[Ahs-grads] Summer online teaching

[Susan Laxton]

Hello everyone,


Please read this email carefully if you are interested in teaching in the
summer session.


The department is always working hard to provide support and professional
development for you, our graduate students. As part of this, we make a
portion of the department’s summer session teaching available to our
advanced students. The department typically offers 4-5 introductory and
upper-division courses each summer. These are managed by the Summer
Sessions Office, and are taught on campus as 5-week “concentrated” courses
during two summer terms (late June-July; late July-August). These courses
must be drawn from our existing undergraduate offerings. Topics are
selected by the department to meet the needs of the undergraduate
curriculum and students. The list of courses that have been named this year
are attached here.


*We now invite expressions of interest/applications from our advanced
graduate students to teach during summer 2024.* Minimum requirements are an
M.A. in hand and demonstrated teaching experience. TA-ships count towards
this, but a record of designing and teaching on your own will be especially
valuable. Those who are currently working on their M.A. but expect to have
it in hand at the completion of Spring term 2024 *may* be considered, but
only with iron-clad assurances from the student, the graduate advisor, and
the primary MA advisor that the degree will be fully completed in June,
since the appointment will have to be cancelled if the thesis isn’t
finished in time.


If you are interested, please submit to the Dept Chair via email:

1. your current CV (listing your teaching experience)

2. a short paragraph giving a sense of topics or areas you'd feel
comfortable to teach

3. a sentence stating which term(s) you would be available (first, second,
or either)

Please submit your materials by *Friday,  March 21, 2025*. The decisions
are made by the Department Chair. Please note: the process is competitive
and there is no guarantee of selection or employment. However, I can
promise that all submissions will receive full consideration on the basis
of their quality and the needs of the undergraduate curriculum.



We believe this can be a very valuable means to gain financial support and
professional experience. There are, however, some things you should
consider:


 —Summer courses, even once listed, are not guaranteed to take place. Per
the Summer Session Office protocol, they may be cancelled up to the last
minute due to lack of enrollment, even a day or two before the beginning of
session. Because of this we encourage students, even if assigned a course,
to continue pursuing summer funding opportunities including research
fellowships and other types of employment both on and off campus.



—The chance to design and teach your own course provides invaluable
preparation for your career. However, you should recognize that creating
and teaching a course is intensive, time consuming, on-site work. You will
be held to the high standard we expect of all our instructors. I encourage
you to consider how taking on a teaching assignment will impact your degree
progress (PhDs) or other professional ambitions (MAs).


—Regarding the courses, while you will have some freedom to determine the
topics, materials, and assignments for the course, the subject matter must
conform to the course you are assigned. We are unable to facilitate the
teaching of courses tailored to an instructor’s individual research.


—Given that summer is when regular faculty devote themselves to research
(often far from campus), you will be expected to work very independently.
There will be staff and VRC support available to you, but your advisor will
probably not be available as a backstop. You must be willing to take on
this responsibility.


Finally, please know that these opportunities should be available each
summer. So, please consider where such an experience might best fall within
your overall degree/career plan. Your advisor can certainly help you in
thinking this through.


Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Susan Laxton
Associate Professor, Modernism and the History of Photography
Chair, Department of the History of Art
University of California, Riverside


 *Surrealism at Play* <https://www.dukeupress.edu/surrealism-at-play>, Duke
University Press
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