Your Academic Job Talk Must Create Tension

This chapter details the principles for selecting and describing scholarship in an academic job talk. In particular, the chapter conceptualizes the job talk as a story of the speaker’s research program. Constructing this story involves strategically selecting three pieces of scholarship to discuss during the talk and in a way that is informed by principles of storytelling in film, namely, the concept of the film trilogy. Building off of Chap. 13 , this chapter articulates the principles for selecting and describing the second piece of scholarship discussed in an academic job talk and argues that this piece is strategically selected because the speaker predicts that it will create tension or conflict in the audience and how they engage with the speaker’s work. As such, this chapter details the core features of this “conflict story” of the talk and its connection to the two other pieces of scholarship discussed in Chaps. 13 and 15 .