Good news! If you're unable to get your work published in peer reviewed professional venues, and are looking to waste time on something completely impotent, but would nevertheless like to deceive yourself and others into thinking you're taking the intellectual high-road by bringing philosophy to the masses, there's still time to submit an abstract for the forthcoming volume on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Philosophy!
The editors claim to have special interest in several topics, including the topic of "Pessimism (Should we curb our enthusiasm?)." Enthusiasm and optimism are apparently synonyms. But it's no matter. The purpose of every book in the series is simply to make money off of people who collect merchandise related to their favorite TV show (or movie, or band, or low-carb diet....) by filling books with poorly written and shallow philosophy essays.
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32 comments:
I doubt Benatar's contribution to The Onion and Philosophy will be poorly written or shallow.
At least they can claim some form of employment/revenue.
I can't.
And I thought "U2 and Philosophy" was a new low.
Hey, I think as long as the academic in question (a) doesn't think this is genuine academic writing and (b) approaches the task for what it is (i.e., trying to explain a basic philosophical concept to laymen using a ready-to-hand example, as you might in conversation), I don't see the harm. It's only when the writer strays from one or both that this becomes ridiculous/detrimental. Now, the extent to which you think that has happened in past volumes will largely govern your response to the genre as a whole, but the principle, I think, stands.
I mean, seriously, can we really object to trying to elucidate a philosophical concept with some pop-culture example? It can't all be brains in vats and blocks of wax. Just acknowledge that it's not research, and you're good, right?
Plus, it pays. Why do you think you see so many grad students publishing in those things?
But, Spiros, if we get rid of these things, we lose an easy way to determine who is and isn't a *real* philosopher and who does and does not do sufficiently rigorous philosophical work.
And, lord knows we need all the help we can get in patrolling our borders, keeping the unclean out, and shunning those who would deign to get in!
(Seriously though. I think one should publish all you want in these things - I'm guessing they're really fun to write - but don't put it on a CV for fucksakes.)
Not only not on one's CV, but perhaps anonymously?
Fun to write? Perhaps. Helps pay some bills for the penurious grad. student? Great!
Possible albatross should anyone on a search committee google your name? Priceless.
Oh, please, you're telling me some people are big enough assholes to begrudge a newly minted PhD the fact that he made a few bucks making the same kinds of analogies between popular topics and philosophical concepts that most people make while teaching 1000 level classes? What, are search committees supposed to shitcan everyone who ever made a reference to "The Matrix" while leading a discussion on skepticism, too?
You've got to be fucking kidding me. Sure, it's not research, but an "albatross?" Get the fuck over yourself.
Uh, Jaded Dissertator, I think you need a different sufficient condition.
To take the U2 and Philosophy example, look who is in it: Mark Wrathall (the editor!), Hubert Dreyfrus, Jeff Malpas, Chris Tollefsen, and Trenton Fucking Merricks. Doesn't do sufficiently rigorous philosophical work? Nope. More like: U2 fanboys who feel like goofing off a little bit off the clock.
Anon. 7:10,
It is exactly for these types of situations for which the sarcasm punctuation mark was invented. But, I ain't paying to download that shit.
So, let's just add "/sarcasm" to my original post.
Anon 3:09,
I've been on a few search committees for junior hires, and having a paper in a "pop culture" book was a definite minus. Having such a publication as one's *only* publication was almost always defeating in itself.
So I'd say: if you're going to bother with this kind of thing, keep it off your CV, just as one wouldn't list one's blog posts as "publications."
It doesn't seem to me that one ought to cease writing these pieces, or to leave them off one's CV even. A more reasonable position would be to say that there should be a proportional representation, say, at least 5 or 10 'real' publications for every pop culture & philosophy publication.
Frankly, I can't imagine wanting to work in a department where taking a sort of break to do the occasional light-hearted piece every few years is going to be frowned upon by the oh so serious philosopher-colleagues, even if one is publishing 'serious' work with good regularity. Sounds like a department with a lot of sticks up a lot of asses.
Lastly, they don't seem useless to me, if they're well done. I recall a good article in the very first volume, Seinfeld and Philosophy, which explained the concept of akrasia in Aristotle's Nic. Eth. using George Costanza as an example. Back in the Fall of '02, teaching Aristotle's Ethics as part of an Intro course for a mostly freshman non-major crowd as a grad student, I found it a useful article to illustrate the concept, and one that many of them connected with.
Is that so bad? It seems as if that is exactly the reason why one would write such an article: taking some concept from the history of philosophy or from the present and illustrating it in a pop-culture context to help the reader (the layman or the non-major) to understand it. Sure, I could have recommended an article from A.O. Rorty's collection or a section from Broadie, but then their eyes would probably have glazed over and they wouldn't have learned anything.
Agreed, many of these articles (at least most of the ones I've seen) are crap. But the form can have some intrinsic value, if it's used rightly and seen for what it is.
There is an interesting defense of the popular culture & philosophy series in the new magazine On Second Thought written. It’s written by a non-philosopher and describes how he used the books to get a foothold in central issues. It’s the last article in the issue.
And Spiros, you should know that your blog is quoted (in a big block quote) in the first article “Philosophy and its Public: Mediating the war between philosophers and everyone else.”
The magazine is online and you can order a free hard copy via email:
http://www.philosophyinpubliclife.org/Instute/OST.html
The magazine is published by the Institute for Philosophy in Public Life, the folks that do the WHY? radio show. (www.whyradioshow.org)
"a lot of sticks up a lot of asses" by Anon 2:26 is exactly the right way to describe Spiros's and his department's attitude. I also agree with Jaded Dissertator that this is gate-keeping of the worst kind. And this is coming from someone who never published nor intends to publish in these volumes.
Would you list on your CV a local radio interview, an entry in an introductory or a high school level textbook, a teaching aid you developed, a talk at a high school or a local library? Not necessarily, but there is nothing wrong with doing so. Nor should there be with the chapters in question here.
Sorry, Spiros, your anecdote ain't evidence. I have also been on search committees, and having one or two of these has been a plus - but only in the right context. The right context is that there are quite a few papers in really good journals. Then it shows breadth and an ability to communicate. I suspect that one of these things is better than nothing for some jobs. Obviously not Leiterific depts, but community colleges, maybe.
11:53,
Seems to me you don't know what evidence is. You might think the anecdote isn't sufficient evidence-- viz., it doesn't provide sufficient support for the conclusion I draw-- but it's obviously evidence. Duh.
Anon 5:18,
Would you list a blog post as a publication? Or a letter to the editor of the university newspaper? Probably not.
I've seen plenty of junior CVs that list P&PC chapters as "peer reviewed publications." A considerable sub-set of these CVs have *no* publications outside this series. One recent applicant claimed in his cover letter to have already amassed an "impressive record of publication," when in fact the only publications he had were three P&PC chapters (two of which in books edited by one of his undergrad profs).
Let's just admit that the series is a joke. On occasion, one runs across a decent contribution. But for the most part, the series is simply a boondoggle-- a venue for people who can't get their work passed peer review, a way to add lines to one's CV.
I agree with Spiros totally. The series is awful and desperate. In our last three tenure-track searches having a publication in a "pop culture" volume was for sure viewed as a minus even at my shitbox-department at completely-crappy-university.
Let's draw a distinction between *having* a P&PC publication and listing it as a "publication" on the CV. That's not the only place something like that could go, obviously. Some applicants list such publications as "service" (I consider this suspect, personally) or "non-academic activities," a label which is hard to contest.
I wonder if Spiros and the other naysayers would consider an applicant who listed P&PC publications in THAT manner to have a black mark against him? No one has addressed this issue at all - the only talk has been about people who list them in the same manner one would list a genuine peer-reviewed publication. I think we can ALL agree that THAT sort of thing is ridiculous - that's NOT the same as saying merely HAVING a P&PC entry is CV poison.
Thoughts?
Im curious what you guys consider to be "real", serious work in philosophy..what are some examples of pressing/legitimate issues? I thought Wittgenstein let the fly out of the bottle decades ago.
Curb Your Enthusiasm And Philosophy should be pretay pretay pretay pretay good. Thanks for the heads up, Spiros!
4:13am,
I like the distinction. We should also distinguish between the case of tenured persons dabbling in this sort of thing and the junior job applicant.
For the former, contributing a fluff piece for a PPC is in my view merely in poor taste and not a major violation. At its worst, it lends some scholarly credibility to a suspect commercial enterprise and perhaps encourages junior people to mistake the series for a legitimate vehicle for scholarship ("Look, ma, I'm published alongside [some famous philosopher]").
But in the case of the junior person, things are different. Contributing to a PPC (especially when no other publication is present) suggests a serious mismanagement of research time. In my view, junior people should be putting all their research effort into publishing in peer-reviewed, professional, A-list venues. Disclosure: I advise students to just say no to invitations to contribute to edited volumes of any kind, unless of course the volume is extraordinary (e.g., Oxford UP, edited by the top person, with a roster of top people). But grad students are of course rarely invited to contribute to volumes of that kind. So the rule is G. Marx's: don't contribute to any volume that would invite you.
I think that search committees are right to look upon publication in a PPC with suspicion, especially when publication in professional venues is lacking. No one should get tenure on the basis of even a long list of PPC publications. But who wants to have to explain to one's dean why someone with a long list of publications (someone who takes himself to have an "impressive record of publication" on the basis of a string of PPC contributions) should be denied tenure?
I've seen these publications on a quite a few CV's when we are doing junior hires, and my impression is that they count in the candidates favor if they show up on their CV in a way that clearly separates them from the publications that are supposed to be "research" (sometimes they are listed as "teaching related activities", "contribution to the profession" etc.).
On the other hand, if they are listed as research or just put under the general heading of "publications", then they tend to count against the candidate in question.
In the first case, the candidate comes across as someone who takes his pedagogical role seriously, while in the second they come across as someone who is deliberately padding their CV.
Let me stir up the shit if I can. What matters is not the publication-pedigree of an article, but rather it's quality. So if you really want to learn something about the philosophical acumen of a candidate with a P&PC line on her/his CV, read the fucking article.
(Yes, it's more likely that an article with Phil Studies-pedigree is philosophically valuable than an article with P&PC pedigree, nevertheless ...)
3:58,
I'm not sure I'm making a point about pedigree. Maybe others are. I'm not arguing that since JP is a better venue than PPC, whatever appears in JP is more valuable as scholarship. The claim, rather, is about one's professional aspirations, or what having PPC as one's sole publication suggests about them. If one aspires to contribute to one's scholarly profession, one should be trying to publish in places which subject one's work to ruthless peer-review. The PPC volumes are mostly vanity projects with no real review process. A junior person who pursues the latter rather than the former is likely someone who misunderstands the scholarly task, or sees the aim as that of adding lines on the CV.
Spiros, Anon 11.53. You are quite right. I spoke loosely. I should have said your anecdote has little evidential value. I don't know how I could be so imprecise on a blog, where only the highest standards of precision are expected. Ironic, really, given that your whole point was that in this profession we always maintain the highest degree of rigor, whether we are writing in JP, blogs or PPC.
11:53 [9:58],
No problem. The point would have been a case of trivial nit-picking were it not for the case that you offer your own anecdotal evidence, drawn from your own experiences with search committees, to counter mine. But it's obvious that if my anecdote isn't evidence, neither is yours. So your error-- which you now present as a mere slip which given the informality of the forum, should be overlooked (just as an "its"/it's" conflation)-- struck me as possibly more systematic than that.
And, yes, this is an informal forum, so standards of precision are of course relaxed. But when you're out to defeat the claims of another, you should try to avoid silly mistakes, at least.
More anecdote. In the absence of anything decent, I was advised straight out of grad school to list everything on my CV. This advice should be taken with a lot of salt, bc my advisor was obviously out of touch - he told me not to publish while writing the dissertation because it was too distracting and anyway unnecessary. Still, it was the best I could in the situation I was in. My CV had 4 items on it, the best of which were PPC type papers. I landed a job at a middling institution (I have since traded up).
The JP paper came later, so I guess they didn't too badly. And no, I didn't come out of a top 10 dept and have big name referees. I came from a program that would only ring a distant bell, and you haven't heard of my advisor.
I'm was in a similar position to Anon. 10:28, in that I had 5 items on my CV (not counting book reviews and translations); one was in a peer-reviewed journal, 3 were in edited collections, and one was P&PC. I listed them all chronologically (which placed the P&PC article in the middle), under "Publications: Articles" as opposed to "Publications: Translations" (2) and "Publications: Book Reviews." (5)
My first job (landed on the basis of this CV - although the fact that I was coming off a doctoral Fulbright probably helped), was at a middling school, where the philosophy department fell just outside the Leiter top 50 ("evaluated but not ranked"). I moved on 3 years later. So, on the basis of this experience, I'm a bit skeptical of the claim Spiros is making (in its more general scope).
I would agree that - for a junior candidate - it ought not to be the only publication. I don't think it's a no-brainer to leave it off, though: different departments are going to look on it differently. I suppose if one is in doubt, then segregating the article under some other heading might be the best solution, provided one has other publications.
But I think the issue is being muddled a bit by choosing examples of extreme stupidity (students who have wasted their time on 3 of these and done nothing else other than the dissertation), and examples of bone-headed mis-classification (claiming they are "peer-reviewed").
It seems to me as long as you have 4 or 5 other articles, you're fine, unless you run into a department like the one Spiros works in, which - I am going to say this is probable - are in the minority.
2:52,
Hi. I think we agree on this much:
1. No one loses a job for not having a PPC publication.
2. People lose jobs for having no publications.
3. Job seekers should not have PPC as their only publication.
4. Having a longer list of publications in quality journals is in general better than having a shorter list.
Now, it seems to me that from these, the following counts as good advice for someone coming out of grad school:
5. Do not waste your time writing for PPC volumes. Put your efforts into publication in quality journals.
Agreed?
Spiros,
2:52 here. Yes. It's the advice I would give to my students -- a sort of do as I say and not as I did.
Still for me personally when conducting a job search, contributions to titles like "U2 and Philosophy" and "Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy" on the CV are going to put me off the candidate.
Well I have a piece coming out in one of these things, and I chose to do it just because I thought it was enjoyable. After reading this thread, I feel like shit. I'll be sure to keep it the fuck off of my CV now.
I contributed a piece to the book at the top, and I'm quite bemused my some of these comments. It's a mistake to think that the motivation with something like this is professional recognition. I take on a number of different writing project with different partners and find that it keeps me stimulated. It's good to try your hand at something new. I generally don't feel that motivated to publish in the traditional peer review system but it doesn't seem to be holding me back. (I have a PhD and work as a researcher.) More generally, I feel that it's going to be increasingly important to be comfortable communicating across a range of media and to different audiences. So, from a developmental point of view, one could see it in those terms. But, for me, it was more a fun thing to attempt and a bit of a refreshing change.
I do list it among my publications. I suppose that if I were in the market for a 'serious' philosophy job (?) then I might separate it out in the way suggested... I think that there's a pedagogical value in using material people are already familiar with to explain philosophical concepts, and if it can be fun and amusing then all the better.
I haven't (I don't think) read any of the other books in the P&PC series, though I understand some of them are good. From an authorial point of view, I would say that the editorial guidelines are somewhat inflexible and lend the chapters a bit of a repetitive style even though each is by a different author. I suppose they have their reasons but it would have been nice to see people exercising a bit more creativity. Getting the balance between accessibility and rigour is quite difficult, I suppose... it was certainly one of the main considerations when drafting.
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