Faculty careers stall at the associate-professor rank for all sorts of complicated reasons. But one professional hurdle impedes promotion more than any other: the second book.
Despite the widely publicized financial pressures on academic libraries and presses, books remain as important as ever for both career advancement and scholarly impact. In most of the humanities and some of the social sciences, the publication of a second book is the central accomplishment that faculty members, especially at research-oriented institutions, must show to earn promotion to full or even associate professor.
A decade ago, while he was president of the American Historical Association, Kenneth Pomeranz of the University of Chicago wrote about the “problem of slow promotion” and called for more support for scholars working on their second books. Since then, some institutions — including Rochester Institute of Technology — have issued white papers on the topic, and it’s an area of growing interest in education scholarship. The challenges of producing a second book often feature in career-advice essays on midcareer malaise and post-tenure depression.
However well-documented the problem, it seems to have evaded easy solution.
Taking up the challenge, we have founded the Second Book Institute at the University of Tulsa, with support (including a $29,000 budget) from our president and provost. In the summer of 2023, we welcomed eight scholars from across North America as the institute’s inaugural class of fellows, and this July we will bring in eight more for a week of workshops and mentoring.
Our main objective: to provide specific, practical support to academics in book-centered fields who are seeking to write a second scholarly monograph.
While first books tend to be revisions of dissertations, written initially under the guidance of a graduate adviser and committee, second books are more truly solo acts. They are the gold standard of intellectual accomplishment and a career milestone, marking the completion of our protracted apprenticeship. Second books often make more ambitious contributions to a field while showing that their authors can work without a net.
For all of those reasons, as well as a host of external factors, second books are often much harder to complete.
The idea of an institute devoted to second books may seem like a luxury in an era when tenure-track positions are increasingly rare in book-centered fields and when “precarity,” “cuts,” and “crisis” are disturbingly prominent keywords in all sorts of higher-ed publications. One might reasonably ask: Why should any institution devote new resources to the advancement of midcareer scholars, many of whom enjoy the security of tenure? Shouldn’t an occasional sabbatical be enough?
No doubt the plight of stalled associate professors is less urgent than that of new Ph.D.s greeting a barren job market or contingent faculty members struggling to make ends meet. But to view those issues as competitors within a zero-sum game misses that they are interwoven.
In The Small Room, May Sarton’s academic novel set at a 1950s women’s college and published in 1961, a senior professor explains her devotion to her scholarship by telling her younger colleague that teaching “takes the marrow out of your bones, and something or other has to put it back.” If Sarton was writing that book in our present day, she would no doubt also list the increasing demands of service work and family care.
Cutbacks in tenure lines have shifted departmental service loads onto fewer and fewer shoulders, while resources are very limited when it comes to helping faculty members (with or without secure employment) grow as intellectuals over their entire careers. The results are (a) faculty burnout and (b) erosion of their commitment to less quantifiable, less visible areas of their work, such as mentoring or providing anonymous peer reviews. Scholarship can fall to the wayside as committee meetings, reports, and emails demand immediate attention.
That state of affairs can be ignored for a while. But over the long term, the depletion of an immeasurable resource — the mental energy and creativity of scholars who come of age amid austerity — threatens to create major problems for the entire ecosystem of American higher education. To be sure, scholarship can replenish faculty energy and purpose, but that requires nurturing and money. We believe that more support for midcareer professors — as scholars — can yield significant benefits for our institutions and our fields.
Hence the Second Book Institute. Our program is aimed at scholars from across higher education, but we think this model could be replicated on a state, regional, or campus level.
Faculty members from across the country apply for the institute by January. We admit seven scholars nationally and one from Tulsa. We ask applicants to include, among other information, a one-page description of their book project, an outline of the chapter they plan to work on during the institute, and up to 10 pages of draft writing.
The demands of child or eldercare combine with the caretaking aspects of increased service duties — especially for women and scholars of color — to provide one of the greatest cumulative drags on scholarly research and publication. So we’ve structured our call for applications accordingly: We ask for a one-page description of their service commitments and note that we aim to support scholars who “give amply of their time and energy to their institutions, families, and communities.”
The fellows are selected by a panel of judges. The visiting fellows receive six nights in a local hotel, most of their meals, and a $1,000 stipend for additional expenses. (Internal fellows receive a $500 stipend and meals.) Through that material support, we’ve sought to create a setting in which a group of overextended academics can find time and space to focus on their second books, make significant progress on their manuscripts, and develop strategies to continue writing when they return to their busy lives.
Our base of operations is a faculty study room in our campus library. This room, usually reserved for professors to work in silence, is comfortable and beautiful, with an assortment of tables, sofas, and chairs that can be arranged for individual study or conversations. Every morning, the institute’s fellows gather to write in the study, where breakfast and a constant supply of coffee, tea, and water are available. They work alongside one another in silence, taking breaks or walks as needed.
Afternoons are for structured programming related to book writing and publishing. Last summer, for the first three afternoons, writing coach Joli Jensen, emerita professor of media studies at Tulsa and author of Write No Matter What: Advice for Academics, led workshops on topics such as restarting stalled projects and protecting your writing time, space, and energy.
On the fourth afternoon, the fellows met as a group and individually with Greg Britton, editorial director of the Johns Hopkins University Press. In the final afternoon session, the fellows reflected on the week, looked ahead to the coming year, and developed accountability plans, including regular check-ins as they moved forward with their projects.
While writing time and workshops were essential aspects of the program, the true joy of the Second Book Institute was the network of scholars that developed over the week. In meeting other midcareer academics from different disciplines and institutions, a sense of solidarity and community was born.
Writing is often solitary work. Knowing that you are not alone and that others share similar struggles helps you feel seen and understood. We asked the fellows to join us for dinner at the beginning and end of the week, but we left the rest of the evenings unstructured. During these evenings they explored Tulsa together, visiting the Greenwood Rising Museum, eating at local restaurants, and forming a cohort that we hope will last for years to come.
We also hope that the establishment of the Second Book Institute will advance a larger conversation in higher education about how to develop programs for midcareer scholars and support them through their next career stage.
