Slavic linguists ARE getting hired in this country!

[Loren A. Billings]

I agree with both professors Birnbaum and Scatton re the state of "the field"
of Slavic linguistics overall.  I am one of those people finishing a PhD at
a Slavic-languages-and-literatures department looking for work (preferrably
as a teacher/researcher).  True, there was only one tenure-track position in
the field this year (down from seven or so in the US and Canada last year).

I should point out that I recently heard of two people who work on Slav. ling.
who have landed ten-trk jobs at US institutions:  Z^eljko Bos~kovic~ (ABD in
linguistics at UConn, is replacing M. Saito in that same school's syntax
position) and Sergey Avrutin (recent MIT grad, now post-doc at Penn and going
to a joint ling/cog-sci position at Yale).  "Yeah," you're saying, "they don't
count."  I heard such a slur at AATSEEL about Kat Dziwirek (recent UCSD ling
grad, now at UWa Slavic dept).  They DO count.  I know all three with varying
degrees of familiarity.  Maybe we SHOULD be trained in ling. depts.  --Loren