On Twitter yesterday, an early-career philosopher asked:
I would like very much to develop teaching competence in Ancient Philosophy, including especially ancient science. It seems like this is a bad idea given this would be far off from what I would like to specialize in…I wonder how people navigate such thing. [A]ny Cocoon posts about things like this?
I think this is a great query, as it raises some important job-market issues that I suspect many graduate students and job-candidates might not know very much about. Indeed, far from it being a bad idea for this person to develop an AOC in Ancient, I think it is a great idea. Let me explain why.
First, what exactly is an AOC? There has been quite a bit of debate about this over the years. One standard definition that I've heard is that an AOC is something that you'd be well-prepared to teach an advanced, upper-division undergraduate course in. But, for my part, I guess I'm inclined to say that AOC may be fruitfully treated as a more flexible category, depending upon the job that you are applying for. Here's why. At my university, our philosophy major requires students to take two of the following three lower-level history of philosophy courses:
- Ancient Philosophy: Plato & Aristotle
- Modern Philosophy
- Contemporary Philosophy
We also have a policy that required courses for the major must be taught by full-time faculty. So, when I was hired into an Ethics position (way back in 2009), I was hired in part to teach that course. Similarly, when we hired for a full-time position Feminist Philosophy, the job ad stated that the person hired would be expected to teach Modern Philosophy. Indeed, even though the advertised AOS was Feminist Philosophy, the AOC was roughly equally important to us: we needed someone with a good background in Modern. And here's the thing: there aren't that many candidates with an AOS in Feminist Philosophy who also have robust backgrounds in Modern. So, having an AOC well outside of your AOS can plausibly be a huge advantage for some jobs. Finally, as my above remarks indicate, my department didn't need someone well-prepared to teach an advanced upper-division: we specifically needed someone with competence in teaching a lower-level course.
Long story short, I think that the AOCs one develops (or doesn't develop) can turn out to be very important–indeed, a real difference-maker for some jobs. So, grad students and job-candidates are well advised to cultivate AOCs, at least (let's say) if they want to be competitive for jobs at teaching-focused universities (note: my sense is that research universities usually hire specialists to teach courses like the above – so if you're only or primarily interested in R1 jobs, AOCs might not make a big difference). But anyway, this in turn raises an important question: which AOCs are likely to be the most beneficial to cultivate? Here, in brief, is my sense: history of philosophy courses and applied ethics courses. First, as at my university, history of philosophy courses are likely to be major requirements–so having an AOC in historical areas seem to me likely to make a candidate attractive to departments that need courses like this taught. Second, judging by recent job ads on philjobs and my department's own course offerings, applied ethics courses are especially popular these days. Many students need to take them as electives for other majors or minors, so departments need to offer quite a few of these courses.
A few final comments: (1) Going back to the OP, I don't think competence in ancient science is likely to be helpful (as our Plato & Aristotle course doesn't, for example, focus on ancient science); (2) No, one doesn't need any background in foreign languages (e.g. Greek, German, etc.) to claim in AOC for history of philosophy jobs at universities like mine. We're not looking for specialists (who presumably should know the original languages of works in their AOS). We're merely looking for people with background competence and (ideally) teaching experience in the relevant AOC.
Anyway, these are my thoughts. I'm curious to hear from other readers. Which AOCs do you think are a good idea for grad students and job-candidates to develop, if they have the chance? Why, and what do you think is necessary for a candidate to plausibly claim the relevant AOC when applying for a job in your department?
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