males). The total number of “filled
positions” known to the Placement Service as of June 30, 1997,
was 94 (48 M, 46 F); 82 were filled by APA members, 7 by AIA members,
5 by individuals not registered with the Placement Service (Source:
APA Placement Service Report 1996-97).
Placement Service Guidelines. The survey inquires whether
specific topics were addressed in the interview. These areas are
shown below (“indirect” means the subject was broached
indirectly during the course of an interview; “direct”
means direct questions were asked on the subject):
Indirect Direct
a) race 2 1
b) ethnic origin 4 1
c) religion 5 3
d) nationality 1 2
e) political views 0 3
f) marital status 8 4
g) sexual orientation 3 0
h) partner’s willingness
to relocate 4 1
i) age 5 1
j) gender 3 1
k) children 1 0
l) physical condition /
health 0 0
Candidates were also asked in the survey whether they thought they
were discriminated against or favored on particular grounds, and 16%
(8) indicated that they felt they were (50% (4) discriminated
against; 38% (3) favored).
Regarding the professional conduct of the interviewers, 10% of
candidates (5) indicated both offensive remarks and offensive
behavior, and 8% (4) cited the use of a hotel bedroom as the site for
an interview. No other violations were indicated, and none were
reported to the APA, except in response to this questionnaire, with
candidates usually citing fear of repercussions as the reason for not
reporting an incident to the APA. Regarding the site of interviews,
CSWMG would like candidates and the APA membership in general to note
that the New York hotel withdrew 50 of the scheduled 70 meeting rooms
at the last minute, and that particular unforeseen situation most
certainly forced many institutions into hotel rooms when they, too,
would have preferred meeting rooms.
Finally, a common thread runs through the general comments, and they
are similar to those made in past years: that the
“blackboard” is demeaning and insulting, and a better
system should be found; that persons of limited income are
discriminated against by institutions not informing them in advance
whether they have interviews scheduled at the Annual Meeting; that
smaller schools appear to be at a disadvantage compared to larger
schools who often exceed their time and monopolize meeting space.
In closing, the CSWMG would welcome comments and suggestions from the
APA membership regarding the survey, including both content and means
of increasing response rate; such comments may be sent to the current
Chair of the CSWMG, Sally MacEwen, Dept. of Classics, Box 968, Agnes
Scott College, Decatur, GA 30030, or via e-mail at
smacewen@agnesscott.edu
Summary report compiled and submitted by
Pamela Vaughn
for the CSWMG
The Committee on the Status of Women and Minority Groups (CSWMG)
provides the following summary of the participant reports from the
1997 Annual Meeting. The delay in reporting is the result of two
factors: first, the move of the APA office to New York University,
and second, the conversion of the old program to a new database. This
latter step will allow future APA staff to enter results much more
quickly and efficiently, and the Committee is grateful to John
Marincola and Elizabeth Cannon for undertaking this database
conversion.
To protect the privacy of respondents, the participant questionnaires
were read and summarized by an APA staff person who is not an APA
member, and then entered into a relational database by a second
non-APA member on the APA staff. No APA members opened, processed, or
input any data.
As in previous years, this summary refers when appropriate to the
very useful Report prepared by the APA’s Placement
Director, Elizabeth Cannon. The report provides a broader
quantitative review of the candidates’ experiences and thus a
context for the more focused CSWMG. The Committee extends its thanks
to Elizabeth Cannon for her excellent work.
Conclusions. The central observation to be made is that, of
the 282 candidates who were present to be interviewed in Chicago in
1997, 88 (31%) returned responses to the CSWMG questionnaire. All
those who read this brief summary report should keep in mind the
relatively small sampling of candidates, but the CSWMG is encouraged
that the response has increased from 1996. A number of candidates
have offered suggestions for improving response rate, and the CSWMG
hopes to implement some of these suggestions for its 1999 Survey. One
should also note that, as in past years, some respondents have chosen
not to answer some questions, which results in totals and percentages
that appear not to add up.
Demographic Information. The total number of candidates
registered with the Placement Service for 1997-98 was 503 (308 males,
195 females). Of these, 282 (180 males, 102 females) &emdash; or 57%
&emdash; were present to be interviewed. (Source: APA Placement
Service Report 1997-98). Of the 88 respondents to the CSWMG survey,
40 (45%) were males and 48 (55%) females; of those who chose to list
an age group (54, or 61%), most were in the 30-40 age bracket, as we
noted in 1996 (24 M, 30 F). Only one minority candidate (Hispanic)
was represented in this sampling. Obviously the profession needs to
continue and expand its efforts to recruit and retain minority
candidates. Most respondents (85%) are U.S. citizens, with others
reporting British (5), German (3), and Greek (3) citizenship. 11%
(10, the same number as 1997) listed sexual orientation other than
heterosexual (2 Bisexual; 4 Lesbian; 4 Gay; 9 candidates chose not to
respond to this question. The percentage of candidates who are
married or in a permanent relationship continues to be high (66%; 70%
of males reporting and 62% of females reporting). Most respondents
(74%; 69% of females and 78% of males reporting) had the Ph.D. in
hand, but the actual number was slightly lower than in 1996.
The Placement / Interview Experience. It will come as no
surprise that candidates are having to use the Placement Service more
consecutive years before finding employment or deciding on other
courses of action. In 1997 there were 757 interviews scheduled at the
Annual Meeting; 450 went to male candidates, 307 to female
candidates. The average number of interviews per candidate was 2.3
(1.68 M, 2.47 F) (Source: APA Placement Service Report 1997-98).
In 1997, 25% (22 candidates, 2 more than in 1996) reported having
sought employment through the Placement Service 4 or more times (50%
of these males, 50% females). 84% of the candidates who responded
indicated that they received no offers of employment as a result of
the interviews which took place at the Annual Meeting (90% of males,
77% of females). However, 80% of those reporting state that they were
offered full-time positions, with approximately 70% of those
positions tenure-track. Salaries reported ranged from a maximum of
$48,000 to a minimum of $4,000 (including both full- and part-time
positions). Of the 141 positions advertised with the Placement
Service, the total number of “filled positions” known to
the Placement Service as of May 1998 was 84 (46 M, 38 F); 59 were
filled by APA members, 5 by AIA members, 9 by joint members, 11 by
individuals not registered with the Placement Service (Source: APA
Placement Service Report 1997-98).
Placement Service Guidelines. It is obvious that the
publishing of the Placement Service Guidelines continues to benefit
both candidates and institutions; very few instances of violations
are noted.
The CSWMG survey inquires whether specific inappropriate
topics were addressed in the interview. These areas are shown in the
chart on the next page (“indirect” means the subject was
broached indirectly during the course of an interview;
“direct” means direct questions were asked on the
subject):
Not
Indirect Direct Mentioned
a) race 0 1 73
b) ethnic origin 4 3 67
c) religion 5 3 65
d) nationality 2 5 67
e) political views 2 2 70
f) marital status 5 6 63
g) sexual orientation 2 1 70
h) partner’s willingness
to relocate 7 3 64
i) age 5 3 66
j) gender 6 1 67
k) children 5 2 67
l) physical condition /
health 0 1 73
Candidates were also asked in the survey whether they thought they
were discriminated against or favored on particular grounds, and 17%
(15) indicated that they felt they were (12% (11) discriminated
against; 2% (2) favored).
Regarding the professional conduct of the interviewers, 5% of
candidates (5) indicated that they were subjected to what they
considered both offensive remarks and offensive behavior, and 3% (3)
objected to the use of a hotel bedroom as the site for an interview.
No other violations were indicated, and none were reported officially
to the APA, except in response to this questionnaire, with candidates
citing, as usual, fear of repercussions as the reason for not
reporting an incident to the APA officially. One candidate did
comment, however, that the truly inappropriate comments take place
not at the APA, but at the campus interviews.
Among the various comments offered by the respondents, the CSWMG
notes an increasing sense of age discrimination among the candidates,
which is not specific to either gender. One candidate observed that
age discrimination was “a matter of course” within the
profession, with the code word usually being
“overqualified.” Concerned about any instances of
discriminatory behavior, the CSWMG urges the leadership and the
appropriate committees of the APA to examine this issue in greater
depth. Finally, a common thread runs through a large number of the
general comments, and these are similar to comments offered in
previous years: that the placement “Board” continues to be
a source of anguish, although some candidates commented that it was
more discreetly positioned in 1997, for which they were grateful;
that persons of limited income are discriminated against by
institutions not informing them in advance whether they have
interviews scheduled at the Annual Meeting; that too many
institutions exceed their allotted interview time, creating
difficulties for both candidates and other institutions. Regarding
the use of the placement “Board,” one candidate recommended
that the Placement Service investigate the use of hotel
closed-circuit television or a Web site, so that candidates can view
the interview schedule in private.
Respectfully submitted,
Pamela Vaughn
on behalf of CSWMG
Calvin College, Assistant Professor: Karalee S.
Harding
Emory University, Visiting Assistant Professor:
Brian Breed; Visiting Assistant Professor:
Alan Zeitlin
Hollins University, Visiting Assistant Professor
of Classical Studies: Gary D. Farney
Marshall University, Assistant Professor: Mary
English
Rutgers University, Visiting Assistant Professor:
Braden Mechley
University of Calgary, Professor: Peter Toohey
University of Massachusetts, Professor of Clas-
sics: Kenneth F. Kitchell, Jr.; Assistant Profes-
sor of Classics: Debbie Felton
University of the South, Assistant Professor:
Amy Clark
Yale University, Professor: Susanna Morton
Braund
Alexis Q. Castor, Enoita: The Contexts of Greek
Earrings,Tenth to Third Century B.C.
(S. Miller-Collett)
Gary D. Farney, Aristocratic Family Identity in the
Roman Republic (T.C. Brennan)
Kerri J. Hame, Ta Nomizomena: Private Greek
Death-Ritual in the Historical Sources and
Tragedy (G. Dickerson and R. Hamilton)
Gordon P. Kelly, Exilium: A History and
Prosopography of Exile in the Roman Republic
(T.C. Brennan and R.T. Scott)
Mireille M. Lee, The Myth of the Classical Peplos
(A. Donohue)
James M. Pfundstein, Not Only the City: Cosmogra-
phy in the Tragedies of Seneca (R. Sonkowsky)
Cheryl Houdek, The Cult Sites of Athena in the
Peloponnese (F. Cooper)
Nathaniel Hauser, Monumental Crucifixes and
Calgary Groups in the North of France between
1370 and 1450 (S. McNally)
Patricia Libby, Military Simulacra as Votive Offer-
ings in Archaic and Classical Greece (F. Cooper)
Thomas Kohn, The Poetics of Seneca’s Oedipus
(R. Sonkowsky)
Nannette Scott-Goldman, Hellenistic Literacy and
Sub-literary Hymns in Asia Minor and the Near
East (P. Sellew)
Kent Gregory, The Acquisition and Retention of a
Roman Identity: A History of Roman Metz
(O. Nicholson)
Emily West, Advisors, Artisans, Helpers, Wives:
Women in Greek and Sanskrit Epic (P. Sellew)
Anne Holland, A Graeco Fonte: A Systematic
Analysis of the Use of the Greek Language by
Horace (N. Krevans)
Important Dates for APA Members
October 15, 1999 Deadline for Nominations for Lionel Pearson
Fellowship for 2000-2001
October 15, 1999 Candidate CV’s Due for Placement Book
October 22, 1999 Deadline to Qualify for Drawing for Free Annual
Meeting Registration
November 12, 1999 Deadline for Applications for Lionel Pearson
Fellowship for 2000-2001
November 15, 1999 Applications Due for Thesaurus Latinae
Linguae Fellowship for 2000-2001
November 19, 1999 Deadline to Qualify for Reduced Annual
Meeting Registration Rate
December 10, 1999 Last Day for Receipt of Annual Meeting
Registration Forms by Mail
December 27-30, 1999 131st Annual Meeting, Dallas, TX