This is the second in an at-least-two-part series about how awkward professors are.
Last time, I claimed that professors are so awkward they don’t even know how to refer themselves. Today, I want to talk about that most sacred and awkward institution: the professor marriage.
Professors often marry other professors. There’s nothing so inherently awkward about that — why not marry your grad-school sweetheart? But the uncomfortable saga that ensues is truly cringe-inducing. Distant-cousin Bwog has a nice article that tries to minimize the awkwardness of academic marriages, but don’t be fooled.
Professor couples will only admit their marriage when cornered, and even then they’ll do so gruffly, as if confessing to a drinking problem. Husband and wife might be working three doors down from each other, but for all anyone else knows, they’re total strangers. As for PDA? Forget it. All that means to professor couples is some kind gadget that’s too hard to use.
Example #1: I had no idea that Linguistics professors Gillian Sankoff and Bill Labov were married, even when Labov guest-lectured one of Sankoff’s classes.
Only when Sankoff interrupted Labov’s talk — “No one can hear you, Bill! Talk into the microphone!” — with a distinctly spousal tone did I realize the truth.
Example #2: Despite working together, couple Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney make absolutely no mention of their marriage. Instead, Seyfarth mentions only that “I’ll be co-teaching [BBB 231] (with Prof. Cheney in Biology).” Cheney says, “My research is conducted jointly with Robert Seyfarth, a member of Penn’s Psychology Department.” In a webpage filled with pictures of baboon couples, not one picture shows the two professors together.
Why does it have to be this way? I guess it has to do with the implication that in professor couples, one partner is the one the university really wants and the other is just allowed to tag along. So a publicly acknowledged marriage invites speculation as to whether a professor is the intellectual bread-winner or the gold-digger in the relationship.
Still, it would be less awkward for everyone if married couples in academia loosened up a little bit and showed some affection towards each other. Less awkward, and much, much grosser.
Notable exception(s):
- None.
Tags: awkward, baboons, professors
An RSS feed of The Spin is available
April 2nd, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Heh, nice.
April 5th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I professor couples’ disinclination to refer to their spouses on a CV or course description has more o do with being professional than shame. I mean, how unprofessional does “Prof. X conducts her research with her husband” or “Prof X. co-wrote the paper with his wife of 20 years” sound? That’s just how academia is.