

What the archives of academic job ads can tell us - benbreen
http://jgoodwin.net/blog/jobs-of-the-mla/

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benbreen
The job ads from 1972 are priceless. This one in particular is like something
out of a David Foster Wallace novel:

"We may very well have an opening or so for September, 1972. Publications
definitely helpful, as is degree from high-ranking school and ability to
receive serve in the backhand corner. David Orr, Chairman, English"

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bartonfink
Does anyone have any idea what crespo and crespulum mean? I checked two of my
dead-tree Latin dictionaries and even resorted to an online search and came up
empty. This is going to stick in my craw for a while until I can sort it out.
Any other Latinists out there with ideas?

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benbreen
I was wondering the same thing. Crespare means "to curl" in Italian. So it
means... Who will curl the curly? I suspect it's some sort of pun on a well-
known Latin phrase, but I have no idea what it would be.

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blahedo
Don't be misled: the -are and -ire endings mark different conjugations (per my
other comment, a Latin "crespare" would have become "créper" in French, which
means "frizz" or "crimp" and is thus almost certainly cognate to your Italian
word, but not to the "crespit" of the OP).

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caractacus
Why make every reader click through to the twitter feed? At the very least,
you could embed a screenshot of the twitter post but it would seem simpler to
link direct to the image.

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newacctlol
You're probably blocking social media and/or tracking on sites. If you access
the site with none of that, the author's Twitter posts are seen on the blog
post itself. If you are blocking it, you get the the plain text version with a
link instead of the image. It's the equivalent of the alt attribute in for the
<img> HTML tag.

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slyall
MLA = Modern Language Association of America

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Language_Association](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Language_Association)

The JIL is the recognized professional source for announcements of full-time
faculty positions available in the fields of English and foreign languages in
North American colleges and universities

[http://www.mla.org/resources/jil](http://www.mla.org/resources/jil)

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dalke
For anyone curious about sampling effects, a scan of the December 1972 MLA Job
Information List is at
[http://rid.olfo.org/doc/mlajilocr/jil_eng_1972_12-OCR.pdf](http://rid.olfo.org/doc/mlajilocr/jil_eng_1972_12-OCR.pdf)
. (This is the one that contains the Latin that bartonfink and others are
curious about; p50, ordered by ZIP code.)

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pXMzR2A
Why are we looking at the twitter feed? Just so there is some kind of graphic?

The way I'm reading this, the write up should have been an imgur submission of
ad snippets posted on reddit.

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pkaye
Imaging a $1M salary being common in 40 years!

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droidist2
True, and a house in a good neighborhood will cost 10 million.

