How to Build a Life in the Humanities ― Meditations on the Academic Work-life Balance

A follow-up to the popular Graduate Study for the 21st Century: How to Build an Academic Career in the Humanities, this book seeks to expand current models of "professional development" by placing an emphasis on the human and humane aspects of daily lives in the humanities. It does so in response to a conviction that the contemporary academy has given rise to a host of complex personal challenges which demand serious reflection due to their direct impact on us as scholars, pedagogues, and university citizens. A collection of 25 short essays by leading humanists in all stages of their careers, How to Build a Life in the Humanities will delve into such under-discussed academic "life" issues as the following: maternity leaves; tenure-track stress; adjunct exploitation; post-tenure depression; personal relationships; exercise and hobbies; managing ambition; administrative burdens; institutional politics; classism; racism; sexism; and identity politics, among others. These candid, illuminating essays, which combine practical wisdom with meditative reflections upon the challenges of academic life, will be of interest to humanists of all ranks, from potential or beginning graduate students to seasoned professionals.

Greg Colon Semenza is Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, USA. He is the author of Graduate Study for the 21st Century: How to Build an Academic Career in the Humanities, The History of British Literature on Film, and books and articles on subjects ranging from Renaissance sport to punk. His blog for the Vitae section of The Chronicle of Higher Education, "This Academic Life," focuses on work-life issues in academe. Semenza is the recipient of the AAUP's Excellence Award for Teaching Promise and the 2005 University Teaching Fellows Award.

Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr. is Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, USA. He is the author or co-editor of numerous books, including most recently Sleep, Romance and Human Embodiment: Vitality from Spenser to Milton and The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature (with Alan Stewart). He has served as co-editor of Shakespeare Studies, a trustee for the Shakespeare Association of America, and is currently serving on the Shakespeare Division Executive Committee of the MLA. His work has been supported by the Newberry Library, the National Endowment of the Humanities, and the Folger Shakespeare Library.