Friday, February 13, 2015

Personalia update 2014 I: tenure books

With the release of the Winter 2014 issue of Monatshefte, it's time for the annual updates and fact-checking. This first installment will look at tenure books, where not much has changed since last year's comprehensive look. Of the twenty-one promotions to associate professor listed, ten appear to have submitted a single-author monograph as part of the tenure package. The home departments of those publishing books are little changed: one at an MA program in Canada, two at SLACs, the rest at RU/VH institutions. All but one of the RU/VH institutions offer a Ph.D. in German. So: If you're at a research school or a high-end SLAC, you may need a book for tenure. If you're not, or you're a linguist, as a rule you don't need a book for tenure.

As always, there are differences between presses. Native Germans can earn tenure with books from a German academic press. A book from a commercial press like Palgrave Macmillan or Routledge was enough for tenure at some RU/VH schools, including at the newest Ph.D.-granting departments in Colorado and Arizona. There were only two books from American university presses, both from Stanford University Press, which paved the way to tenure at Massachusetts and Yale. That bumps Stanford (6) ahead of Northwestern (4) in the list of most frequent recent homes for tenure books for those promoted to associate in Ph.D.-granting departments, followed by Chicago, De Gruyter, and Fordam (3 each), and then Penn State, Toronto, Routledge, and Niemeyer (2 each).

To update just one graph, here are the percentages of tenure books by press type and degree granted of the tenuring departments.

Publishers of tenure books in German Studies, 2009-14, according to the degree granted of the tenuring department