Unpacking Lateral Moves & Constance’s New Gig

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Unpacking Lateral Moves & Constance’s New Gig

[00:00:00] Jo: Welcome back to unpack this where academic misfits on load their shit after a, somewhat extended break Constance And I are back. I am Jo Hsu.

[00:00:10] Constance: And I am Constance Bailey. I would have to say we’re back in better than ever, but it’s the end of semester. So we’re probably burnt the hell out.

[00:00:17] Jo: We’re back in, burned out.

uh, which is less, less catchy, but we are very happy to be recording another show. And since Constance has some news, we figured that would set us up for the topic today. So would you like to share your news?

[00:00:32] Constance: sure. So I have accepted. Position comparable position. Um, So what we sometimes call a lateral move, but I’m a tenure track assistant professorship at Georgia state university. And it is also in the English department. I will probably also affiliate with Africana studies, so in some ways, identical to the position here.

But, the position is. For a folklorist and 20th [00:01:00] century African-American lit specialist. So, uh, quite ironically, the two things that I like to think I do well, I’m not entirely sure that’s true. But,

[00:01:10] Jo: Clearly you got the job. So clearly other people think that you do,

[00:01:14] Constance: so someone thinks.

[00:01:16] Jo: but it was, it was like a job ad written for you basically. So.

[00:01:20] Constance: Oh, yeah. I was very, very excited when it, when it came down. Although, you know, of course what moves, there’s always a bittersweet, I’ve made some great friends, have some wonderful colleagues here, or my kid is in high school and will graduate next year. So, it was definitely a difficult decision.

But in terms of, you know, location, which is a lot about, we talked about this, I think in one episode, right? Yeah. Georgia is ideal in many ways, because I have so many family and friends, and I think we’ll talk later about, you know, kind of the things that are important in an academic career and things that are, you know, sustain you.

So,

um, so I’ll, I’ll stop there for now, but I’m excited.

[00:01:58] Jo: Yay.[00:02:00]

So I figured we would use this episode to talk about lateral moves kind of, but also just, , starting academic jobs in general. I feel like. When I got my first job, it was kind of like every other stage in academia where you’re sort of thrown into the water and people just kind of hope that you swim, even though nobody’s told you about swimming or what it looks like or how to do it, you just kind of flail around for awhile and ask if this looks like swimming and, you know, hope you stay alive.

But that’s, that’s basically how I felt the first time that I went into the job. So I figured we’d talk a little bit about both starting a job and also the lateral moves.

[00:02:34] Constance: Yeah, that sounds good to me. Alright, well, let’s get into unpacking this thing. All right. So, what do you academics mean? When we say a lateral move, can you elaborate on that for our non-academic?

[00:02:47] Jo: Sure. I feel like I’m using it capacious, maybe like I do with all words, but to mean a move to a position of a equivalent rank, , that. I’m told happens [00:03:00] more often when you’re an assistant that it’s, they’re just fewer positions at, higher levels. , lateral moves are difficult by nature and academia, just because of how few positions we have increasingly.

So, but it still does happen, you know, quite regularly, both of us being examples. , so for me, at least I. I wasn’t actively on the market. , but you know, the dream job opened, they reached out and I sent in an application. , even though, like you said, there were lots of things that would have kept me in Arkansas.

It was just, there are lots of different factors that you weigh about the positions that you take. And there were things that were appealing here. What about you? Have you always been looking to do that lateral?

[00:03:45] Constance: I think, the move is across rank, but also peer institutions, right? I think at least in terms of how most people talk about lateral moves,

that it’s, if you’re at an R one, the expectation is that you go to an ROI or that’s.

[00:03:57] Jo: I don’t know if that’s part of the definition!.

[00:03:59] Constance: Well, [00:04:00] yeah, that’s the thing. Disclaimer we never have said we are experts. To Jo’s point. We are the blind leading

this

[00:04:07] Jo: we are flailing around and calling it swimming

is what we’re doing.

[00:04:10] Constance: So to be clear, but yes, I think that is the expectation, at least.

Right. And I don’t know that that always plays out that way, but, here’s the thing about what I’ve heard about not like lateral moves or otherwise, in terms of job hunting. I’ve heard it go both ways, right. That you can, Interview, when you think that you.

Like, if you know that you want to leave, I wasn’t actively on the market, you weren’t actively on the market. So I think that’s true for both of us.

Of course, if you’re not happy or you think that the situation or fit isn’t right for you, then, you know, that’s when people interview,. I had not been planning to make a quote unquote lateral move in part, because I guess I would be what you’d call an advanced assistant professor was really.

It’s just semantics. I’m an assistant professor. It’s just, I’ve been here longer, but my tenure dossier would have gone up, next year. And we [00:05:00] can talk about what that means. We can unpack that for you all, probably in a subsequent episode, and I have every expectation. You know, presumably who would have been, would have been well received, like I would have gotten tenure or whatever.

And so, a move right now, was not necessarily advantages, but you know, you have to think about in terms of starting new jobs or starting over the totality of your experience. And that’s one of the things that. Has made it difficult to sustain. My research and productivity here is not having a really extended network of family and friends.

People like Jo left me high and dry.

So I no longer have me to, well, there was also a whole pandemic, so let’s be clear. I didn’t have a coffee shop writing buddy, because Jo laughed, but also a pandemic. So.

[00:05:49] Jo: Yeah, that one wasn’t in my control.

[00:05:52] Constance: So anyway, there there’s a lot that goes into it, but yeah, I was not looking to make the quote unquote lateral move.

It was, as you say, like a dream position [00:06:00] opened up and incidentally happened to be kind of in a dream location.

[00:06:03] Jo: so let’s, let’s go back a little bit and talk about starting jobs. I’m not actually sure. I know the full extent of your background. How many academic positions have you held after graduate school?

[00:06:14] Constance: Oh, wow. Okay. So, not that many, actually it feels like a lot, but I think that’s just because we work so freaking hard. If anybody out there wants to go in academia and you think. I don’t think anybody who’s in academia or in graduate school was under the insane assumption that somehow their weekends and summers off, but people outside of academia, I have heard these things tossed around in ways that feel offensive to my, to my ears.

You really should be finished or have a defense date set. And that was not the case. So I took an instructor position at Southern Southern miss is what it’s affectionately known as, but university of Southern Mississippi, Gulf park campus.

So long beach, Mississippi, beautiful white sand beaches. [00:07:00] And I often joke, juxtapose with. Murky Gulf of Mexico waters, but anyway, was the scenic drive, loved the campus. And, same thing here, I found some great friends, a great colleagues who I’m still, close with now. So that was a wonderful starting point.

I was there for four years.

[00:07:18] Jo: Hm.

[00:07:19] Constance: And I finished my dissertation during that process, but of course I was teaching more. So I had, four classes each semester. Although I think they did give me a reprieve, when I first started, because they knew that I was what we call ABD all but dissertation.

So, from there I went to Arkansas so from instructor. I went, what is it an upgrade when Sam went from an instructor to an assistant professor? So, that was not a lateral move.

[00:07:44] Jo: , but let’s pause and clarify. You wrote a dissertation while teaching a four, four

[00:07:49] Constance: Well, I finished a dissertation,

[00:07:51] Jo: it’s still.

[00:07:53] Constance: right. I had started a dissertation, quite a while before that.

[00:07:57] Jo: Yeah. , I did [00:08:00] not go on the market early. I wanted to have my dissertation. You know, completed in a way that I could speak confidently about it. I also, , was fortunate enough to be in a program that provided us funding for us to be able to do that.

And so Arkansas was my first job straight out of grad school.

So I’ve been incredibly fortunate this whole journey. , my plan was to stay in Arkansas until tenure. At the least, I, I told my partner, you know, there are three jobs in this country. Where I would actively consider applying if they opened a position and then lo and behold, that position happened. And here I am.

[00:08:36] Constance: Yeah, that worked out well. And, and I should say Jo is the brains of this operation. So the other reason you probably did not go on early is because you’re smarter than me. Right. And that you really, really should not. so I think I only have you buy one. Yeah, there was the instructor position, assistant prophet, Arkansas, and then, and now of course, assistant prof at Georgia state.

We could [00:09:00] talk at some point, I don’t think we’ll unpack it today, but we can talk about negotiations and what that means and what that looks like and tenure and all that. it’s so many things I think. Over the course of this podcast, what we find ourselves, like things that unfold is that like, oh my gosh, we haven’t talked about this.

And what does this mean? And what

[00:09:18] Jo: There are all these things that we take for granted that people know, and that we had to figure out mostly on our own, because we did not know.

[00:09:25] Constance: exactly while we were pretending to swim? Well, what do you think? What was the hardest part about transitioning into your first academic appointment..

[00:09:35] Jo: one was just inhabiting the position. I feel like, I felt like. You know, we talk about imposter syndrome. , I felt like a grad student pretending to be a professor for a long period when I first got there to Arkansas. ,

so part of it was. Feeling like I could do the job. There’s no like guidebook there’s no, you know, this is how, this is what [00:10:00] committees are and what you do on them, you know?

But all of a sudden you’re there, you’re on campus. You’re suddenly running a bunch of committees or on a bunch of committees, , your tasks with all of these different things. You’re mentoring students for the first time. And I don’t know that we have open conversations about any of this. Right. So they’re like just figuring out a lot of the day-to-day and sort of.

How to manage your time, I think is something. And your emotion is something that, that took me a long time. I remember I was talking to a good friend who became a mentor over time. About the number of committees that you’re asked to be on when you are, say the only person of color or queer person or trans person or whatever, in any given space.

And I was like, there are all these things calling for my attention and there’s literally not enough of me to do the things. And she asked me, what’s your criteria for saying yes. And I was like, oh, I’m supposed to have that. Right? Like I’m supposed to have thought through the conditions under which I . Will agree to saying a thing rather than just [00:11:00] accepting all of the things that come my way.

, so balancing my, my eagerness to be a part of this new place to meet the people, , to be a good sport and get a good mem member of the department with my like very material needs. The a sane human who sleeps and eats and functions.

that, that was one of the big, uh, challenging things. I, in terms of starting my first job, what about you?

[00:11:24] Constance: Sleep. What is that? Yeah, I mean, I think for me, the work-life balance or a S someone at one of these workshops I’ve attended, it’s called it life-work balance has been how do you maintain your sanity? And part of it has been, yes, for sure. There’s trying to negotiate obligations to things that are personally important to you.

Committee obligations work. But for me, it was just literally. Being in an unfamiliar place, not having any network when I first got here. And one of the things that ended up happening. Somewhat, unfortunately, my grandmother passed away like within a month of my move.

[00:12:00] So when I went home, and when I went to the funeral, a cousin said, Hey, you know, we have, family, there and I was like, oh wow. And they ended up being members of one of the local churches. And that ended up providing a little bit of, support.

These weren’t people that I knew, well, you know, No, I grew up with my grandmother, but certainly still like, them having, children and grandchildren, who could help, keep an eye on Chloe when she was little. And I had another relative pass away, within two or three months.

So then I was traveling home for that. And then, the next year, which would have been a year that I would have taken some, I think it was a year. I took like a semester off for like research leave, but my mom was doing chemotherapy in Georgia. So I was, trying to not really commute to Georgia, but going there frequently to try to give my, siblings a little bit of a reprieve to help with.

Chemo. So that just ended up being, a lot of the family stuff just ended up. And even now that I haven’t been necessarily having, you know, like the last few years, thankfully have not been marred by tragedy, but [00:13:00] just having a kid who’s in the band be forewarned.

And if you get a kid that is not, junior high, high school yet, they, and mom soccer, mom, any type of adjective that is followed by mom. Try to avoid that, like the plague, because you will find that

you want to be, fair to your children and you know, it’s not necessarily their fault that you’ve taken on more than you can handle, but you know, to Jo’s earlier point, that’s why you really have to be kind of.

About what to say yes. And what to say no to, because you still have to have something left for your partners, your kids, your pits, or whoever at the end of the day. And that was me just feeling like I didn’t have, anything left for anybody because just the day to day was so taxing

[00:13:44] Jo: hmm. I want to connect with something that you said there about community and the importance of that. I think so one of the things, the odd things about my initial transition from the grad program to my first job [00:14:00] is, and I’m not particularly quiet or secretive about this. I did not like the place where I attended graduate school.

It was also a site of many different forms of trauma to me. So. Being out of there for the first time I felt like I could breathe. I didn’t realize that I felt like I’d spent my last maybe four or five years of grad school feeling like I was holding my breath because of just how much sort of negative effect I had with the place.

, so just being out of there made me feel like I I’d suddenly more freedom and more emotional bandwidth and I’d had for the better part of a decade. And I was very fortunate in that at Arkansas, one of our colleagues in the creative writing program. So not totally connected to where we were fully. But still one of our colleagues, , had been my creative writing mentor back in the grad program.

And one of the faculty members with whom I’d been the closest. So it wasn’t that I had a full network built in, but I had somebody that I knew well that I’d known for almost an entire decade that I trusted. So when things happened on campus, I had a person I [00:15:00] knew I could text and say, okay, this this happened.

I don’t know how to navigate it. Or, you know, what is this thing that I’m being asked to do? And I can’t overstate how valuable that is to be able to have someone you can go to with the things. and not even just having that person as a resource, but also having the sort of confidence and safety and comfort that comes with having a person in a resource.

So the transition here was actually a little bit harder than that in that, um, I got here in the middle of the pandemic. So relationality and connection was not really built in, , the campus is twice the size of the one that are at Arkansas. And I knew I was like, you’re about to go be a tiny speck in a much bigger pond.

Um, but actually doing that in the middle of a pandemic. , even though I, I, you know, knew some people here wasn’t, it wasn’t quite the same, right. The environment of the world was a lot more chaotic and so lacking that, was more destabilizing than I [00:16:00] anticipated, , which I guess, uh, connects me to the, the second part of this that we were going to talk about, which is what, what has helped, you know, you talked about how the lack of a built-in structure was a struggle with your first job.

What made it better, or what strategies did you find.

[00:16:17] Constance: Yeah, well, you know what, so actually I want to piggyback off your piggy bank, that’s a really great point that you mentioned about having someone, um, you know, that you know, or that you feel comfortable with, even if it’s just asking questions, having a resource, because, that was sort of an issue for me at Arkansas.

Right? So One of my friends from graduate school, even though we only had like one year of overlap, um, that her Casey Kaiser shout out the Casey. Well, I’m always trying to tag people on stuff, trying to get our mentions up or whatever. But anyway, Casey, we had gone to Mizzou together and that was also in boy, talk about . Shared trauma and, and spaces of trauma.

That could be a whole other, episode, but we had had, you know, good experience. And so she was wonderful. [00:17:00] And when I visited campus or when I interviewed, I think I’d actually had to use her office, pump breast milk because there still aren’t campuses and many places that aren’t friendly to, or, conducive to.

Nursing mothers, new moms, all that good stuff. But, in spite of that, we made it work and she was wonderful and, in helping make that transition in terms of having a friendly face and being a support system. I don’t know that I had though, any emotional, outlet, just in terms of a stir person, ,outlet until I linked up with, I think, maybe the semester or two before you and I linked up, I got with Nikita Reed who, you know, shout out.

She was on a previous episode. Um, and she and I clicked up and became friends. I had done some programming in the community. Not we’re not in the community on campus. That utilized the community and intersected with the community. So having the local barbers coming in and stuff like that.

And so that kind of exposed, I don’t want to say raise my profile cause I, that, that [00:18:00] implies something that is not true, but I think it made more people aware that I was around and that I was here. And so, by virtue of that, then people reached out to me. Um, And so that was helpful in facilitating community, but it was almost like, and I do feel this very much .

If you build it, they will come. Old field of dreams, reference. But I also feel. The onus and the burden shouldn’t be on junior faculty, black women, faculty, trans faculty, institutions need to do more work. And I think we did not. We went on our soap box a little bit on this.

When we talk about academic or students that are actually retreats. But, you know, I really wanted to try to create like a. elder care or childcare network for junior faculty. I was trying to figure out how to build this thing and try to partner with childcare center on campus.

And there was liabilities that was too much. I needed to be [00:19:00] working on tenure in my book somewhere. I did not have the time for that. I do not have the time for that. So yeah. I mean, those things are really, really helpful, to the extent that they exist.

[00:19:12] Jo: Yeah. Well, I mean, even though the child care network did not happen, , your profile in, in building community and in, in creating gathering spaces was really important to me when I came along, what was it? What did I get there two years after you

[00:19:29] Constance: I don’t know.

[00:19:31] Jo: anyway? Yeah. , sometime in there I arrived after you, but you were, , one of the first faculty who like consistently reached out and, you know, Hadn’t it had an invitation for me to join in, in particular spaces. And I think, , for, for many reasons, academics are busy. Uh, we all have limited bandwidth, whatever, but that, that, that very simple gesture gets overlooked a lot.

When you have someone new, like coming into a space and is really [00:20:00] important because otherwise you don’t really have like an inroad into the communities and the groups that, that, that exist on campus. So. Very honestly are the, what was it? I don’t remember our, what did we call it?

[00:20:14] Constance: I just make up. As people may or may not know it

[00:20:18] Jo: the league minority minorities.

[00:20:20] Constance: was it the new-ish? Oh, wait a minute. Oh, is this, how was this our coffee shop writing group? Cause I have created multiple groups. Uh, I can’t

[00:20:27] Jo: it.

blurred. We had a group that was newish faculty.

[00:20:31] Constance: Yes.

[00:20:32] Jo: And we also called ourselves the league of beleaguered minorities. And there it’s like a Venn diagram

somewhere

[00:20:37] Constance: true. That’s true. I think. Okay. So I think it is that the new faculty group, literally just, they made up a listserv. I think that when preceded the league of the league minorities, which was an offshoot of the newish faculty, well actually now that you put, yeah, it is this kind of weird convoluted van diagram.

Cause I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg, [00:21:00] but yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that’s the thing like to your point. Yeah. You do sometimes need an inroad. And the thing I think that gets hard or difficult is that when it’s not structurally in place like through the department or the college or the institution, it’s hard for individuals to create that one cause we’re busy or overworked, or we have competing priorities, but to a lot of academics.

Even people who like, I’m not an introvert, but I’m still ridiculously busy. People are always amazed, like how the hell that you’ve had in time for this shit. And I’m like, I have, it’s not that I have. I do it because I know that it is important to someone like me who needs that sort of space and needs that mentoring or needs um, you know, a cohort.

And sometimes for whatever reason, the cohort that you come in with is not. Well, honestly, visit institutional cohort. There’s people who like study plant botany. Like, I don’t know what the hell they do. It’s interesting, but I’m not going to reach out to them for like a [00:22:00] collaboration. I mean, I . Might cause I just might cause I’m crazy like that, but, but realistically they probably don’t have that much relevance to what I do.

So it becomes a real issue for me, I think I’m always concerned about. How personally I can help affect larger system. They, I don’t know. Shit.

[00:22:22] Jo: Yeah, I mean, you’ve, you’ve. Created spaces where the institution faltered in, in the gaps that they should have been filling. And to your point, it, it shouldn’t be on the new junior people to do that for many reasons. Not only because of time and lack of energy, but because you don’t have the relationships, you know, like you don’t know where the resources are.

You don’t know where you can move or who to connect with. Is this person safe? , so having people who’ve already been there. Doing that work and welcoming you in and giving you the background is totally invaluable. And often something that, I mean, [00:23:00] one institutions don’t do, , for many reasons, oftentimes because these spaces serve to counter the violence of the institution.

Um, and, and also, , something that academics aren’t necessarily very conversant in. , there are a lot of folks who. Those who have not had to think of these places as places of survival, um, who haven’t thought too deeply about how is it that I make this space survivable for people who experience it as, you know, a site of continued violence.

[00:23:26] Constance: That reminds me of that, little meme or whatever, somebody tweet that was going around. It’s like, academics will acknowledge that this is a problem. How do we decolonize the academy? And then the solution for academics is like less.

Uh, Dean of, of decolonization. like, no, that’s not, that’s not how you address these things. Yeah, that is the reality. And I also think one of the things that I think can sometimes happen with institutions or, or departments or programs, is that we’re not good at marketing. What we do.

Like we’re English scholars or rhetoricians, actually, I would think rhetoricians [00:24:00] would be better, but you know, we do a thing and,

let me be more nuts and bolts. Sometimes there are programs that exist or there are things that are helpful I could be reinventing the wheel in a space.

But I’m not aware that I’m reinventing the wheel because whatever resource or, whatever, mechanism the institution has in place to support faculty who are in precarious positions or who just need that additional support. The bureaucracy is so whatever that you don’t even necessarily know how to access it.

Right. And so, that becomes a problem, as well. So I think we just need to one be better about doing stuff like that and it, to your point, we’re not necessarily, you know, academia is not known for, for being great about re-imagining itself in a more hospitable and equitable.

As a, as a more hospitable and equitable space, but two, even when it tries to do some things where it does some things, right. I don’t think it does a good job of announcing [00:25:00] that, Hey, you know, here’s, here’s what we’re doing or, you know, here’s what we want to do. So I think that’s a PR thing maybe.

[00:25:08] Jo: Well, there’s that, and we’ll probably have a whole other episode on, you know, the DEI, , grift at some point, but. The one of the challenges in these spaces, one of these challenges in the space and I, I absolutely, I don’t know if you were as naive as I was, but when I got on a new campus, I was like, oh, there are all these diversity things.

I want to be involved in the diversity things. Let me go to them. And then eventually you find that not all, but a lot of diversity things in institutional spaces are PR, right? Like they’re, they’re things that make it look like we’ve done. With the work that we’re actually unwilling to do and what they end up doing intentionally or not is wasting the time of a lot of marginalized people.

Um, so that one of the things that institutions do is that they develop these patterns, that one waste the time and energy and resources of people who do not have those things to spare, but also [00:26:00] render a lot of that label, labor 11. So like there are the formal DEI things that we’ve gone to, that doesn’t actually get the structural work we need done.

And then there are the sort of like underground networks that we need to create to support one, another survival that we get no credit for it, because there it’s not, it’s not legible, it’s an institution. And so there’s all of this labor that is being swept under the table while we are being measured by totally different metrics about whether or not we’ve been productive this year.

So. I dunno, it’s a whole mechanism that intentionally or not, makes it much, much harder for marginalized people to . Survive, to be recognized for all of the work that they’ve done.

[00:26:39] Constance: Well, that’s a really good point. I mean, yes. Oh, well let me backtrack. No, I don’t think I was, as, naive. So maybe you were naive, but I don’t think I was naive about it.

And I have always say cause I get a lot of, that’s the type of work I do now that it’s your point that I don’t actually get credit for anywhere as far as I can tell [00:27:00] in how my, tenure and promotion is evaluated, but committee work, I was like, I forget what the technical term, but it was basically like the ombudsmen between graduate students and then like English department, the liaison person who was trying to negotiate grad student disputes, so I have always vehemently opposed being on diversity committees, even though , I am, down for the cause. if there are. actionable things going on that don’t necessarily involve photo ops. Although I like them to get photo out just as much as the next person, I’m happy to be involved in mentoring and supporting, any kind of faculty member I can and any students that I can and anythings that need to be done and that will have a meaningful impact on, Students and faculty of color, I’m down for it,

[00:27:48] Jo: Yeah.

[00:27:50] Constance: a lot of DEI stuff.

I just absent myself. I don’t even, a lot of times don’t even read the email. Somebody says like, you have to do this training. I was like, oh crap, I better do it. You know? But, [00:28:00]

[00:28:00] Jo: I think I can attest the fact that you don’t read emails. Cause I remember texting you about things and having you say what now,

[00:28:05] Constance: yeah.

[00:28:06] Jo: and that was a good sign to me. Like, oh, I should not go to this thing. ,

but I mean, looking back on . My naivete, it kind of surprises me too. Cause I, I wrote an entire dissertation about how.

Institutions appropriate the experiences and embody minds of marginalized people and still, you know, , I think as a grad student, I saw faculty positions as this position of authority and power, which relatively, you know, it’s nuanced in there. , and I felt like Nuno, now that I’m here now that I get to be in the rooms where things happen.

I want to be able to sort of like, you know, put my hand on the lever and do something about it. And it turns out That, being in the room, it’s not enough to put my hand on the lever or do something about it.

That was a hard lesson.

[00:28:49] Constance: That is a hard lesson to learn. And I feel like that’s what I was. I feel like I kind of learned that I grew up, like, I mean, which again, To your point, faculty, you know, relative to graduate students, we have a little bit of power, but it’s still [00:29:00] not, I had faculty mentors who wanted things to change, but then there’s so many levels of where they are in the, in the tier of things, didn’t, the ballers just didn’t make sense.

They were so far down the chain, so We don’t want to discourage people if you can be in rooms where those conversations happen. But for those of us who have sort of limited bandwidth resources in terms of emotional availability, in terms of literal time availability.

So for me, and I, I should probably be clear about that. It’s not that I would, would not have served on a. Committee that was doing DEI work when that is very near and dear to my heart. It’s just that because I have to prioritize my time and it’s so limited. I know that a lot of times that work ends up being performative.

So I would rather just do the DEI thing then go to the EEI meetings or, or be on DEI committees, or. Any of the other things [00:30:00] around, uh, the, uh, this want to do the work, you know,

[00:30:03] Jo: Yeah, I think I know. Talk about criteria, one of my criteria. Now, when I’m asked to do a thing that has to do with creating more inclusive spaces on the surface. , but the first question I asked myself and that I’d try to find out. Are there actual resources behind this thing, right? Like if I do this work, are you actually going to respond to it?

Is it going to go somewhere or are you just asking me to write a thing that gets slipped under the table? So. So, yeah, I think that was, that was a lesson over time. And it’s not that these things are not worthwhile everywhere. It’s that it takes a while to figure out, you know, to do the power mapping and figure out whether or not there’s actual, you know, force behind this task that you’re being asked to do.

And if there is then maybe it’s worthwhile, but if there’s not, there’s a whole lot of other things you could be spending your time on.

[00:30:49] Constance: Yeah, for sure. I mean, one thing that this is a little bit, , transitioning a little bit, but, and I don’t think this is on our notes. I’m going off script by [00:31:00] like what, you know, um, we we’ve had some crazy unscripted episodes, but one of the things I think that I’m looking forward to in the new position, I mean, I think there’ll be challenges.

And I like to remind myself that there are no academic utopias. Or hail for that matter. There are no regular utopians. Not that I’m aware of, but it’s, um, you know, but, but looking forward to, one further investigating what, what mechanisms or structures that are in place, even though I know, sort of automatically in terms of my own sort of personal support system as a much more robust and Georgia, so that that’s always nice.

Um, when you have that. I’m looking at the institutional resources, but also looking at potentially sort of collaborating and thinking about how to build. And this is a little bit of a transition, but in terms of, thinking about academic spaces, particularly virtual, academic spaces, because the pandemic has shown us that, accessibility is so important and [00:32:00] that virtual spaces can make that possible in ways that

for all that we would love to do and have amazing things on campus and spaces. There are, intellectual communities. what is it, virtual writing? Not virtual writing programs. There’s an acronym that, um, Blanking on the name of it now, but first of all, writing communities, and really just, some ways that, that we can support and, and create some structures for, up and coming scholars where our own selves, not just like, I can’t wait to get back to writing regularly.

I’ve been grading and also packing a little bit, but mostly grading. And I’m trying to figure out like someone you should like, where the hell am I going to live? You know, I’ve been doing that kind of stuff too.

[00:32:44] Jo: Uh, you know, some, some somewhat important things, but I, I like that point though, and something that I’ve, I’ve been trying to shift my thinking in over time is how do we build those? How do I build networks and [00:33:00] meaning and connections that extend well beyond that don’t ground me in the institution.

Right. , so that like, you know, my, my job is here and I care for a lot of the people here, but like, I don’t want to see the boundaries of this place as the boundaries of my work or the boundaries of who I am as a scholar and teacher. And so finding more opportunities to do that, and COVID has.

Raised the importance of, of that and made it more visible for people who didn’t have to grapple with that before.

[00:33:30] Constance: Yeah. That’s okay. Yeah, I think that, that’s one of the reasons I, I really find, our research interesting in that we are able to write about and talk about things that are outside the institution in ways that are meaningful to us. Absolutely. At some point, we can talk, I’ll be excited to talk to our next guest, soon because I had forgotten, well, I shouldn’t say I have forgotten.

Dr. Richardson has such a. Impressive and daunting, academic profile that it’s easy for things to go down the list. [00:34:00] But, I was looking at a couple of her performances and I was like, oh yeah, the second academic project, like the second monograph, meanwhile, I need to finish the first monograph it’s on like blues women , and black women’s humor.

But I was like, there’s going to be a chapter on blues women. I wonder, can I interview them? You know? So it was just thinking about like all of these really kind of cool things and amazing. that, that my research allows me to do in a way that you know, that I just love, you know?

[00:34:24] Jo: yeah.

I love that we’re teasing our next episode already.

This makes it feel, it seem like we have our stuff together.

[00:34:31] Constance: I’m telling you, , we’re getting it together. People we’re becoming adults in front of your very eyes.

[00:34:36] Jo: ., that’s news to me, but I’m glad to hear that. so I guess the way I wanted to bring this out, or I was hoping to bring this episode home was thinking through what support systems you would like to see more of, what would you be hoped to find them maybe at your new job?

[00:34:52] Constance: Yeah, that’s a good, yeah. Good point in terms of bringing it home. Um, yeah, I mean, I hope so. And this is unfortunate that, you can’t do [00:35:00] everything right when you’re researching an institution, you know, so thinking of. Yeah, geographic location and the department and the, different areas of research, student makeup, all of that was sort of priority.

and thinking less about structural things, very specific to my needs, was less of a priority for me, mostly because I knew I would have a more robust, personal support system as I’ve said, but having said that, I really hope that there are, some structures for. Parents, or I wish I would say parents and elder care, even though I’m not taking care of my mom now, but I think there are other people who, who need additional resources and I’m absolutely sure they probably have something like, the. Employee assistance program that exists here, which you can, get, therapists through. We’ve only really used that therapist, but, I’m absolutely sure they have that kind of family support system.

And those are, you know, most public institutions I think have those, those are great. Um, but if there is, uh, and I do think they do have a formal. Mentoring program [00:36:00] within the department and within the college. So those I think are very important. I’m pretty sure that is a writing group within the unit.

So I can’t remember that department or college, but I’d ask about that. Um, Even though I have the expectation that the writing group that I’m a part of here will continue we’ve said that we’ll continue to, share work. So yeah, there, there, those are some specific things that are kind of important to me.

Um, but hopefully they’ll have, I mean, you’re in Atlanta, so I should need like a social outlet. I need that. Everybody knows that I need to be able to hang out and kick it every now and then. But if you can’t find something to do in Atlanta, man, I don’t know what to tell you. What about you?

What do you need to sustain your, your, uh, work and, and create.

[00:36:45] Jo: Yeah.

I, you know, I love that phrasing because when I was first. When the job listing for Texas came out and I was trying to decide like, do I, do I spend my time applying for this thing? You know, you and I used to talk a lot at [00:37:00] Arkansas about how we know it. You know, we know what the shitty things are here.

We don’t know what the shitty things are somewhere else. Like we don’t have no idea. If the things we struggle with in this place are everywhere or particular to this place. We don’t know what the new things we’re going to struggle with at the new place are going to be right. So I, I texted a good friend, , Ersula Ore about, you know, How, how do I make this decision?

Right. And I remember her answer, which is where can you get your writing done? Like, where will you have enough around you? Enough support enough peace of mind, whatever it is, enough joy in your life that you have the space to get your writing done. And I thought about it and I realized there are resources here, there are communities here.

, that would, that would make that more possible. And which is ultimately what, what helped me make that decision? And . So I’ve talked about some of the things that we’re struggling about finding community here, but also one of the wonderful things about, about being here is that a good friend and mentor was here as well.

, and. She had already [00:38:00] established some spaces of, gathering, particularly for people of color or for queer people of color and some writing groups and stuff like that. So having access to those things, having, again, that initial person, who’s going to invite me into a space where I’m totally new, where I don’t know anyone, and introduce me, that was.

That was really critical for me to make some new connections and finding, you know, people like you who are willing to be like, Hey, this new person that I totally don’t know, will you come join us at this event? Will you, you know, , will you be present here? And we will like ask you with interest about what it is that you do, and, you know, people who are willing to get to know you as a human, which is.

I don’t know, , sometimes more rare than you would hope it would be in an academic space. And I think particularly about starting in a place during COVID, everybody was so tired of zoom. Everybody was so like strained and worn thin. So that every time you, you met a person, you were just trying to get through the zoom call, do your work, get off the call.

And it took some like super [00:39:00] generous people who were willing to do more than. And like, you know, again, know me as a human and not like the machine who turned out other sorts of work. Um, that actually helped me feel present and gave me the sort of emotional grounding that I needed to do my work. , and that, that goes back to, you know, , where the institution is missing.

A lot in terms of how do I, in terms of thinking about all of the employees and students as whole humans who need a support systems that get them by, , you talked about childcare. When, when, , I got to Arkansas, one of my good friends, uh, Injeong Yoon, , one of the reasons that we got to know each other in that first year was because we were.

Brand new assistant professors who had dogs and, you know, the new job keeps you on campus sometimes for like 10 hours. And so by default, we started clung to each other as like, you know, you live near me, here’s my house key. I need you to go let my dog out there. They’ve been pent up on all day. So just having the person to do that when I got really sick, it was her husband who took me to the hospital, you know, like [00:40:00] somebody, somebody you can count on for those like day-to-day life things.

, so I guess.

I’m trying to think of what that means in terms of institutions, gathering spaces, opportunities for connection, , valuing those things, right? Valuing the creation of, of spaces that create, , opportunities for genuine relationships,

Rather than just things that look like productive on paper.

, I think those are, those are important. I mean, if you’re going to talk about it in terms of metrics that matter in capitalism, it makes us more productive. Right? It makes us able

to do our job. but also like it helps us think of ourselves as whole humans who need to, who needs a live in these spaces.

, not as machines, but as people.

[00:40:43] Constance: And I think it, no that’s, in terms of bringing it home . And thinking about capitalism, right. what do you need to write? What, in terms of support in terms of structure, but also in terms of , money, right?

If Arkansas would have been willing or . Able, may be willing, but it’s certainly not able, [00:41:00] somebody wants to build my mom a house, give me the salary that affords me that luxury, then, I can absolutely do what I need to do because I’ve got, whatever.

And I only said that to say, in the absence of a structural, spaces or. Programming or whatever, to support, faculty. If you have people who are, open-minded, you know, leadership that’s, I don’t wanna say transgressive leadership.

, but you know, this is progressive people. Who, you know, say to themselves, I don’t know about this thing, but I’m going to support it if my faculty say that I needed, you know, you can, you can throw money at things sometimes. And that’s.

Okay. Because, what that might empower, some institutions or programs to do. Like say, you know that to see that power to say, I don’t know what I’m doing. Or I don’t know, what’s most useful. How can I best support you? Here are some funds to do the things that you think need to be done and then empower the faculty or whoever, to do that.

[00:42:00] I think that works too. You can give people money. If you have a sense that, That it will you know, support, productivity and will help improve their quality of life, which ultimately improves their productivity.

[00:42:12] Jo: I mean, yeah. We contribute to communities that we care about. Right. And in order for that to happen, you need to, you need to show that you care about them and money is an important part of that, right? Like we need to be able to have the emotional, mental, like material space and time to commit ourselves to making these spaces more livable and better.

, and it, it goes to. The fact that oftentimes structures, institutions, , are built on these patterns that they take for granted. Like we do these, we do this this way because it’s the way it always has been. , and we can’t do it another way because we’ve never done it that way. But what that overlooks is.

What’s more important, right? The pattern of the way that you’ve done things or the people that you want doing those things. And so like shifting to value the people [00:43:00] that you want in those spaces means also giving them the license to change those spaces into what they need in order to inhabit them.

Right. So, so I think that that’s an important thing, right? We need a space time connection, and we need the resources to be able to make that happen.

[00:43:17] Constance: Awesome. Yeah, I agree. We’re, we’re leaving on the secure, the bag notes, like

[00:43:23] Jo: I like it. Yeah.

[00:43:24] Constance: give us money. Yeah. Well, I think that maybe we’ll just put out our social medias. Jo has finally arrived on Twitter. Talk about transition.

[00:43:38] Jo: I have, I have arrived on Twitter. I’m still ambivalent about my feelings on footer, but I am on it.

[00:43:43] Constance: So we will put all of our social media is where you can find us. Of course, the podcast, in our two tweets a year, whatever, is as available at the unpack this, podcast. Yeah, the unpacked, this podcast or the underscore, I’ll put it in a social media cause I’m butchering that. And [00:44:00] for sure, email is the, the unpack this podcast@gmail.com and yeah,

[00:44:06] Jo: for our very exciting conversation with Dr. Elaine Richardson. , and thanks for listening. We’ll catch you next time.