Writing Yourself into the Academic Job Market

Michael Moses
Education
UC Riverside

Writing Yourself into the Academic Job Market is the first book of its kind to center discussions of wellness and perspectives from minoritized scholars in the literature on academic writing and professional development. The literature—primarily written from white perspectives—notes how graduate students and postdocs of the 21st century endure unprecedented job market circumstances due to the academy’s pervasive “publish or perish” climate, yet few projects have sought to situate job market socialization as a site for early-career scholars to cultivate healthy and sustainable ways of being in the academy. My project flips this oppressive framing of the market on its head by situating job market writing as a scholarly skill of self-advocacy—one that should honor the individual job seekers’ professional and personal values, needs, and aspirations as equally as traditional academic norms. Drawing on nearly 100 interviews with minoritized scholars recently on the market in addition to my experience and training as an academic writing consultant and mindfulness practitioner, this book provides an empirically-driven understanding of how to navigate the market for job seekers from a diversity of demographic backgrounds (e.g., of Color, queer) and intellectual traditions (e.g., Humanities, STEM).