Express Your Ideas, Show Off Your Talent. . .

Whether creative, academic, artistic, or a combonation of the three, there are several opportunites and ways to participate in upcoming literary and creative events.

Threshold, the student literary and arts magazine of DePaul University, is now accepting submissions of anything from short stories to photographs, one-act plays to graphics. Submit yours now and be part of the annual publication of the best student work. The deadline is April 2. More Info.

The 2004 Graduate Student Conference: Organized and run by graduate students, the conference is interdisciplinary in scope; papers are invited in any area of medieval or Renaissance studies. It provides participants the opportunity to present their work in a collegial scholarly forum, to meet students from other institutions and disciplines who will be their future colleagues, and to become familiar with the Newberry Library and its resources. The deadline for abstract submission is March 1! More Info.

2004 M/MLA conference announcements and ongoing calls for papers.

Faculty:Submit citations,works in progress

Employment Opportunities! Here are some useful resources you should consult if you're interested in careers in publishing, professional and technical writing, non-profit arts and humanities organizations, or teaching overseas.

Some important advice: if you want to join any of these groups (esp. those that, like Women in Technology, communicate via a discussion list), first familiarize yourself with general "netiquette." This is crucial for all of your professional endeavors. Click here for more infomation, guidelines, and links.

MAW student Lyndee Yamshon recently took advatage of these resources and was offered a job as a grant writer/PR person at Family Services, a non-profit counseling organization in Highland Park

Feature Essay: "Talking the Talk: the M.A. and Academic Language" MAE Alumn John Pendell, PhD Candidate, University of Iowa, delivered this paper for the panel, "What's the MA Degree For?" at the M/MLA in November 2003.

I have been in graduate school for a number of years, and having finally attained that coveted status of “advanced graduate student,” I want to employ today one of the many benefits that comes with that status—that is, to be able to pick on other students a bit and explain a little about what I’ve heard by listening to their voices. Over the years of coursework I’ve done, both in an MA and a PhD program, I’ve gathered enough anecdotal (if not empirical) evidence to talk about an interesting split among the students in my English PhD program at the University of Iowa: those who entered the program with an MA (not always in English) and those who have not. My talk today will focus primarily on the graduate classroom setting, and the way those preparing for a career in the profession of literary studies (as nearly everyone in my program at least initially intends to do) pick up the language they need to succeed. I’d like to consider today that the acquisition of the language of literary studies is akin to the acquisition of any second language. Although there are no native speakers of this tongue, there are certainly those so proficient as to seem like they’ve been bilingual since birth. But of course, as with any foreign language, acquiring academic language comes with an awkward learning period, and few “non-native” speakers will ever feel like they speak it fluently.

The split in my program centers on the degree to which students have mastered the language of the field, and the speed with which they accomplish the task. Iowa accepts roughly half of its new students each year from each category, and I have been in classes with a fairly representative sample of students over the past several years. I have never been privy to just how the admissions committee arrives at its decisions, but once students are enrolled, the department makes no formal or institutional distinctions between types of students (nor, for that matter, does it make any secrets about the previous educational training of any student). However, as apprentices to a profession based in part on attuning oneself to the fine points of rhetorical matters, students in my PhD program would have little trouble in divining the preparation of their colleagues in any case. Those who enter with an M.A. simply sound different from the rest, at least in the beginning. I want to focus then on what that difference sounds like, and on a few practical ramifications of a program where speakers of two different languages sit side by side in discussions of Lacan, or Zizek, or semiotics, or constructs.

Students don’t neatly divide into “masters” and “novices” of academic discourse, of course; rather, they are arrayed on a sliding scale of adeptness. Still, the interesting linguistic cases are arranged near either end. Not surprisingly, the linguistic distance between the haves and the have-nots is most noticeable upon immediate entry into the program, and is most evident in those first few class meetings in the fall semester that, for better or worse, all too often leave such a striking impression of just exactly what a particular student is all about (and some long-lasting, classic memories for those who got to witness these moments—I know I can’t be the only one who notices these things). It’s not my intent here to prove that students coming in with an M.A. are at a permanent advantage in a PhD program, or that the level of discourse a student displays on the first day has anything to do with the future quality of that person’s work, or even the speed with which they move through the program—only to note that the curve toward relative mastery of the language is a steep one, and that an M.A. program can be a slightly less. . .Read More