I was just reminded by Kathy Geier on FB and Twitter that when she was a student at Hunter College in the early 1990s, she took a comparative literature course with Philip Roth. According to Kathy, Roth had no TAs, designed the course himself, graded all the papers (and there was a lot of writing), and was paid reasonably. The last point was confirmed by Ken Sherrill, whose memory of Lillian Hellmann teaching at CUNY I spoke about here. About all of which Scott Lemieux said: What I find really strange about this is that he [Roth] apparently put together a syllabus for a course without at least 3 grad students to help him; almost as if he was an […]

In response to my Petraeusgate posts, Ken Sherrill, who’s a professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College, sent me this email: Around my first year at Hunter (1967-68)  the Dean hired Lillian Hellman as a visiting professor for a purpose like this. It turned out that Hellman hated the students and vice-versa. I’m trying to remember how the plug got pulled. In any case, while I don’t know if she was hired full-time and given a one course load or if she was hired as an adjunct, I’m pretty sure Hellman was paid normal rates.