A timeline is an obvious solution to make that clear to a tenure committee consisting of people who don’t even do history. But if “my history” is that long and covers allegedly five thousand years (historians have issues with that claim), it’s a squeeze to fit it all in. One solution is to borrow the scroll format, like Along the River during the Qingming Festival. I felt I already was pushing the format of my file by including illustrations for a non-Art tenure case, so I let that go for now.

Squirrel to the rescue! He can unroll the timeline like a garden hose to its fullest extent for display purposes, and can reel it back in anytime to tidy it away. And while we’re at it, I might as well point out that any East Asian historian worth their salt at a SLAC (Small Liberal Arts College), ends up covering Japan and Korea as well. It does help to have a little hippo on hand to model the correct reaction, of course! This ended up being a full page in my file, because… East Asian history is really long, you know? And just to be clear, I highlighted my area of scholarly expertise in purple, although I will happily cover it all “from Yao to Mao” and beyond.

The top panel has become a very regular feature at the start of any premodern Chinese history class to orient us for the session that day, and I use little coloured pointers to indicate where exactly we are. Reusable, and fun: what more do we want out of tenure file products?

Turns out if I can put squirrels on it, I can reframe even writing a tenure statement as a (somewhat) fun task. QED:

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During our online era (2020-21) I offered exploration packs for my classes, and students told me they liked that: even when neither of the two options were something they really wanted, they could at least choose against something. I wrote a bit more about the how and why of this approach on my other blog. I opted here for an engaged and energetic European Red Squirrel who goes on an adventure, here choosing between two options for Shang dynasty history.

This squirrel also acted as the cover card for my tenure file’s Canvas course shell. And I can easily go into the drawing and write something else on the arrows to represent an active choice, so he is very re-useable. Where should he point next? Let me know in the comments!