Academic Careers Workshop

This course is open to all graduate students in English and Comparative Literature who have passed their oral exams. The course, which students may take for R-credit, has several aims. It will help you: sharpen the focus of your dissertation and clarify the nature of its contribution; expand your scholarly profile, illuminating the breadth of what you have to offer academic life; and launch activities that can make your potential contributions visible and legible. We will look closely at the kinds of materials you will circulate on the job market: cover letters, CVs, teaching statements, research statements, DEI statements, teaching portfolios, and more. We will workshop these in the seminar, while also practicing the oral forms you will encounter in the job market: interviews, presentations, job talks. At the same time, one of the central aims of the seminar is to help you develop your sense of who you are as a scholar, teacher, and member of the profession more broadly, whether you are just post-orals or about to defend your dissertation. Thus, throughout the semester we will engage in exercises such as elevator pitches or the production of creative, collaborative, and / or public humanities projects that will help you expand the universe of professional possibilities and highlight the richness of your potential contributions.

Preparing yourself for the academic job market can be emotionally wrenching, but it can also be exciting. The seminar will serve not only as a workshop but also as a supportive community of scholars, teachers, readers, and writers helping one another envision the work they might do and, at the same time, remember why it matters.