This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all resources in these areas, but rather to serve as a useful starting point for your own exploration. Social media –– and in particular academic Twitter –– can also be a valuable, albeit less formal, resource.
On this page: Career Exploration | Safety & Risk | Graduate Education Reform | Graduate Center Resources
Career Exploration for PhDs
These resources are for students exploring careers and thinking about the relationship they want to have with their work. They are also very useful for faculty who want to learn more about how to help their students on a variety of career pathways.
BooksThese books range from the practical to the philosophical to the radical. Some are combinations of all three.
So What Are You Going to Do With That? Finding Careers Outside Academia by Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius
Succeeding Outside the Academy: Career Paths beyond the Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM by Joseph Fruscione and Kelly J. Baker
Putting the Humanities PhD to Work by Katina Rogers
Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe
Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen
ImaginePhD––From the Graduate Career Consortium, this free and confidential career planning site is perhaps the best resource on the web for humanities and social science PhDs who are want to explore the spectrum of careers available to them. It includes self-assessment tools, guides to job families, and also resources for creating an independent development plan (IDP) for your time in graduate school.
AHA Career Diversity –– From the American Historical Association, the Mellon-funded AHA Career Diversity initiative supports career exploration for history PhDs. Where Do Historians Work? is an easy-to-use interactive database of History PhD career outcomes. Their resources around the Career Diversity 5 Skills are useful for students and faculty alike.
MLA Connected Academics –– From the Modern Language Association, the Mellon-funded Connected Academics initiative supports career exploration for English and modern language PhDs. Faculty––not only those in MLA fields!––should note their Doctoral Student Career Planning tool kit for faculty and programs.
Promising Practices in PhD Professional Development –– This document from the Council of Graduate Schools provides a summary of lessons learned from the first cohort of the National Endowment for the Humanities’s NextGen PhD program.
Summary of Prior Work in Humanities PhD Professional Development –– This document from the Council of Graduate Schools provides an overview of past work in humanities PhD career diversity.
National Association of Practicing Anthropologists –– NAPA supports anthrolopologists who are practicing across all sectors of the economy.
University of Iowa Humanities for the Public Good –– This “sister program” to the PublicsLab supports public-facing doctoral education in the humanities at the University of Iowa.
Imagining America –– A consortium of public arts and humanities associations and scholars from around the United States. They have published tenure and promotion guidelines on how to evaluate public scholarship.
Public Scholarship and Graduate Education Reform
There has been a long-standing effort to reform graduate education so that it serves more people better, and the most recent iteration of this has been focused on public scholarship.
BooksPutting the Humanities PhD to Work by Katina Rogers
A Third University is Possible by la paperson
Generous Thinking by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It by Leonard Cassuto
The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education by Leonard Cassuto and Robert Weisbuch
Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping by Julie R. Posselt
“The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses” by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney
“We All Have Levers We Can Pull” by Rachel Arteaga, Brian DeGrazia, Jimmy Hamill, Stacy M. Hartman, Stephanie Malak, Ashley Cheyemi McNeil, Katina Rogers, and Beth Seltzer
“Abolitionist University Studies: An Invitation” by Abigail Boggs, Eli Meyerhoff, Nick Mitchell, and Zach Schwartz-Weinstein
“10 Steps to Reform Graduate Education in the Humanities” by Katina Rogers
“Reforming Doctoral Education, 1990–2015: Recent Initiatives and Future Prospects” by Robert Weisbuch and Leonard Cassuto
Safety & Risk as a Public Scholar
Being a scholar in public carries some risk, especially in today’s political climate and especially for women and scholars of color. This section contains some things to consider before you jump in.
Harassment and Scholar-Targeting TacticsTwitter thread on Campus Reform’s tactics by Asha Rangappa
“Protecting Activist Academics against Public Harassment” by Zuleyka Zevallos
“Faculty under Attack” by Sociologists for Women in Society and Abby Ferber
“Academic Outrage: When the Culture Wars Go Digital” by Tressie McMillan Cottom
“Everything but the Burden: Publics, Public Scholarship, and Institutions” by Tressie McMillan Cottom
“If There’s an Organized Outrage Machine, We Need an Organized Response” by Chris Quintana
“Protecting Academic Freedom: Resources and Readings” by Patricia Matthew
Graduate Center Resources
Futures Initiative –– The Futures Initiative (FI) empowers the next generation of intellectual leaders with bold, public, and engaged teaching and learning. With an emphasis on student-centered practices, FI redefines graduate preparation to include translation of specialized research into the best undergraduate teaching, including for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Futures Initiative also fosters greater understanding of the complexities of the higher education landscape by spearheading data-driven research in areas critical to institutional change.
Center for the Humanities –– The Center for the Humanities plays a vital role in fostering new ideas in the arts, philosophy, politics, and the humanities in the 21st century. Free and open to the public, their programs and exhibitions aim to inspire sustained, engaged conversation and to forge an open and diverse intellectual community.
Writing Center –– The Writing Center assists current and past graduate students in the cultivation of these writerly skills and habits through individual consultations, workshops, and other programming.
Career Planning & Professional Development –– The Office of Career Planning & Professional Development (CP&PD) supports the Graduate Center’s (GC) students in exploring and understanding career paths and achieving their professional goals, offering workshops and information sessions on the job search process in the academic, non-profit, government, and for-profit sectors; hosting networking events with alumni and potential employers; and helping students to identify and apply their transferable skills.
GC Digital Initiatives –– Graduate Center Digital Initiatives (GCDI) brings together the work of leading scholars and technologists at the CUNY Graduate Center to pioneer new modes of inquiry that integrate digital tools and methods into the research, teaching, and service missions of the university.
New Media Lab –– The New Media Lab (NML) works with Graduate Center doctoral students and faculty from a variety of academic disciplines to conceive and create groundbreaking multimedia projects based on student and faculty scholarly research.
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