The Provost Postdoctoral Fellows: Annabel Kim, Monica Huerta, Ashley Farmer and Stephanie Hassell.
Annabel Kim didn't come to Duke on a two-year postdoctoral fellowship planning to "blow up" her dissertation, but she did and now she says it's made her excited about starting an academic career.
A French literature scholar, Kim is one of four new Provost Postdoctoral Fellows at Duke, an eight-year old program. It's a rare opportunity for new Ph.Ds to move forward in a difficult job environment, even if in Kim's case it means starting by moving backwards.
Kim came to Duke from Yale University confident in her dissertation on the influence of three contemporary French feminist novelists. But discussions with her Duke postdoc mentor Anne Garréta and with other faculty in a seminar on the contemporary novel led her "to see that my project could have larger stakes than were explicit in the dissertation."
Starting nearly from scratch, Kim's new project is "more theoretically ambitious" and "already sowing the seeds of what will come next as my second research project," Kim said.
"I absolutely think that the postdoc is putting me in a stronger position for an academic career," she said. "Already, in just one semester, I've become a much more ambitious thinker and writer."
Kim is joined in the two-year fellowship by Ashley Farmer and Stephanie Hassell in history and Monica Huerta in women's studies and English. Thirteen previous fellows have gone through the program, 12 of whom have found faculty jobs afterwards.
Although the current four fellows are all from the arts and sciences, the program also has awarded postdocs in natural sciences and in the Nicholas school, said Dr. Nancy Allen, vice provost for faculty development and faculty diversity, who oversees the selection process. “We especially wish to welcome women and underrepresented minority postdocs in fields where they are underrepresented, with the hope that departments will get to know them during their time here and consider them strongly in the hiring process for faculty positions," Allen said.
The idea for the program originated in 2005 when a Duke undergraduate named Iman Washington suggested to then-Provost Peter Lange that the university start a program based on models at UNC-Chapel Hill and elsewhere. The program started in 2007 and on average Duke has admitted two new fellows each year.
For Duke, the program is a way to build the pipeline to academic careers and build faculty diversity at Duke and at peer institutions. For the postdocs, there's time to do research, turn their dissertation into published manuscripts and add teaching and other academic experiences to their resumes before they enter the market.
Kim will spend part of the spring semester using fellowship research funds to travel to conferences she couldn't otherwise attend. She'll also take her first turn teaching a new class cross-listed in literature, Romance studies and women's studies. "That will get me valuable experience as a teacher that will certainly make my CV more compelling, as I didn't design and teach my own literature class while a grad student [at Yale]."
Like Kim, Huerta "is re-imagining the manuscript I'm writing," which was based on her dissertation. Huerta was working on what she thought was two different projects: one on how involuntary facial expressions and gestures were tied to notions of identity in the 19th century; the other was to be on media and the history of theories of emotions.
Working with Priscilla Wald, Huerta is finding the two projects might be combined into one manuscript on involuntary emotions and visual media.
"Thinking my way to this new sense of what the project is has only been possible because at Duke I have that elusive combination of freedom and support," Huerta said. "I can think not only about the direction in which my archives are leading but also about what exactly it is I want my book to say."
A key component of the program is the involvement of a Duke faculty mentor, who advises them on everything from research approaches to the little important details about job hunts that aren't taught in graduate school. Farmer, who is working with Duke historian Adriane Lentz-Smith on an intellectual history of women in the black power movement, said one of the greatest joys is participating as a full colleague in "an impressive breath and depth of events and talks on Duke's campus. I have been able to attend everything from the Global Blackness Conference to more intimate colloquia in multiple departments."
For the faculty mentor, the program offers benefits as well.
"I agreed to serve as a mentor because I believe that faculty should make meaningful commitments to institutional diversity, but it being a mentor has benefitted me tremendously as well," Lentz-Smith said. "Academic jobs don't come with a user's manual, but my conversations with Ashley--on everything from how one creates community within a department to how one negotiates a book contract--have helped me to think systematically about how to do my job and how I navigate through an institution as broad-ranging as Duke. I will be a better advisor for it."
Duke is currently accepting applications for the next round of Provost Postdocs Academic Jobs Online until Jan. 23. Traditionally, the university receives 35-85 applications annually, Allen said. Each applicant must have the approval of a Duke faculty mentor.
For more information about the application process, go to the program's website.