Talk:CreativeWriting 2013

"Diversity Watch" Discussion
5/6/13: I am moving this list and discussion from the front page because numerous legitimate concerns have been raised about its methodology and conception. As the administrator of this wiki, I am not entirely comfortable with keeping such a count so close to a list of people's actual names, as this Wiki's "terms of use" clearly state users should not post material that "violates any law or right of any third party, or content that contains homophobia, ethnic slurs, religious intolerance." I do not believe this conversation has gone fully into this territory, but at times, it has skated periously close, and as some comments below illustrate, the list's purpose may be unclear and even seemingly "racist" to some users. Please remember as well that all information on this wiki is partial and fragmentary and not intended to be used as the basis of any serious study. Such studies should be undertaken with data gathered in a more comprehensive and methodologically-sound manner than this wiki can provide. If you want to discuss the decision to move this conversation, leave a note on my talk page. Users who want to continue the general conversation about diversity below or on the front page should feel free to do so. Thanks. Una74 (talk) 00:13, May 7, 2013 (UTC)

DIVERSITY WATCH (A Count -- Please Update When You Post a New Hire)

 * Male - 33 of 62
 * Female - 29 of 62
 * African-American - 5
 * Latino - 3
 * Asian-American - 3
 * Indian-American - 3
 * Arab-American - 1
 * Native American - 0
 * Jewish-American - 9 (Can someone explain why "Jewish-American" is a relevant category? Do we have "Catholic American" or "Buddhist American"? And I wonder whether the hires described as "Jewish-American" are self-identifying or if someone else is doing it for them.)
 * Total from "non-white" diversity categories - 15 of 62
 * Total from all of these diversity categories - 25 of 62
 * GLBT Identified - 9
 * Highest Degree Held is M.F.A.: 33
 * Highest Degree Held is Ph.D.: 29

-- There are so many reasons as to why this list is idiotic and dangerous. First, the erasure of "white" as a category in this random and racist mapping with the exception of the following "Total from 'non-white' categories - 15 of 62" and "Total from all of these diversity categories 25-62" makes it appear that the colored peoples are, once again, taking over, as if to say, by "fact" that, "almost half of them got jobs in our institutions, so stop the complaining & here are the stats to prove it..." Okay, so maybe the White People categories are  "Jewish American," or "Arab American" -- code for whites who are magically not white!? What's even more maddening is that this tally is at best marked by names, and some dubious Google-sleuthing at best, which folks have pointed out before. Why is GLBT Identified the only category where the other tallied, here, do not get to self-identify? Wait, what about folks who are of mixed race, who are born and and publish under multiple identifications, or who eschew these categories, or complicate them with various identifications and explications? It just seems like the "starting point" here described below reifies the ways that the numbers game reflects a way to look at the very idea of perceived affirmative action in a familiarly suspicious way. The truth is that being a writer and an academic of color, queer or transgender identified person in the academy is tremendously challenging, and the odds are stacked against one and all, mainly because of a stubborn way of thinking that does not want to face the fact that White is a Racial Category. In our profession it is still a stifling majority, not only by the numbers beginning with the actual numbers in T ant TT lines, here and before, but in the mentality of unchecked racist white privilege which marks the creation of these tiring lists that attempt to blatantly dismiss this reality.

Q: Uh... what?

(Feel free to add categories that indicate diversity markers of the sorts search committees or applicants might find useful. Also, feel free to add other statistical measures, such as hires by grad program, hires by degrees held, hires by books held, etc. If we are going to have productive conversations about this year's trends, it will be useful to have a common set of information that can be used as a starting point for discussion. It is possible that some of these categories have been under-counted due to lack of public information.
 * WENT AHEAD & DELETED THE CATEGORIES THAT ARE ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE,  i.e, "Experimental," "Lower Tier MFA," "wealthy backgrounds," etc. All these categories are is a record of one person's opinion.

How is some of this even useful? What is a 'lower tier' MFA program? What does 'experimental' mean (as if this is some indicator of 'diversity'? Aesthetic diversity? How are you figuring out that people are 'working class'-- are college professors working class? Or are you talking about parents? How do you know?
 * The list is as broad in its definition of diversity as possible, to try to accommodate the range of ideas about diversity indicated in the discussion below. No value judgments have been made by the poster about any of it. One hopes, on a Wiki, that the group will help regularize the numbers somehow. The initial counter (me) did the best she could, using Internet search engines. Others have already added categories. One mock category added by the asker of the questions above ("Symbionese") has been deleted, but the scorn for the attempt (to engage in good faith the conversation about diversity by trying to quantify some of the categories explicitly or implicitly addressed elsewhere on the Wiki) is duly noted. Truly, though, it seems to this poster that it might be helpful, when trying to say something about the numbers, to begin to start gathering numbers from which one might analyze, interpret, eventually probably generalize, although with such a small sample size it seems a fraught endeavor. Perhaps over a few years of data collection a clearer picture will begin to emerge. Methodological suggestions for improvement are welcome. Research is welcome. Information is welcome.
 * I, for one, cannot wait to skip the AWP panel that comes out of this.
 * Trust me: it's already been accepted as an AWP panel.
 * How is "lower tier MFA/PhD" not a value judgement?
 * And how does one even begin to separate PhD programs into tiers when so few exist? Most CW PhD programs are competitive and produce quality grads who publish books and in national magazines. This is silly.
 * So, your answer to my questions is 'I googled them'? I know you mean well, but I'm not sure the point of 'gathering numbers' on things that are SO nebulous. Like (1) what's a 'lower tier' MFA, and why's that important? And yeah, how is that not a judgement? How are we supposed to call out the lower tier MFAs if we don't have any clue what that even means? Do we use US News or Seth Abramson's list? 2) What criteria did you use to determine if a candidate is working class (I assume you mean their parents?) (It makes me very uncomfortable that you are trying to determine the class of candidates' parents. I'm not sure why, it just seems icky. It's none of your business.) 3) Why on earth a tally of who you think is an 'experimental' writer is useful. How did you decide?
 * "Why on earth a tally of who you think is an 'experimental' writer is useful."   Here's one answer: I think it becomes extremely crucial if we think about potential biases against experimental writers from "non-white" diversity categories, writers who are expected to "sound" a certain way because of certain visible markers of their identity.  I directly encountered this issue during a campus visit.  The way in which identity politics intersects with aesthetics shouldn't be taken lightly.  Unlike the folks above joking about the AWP panel, I'm certainly not laughing.  I also think folks need to be less snarky and dismissive here.  I appreciated this earnest attempt at a tally.  And it seems weird to me to talk trash about internet searches when this is, after all, a wiki.  It seems like there's a lot of aggregated information from the web here.  The "It's none of your business" comment has me scratching my head--how else, do you suggest, do we begin to do some important sociological and cultural analysis of institutionalized creative writing?
 * C: I do get what you're saying, and that writers of color are often faced with a damned-if-you do/don't mentality: write about self in a recognizable narrative lyric, and you're "just" writiting identity poetry. Write a non-traditional poem, and why aren't you writing identity lyrics? There's are other factors that play into a dept's aesthetic preferences, though. If it's an MFA or CW Ph.D program, they likely have established aesthetic tendencies and can be reluctant to deviate. If it's an undergrad program--which are the majority of jobs each year--well, those committees may be staffed largely (sometimes exclusively) by Lit folks, and the truth is that many Lit folks don't read contemporary poetry, period, are skeptical of it, perhaps particularly skeptical of work they don't get.
 * Sorry, but I doubt the tiny chart above clears the "important sociological and cultural analysis of institutionalized creative writing" bar. One of the first things they teach in them research methods course up thar at the college is that you need to define your terms so's people know your meanings. "Experimental" means what? "Second-tier MFA" refers to which ones? "First-Generation MFA/PhD" is a not a joke category? Heck, you might could conduct real research on this subject. But then you'd collect a lot more data than we see here. To me, this chart doesn't look like a study of anything. It looks like a tricked-up, open invitation to a squabble. And maybe laughing would do you some good. Would your being a non-white experimental writer really shock a search committee that has invited you to its campus? Don't they have Google, too?
 * The "it's none of your business" comment was clearly directed at the ridiculous attempt to determine someone's class status via Google. Where's the rich person's category, by the way? Why is the only class category "working class"? Hmm. No, that's not problematic! The data collector came up with categories like, "experimental," yet never thought to create a category to track people from upper middle class and wealthy backgrounds. Half of these categories are also ridiculous to track in this format. This isn't VIDA, women vs. men. Cut-and-dry. You look in the TOC and count the men vs, the women and it's all painfully obvious. We're talking about using Google to pin down whether or not someone grew up poor, which is idiotic.
 * (What if I had put 'self identified Symbionese'? Is political affiliation not okay?)
 * It's pretty simple, when you are a search committee and you fall in love with someone, you don't really worry about his or her (apologies to transgender folks for this simplistic binary) socioeconomic status, where he or she received their advanced degree, or gender, or sexual orientation, or ethnicity, you simply fall for the person who has the goods. All this parsing of categories seems to be an effort to explain why you weren't picked to go to the prom. Face it, they just weren't that into you. Do the work, be yourself, and the job will come along. Or not. Now breathe and get to work on that next piece. I'll race you to the slush pile. Ready, set, go!
 * "It's pretty simple...you simply fall for the person who has the goods."  I appreciate the positive attitude here.  But this evinces an extremely naive understanding of programs, departments, and search committees.  And not everyone who is interested in diversity has a sore loser complex.
 * You can write that my understanding of programs, departments, and search committees is extremely naive, and I can write your perspective is cynical and disturbingly defensive. Clearly, we have had vastly different experiences as representatives of programs, members of departments, and serving on and interacting with search committees. But I think you missed the point I was making. "The goods" is an indescribable group of characteristics that departments, programs, and search committees want, but are unable/unwilling to specifically articulate in their job posting. You either fit the myriad desires or not. And if you do fit the criteria, it's possible your interview will go off the rails, that you will receive your campus visit itinerary at the last minute leaving you little time to prepare, that your teaching presentation will fall utterly flat, or that during a dinner with students and faculty members the conversation will be filled with protracted and awkward silences. Getting a TT job is a combination of preparation and serendipity. You can't do much about chance, so the best course of action is preparation for the next opportunity. Staying positive and proactive about the things you can change may be--in your opinion--naive, but it does make the struggle more manageable.