The Academic Career: Exploring International Teaching and Research

Kevin Riordan (PhD 2011) was a high school teacher at an international school in Japan before he entered the U for a doctorate in English. Now senior lecturer at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, Riordan says he was interested in the PhD “as a career teacher as well as an aspiring academic (in that narrower and now somewhat mythic sense).” The earlier job in Japan turned out to influence what he did after graduating: “When I started on the job market, I had more luck internationally than domestically,” says Riordan, “and this has remained the case, reinforced by precedent.” Riordan is the author of Modernist Circumnavigations: Around the World in Jules Verne's Wake (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and editor of Tales of an Eastern Port: The Singapore Novellas of Joseph Conrad (NUS Press, 2023). He graciously answered our emailed questions. 

Would you describe your career path?

I was a teacher first. Having some teaching experience meant that, at the U, I went straight to teaching stand-alone literature classes, became a teaching mentor, and took up a lot of other teaching things (an OLLI class, some early online teaching, etc.). After finishing at Minnesota, my first job was in the Writing Program at NYU Abu Dhabi—despite my not having taught in Writing Studies at the U (a regret). Since that institution was new, it led to opportunities that would be harder to find at more established schools: in my second year, for instance, I started directing the Writing Centre. 

At that point, I got an offer in an English department proper, at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, a large, research-forward school with MA and PhD programs. Classes there were large and often examination-centered, and it had a very different feel. I like research too, and working with grad students was great, but other pieces of that academic culture weren’t always a good fit. Fast-forward to 2021, I was finishing my book during COVID, and, long story short, my contract wasn't renewed. In retrospect, I think I would have moved on at some point anyway—it didn’t feel like a forever job—but it was a life shakeup, nonetheless. Now I’ve taken on a more teaching-focused role at Yale-NUS in Singapore, a wonderful liberal arts project that is unfortunately closing next year.

My family and I are exploring all sorts of bigger changes, but it makes sense for us to stay in Singapore for now—including, for me, to finish up some research projects on Singapore literature and theater. At Yale-NUS, my classes are small, and I’ve invented some new syllabi for the first time in a long time. I’m relearning to teach, nervously and excitedly. This college, with the pending closure, has only juniors and seniors (and next year only seniors), which is a unique kind of teaching, advising theses and really supporting what these students might do next. It’s great, and temporary for all sorts of reasons.

What is most fulfilling or energizing about your work?

Teaching new things or starting new projects always provides some spark, when the otherwise cyclical school years start to accumulate and blend together. It’s sometimes hard to teach myself new methods or new subfields, but it’s also what maintains my interest; last semester I taught “Literature at Sea,” and I was frantically reading to stay ahead of my students. It was great.

Otherwise, I have always been energized by the side projects and side hustles. I work, in part, on theater, and after writing an article on the New York company Theater Mitu some years ago, I’ve started working with them, doing production dramaturgy and going on research or training trips to India and Japan. If doing strictly literary research seems to be isolating and goes on forever, getting back “in the room,” on a production schedule and in constant collaboration is so refreshing. Or: a few years back, a few other Asia-based modernism scholars and I found ourselves commiserating at UK and US conferences about our unsustainable travel and realized we should start our own organization in Asia (MSIA). Building up a broader network of colleagues, and doing projects beyond the immediate workplace, grounds and inspires me back in this office or classroom.

What do you wish you had known as a graduate student?

It’s bluntly practical, even cynical, but worth mentioning: a visiting post-doc recently spoke to our students and, when asked about her success, curtly replied, “Money follows money.” Glib in isolation, her broader point was that she had applied to small grants and prizes; these led to a paper trail and then success with larger opportunities. I’ve had a parallel experience with publishing, where a short translation or an online article gets read more widely than an article I’d been working on for years—and those little things seed new projects that come more easily. So, apply to things on larks, reach out to strangers, and dive into opportunities that don’t seem great fits.

An example: in 2007, I was coaxed to apply for a Celtic Studies travel grant at the U—despite not really working on Celtic Studies—and now (in 2024!) I have a forthcoming article about Japanese theater based on some pictures I saw in the National Library of Ireland.

I’d have liked to have done more language study at the U, and to have taken greater advantage of being at the University in general. I might’ve better embraced many side things as the thing itself: volunteering in the arts community, organizing with people in other departments, being in local libraries and archives, doing more non-academic writing. I was cautious to not get distracted from the degree, but the distractions retrospectively seem like training and preparation too, and sometimes they led (in roundabout ways) to breakthroughs in degree progress.

What advice would you give current graduate students considering or preparing for the academic job market?

I’m still seeking and updating such advice myself, so feel a bit bashful giving it! I think there is a more realistic conversation about “alt-ac” than there used to be, and that’s a good thing. Without quite having the language for it, that’s what many of us were pivoting to when we finished a decade ago. A lot of successful peers find themselves in “staffulty” (a new word for me!) positions, as researchers, editors, or educators, sometimes in universities proper, but also in high schools or at publishing houses, libraries, or other institutions. I have remained closer to traditional teaching-and-research jobs, but so far not in the US. I guess my advice would be to daydream about and work toward the next job, project, or opportunity without putting too much pressure on the first job being the last or defining one.