Job Opening in Medieval History: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

by EILEEN JOY

I want to alert all of our readers who may be medieval historians in search of a job that Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is currently searching for a medieval historian [this person would be replacing my friend Michael Moore, an historian of the Carolingian period, who recently left SIUE to take a position at the University of Iowa]. I can tell you that SIUE, more than any institution with which I have been associated, really puts its money where its mouth is when it comes to support for faculty research and teaching. Although the current economic climate is horrendous [for example, a friend informed me last week that her university in South Carolina has rescinded all travel funding and sabbaticals that were already pre-approved, frozen all job hires, and is also asking faculty to take on additional courses], at SIUE we are holding steady, partly thanks to progressive state funding and a Graduate School that is superior in terms of its external funding rates. As a result, travel funding is generous and there are close to ten annually recurring internal grant programs, and I can tell you that I have benefited enormously from those [two summer research fellowships and reassigned time practically every single year I've been here--in fact, I am not teaching at all next semester thanks to one of these grants]. In addition, SIUE puts a lot of support behind cross-disciplinary, team-taught courses and is continually devising new ways, with financial support, to encourage faculty to innovate new courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The History department has a very vibrant intellectual atmosphere and clearly values premodern studies [the chair of the search committee for this position is an art historian of ancient Assyria]--in fact, for several years now, their two-semester theory seminar for their M.A. students has been taught by a three-person team of an historian of intellectual French history [who studied with Derrida at Irvine], the early modernist [who works on material culture of the Italian Renaissance], and my friend Michael, before he left. I reflect that I am beginning to sound a little bit like an SIUE public relations machine, so I will simply append the job ad here:

H-Net Job Posting: Medieval History