Advice on writing the academic job letter

The job letter for an R1 job typically has three parts--after your exordium (in which you specify when and where you will be completing your degree), you describe your research (primarily your dissertation), your teaching, and any service. It should not be longer than two pages.

Students struggle most with the description of the research project. Keep in mind:

1. Your goal is a clear and cogent description or your project that clearly places it in an ongoing scholarly conversation within the field for which you're applying. If you're applying for a rhet/comp job, then you make it clear how this is going to change the conversation in rhet/comp.
2. Give a clear sense about your publication plans.
3. Ideally, your research is clearly related to your teaching, so that there is an obvious repertoire of grad and undergrad courses that could follow naturally from it.
4. Your description of your research project should be comprehensible and engaging to non-specialists (the "Faulkner guy" as Frank Wigham says). 

Notice how often I used the term "clear." You aren't trying to impress people with how smart you are, or how hip, or well-read. Be clear.

Some tips about the process of writing a good job letter:

• Write multiple drafts from scratch. Don't get attached to your own words.
• Write at least one version as though you're writing to someone you like, such as a favorite professor from undergrad. It's better if they're not r/c. Go ahead and be colloquial.
• Write a deliberately bad letter--pompous, unclear, offensive, dumbass.
• Try different rhetorical strategies: focussing incident, conversion narrative, they say/I say, I say/they say.
• Keep the stakes low. Write early and often and generate lots of versions. Once you've got a bunch, then try pulling one together.