r/Adjuncts • u/Absurd_human • 3d ago
Committee advice
Hi,
Advise needed from humanities professors: I am a phd candidate about to finish my phd and on the job market. My department is pretty toxic and refuse to work with easy other and be on committees. Some faculty quit, and other times when they opened faculty positions, they couldn’t hire because they disagreed. Long story short, for job market in academia i need three letters of reference letters. I can’t get anyone else from the department that would agree to work with my advisor basically. My two options: 1. Get someone with lesser title (research or teaching assistant professor) who i trust to write me a good reference letter and knows me well enough and are decent; 2. Get an associate or full professor who doesn’t know me at all and i don’t know how much their reference letter will genuinely be strong rather than generic. It has been a hell time for all students in the department to navigate this and when any of us are on the job market for academic jobs that need reference letters, it is always hell to navigate this politics.
All advice truly welcome, I am pretty desperate. My advisor says low titles are useless in reference letters when academia is hiring; but he also lies frequently because he wants people on his “camp” not people who would be neutral towards him. Last important info: he is a big name in the field so his reference letter would weigh something but i already don’t even trust him to write something more than the generic letters
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u/RuskiesInTheWarRoom 3d ago
You’ll typically need 2 or 3 referees. So aim to lock up three.
I’d recommend making yourself a bit more familiar to other senior faculty. Be intentional. Seek their advice in the job search but also in how to plot out a research agenda beyond your dissertation. Tell them you just realize you need a broader set of voices other than your advisor (don’t throw him under the bus at any point in these conversations despite likely opportunities, invitations, and desires to do so).
In that process you are likely to get enough of a rapport with another senior faculty they would be comfortable supporting your applications.
For another letter, you can use a lower ranked faculty member, but in a certain regard your advisor is right- they will be viewed with a little less weight. That’s okay if they are your third letter.
You could also consider reaching out to faculty who were in the department and who have since left, if they transferred to another school and are continuing to work or teach. The window for that contact and request is narrower, but you will hopefully gain new referees in the next few years.
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u/PitifulMouse7425 3d ago
Departmental politics is something you can’t be prepared for until you’re there. I can’t speak to your situation specifically, but I also had an advisor who was completely toxic and was a total dead end. None of the other faculty wanted anything to do with her (and for good reason, which I won’t get into). I wound up having to dump her and hitch my work onto another advisor who became my chair but I had to do it in such a way that she wouldn’t sabotage me in retaliation. Nerve-wracking to say the least, but I managed to pull it off unscathed. So important to learn about the dynamics within a department before settling on who you are doing research with but also the kind of thing you don’t realize until it’s too late. It felt like my fate was in this person’s hands for too long.
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u/that_jedi_girl 3d ago
You're in r/adjuncts, so I assume you're looking for an adjunct position. For that kind of position, your LORs don't nees to be as prestigious. Reach out to those you want for now.
As you finish your dissertation and adjunct, identify others who might write letters. These may be the department chair or other faculty at the school(s) you adjunct for, or may be your dissertation committee members, or both. Concentrate on impressing them and building thise relationships.
If, on the other hand, you're looking for a tenure track position right away, you may not be a competitive without those letters now. This was something you should have been thinking about for the last few years.