Today we’d like to introduce you to Elizabeth Keohane-Burbridge.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Elizabeth. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I grew up in New York with four older brothers and one younger sister. We all attended Catholic schools and, by 4th grade, my career goals had rotated between farmer, rancher, president of the United States, and nun. High school and college brought additional job ideas, including Supreme Court Justice (at which my high school guidance counselor laughed when I told him) and history professor. After college, I worked as a paralegal and then taught preschoolers with special needs. Finally, in my mid-twenties, I decided to enter graduate school in pursuit of a medieval history PhD.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Knowing that graduate school in the humanities takes several years, especially as my focus was medieval history and would require archival research and becoming proficient in three additional languages, my partner (boyfriend when I entered graduate school, husband by the time the doctoral program started) and I decided to start having children. Three girls and a move from New York to Atlanta happened before I defended my dissertation. My graduate school did not have maternity leave for graduate students and funding was limited, which made writing a dissertation with three small children difficult, but I was determined to finish and lucky to have a partner who was able to support us. Adjuncting and student loans paid for childcare.
Even then, it took over a decade to finish my Ph.D. But, there I was. Mid-thirties. Done with the dissertation. Contemplating the academic job market. Over the seven years we lived in Georgia, we had moved to Decatur and I was serving on various committees and boards for the City. My love of politics and involvement in government was competing with my desire to be a tenure-track professor. Ultimately, the former won out and I decided to not even engage with the latter. Instead, I applied to job openings at independent schools in Atlanta and was hired by Woodward Academy. I was now able to teach history but also to continue to make a difference in a community about which I felt strongly.
This path sounds rosy, right? It wasn’t. There were lots of fights as my academic work was not always taken seriously – it was referred to as my “hobby,” for example. I also had the baby blues after the births of my girls but without maternity leave, I still had to pay for tuition and felt so guilty wasting our family’s economic resources if I didn’t at least do something.
My advice? Get yourself a village of friends who can commiserate, not judge, and also – hopefully – watch your children. Find an adviser sympathetic to having children in graduate school and one who will try to work the system to help you. And if you have a partner? Don’t just ask for help – demand it. And if anyone describes your undergraduate or graduate work as your “hobby”? Reach out to me. I have a few choice words.
what should we know about Footnoting History? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Now, about six years ago, in the midst of writing my dissertation, adjuncting, and having children, I started to think about what I would do when it was all done. The academic job market is notoriously hard. There was a very real possibility that I would not get a teaching job but I live to talk about history. Enter: podcasts. After looking over history podcasts, I decided that there was an opening for more podcasts that were created by academics but geared toward the general public. I contacted some friends from graduate school and they agreed. Together, we started Footnoting History (visit our website). Besides being academics (many history podcasts are created by lovers of history, but not necessarily trained historians), we were also comprised almost completely of women. We also produced episodes under thirty minutes – we thought of them as what you could listen to on the way to work or while cooking dinner. Most history podcasts are created by men and the majority of episodes are an hour or longer. Basically, we decided to create what we wanted to listen to and we decided there was a market for such podcasts. And there is. Since we started, we’ve had nearly two million downloads, including in the last year or so about forty thousand downloads a month. We have been invited to speak at academic conferences to help guide others who would like to start their own podcasts, we’ve been included on numerous lists of history podcasts, and we’ve been told by listeners that they appreciate the length of our episodes that they can play as they drive their teens to school.
Looking back on your childhood, what experiences do you feel played an important role in shaping the person you grew up to be?
As mentioned, I have four older brothers. My brothers were heavily involved in theater programs and so I was too. Additionally, my family is big into debates. We will debate any and everything. History is, as you might imagine, a popular topic. From my youngest days, I was expected to contribute to our family debates – and did I! I know that many families consider politics or religion to be off-topic, but that is pretty much all we talked about growing up. In college, I met men who did not seem to believe women should either have an opinion or share their opinions. This attitude was so different than how I had been raised. Being aware that some people think this way about women has definitely shaped how I teach and how I raise my girls because I want my students and my children to know that women should never be silenced, even if it makes others uncomfortable.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.footnotinghistory.com
- Email: footnotinghistory@gmail.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FootnotingHistory/
- Twitter: @historianmum
- Other: https://twitter.com/HistoryFootnote
Image Credit:
Tyler Burbridge, Alison Keohane, Lucy Barnhouse, John Keohane
Getting in touch: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
