I'm a tenured professor in a humanities department at a second-tier research university in the United States. My Ph.D. is from a top-ten program in my discipline. I have an above-average number of publications for my age. I have about five years of undergraduate and graduate teaching experience post-Ph.D.
I have an opportunity to take a job as a writer/editor for a marketing company. I'm inclined to take it (for reasons I won't detail here) but am worried that if I don't end up liking my new job, it will be impossible to get back into academia after having left voluntarily.
I'm not expecting that I would get my current position back, or necessarily be rehired to a tenured position. I'm just wondering how hard it would be to go back on the job market and find a tenured or tenure-track position somewhere in maybe two or three years' time if I end up hating the new job.
I want to emphasize that I am in a humanities discipline. I gather that in the sciences, it is common for one to leave an academic position to go work in "industry," then later return to academia. I have never heard of anyone doing this in the humanities, however. Does it happen?
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