I didn’t feel like an impostor. There were no consuming doubts about my skills or accomplishments loading me with the “persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud.” Instead, as a first-generation graduate student, I had the shaky sensation of being out on a limb, on my own, on a dark night with no moon. And too many missed signals would mean not a hard painful fall, but years of moving around through the branches without ever hitting solid ground. Surges of disorientation and anxiety hit when I had an awareness that some custom, gesture, and especially mediated benefaction was passing me by and I did not know what to do. Should I ask a question, comment on my research, how do I insert myself into that conversation, is this how people get on a panel, what do I write for this grant or that fellowship to distinguish myself but not appear presumptuous? Do all these protocols feel odd and uncomfortable to anyone else? Why do the young men seem to get more funding, more easily? The questions involved the nuances of tone and culture with insider power, not simply the next procedural step.

I was doing my PhD for one reason: a scarce tenure-track faculty position. Unlike younger doctoral history students, I had already worked in “alt ac,” the unfortunate term invented by senior scholars to denote the majority of jobs in the United States – in my case high school teacher, freelance writer, adult basic education instructor, and transition to college coordinator. Teaching was not a side gig to my academic life, it had been the core of my career. But I wanted more time and some funding to research and write – and to talk about writing projects. So I stayed upright on that unfamiliar limb and edged onto its most precarious branches, able to teeter with my head up because I had a sense my work was solid. But each inch further out brought with it strange sensations to which I had to acclimate.

I didn’t understand the behind-the-scenes system of academia, with its arcane unarticulated conventions, elitist habits that contradicted its public narratives of merit and access (as well as much of the faculties’ research interests), and ageism that could give Hollywood studios a run for their money. The constant appeals and applications for funding required ritualistic side conversations and closed-door referrals. Each year, I observed and pushed forward, shimmying my feet out on the limb. Other first-gen academics got me through the program and the years of job searches. We broke down the unspoken rules and the challenges of navigating practices and personalities that have been insulated (and often inflated). We talked about the initial discomfiture of enacting the unspoken theater of academia. I regularly think of another first-gen grad student who was also in singular pursuit of a tenure-track position. He grew up in Puerto Rico and told me he approached conversations with senior scholars or editors at conferences con una cara de lechuga, with bold innocence, without hesitance or arrogance. This concept gave me some insightful affective advice, more than just a basic instruction on what-to-do-next.

But just as I succeeded at one step, another would appear, imbued with that vague impression there was something more to it. The sense of being on my own, balancing under a vast dark sky, continued. My family and friends thought it was great that I was going for it. Professors in the department asked about my work and discussed further reading. For first-gen students and students in historically marginalized groups, however, family praise, friendly approval, and positive comments on academic work are not often enough. Telling them their scholarship is interesting is not enough. Even telling them to make a community of their peers is not enough, when most first-gen students do not know the larger etiquette and rituals.

Now I am in my first year of a tenure-track position. I became one of the few non-elite, first-gen history PhDs who hit the right convergence of hard work, white privilege assistance with access, conference encounters, and job postings. I landed – it seems my feet might be on semi-solid ground. I’m beginning to feel like I have some collegial backing, some understanding of how people navigate behind the scenes in departments and across campuses. I made it to the other side of something invisible but tangible, I got inside the cloister. There’s an appeal to leaving behind the whole out-on-a-limb syndrome, especially as service and scholarly demands pile up on me within a shrinking tenure-stream faculty. But then I wouldn’t remember to invite another first-gen scholar to share what they find disorienting or odd about academia, to let them know someone sees them balancing the best they can.

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The post 2022 Dec: AHA Spotlight, To recognize its talented and eclectic membership first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.

In 1984 and 1985, Gloria Maldonado and several Puerto Rican needleworkers in New York City shared their experiences with three women scholars for a public history project titled “Nosotras Trabajamos en la Costura.”

The post 2022 Oct: “‘Nosotras Trabajamos en la Costura’: Gloria Maldonado and Puerto Rican Needleworkers in Public History Production, 1983-1987,” PRSA first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.

The post 2022 April: “The Crisis of Contingency and the Erosion of Research,” Scholarly Work and the Work of Scholarship in an Era of Contingency, OAH Boston first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.

The post 2021 Aug: Assistant Professor of History, Central Connecticut State University first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.

The post 2021-2022: Faculty Fellow, Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, Yale University first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.

The post 2021 April: “Beyond the Fields: Gender, Labor, and the Public Legacies of Puerto Rican Farm Workers and Needleworkers,” Shade Research Collective Symposium first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.

Contingent is a non-profit history magazine. Its writers are adjuncts, museum workers, independent scholars—all people who work outside the tenure-track professoriate. Contingent is rooted in three principles: History is for everyone. Every way of doing history is worthwhile. Historians should be paid for their work.

The post 2021 Feb: “How Aimee Loiselle Does History,” Contingent Magazine first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.

The CCWH Prelinger Award is a scholarship of $20,000 awarded to a scholar of excellence. This award, named for Catherine Prelinger, a former CCWH president and nontraditional scholar, is intended to enhance the work of a contemporary scholar whose academic path has not followed the traditional path of uninterrupted study, moving from completed secondary, to undergraduate, then graduate degrees, followed by a tenure-track faculty position. These funds were originally granted to CCWH by an anonymous donor in honor of the work this organization has devoted to exploring women’s history, encouraging opportunities for women in the profession, and in educating young women to pursue careers in history. It’s intended to enhance the ability of the recipient to carry on these traditions through contributions to women in history.

The post 2020 Nov: Catherine Prelinger Award, Coordinating Council for Women in History first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.