Cinema Journal

It is well known that while many media academics find themselves doing administration of one kind or another, none of us has been specifically trained for it. This dossier, in addressing such an important reality, brings the dark secret out of the closet. Perhaps the combined experiences collected here will inspire our organization to create a structured collaborative process for sharing with younger media colleagues the joys and pitfalls of taking on administrative positions. [End Page 95]

There are different ways of getting into administration. Perhaps most common is that your academic department needs a new Chair, and colleagues put your name up. The other way—and this speaks to my reasons for going into administration—is wanting to build something that is not already in place: This means you have to undertake the leadership needed to bring the new project about. At Rutgers, where I taught for twelve years from 1974 to 1987, I experienced both ways of getting into administration. On the one hand, my small English Department in what was then University College (Rutgers consists of several different colleges) needed a Chair and I was asked to take it on, but my main motive for becoming an administrator in the mid-1970s was not any wish for such a position in itself but a desire to build a minor in Film Studies at Rutgers University.

I must say that I did not feel at all prepared to chair the University College department, but with the help of more senior colleagues, I gradually learned the ropes. The good thing about taking on the position was that my being in Film Studies gave visibility and status to what was then an embryonic field, still by and large not considered a serious and scholarly area by my literary colleagues. Another advantage of such administration is that, depending on the particular way your institution is structured, you get to interact with associate deans, deans of various colleges, provosts and, at times, presidents. The more the higher administration knows about you and the fields you represent, the better for Film Studies and the humanities in general. At many large research-oriented universities, the humanities get short shrift. The natural sciences (and some social sciences) bring in huge grants—and money is power—while humanists, as we know, compete for meager funding opportunities. Lettered social sciences face similar problems, although they still fare better than nonquantitative scholarly areas. Media Studies varies enormously across colleges in regard to its disciplinary methods and related chances of obtaining grants. (Digital Studies often does well, as do any number of quantitative or production projects.) For good or ill, I found myself in universities without sizable Film Production units and where Film Studies had a theoretical, critical, and interpretive focus. We were thus often underneath the higher administration's radar. Being a Chair usefully brings some visibility to Media Studies.

But here is where faculty taking on such positions could use counseling. I didn't know much about how higher administrators thought or the challenges they usually face. I didn't realize the broad purview they have to have, the numerous departments they control and have to take into account, the complexity of distributing funds, the juggling between sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities that has to go on, the significance of their attitudes toward the various humanities disciplines (higher administrators are rarely literary or media scholars) or the power that those bringing in huge grants have. I would advise faculty thinking about taking on administration to talk to senior scholars who have been at the university for some time about the particular agendas of the higher administration in your context. Or talk to the folks running the Arts and Humanities Senate or to union representatives (if your college has a union).

I took up my second and third administrative positions because I wanted to build something new: I thought I could contribute in the first case to Film Studies at Rutgers, and in the second to new interdisciplinary scholarship at Stony Brook and elsewhere. Rutgers had no Film Studies as such when I accepted an offer...