[Linganth] Results from survey on tenure requirements in linguistic anthropology

[Jennifer Dickinson]

Hello everyone,
Thanks to everyone who answered my request for information about publishing
guidelines for tenure in linguistic anthropology.  I have been trying to send
the results out to the list, but it must be blocking messages with attachments,
so I will try to summarize the information I had in chart form in this message.

13 people at 12 institutions (two were in different departments of the same
research university) answered the survey.  Six were Research Universities
(defined for my purposes here as
offering a Ph.D. in the respondent's department) and six were Research/Teaching
universities (where a B.A. and/or M.A. are offered).  No college
departments were represented.  I don't know whether this more an effect of the
small sample or a
reflection the academic distribution of linguistic anthropologists.

 Overall, there is some continuity in large Ph.D.
granting departments, where a book plus (plus a second book under contract, or
plus multiple peer-reviewed articles) is required.  In other departments, there
was considerable variation in requirements from a book, down to a couple of
well-placed
articles deemed meritorious by the review committee.  In general, a book was
considered equivalent to 4-6 peer-reviewed articles, and one or the other is
generally required.

Linguistic Anthropologists in other deparments (such as communications or
education) noted that articles are generally preferred to books.  In
anthropology, at least two people noted that their department has or is in the
process of changing its policy requiring a book due to difficulties people have
encountering publishing monographs recently.  In other departments where
linguistic anthropologists are judged as a type of cultural anthropologist, a
heavy emphasis was placed on the book, especially a book that that is "more
cultural" in its subject matter.  Some people (particularly junior faculty)
lamented difficulties in publishing linguistic anthropology monographs.  Based
on the variation in responses, I think the field would benefit from a
discussion of the place of "the monograph" in contemporary linguistic
anthropology, but I don't know what the best forum for such a discussion would
be.

I would also like to note that although the tenure process obviously stirs
anxiety in all kinds of people involved in the process, from job-seekers to
senior faculty on review committees, most people reported some degree of
flexibility in tenure requirements designed to respond to subfield differences
and individual strengths of candidates.  Some of this flexibility was
"built-in" to the tenure guidelines, while in other cases it comes in the form
of vagueness as to what is actually required of candidates (e.g. how many
articles).

I hope some of you find this useful, and apologies to anyone who wanted to
include a response, but didn't get it to me before I wrote this summary.
Best,
J. Dickinson



--
Jennifer Dickinson
University of Vermont
email:  jennifer.dickinson at uvm.edu