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Apocalyptic fiction is everywhere. It suffuses popular enough to have become its own burgeoning subgenre of both science fiction and speculative fiction at large. The impulse to explore how a world ends and what arises in its place is not new, but the burgeoning and seemingly endless interest in dystopias has hijacked primetime and the box office. In a post-9/11 world, where terrorist attacks on our home soil jolted normalcy to its very core, it makes sense that people focus on fictional empts to comprehend responses to epoch ending catastrophe. Books like The Hunger Games and Station Eleven, and shows like The Walking Dead are all less concerned with the events that destroy their fictional settings than they are with what comes afterward. Rebellion, preserving culture and history, and finding stable human relationships amidst violent and unpredictable chaos thread their way through disturbing imagery that can only be described as torture porn.

Despite the massive success of franchises like The Hunger Games and The Walking Dead, I would like to submit to you that there is another, better, far more compelling depiction of our dystopian future being presented by The Leftovers, HBO’s Peabody award- winning show that shakes the meaning of normalcy to its very core and expertly examines human relationships within the unsettling mundanity of a world trying to find meaning in the wake of inexplicable disaster.

The Leftovers has a simple enough premise, one not unfamiliar to those who have heard of the Christian fiction Left Behind series. On October 14^th of an unnamed year presumed contemporary to our own, 2% of the world’s population disappears without and trace, and with no explanation as to why and where they may have gone. This may seem like a small number, but it is high enough that no person, no family, a social unit at the core of the show’s mythos, is left untouched.

Kevin Garvey in his role as Mapleton’s Chief of Police and patriarch-at-large.

The first season is set in the fictional town of Mapletown, New York, a synecdoche for Everytown USA. The show follows the trials and tribulations of the Garvey clan. Kevin Garvey, made Chief of Police after his father has a psychotic break, stands in as patriarch for both the traumatized town and his shattered family. His wife has left him and his daughter to join the Guilty Remnant, a cult whose main purpose is to force everyone in the town to confront the disaster of what is termed the “Sudden Departure.” His son has disappeared, a member of a different cult dedicated to protecting the series’ literal magical Negro, a mysterious black man named Holy Wayne who claims he can hug the pain caused by the Departure away. One of two foils t to Laurie Garvey’s failed matriarch is Nora Durst, held up as divine symbol of motherhood and sacrifice as a result of the fact that both her husband and two children, her entire family, disappeared in the Departure. During the first season, Nora’s character arch revolves around her struggle to redefine herself in the face of this tragic loss.

The striking thing about The Leftovers is that something terrifying, inexplicable, and traumatic has happened, something that has touched everyone’s lives whether their loved ones have departed or not, but in the face of this the world goes on as it did before. Watching the show, the most fascinating and uncomfortable aspect is the struggle for normalcy all the characters must still endure years after the Departure. The Guilty Remnant works toward a radically new normalcy, continuously reminding the town of their ruptured families and the pain of the Departure; that things are not normal and the only way to exist in the wake of disaster is to embrace the nihilism that is at the show’s core.

The Guilty Remnant’s philosophy is built around remembering the trauma of the Departure, especially the way it destroyed family systems.

The “never forget” rhetoric of the Guilty Remnant is a clear reminder of the way life went on after September 11^th, when the government told us to go about our lives as if nothing had happened, that going shopping was the best way to strengthen the nation and prevent another attack. In a message at least as old as the 1950s, if not stretching back to the Victorian age, the American government and that of The Leftovers urges its citizens and the characters to find safety in family life, even when family bonds have been shattered and perhaps even proved illusory. But a duel narrative, represented by the Guilty Remnant, emerged, urging us all to be always afraid of what might be waiting around the corner. Terrorism works not because it comes armed with modern weapons and traditional armies but because it subtly co-opts our daily lives, because it targets the most scared parts of who we are and violently destroying them to communicate that no one is ever safe, especially in the places that we hold to be the most secure.

The Leftovers is about the struggle to reconcile that sense of violation, that unknown attack on perhaps our most vaunted institution, family, and the desire for normalcy. What makes The Leftovers such a terrifying show is not the Departure itself, but the way the Departure destroys human relationships and renders even our most holy places as unsafe. Like terrorists, the Departure is an enemy the characters of the show could not see until it was too late, and divining a meaning from a seemingly senseless act tests every individual’s sense of self, family, and community. Watching this struggle is deeply unsettling to the viewer because the show continually refuses to allow either the characters or the viewer any sense of relief. Brief moments of intimacy or reconciliation are always met with the reminder of the loss the town, and humanity as a whole, has suffered.

Untangling the show’s cultural messages beyond its focus on despair, if there is one, can be difficult, as every character’s point of reference is that despair. The Garvey family lost no one to the Departure, but Laurie’s abandonment of her family rejection of her daughter, son, and husband; her family role altogether, and defiance of her husband’s role as patriarch demonstrates the fragility of the family system. Kevin struggles to atone for his wife’s abandonment by embracing his role as Chief of Police and working tirelessly to protect the town from the Guilty Remnant’s attempts to remind town folk that life is meaningless and family not only stands powerless to stop terror but is in and of itself an imagined institution that must be abandoned in the light of the Departure. Patti Levin, the group’s leader, is the second matriarchal foil to Kevin’s machismo and aggressive rage, championing physical non-violence but still devising her own acts of terror to traumatize the town and prey on those still attempting to find meaning in the Departure. Her terrorism serves as a prod to keep the Departure ever present. She is woman who defies the institution of family instead of working to sustain it.

Holy Wayne offers to take people’s pain away.

The show constantly attacks and reevaluates the meaning of the traditional family. Kevin cannot reconcile with Laurie and Tommy, and his teenage daughter Jill constantly acts out against his authority. But the end of the first seasons finds Kevin finally rebuilding what he has lost, along with Nora Durst, when they form a new domestic partnership around Holy Wayne’s child, of African American and Asian parentage, left at Kevin’s doorstep anonymously by Tommy. A new age calls for a new kind of family, just as feminist, gay and lesbian, and minority groups create new family structures attempting integrate themselves into our own world and reap associated benefits. Of course, reconciliation requires acceptance too.

But if 9/11 provided a chance to reevaluate ourselves and our relationship to the world, how far might we have come if different decisions were made? In the world of The Leftovers, the answer is not very far at all. Shopping failed to bind our wounds but we keep doing it in hopes that eventually it will. We turn a blind eye to our government’s violent actions overseas. Some choose to fight the formation of new family systems that question the foundation of heteronormativity on which traditional marriage is based.  In The Leftovers, reconceptualizing the meaning of family and letting go of old ideas about proper gender roles tangles with the search for normalcy always promised by the family, an idea that goes back to Elaine Tyler May’s domestic containment of the Cold War born in the 1950s.

Elaine Tyler May’s seminal work on “American families in the Cold War era.”

In Homeward Bound, historian Elaine Tyler May describes domestic containment as America’s reaction to the looming threat of nuclear apocalypse brought on by the dawning of the Cold War. According to this ideology, the family served as the bastion of safety by domesticating the twin threats of nuclear war and communist subversion. If each family member followed their prescribed gender roles (father as breadwinner, mother as happy homemaker) then American society could repel any physical or ideological attack made upon its citizens the Soviet Union. In fact, the ideology of civil defense rested firmly upon each family member strictly adhering to their gender rolls in the face of nuclear attack. Before the attack the father was to build the bomb shelter that the mother would then not only stock with survival goods, but would decorate so as to make it so comforting that it might be used as an extension of the home during peace time. In the event of a nuclear attack, strengthening the family unit by continue to adhere to gender roles would prevent the apocalypse from overcoming the country and would allow America to rebuild in its own domestic image. Unlike in The Leftovers, the family would emerge the founding institution upon which a renewed America could be based. In The Leftovers, by contrast, the Departure strikes at the very heart of the institution of family, blatantly questioning the American ideal that family can survive and even thrive in the face of catastrophe.

The Guilty Remnant is the most blatant manifestation of the show’s nihilism.

Of all the dystopian fiction that has emerged over the past decade and a half, I submit that The Leftovers is perhaps the most “realistic” depiction of a future dystopia yet, or at least the most realistic response to a calamity like the Departure. We have experienced our own jolt to reality on 9/11, and though it seemed the world would never be the same again, yet somehow it both is and isn’t. The Leftovers characters attempt to build a new normal, one that both accommodates loss and celebrates the devising of new social systems meant to address the pain and fear engendered by that loss. It is about the meaning of human relationships in the face of something that destroys them. At its heart, dystopia is about our fear of surviving loss. The Leftovers is a depiction of a world shaken by collective and individual loss, but it is also a story about not forgetting that loss, but accommodating it. And always at its heart, as with most modern dystopia, it is about the fragility of human relationships, and how only by adopting new ideas about how relationships and social systems work can we move on from something that shakes us to our core. In this way, the Leftovers is both mundane and awesome, and constantly it asks us, “What happens if the world doesn’t change after it ends?” Perhaps normal is the most disturbing dystopia of all.

Recently I took a job as an Administrative Assistant at a small government contracting firm located in the DC/Metro Area. None of the duties this job requires are explicitly related to my PhD in History (in-progress), however, I was able to massage my resume so that my skill set spoke to the position my company ultimately hired me to fill. I’ve learned even more about resumes and job hunting in my role as an applicant screener for my company. This position entails searching online resume databases such as Monster.com or Indeed.com to find applicants whose resumes match the job descriptions for our open positions.

Almost all companies searching for and accepting applicants employ some sort of job screening to evaluate resumes before they are passed on to the hiring manager. Many companies have cut the human element out of the process and use computer programs to sift through resumes. My job does not differ much from the content of these programs, as I am scanning for the same keywords and basic qualifications necessary to pass on resumes to my hiring manager, who will then decide if we reach out to the applicant. Because of these cursory examinations, it is crucial that your resume communicates the best possible picture of you while quickly informing computer or human readers of your qualifications. Your resume is most often the very first impression a company has of you, and as such it must work as a powerful advertisement of your competence in many skills, including your ability to create an attractive and informative resume.

What follows is advice on what makes a good resume as seen from my role as a screener. If your resume can get past me or my automated counterparts, your chances of getting an interview increase, while an unattractive and untailored resume will consistently leave you in the trash pile. The advice I offer here does not pertain to landing a job in academia; however, it does include hints on how to shape your academic resume to fit an academic job. You can find more detailed information about that process in my more detailed post on the subject.

• Appearances Matter. Just as in person, a screener’s first impression of you is captured through how your resume appears. Fonts, colors, and layouts all matter. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend whether plain or colorful resumes are better – this is often a personal preference depending on the screener – but I can tell you that no matter what your level of proficiency with Word, your resume must be both visually appealing and easy to read at first glance. This means staying away from ornate and obfuscating design schemes that you may think show-case your design abilities when they’re really just getting in the way of communicating very important information. Plain black and white resumes carefully arranged with tactful use of formatting and web fonts go a long way. Have someone else look briefly at your resume. If they can’t find the most basic information necessary (qualifications, experience, education) in that first glance, you need to re-design.

• Qualifications. When I’m looking at a resume the first things I’m looking for are the base qualifications as related to the job descriptions (if you can’t meet those, I can’t hire you). Know these qualifications and make sure they are easy to find when giving a cursory glance over your resume. You can do this through a combination of resume design and intelligent use of keywords reiterated throughout your resume.
  • Security Clearance. This is a note that is especially important to DC job seekers, where so many jobs are with the federal government or reliant upon it. If you have a security clearance, always make it easy to locate on your resume with minimal searching involved. When I’m screening resumes, if someone doesn’t list a clearance, the resume goes in the trash pile 9 times out of 10. This may sound harsh, but in the positions we staff for, you need an active security clearance or the customer (i.e. the government) will not accept you, no matter how wonderful your qualifications are. If you have a security clearance, do not risk having your resume passed on because you hid it or failed to mention it on your resume. It should be at the top of your resume and easy to find. Otherwise you may be missing out on some great opportunities.

• Tailor Your Resume. Sometimes I screen over 100 resumes a day, and who knows how many more a computer program can race through. When I’m screening I’m not giving your resume a thorough read. Instead, I’m looking for keywords and qualifications that demonstrate you may be a fit for the position. Therefore, however annoying it may seem, you must tailor your resume to the position you’re applying for. Make sure the qualifications of the position are listed clearly in your resume, and make sure you relate your experience to the job description through the use of keywords. Tailoring your resume in this way exponentially increases your chances of being passed to the hiring manager. For example, if the job description calls for POA&M and you have that experience, list that in your resume, by name. For those of you who are simply submitting your resume to a resume database, like Monster.com, know the keywords for your field when writing your job experience, and include a short goals section at the top of your resume detailing the kind of position you wish to achieve, using keywords describing both your experience and the type of job you’re looking for.

• Write Just Enough. While we’re on the subject of resume design and writing experience, nothing looks worse, both visually and contextually, than a thin resume. Every bullet point on your resume describing prior positions should be a full sentence. And if you don’t have at least 5 bullet points for each position, you have not written enough to give a job seeker an adequate idea of your experience. Bullet points with one word or phrase do nothing to demonstrate your understanding of your position, whereas a full sentence will explain to the job seeker how your duties related to your position and, if written well, will reveal how those duties will relate to the position you’re applying for. From the position of a job screener, thin resumes never get passed on to the hiring manager. And I can see a thin resume at a glance. They are very easy to discard.
  • In regards to length, there’s also the old stand-by that two pages is your maximum limit, but my experience suggests that, unless a job description specifically states a page limit, more is better. But, older positions that don’t relate to the one you’re applying for can probably be dropped. For example, I started working in 2003 but my resume starts in 2008. This is because, prior to 2008, I worked exclusively in retail. That kind of experience no longer applies. I did, however, leave it on my resume for many years because it demonstrated my customer service skills, something many jobs in varying fields value. You can always add or subtract experience as you like. Just make sure you can spin everything to relate to the current position you’re applying for and be careful to account for gaps in your employment.

• Hobbies and Interests. When I read a resume, I always think it’s fun to see people include a brief line on their hobbies and interests. It makes their resume stand out. At the same time, many of them are either disappointingly general and/or have nothing to do with the position they’re applying for. If you’re going to include a hobby or volunteer service, make sure it links to the position you’re applying for. For example, I include my time as volunteer at the Point Reyes National Seashore Historic Morgan Horse Ranch on my resume because it reflects both my customer service and public history skills, and I can explain this to an employer in an interview. It demonstrates that my interest in those fields continues outside of work. If you have a hobby or interest that you can use to make connections between your work and personal life, wonderful. If not, it may be fun to know you can ski, but at best it won’t affect if I pass your resume, and at worst it will get you thrown in the trash (as some screeners thing these things are frivolous turn-offs).

• Spell Check. I know this one seems self-evident, but bad spelling and grammar really will prevent me from passing you on to my hiring manager. You’d think people would know this rule by now but I’ve seen people misspell their own names. If your resume is a company’s first impression of you, then bad spelling and grammar are the equivalent of showing up to the interview wearing sweat pants and a dirty t-shirt. It undermines your competency – no one is going to take you seriously looking like that/if your resume looks like that – and it also demonstrates that you did not care enough to put your time and effort into producing an attractive, legible document. If you care so little about your resume, why would I think you’d care any more about the job you want me to hire you for?

• Cover Letter. If you are required to write a cover letter, not only should it be spell checked and grammar checked, it should be tailored to the position you’re applying for, just like your resume should be. Remember, you want screeners like me and my digital counterparts to be able to hone in on your qualifications immediately, and a cover letter is a great way to put them up front on the first page. Always write a cover letter if you have the opportunity. If you’re posting your resume to a database, a generic cover letter highlighting the skills you think are most marketable or important to the field you’re interested in is completely appropriate and even encouraged. Writing a cover letter demonstrates that you care about the position you’re applying for and how you think you’ll fit into the company (another hint: research the company before applying). It also shows you care about making a good first impression, and that goes a long way.

The biggest take away here is that you want your resume to be both visually appealing and easy to read, with qualifications and experience highlighted through the use of keywords. The more you can describe your experience the better. And always make sure you tailor everything included on your resume and in your cover letter to the job description. Making it past a screener like me is one of the biggest hurdles you’re going to face. If you can make it past me, then you are that much closer to getting the job that you want.

I will add, for my part as a human screener, we are cheering for you to pass my test because we want to hire good people. Nothing disappoints more than a perfect resume without a security clearance or one so poorly formatted that I can’t find any of the information I need. Do me a favor and make your resume as strong as possible. I love passing candidates to my boss – it’s exciting for us and for you. I hope these tips will help you beat the system so we can get you that job you know you want.

In “The Woman Who Shook the World Tree,” one of the entries in Michael Swanwick’s new collection of short stories, a brilliant scientist working to understand the mysteries of space-time says to his colleague and lover following their revolutionary discoveries, “The world’s the same as ever. The only thing that’ll be different is our understanding of it.” This quotation, reiterated repeatedly in various iterations throughout the collection, could stand in as a summation of the whole book. With stories that bend the genre conventions of science fiction and fantasy, moving from imaginary worlds to those that look much like our own, Swanwick constantly asks the reader to set aside the conventional notions of what is real and what is not to explore the complexities of our perceptions of every day existence.

The book starts out with “The Man in Grey,” a story that posits life is merely a stage, with its inhabitants being tightly controlled by a fleet of individuals guided by an unknown force to maintain the charade for the actors moving through their predestined lives. When one of the men in grey steps in to save a woman from a death that does not fit the script, questions not only of the nature of reality but of free will come to the fore in a story that is only a few pages long. Swanwick’s stories are peppered with explorations of the nature of death, and, in “The Man in Grey,” death is the surprising and even delightful release from a world controlled by unseen forces.

While “The Man in Grey,” hovers on the border of futuristic fantasy, “Passage of Earth” finds Swanwick more squarely in the world of science fiction, on an Earth that has been curiously invaded by a mysterious race of giant worms. While the mortician at the center of the story initially thinks his autopsy is finally shedding light on the nature of the worms, he soon finds himself imprisoned in a hell on earth consisting of his own memories of a tortured past with his ex-wife. The meaning of memory and our tendency to become entrapped in its clutches leads the reader to question how we let memories shape our own reality, and if it is possible to live outside of them. The worms act as a cipher for human memory, and their collective identity posits a way of existence both foreign and familiar to our own.

In “Of Finest Scarlet was Her Gown,” Swanwick similarly explores the nature of hell but this time deploys the powers of female sexuality to both give his character agency and restrict her choices. Swanwick has a long history of giving his female characters power almost exclusively through sexuality (in the “The Woman Who Shook the World Tree,” the plain looking main character finds agency only through a sexually charged romantic relationship with a man). In “Of Finest Scarlet was Her Gown,” the devil is a beautiful temptress and Si-Yun is a (disturbingly) 15 year old girl hoping to free her father from Hell. At the devil’s behest, she becomes a sexual plaything to any man that comes calling, while meeting the stipulation that she must always abstain from copulation itself. This gives her power over almost all the men she meets, but in the end the Devil uses Si-Yun’s newfound and confused sexuality against her. While sexual liberation may seem like a door to power for Swanwick’s female characters, the agency that these roles seem to represent is usually lacking in the actual outcome.

In his lengthy introduction, Swanwick boasts of and waxes on about his love for the medium of the short story, and of his books that I’ve read, I’d have to agree with him that it is in short fiction that he really hits his stride. Problematic elements remain – Swanwick loves female characters and has no problem placing them at the center of his narratives, but they are often reduced to being victims of their circumstances, only occasionally, as in “The Man in Grey,” (a story devoid of sex) literally dictating the terms of the narrative. That said, Swanwick’s consistent willingness to challenge our perceptions of reality puts him in the same category as Philip K. Dick and provides the mindful science fiction reader with a wonderful litany of questions to ponder long after the book has been put back on the shelf.

A white, middle-class woman tends her space garden.

One of the main factors driving space colonists to advocate for human settlement off Earth was their concern for the environmental degradation that increasingly drove many Americans to call for reform, if not a solution as drastic as the colonizing of space. Space colonists believed that moving a large segment of the Earth’s population to space would not only ease environmental degradation but would also halt and ultimately reverse its concomitant resource depletion, specifically that of energy resources. The Club of Rome’s publication in 1972 of their notorious book, The Limits to Growth, further drove space colonists’ sense of impending doom. They sought refuge in space, a new frontier they believed to be populated with endless resources that would enable human life to flourish, and also permit every human to enjoy an American standard of living. This standard crucially included access to green space, as depicted repeatedly in descriptions and drawings of the proposed space colonies.

Because space colonists harbored such overarching concerns about Earth’s limits, I have been reading histories of the environmental movement in the United States that crested on Earth Day, April 20, 1970, at the same time that Gerard K O’Neill and others began to imagine ways space colonies might solve problems facing the human race on Earth. Like environmentalism, space colonies purported to be a universal solution that would not only preserve middle-class American standards of living but that would also uplift those in the developing world both figuratively and literally into the privileged confines of space.

Space colonists’ concern with environmentalism runs parallel to the issue of population control and the eugenics movement, which did not die out following the Holocaust of World War II. In The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism, Thomas Robertson attempts to link the movement for population control in the 20^th century to the burgeoning environmental movement. What he calls Malthusian Environmentalists found both attention and legitimacy for their cause by linking it to growing concerns about Earth’s limited resources as depleted by Earth’s growing population.

Malthusian Environmentalists all believed that population needed to be limited, but they differed on whether or not it should be done with coercive tactics or through programs of incentive and education. Though he spends little time talking about Malthus himself, Robertson makes a compelling argument that his Malthusian Environmentalists often practiced a classist and racist agenda, viewing the developing world (particularly India) as the greatest threat to mankind’s continued prosperity. Therefore, population control experts expressed more willingness to perpetrate or support coercive measures in developing countries. It is important to note that racism and classism also played a role in population control policies at home, as America also carried out a program of forced sterilization that led many African Americans to view any efforts at birth control or family planning as a plot to exercise targeted population control.

Like space colonists, Malthusian Environmentalists believed technology could solve Earth’s population problems, from new technologies like the IUD and the birth control pill to the forced sterilizations that many endured around the world. Though both groups sought to uphold a middle-class, American standard of living, space colonists did not believe coercion to be a necessary tactic (who wouldn’t want to improve their standard of living?) and offered space colonies in opposition to population control, as a way to ameliorate the population problem without interfering with anyone’s perceived natural right to reproduce and form families as they wanted.

Perhaps Robertson’s greatest flaw, which is also a critique that could be applied to histories of space colonists, is that his book focuses exclusively on the writings of elite white men. He pays little more than lip service to the massive role grassroots organizing played in the American environmental movement, though brief sections on the role of feminist and African American activists provide tantalizing glimpses into what non-elite Americans may have thought of these elite population control tactics. Because he focuses so little on the grassroots movement, the story of environmentalism takes a back seat to that of the development of mid-twentieth century population control ideology. Environmental concerns serve as little more than a  justification for the family planning and population control measures recommended and pursued by Malthusian Environmentalists. Robertson’s characters are more concerned with preventing the Earth from surpassing its limits to growth than they are with being custodians of nature.

Christopher C. Sellers’ Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America provides a poignant counterpoint to Robertson’s work and also conveys a much for satisfying history of the environmental movement, focusing on grassroots origins and organizing over the writings of the elite (men).

Sellers’ central argument is that the modern environmental movement emerged in suburbia as new suburban residents sought and then worked to preserve the nature around them. Though this nature did include the more stereotypical “wild” nature, most often a concern of conservationists, Sellers argues that suburban residents found nature in the built environment around them, from their lawns to their trees to the air they breathed and the water they drank. Pollution and development forced suburban residents to transcend the urban/rural dichotomy and see themselves as part of a holistic ecosystem where urban and industrial pollution could invade their property and their homes to despoil even the managed nature around them. This realization galvanized them to form grassroots organizations and pursue class action lawsuits meant to preserve their living space. This movement also raised environmental awareness around the country and eventually culminated in a more holistic environmental movement that agitated for laws meant to protect this newly understood integrated ecosystem.

Relocating environmentalism in the suburbs forces us to acknowledge that not only is the built environment part of nature but, as Sellers points out, our human bodies are as well. Space colonists recognized the importance of nature to the human condition and constantly stressed the verdant composition of the built space that would make up space colonies. In fact, recreating nature was necessary to create an environment in space not alien and inhospitable but familiar and natural. Visions of space colonies did not invite alternate imaginings of the suburban ideal but instead viewed its recreation to be imperative to the success of the venture.

Of course, space colonies made a very general assumption when they presumed that everyone seeking to better themselves, including those emigrating to space colonies, would want to recreate the pastoral suburban American life espoused in their visions of the future. Similarly, Sellers is careful to point out that the environmental movement often worked to preserve a version of suburbia that omitted those found in lower class and ethnic neighborhoods. This left those of different races and classes, often more likely to suffer from pollution and lack of green spaces, on their own to fight for better standards of living. Though space colonists imagined ameliorating these groups’ living conditions, they did not provide for any alternate vision of built space besides middle-class suburban paradise. In this way it is possible to see that space colonists shared an important similarity to the environmental movement they sought to perpetuate in their visions of the future.

Overall, Sellers work is more effective in supporting his argument, through drawn out case studies of individual environmentalists draw questions about representation that similarly plagued Robertson. What both books demonstrate, however, is that the environmental movement struggled to find a cohesive language of protection, even though many parties fetishized middle-class, suburban American life. In these narratives, well-off Americans benefited most from environmental politics, whether concerned with family planning or ensuring the potability of a community’s water supply. The most famous space colonists, almost all white, elite men, perhaps could not help espousing similar views about what to preserve and what to leave behind.

So it’s finally upon you, time to take your comprehensive oral exams! Ahh! First thing’s first – take a deep breath. You are going to make it through this ordeal alive. But you still probably want (and need) some advice on how to prepare and then how the exams will go once you’re taking them. I am happy to pass on some of the things I found to be most useful when I was preparing for and taking my comps. I will note that, as I took my comps at George Mason University, some of my advice may only apply to the culture of comps at that institution. That being said, I definitely believe a lot of the advice I’m about to give you is universal.

Preparing

You Are Going to Freak Out

This is inevitable. At some point it is going to happen. And, quite honestly, don’t fight it. Don’t beat yourself up because then you will freeze. Admit to yourself that you’re freaking out and that it’s okay and totally normal. And, importantly, talk about it with others. I recommend talking to a peer preparing for or who has taken their comps. I chose to talk to one of my committee members. Just admitting to her how terrified I was made me feel better. She reassured me that it was okay to feel scared and that conversation finally allowed me to move past my fear. It feels like your whole life is riding on this exam, but as my committee chair said of my exam (scheduled at two), four o’clock will come no matter what. Either way you live, at worst you take the exam again. So go ahead, have your moment of total insanity, get it out of your system, accept the nerves that inevitably remain, and move on (or have a bunch of mini-freak outs, whatever works for you). Get it out of your system. Don’t let it paralyze you.

Know Your Learning Style

This may seem counter-intuitive to include on a list where I am telling you how to study, but it is very important to only adopt study strategies that only work for you. It’s okay to try different methods, but don’t force yourself to adopt one strategy just because someone else tells you to. You know best how you learn, and you should nurture that. Having said that, don’t be afraid to try out new learning styles. You may find one that really works for you. But if something doesn’t work, ditch it. You don’t want someone else’s rules slowing you down or freaking you out. And don’t try to change last minute. Know ahead of time what works best for you.

Be Organized

You are going to be ingesting a lot of information in what is a comparatively short period of time. Therefore, you need a system. Keep everything in order and always keep your booklist up-to-date and well curated. You’ll also need to create a file system for notes, wherever you take them. One of the most important things I did was type a separate paragraph for each book summarizing each authors’ argument. These paragraphs became a reference while I studied and didn’t want to go through all my notes. I also created individual binders for each time period and filed book reviews in them along with my notes, which I organized according to my book lists. This system may sound like overkill to you, but it’s how I needed to prepare. You’ll also need to devise a way to compile and stay on top of your schedule or you’ll never be able to move forward or study.

Have a Plan of Action

Another title for this section might be: get good at scheduling. Once you’ve figured out how to organize the material you’ll be dealing with and the best way to absorb it, you need to divide your time so that you can take notes, study, and then you need to bring your advisors on board and schedule practice sessions with them. I was coincidentally and it turns out fortuitously unemployed in the months leading up to my comps, so I was able to structure my time completely around studying. I had a routine I went through every day. I needed this structure to prevent me from goofing off, hence the importance of time management. I studied at the same times every day, I had a set order for the books I worked on, note-taking, and review. A schedule will create routine, and routine will make studying feel natural. Structuring your time is crucial to feeling and being prepared.

Find the Right Place to Study

It is really important to find someplace where you’re comfortable but still able to focus and avoid distractions. If you’re having trouble getting yourself to study in your regular spots, try out some new ones. A good study spot can make the difference between procrastination and hard work. It’s that simple.

Take Notes by Hand

At Mason, so heavily focused toward digital media, this tip may seem like a big no-no. What if I lose my notes? The solution to that is to type them up after you write them, which is a great exercise because it forces you to review and allows you to reorganize things. Because there is something about writing things down by hand that your brain really likes. I found that writing my notes by hand forced me to slow down and think about the information I was filtering from the book to my own words. Writing by hand also encouraged me to take notes in my own words, which further forced me to process and articulate what I had read. Even if you type your notes, always do them in your own words whenever possible.

Reward Yourself, Both During Your Studying and After Your Comps

Devising some sort of reward system will encourage you to finish your task. These rewards can be little or they can be big. I’ll share mine with you. I had all my books in a six foot bookcase (organized by time period and author, of course) and before I started studying I put a green sticky on the spine of each book to represent that I hadn’t worked on them yet. Every time I finished working on a book, I switched the green sticky for a pink one. It was so rewarding to see my bookshelf go from green to pink. This system was a visual manifestation of my hard work. Your tracking or reward system may be different from mine, but it’s important to mark your progress with positive reinforcement to keep yourself from feeling bogged down or discouraged. Similarly, it’s important to plan a celebration for after your comps, if only to remind you that there is an after your comps. Emphasize progress at every step, and reward yourself along the way to remind yourself of that progress, no matter how small.

Your Booklists Are Living Documents

Like it or not, your booklists are living documents. In my case, this meant adding and subtracting books to and from certain lists even in the final months before my comps. I dealt with these changes by telling myself I was simply improving my knowledge of American history and immediately determining how my new books fit in with the rest of my lists. This is the second way your lists are living documents: you need to organize them in a way that emphasizes how the books are connected, and in that regard possibilities are endless, which means you should always be thinking of new ways to organize your lists. Organizing your booklists is one of the best ways to prepare for comps, when you’ll have to repeatedly discuss books that have common themes. Anticipating thematic questions will help you prepare answers beforehand. Further, you get to take your pre-organized booklists into comps with you to preserve the connections you’ve made beforehand if you get stumped.

Trust Your Advisors

This section may apply more to the faculty at GMU – the culture of comps there is an incredibly supportive one. No one at Mason is going to mislead your or ask you’re a gotcha question, at least not on purpose. You advisors are there to help you succeed because they want to see you succeed. They will give you honest feedback but they’re not going to crush your soul. Everything they say and do is meant to help you do better. They don’t want you fail. Firstly, that would mean you’d have to take your comps again, and no one wants to go through that high stress process a second time. More than that, your advisors take genuine joy in seeing you do well. Let their belief in you give you confidence.

Practice with Your Advisors and Write Down Their Questions

Again, here I can only speak to GMU’s comps culture, but if you are a Mason PhD student preparing for your comps, practice with your advisors. This is basically a requirement, as your advisor will use your practice sessions to determine if you’re ready to test. It will also give you a chance to hone your responses and receive feedback on your skills. Most importantly, your advisors will ask you practice questions that you will likely hear again (sometimes word for word) on your comps. For that reason, write down all the questions they ask you in your practice sessions and make sure you have good answers prepared for your actual testing session. Questions will most likely be tailored to your interests, so pay close attentions to the themes in the questions you are asked, too. These themes will appear again in your comps. If you follow these steps you’ll walk into the room facing fewer surprises.

Clear your Calendar of Anything Stressful on Examine Day

For those of you that have full-time jobs, this may be hard, but trust me when I say that you want everything on the day of your exam to be easy-breezey. Give yourself time to get enough sleep (if you can sleep). Try to eat something – have your favorite or least threatening foods at hand. Take a shower or bath. Don’t try to cram – watch a T.V. show, do some crosswords, something mindless and relaxing. The whole point is to relax so that you walk into the exam confident, calm, and not feeling frozen and overwhelmed. You’ve worked so hard – use these last moments of preparation to pamper yourself and reinforce that you’ve got this. Don’t do anything to increase your apprehension or that will make you feel less confident. Do things to reinforce how prepared you are and to calm your mind and body. Let go of your fear!

During Comps

Talk About Books You Like

This piece of advice was given in a colloquium before my comps and I found it to be very useful. I also wish I’d followed it. If you are going to criticize a book, be ready to defend your point of view. Certainly be honest, but know these books are on your list for a reason and you have to be able to identify and explain their strengths as well as their weaknesses. It’s also easier to talk about books you like because you’ll enjoy talking about them, which makes the whole conversation less stressful. Positive arguments are sometimes easier to make than negative ones, and most questions will be so open-ended that you’ll be able to steer the conversation in the direction you want it to go.

It’s Okay to Say “I Don’t Know”

It’s okay to say “I don’t know.” All saying “I don’t know means” is redirecting the conversation toward something you do know. This situation is why making note of inter-book themes and connections as part of your studying is so important. So you blanked on a specific book. Demonstrate you can still answer the question with your knowledge of different books. You can still talk about gender or race or consumerism or suffering in war time (I’m sorry I blanked on you, Sparrow). You can make connections across time to show larger trends in history. Your committee is willing to let you draw a blank if you can demonstrate a different way to answer the question and willingness to try. There is also a degree of respect that comes with admitting you don’t know something. True scholars aren’t afraid to admit they don’t know, especially if they can do it in the classroom setting you’re preparing for.

Enjoy Yourself

Before I took my comps, advisors and peers told me to think of comps as a chance to have an intelligent conversation about history with scholars as their peer instead of as their student. This was exactly my experience, and I loved it. The tone stayed conversational, we laughed, and we engaged in debates about some of the best books written about one of the most wonderful subjects ever. There aren’t exactly right answers, just your willingness to make a point and defend it with the reading, all with a certain about of flexibility. You may be challenged, but you are an intellectual – relish the challenge. This love of challenges, more than anything, is the best trait you can carry with you into your career, whatever it may be. Think of comps as an official entry into the inner circle of scholars that you’ve been training to become a part of for the past few years. You love history. You want to talk about it for the rest of your life. This is just the first of many great conversations.

And there you have it! These are my greatest hits for preparing for comps. The only other thing I’ll say is make sure to give yourself plenty of time, and if you can, take your comps right after your 803s. That way your memory is fresh. And, most importantly, you are going to be fine. No matter what, four o’clock will come. You are a superstar, you are ready for this, and you should embrace the first day of the rest of your history career.

After my apprenticeship ended this December, I found myself unemployed and facing a very intimidating job market. Though I applied to many history jobs, my situation necessitated that I apply to jobs outside the field. The job I ultimately landed has nothing to do with history, or so I thought. The truth is, I use my history-related skills every day, and it was these same skills that attracted my employer to me. As a result of my experiences, I thought I’d write a guide for those of you facing jobs outside of history.

As most of us already know, the academic job market is brutal, and many other history-related fields aren’t much better. What these dreary statistics, combined with the need to make a living mean is that many of us will have to take non-history jobs, at least temporarily. If you’re anything like me, a teacher at birth, you may find this to be disappointing at best. That’s why its important to know that you can still use your history-related skills, even as a non-historian. You can sell those skills while interviewing and flaunt them on-the-job. Trying to frame your job through the lens of a historian’s craft  might make being away from academia easier. With that said, here are some of the most important skills that won me a non-history related job and that continue to impress my employers at work. These are the skills to emphasize in and interview and utilize every day on the job.

Problem Solving

Once an employer sees a long chain of degrees behind your name, they’re going to expect you to be pretty competent. You are, and you should make use of this skill. A lot of jobs will throw you in the water and expect you to know how to swim, which means you’ll also be thinking on your feet. But this is something you know how to do. The easiest example is your experience standing in front of a classroom, fielding challenging and unexpected questions. You’re also a scholar, which means you are always posing questions and then searching for answers. This skill set means you have the tools you need to complete the tasks employers put before you. You’re also not afraid to ask questions, which will increase your knowledge and improve your job performance.

Writing/Editing

If you think freshmen papers are bad, you might be surprised by how much of that writing survives into the work world. Somewhere some composition folks aren’t doing their jobs. But being able to communicate in writing in the work world is crucial. Email is one of the main ways workers communicate, so being able to write clearly, concisely, correctly, and politely is incredibly important, especially if the information you’re communicating is critical or about a high priority task. And don’t worry, these are plenty of opportunities for writing outsides of correspondence (though the perfectly crafted email can be somewhat satisfying). For one thing, the world is replete with proposals of all kinds that need to be written, something all historians should know how to do. It may not be that least stressful, most fun part of being a historian, but working on any proposal is good practice for your own. There’s all sorts of other things to write – technical information, press releases, web content/blogs. You’re also incredibly valuable as an editor. Employers will want to exploit these skills, which means you get a chance to use them.

Learning/Teaching
In my mind, learning and teaching are different sides of the same coin. As a historian, particularly if you have higher degrees, you are a sponge for information and treat every task as a chance to gain knowledge. Employers will love how fast you learn and how much knowledge you retain. You’re also flexible and can apply your knowledge in many different situations, which also relates to problem solving. As a PhD, you also know how to communicate complex information in an understandable manner (I hope), which will be an important skill when interacting with your co-workers. In other words, you will be able to communicate your knowledge to them. Don’t be afraid to show off your brain!

Self-Motivated

Every historian knows that, ultimately, you are your own taskmaster. That means you know about self-directed research and you’re used to writing to deadlines. These are both skills that will serve you well in a work environment. Your boss may task you, but it’s up to you to get the job done in time. When you interview, make sure to emphasize your self-motivational skills. Talk about what it’s like to write a thesis or dissertation or to develop a lecture. Talk about the time table for completion you had to write in your prospectus and how you work to adhere to it. If someone doesn’t understand all the lonesome researching and writing that goes into earning your degree, enlighten them!

Researching

Businesses always need someone who can find information and answer questions. You are an absolute wiz at this. No one knows how to use a search function like you do. For example, say you have to write a proposal for your new employer but your aren’t knowledgeable about the business yet. Your research skills mean you’ll be able to find the right information and parse it quickly. Have oral history skills? Even better! You know how to talk to people to get the information you need. Your co-workers will come to you for answers because they’ll know you’ll always be able to provide them. I use my research skills every day, whether it’s writing proposals or digging up information on our server. Ferreting our information is one of the best parts of my job.

Organizational Skills

I debated putting this on the list because I know that organization is a spectrum of disarray that varies from person to person. But the fact of the matter is that if you’re a PhD then you must have some system, even if you’re the only one who understands it. This is the idea you have to sell to your employer – no matter what, you know how to to get things done and you have the right systems in place to help you do it. As a PhD, people will expect you to be on top of your game, and you are.

Good Under Pressure

You may have read this point and laughed, but it’s true, you are! Think of all the things that have been thrown at you that you’ve survived and excelled at. A great example to bring up in an interview is your comps. For 2 hours you sat in a room and answered complex questions from three people about ~100 books with no notes. And you lived! Maybe you’ve defended your dissertation – talk about that harrowing experience. Any example of grace under first that you can bring up is valuable. Work can be incredibly fast-paced as your pursue the completion of important projects and you want to prove to your employer that you can survive the stress. Being a PhD student qualifies you to make that claim.

Multi-taking

This point is closely related to being good under pressure, as it can be pretty stressful when you have a bunch of tasks piled on you at once. But you’re a PhD student and you already know that, which is what you need to stress to your potential employer. You may even be crazy enough to enjoy the juggling and fast pace, something else to emphasize in your interview. You may not being doing history work, but you can take joy in the flurry of activity, balancing tasks, and completing them correctly. Keeping yourself busy may even help you forget that you prefer having your nose in a book or digging through archives. But remember, being good at your job is its own reward.

You may not be applying for or working in a history-related job, but your love of history and the skills associated with your degree will never leave you. They will continue to enrich your life no matter what you do, so don’t despair. You can get a job with your skills, and you can use that job to keep your skills sharp. Don’t be afraid to make a living while you’re waiting to get called up to the Big Show.

That’s it! I hereby declare my HIST 697 final project completed for submission! You can view it here. I really hope I’ve solved the information architecture problem. I’ve got three films up and running with commentary, with a bunch more uploaded to YouTube for future dissection. Figuring out YouTube (sort of) has been one of my greatest triumphs.

I’m not going to say too much in this blog post because I’m pretty exhausted, but it was great sharing Clio II (and I!) with you guys this year. Thank you so much for all your helpful critiques and also your teaching sessions with me. I really did enjoy the collaborative environment. Now I’m going to look at all your projects!

In addition to my own blog post, I am going to provide some brief comments on one of my classmate‘s final projects:

Great job on this draft of your final project. I love the idea behind the project itself, and I’ll throw out some comments on the design that hopefully will be helpful.

First of all, your site is extremely image heavy, and for someone with a slow internet connection, like me, this means it is taking forever to load. Can you try reducing the file size of all your background images using Photoshop so it’s a slower load time? Or perhaps simply removing one and using a color code instead? Also, you may want to look at your site in Google Chrome. In that browser the alignment of all the elements is way off, weighted toward the left side of the browser. It also appears to be off in Firefox, so now I’m curious if this skewed alignment was your intention? Either way, check your alignment.

Also, you mentioned font choices in your blog. I’m not sure what specific comments Geoff made to you, but I would remove the use of Papyrus in your header image. That font is just about as ridiculed as Comic Sans. I actually follow a blog dedicated to pointing out and disapproving of, if not downright mocking, every use of Papyrus that people come across in design. Perhaps try pulling out one of the historic serifs from your newspaper to use instead. I think this will also help give a more historic feel to the page. Either way, definitely get rid of the Papyrus. Also, the blue in your footer will probably garner you accusations of oversaturation. It is also quite jarring when compared with the rest of your color scheme.

Other than those critiques, I think you’ve got quite a good start. I look forward to seeing the completed project.

This week I spent a lot of time working on the design for my website, trying to take some of the very helpful criticisms I received to heart. I dedicated most of my energy to developing a better information architecture for my site. This meant a re-worked menu bar, which now features a drop down menu that will hopefully direct users much more obviously to my content. The code I used is here, for anyone else who’s interested. I found it to be very easy to work with.

I also redesigned the Watch the Films page so that the actual films themselves are embedded in their entirety on this page. Each film is accompanied by a brief essay and two links, one in the essay itself and one in the caption, directing the user to the film’s dedicated essay page. The film icon next to the film’s title/header also links directly to the film’s dedicated page when clicked. On the essay page, the film in its entirety is presented on the top, but I have re-sized the embedded video so that it is much smaller. This way the user is instantly visually clued into the continuing text. It’s not all hidden below the fold. The essay is both foregrounded and still paired to the film.

The site is otherwise still very light on content. This is partially a reflection of my desire to get the design right first. Once I have that structure in place, I think it will be much easier (and I hope faster) for me to plug in that missing content. It’s also a reflection of my continuing struggles with YouTube. For one thing, I have a very slow DSL connection and I’m not sure how to broach how unacceptable this is with my landlord. Downloading and uploading videos halts my entire connection and I can’t do anything else online until the long slog has finished. So that’s annoying.

Also, I ran into some weird copyright issues. I found some great videos on the Internet Archive that the site identified as in the public domain, but when I uploaded them to YouTube I discovered that there they are flagged as copyrighted. There’s an appeals process, but if you lose they make it sound like you’re doomed to hell fire for all eternity, so I abandoned those particular videos. I also had a time trying to figure out how to upload videos longer than 15 minutes, and when I figured out the solution was to click the link at the bottom of the upload page I felt stupid. So.

Other than uploading context, there are still visual issues that must be addressed, such as the design of my header image, the saturation of my color scheme, and my treatment of the yellow borders. I wanted my page to look like a movie poster, but the point about the yellow against the white is well-taken. I also have yet to even attempt my print stylesheet.

I must also give Jeri a direct shout-out, as her continuing and very thoughtful critique has really helped me understand where I need to go with the site.

I am really late in getting this up, and that’s because I greatly underestimated how hard and time consuming my chosen project was going to be. Uploading videos to YouTube is not as simple as they want you to believe, especially when you have the slowest DSL on earth and your computer randomly decides to remove sound from everything so you have to download everything again and your cat wants to play ALL THE TIME and he breaks things when you ignore him.

That being said, here is what I have up so far:

• Civil Defense Cinema: This is the front page for my project. Some of you may recognize it from my design project. Currently only one link works, and that is…
• Watch the Films!: This is the crux of my website. Here users will be able to scroll down a list of links to films and then select the ones they want to watch. I have two films up to show what the design will look like, but only one link works and that is…
• Let’s Face It: This is a model for the kind of page my users will interact with. After clicking the link, the first thing they’ll see is the embedded YouTube video, which they can then watch. As they scroll down they will read a brief summary of the video, and then, as you can see, I have broken the video down into specific subsections. Each screenshot represents a certain important aspect of the civil defense film, which I explain in the accompanying text. If the user clicks the screen shot they will be taken directly to the part of the video that I am discussing in the text. Interactive!

There is still much left to do. As you can see, I’ve continued with my cinema theme at the bottom of the page. All the currently playing links do work, they just go directly to the YouTube pages for the videos and many of them don’t even have descriptive text there. I have more videos to upload, but that is a long, slow slog, and it shuts down my entire internet so I have to work around it.

Other things I need to do:

• The link currently titled “About Us!” will be changed to say “Civil Defense!” Users can visit this page to read a short summary of what civil defense is and learn the meaning of some key terms, themes, and tropes related to the program. Basically, historical background information. I plan to embed an “about me” page in the footer, as David did.
• “Further Reading!” also has to be changed. I’m actually thinking of making it say “More Stuff!” That goes with the campy, movie poster feel of the site, at least. On this page I’m going to put links to other resources, including all the books on civil defense I read for the project, links to all the free archives where I found the videos and images, and links to other wonderful civil defense websites.
• Spell check. Lots and lots of spell check.

Part of what’s taking up so much time, other than struggling with YouTube, is writing all the content. Taking all those screen shots and editing them is easy but incredibly time consuming, as is deciding what I want to focus on in which video. Some of the important subtext is repeated over and over, so I have to decide if I want to highlight it in each individual video or not. I think treating each as an individual piece is best, but that is definitely time consuming.

I plan to keep working on my website all the way up until class time, so hopefully there will be a bit more content by then. I’ve really enjoyed watching the videos, and working with them, and I hope I’ve at least begun to come up with a good way to collect and display them to users, as well as pair them with historical narrative. The design of the site is making me nervous, but in trying to generate and upload content I’ve neglected that side. I guess I won’t know until I get some actual users to comment, so I look forward to tomorrow’s criticism and I’m really glad I have that full two weeks to work on this. I will say, however, that I really like this project a lot. It’s a great way for ME to gather and think about my primary sources, and my audience, and if it works out I can envision myself keeping up with the project after CLIO, or at least transforming it into something else.

Edit: This week I commented on David’s revised final project draft.