Departmental Chair Proposes Shifting 'Early Modern' Boundary to Secure Tenure-Track Funding

Nobody in the room reacted to the proposal; they reacted to the slide. Chair Peter Ansel had put one figure on it — 41 percent, and had not yet said what it counted, which in curriculum meetings is the part that decides whether anyone claps.

The proposal is to move the college's early modern boundary in the course taxonomy from 1500–1800 to 1450–1850. The stated reason is alignment: the Lazlo Foundation's current Early Modern Studies call defines its period as 1450–1850 and treats a department as a concentrated strength when at least 40 percent of its upper-division offerings fall inside the window. Method: the 2026–27 catalogue. Unit: one course, counted once. Denominator: 61 upper-division offerings.

Adding fifty years at one end and fifty at the other is a small edit to a paragraph nobody reads. It is also, on Ansel's count, four more courses inside the window, which is 41 percent, which is above 40, which is a word document with a signature block. The medievalist was delighted; two of his surveys walked across the line without changing a single syllabus.

The trouble is where the line lands on the other side. Europe 1789–1815, taught by Ruth Kellerman, is now early modern, and the department's bylaws allow a course to count toward exactly one cluster. Kellerman had been preparing an application to the Modern Europe line opening in March, for which that course was the whole argument. "You have annexed my field," she said, "to fund someone else's." Ansel replied that the taxonomy describes reality rather than governing it, which is a sentence that works better in the abstract than in a personnel file.

I recounted. Of the four courses the proposal adds, two are cross-listed with a program that meets outside the department and whose home listing is contested by that program's director; one has not run since 2021; and one is attached to a professor who retired in June and whose replacement has not been approved. That leaves 22 of 61, or 36 percent, with the usual uncertainty — 41 percent if the catalogue counts intent, 36 percent if it counts offerings. Both figures can be printed in good faith, which is why both were.

Nadia Holloway, attending the open portion, asked whether early modern now includes the 1980s, on the grounds that she had read four periodization schemes that morning and saw no reason not to use all of them at once. Ansel said the question raised an interesting point about endpoints. Kellerman said it did not.

Edith Marrow, who maintains the course codes, said she could enter the revision on Thursday. She also noted that the dropdown menu in the system accepts a start year and an end year and nothing else, no field for annexation, no field for intent, so whatever is typed there will be what the next applicant inherits, and the next applicant after that.

A periodization argument is settled the first time somebody updates a record that nobody plans to revisit.