our afternoon of prostitution.

so gracie is in town visiting. the purpose of her visit, other than to spend quality time together after her year long stint at Prestigious U, was to try and take some of the pain out of the dreaded annual fall ritual of the Job Hunt.

or, as we like to call it - total prostitution.

thus, here is grace's tribute to the pain we must all endure, year after year after year, because, really, isn't it true that capitalisizm commodifies identity which is thus how we end up with Human Resources? definer, this is for you.

Dear Professor X and Search Committee members,

I am writing to you to apply for the assistant professor position as
advertised in X. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at school L, working
on issues vaguely related to but hardly commeasurate with my actual research
and teaching interests. My areas of specialization include the form and
function of P, the politics of Q, the history of R, and the epistemology of
S. As you can see, my actual teaching and research interests are those that
seem to characterize your department; what a good match we would be.

My book manuscript, X, focuses on issues that will magically fulfill your
department’s needs, at least as I understand those needs based on the seven
lines of your job ad and a lot of hand-wringing. Well, I do fulfill most of
these needs, but in the next paragraph I deal with any needs that I may not
fill in my other on-going projects – since, of course, the book project is
not enough. Indeed, it is precisely because of the history of R and the form
and function of P that one must study both the politics of Q and the
epistemology of S, which I plan to pursue in my subsequent monograph. Or is
it the other way around? Since my first “book” isn’t under contract, I may
as well speculate either way.

In my other projects, I continue to think about S, R, Q, and the form and
function of P. In addition, I am working towards walking not only on solid
surfaces, but also on liquid ones and, eventually, gas. In “Water and Sky
Walker: A Critical Inquiry into the Stuff of Substance” I plan to sustain my
“walking” for long enough to cross linguistic and national borders –
crossings that will allow me to think liquid, gas, and solid substances in
the comparative mode. I plan to submit this essay to Substance this coming
summer. In “The Substance of Stuff: Thinking Stuff in History” I practice
temporal displacement, considering not only PQR and S but also liquid, solid
and gaseous matter in their historical specificity. I plan to submit this
essay to the journal SPQR: Histories of Stuff in Winter of 2007. In
general, it is the interface of these elements, as well as their temporal
and spatial movements, that drive my own projects. All of this movement,
after all, should be thoroughly interiorized by my work, before I move on to
discussing restoring it to its proper exteriority.

Similar to my research, my teaching involves engaging students with lots of
stuff about stuff. I have taught exactly what your department advertises at
three other schools, where I received highly positive evaluations and
feedback from both faculty and students. Although I would want to hear more
about your school’s needs than the aforementioned seven lines, I would love
to teach classes about what I can tell about those needs based on the seven
lines. My training at The University of Blah has perfectly prepared me to
teach precisely those needs; or, at least, on-going debates about
intellectual and epistemological priorities have prepared me to teach about
why we must teach about some things and not others. I would love to offer a
course at School X on petty in-fighting and its afterlife, called “On
Intellect and Infighting; or, why some stuff is more important than other
stuff.” Students can take classes after mine where they will actually learn
some of the stuff that they have decided, with me, is important; they will
approach all material with a different level of investment!


I appreciate your consideration, and hope that there is something about this
letter that captures your attention so that you might meet me and we can
talk about stuff together. I do hope that I will not feel so overwhelmed by
the process of placing myself on a shelf with labels and a barcode that I
will be able to conduct aforementioned conversation with aplomb. As I
continue to work toward expertise in the above areas without the
institutional support that all academics deserve but only those deemed most
worthy earn, I keep my fingers crossed that this letter will be the one that
opens the door to such support. And a salary. And a sense of social
legitimacy before the age of 40. And the possibility of having and
supporting a family. My work has made me nothing if not aware of the
privilege that such hand-wringing constitutes. And I do feel strangely lucky
to focus my acuity, trained through graduate school, on critiquing while
reproducing the drama. Here’s to drama! Perhaps that should be my next
book.

Love, Hugs and Kisses to each and every member of the search committee,
Grace