A Guide to
Graduate Study in English
(and Beyond)
By Stephen
Karian
Should You Pursue Graduate Study?
Dissertation and Writing Guides
This is
my admittedly modest guide to graduate study in English. I list useful weblinks and helpful
books and articles for students interested in pursuing graduate study,
succeeding as a graduate student, and becoming a professional in the
field. I have only begun to extend
this guide beyond the graduate student experience.
The
literature on professional development for graduate students and faculty is
extensive and constantly growing.
(That growth may well be a symptom of the insecurities created by a weak
job market for Ph.D.s in many fields; see the first heading below.) I thought this brief guide would help a
beginner navigate this material to gain practical advice. Another major need for this kind of
guide is that this information is essential for success in graduate school and
beyond, though it is not widely taught or shared. Each person must seek on one's own.
I have
included very little here that is relevant to teaching. This is not because teaching is
unimportant, but because most undergraduate and graduate students have little
knowledge about other aspects of the profession and because most graduate
programs directly train their students for teaching but don't help them become
professionals in other areas.
Three
caveats: 1) I include only books
and articles that I am personally acquainted with; the absence of particular
references may indicate my own ignorance or bad judgment. 2) These opinions are my own, and not
necessarily those of Marquette University's English Department. 3) This is very much a work in
progress.
(Most
of the links to The
Chronicle of Higher Education will work for Marquette users only; the
exceptions are marked as "public".)
Intellectual
abilities and motivations are necessary but not sufficient for making a career
in academe. Anyone seeking a Ph.D.
in English (and many other fields) needs to understand that the job market for
tenure-track positions continues to be bad and that there are no certain signs
of improvement for the near future.
(Note that I refer to anyone seeking a Ph.D.; a Master's degree requires
a shorter investment of time and by itself would not make one eligible for a
tenure-track position.) Read these
items to understand the obstacles between you and the tenure-track job of your
dreams.
Keen, Suzanne. "Grad School Advice 2009-10."
West, Michael. "Advice to Students Considering
Graduate Work in English."
Keen is
a professor at Washington and Lee University, and her website has a very useful
and brief overview of the process of thinking about and applying to graduate
school in English. West is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and his
lengthy and detailed document compiles a lot of useful information and presents
a lot of sound advice. He
addresses nuts-and-bolts issues (taking the GRE, soliciting letters of
recommendation, etc.), and provides a realistic assessment of academe. Highly recommended for anyone planning
to apply to graduate school in English; start with this piece before moving on
to Peters and the rest.
Peters, Robert L. Getting What You Came For: A Smart Student's Guide
to Earning a Master's or a Ph.D.
New York: Noonday, 1992.
(Rev. ed. 1997)
I
highly recommend this engaging, well-written book to undergraduates considering
graduate school as well as to current graduate students in any area of
study. Peters discusses: why you
should or should not go to graduate school; the hurdles you will likely need to
overcome; strategies for managing time; how to deal effectively with your
advisor and thesis committee; and many other topics. This book is especially useful for its discussion of the
graduate experience; perhaps the best chapter is on choosing a thesis
adviser. Even if you're already in
grad school, you should read the early chapters. (I have not read the 1997 edition.)
Alonso, Carlos J. "Editor's Column: My Professional
Advice (to Graduate Students)." PMLA 117 (2002): 401-6 (JSTOR
or MLA
Journals).
If
you're already in graduate school and want a brief, useful list of suggestions
as to how to succeed, then you should read Alonso's article. (Marquette users
need to be on campus to access both weblinks.) Alonso also quotes a "dissertation contract"
written by Robert A. Gross to help facilitate the adviser-advisee
relationship. Gross's list
appeared here
in The
Chronicle of Higher Education, 28 February 2002.
Goldsmith, John A., John Komlos,
and Penny Schine Gold. The Chicago Guide
to Your Academic Career: A Portable Mentor for Scholars from Graduate School
through Tenure. Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 2001.
Three professors
respond in rotating fashion to questions that cover a broad range of
topics. The format literally
allows for multiple voices and useful disagreements. This book is better than Peters for the later part of an
academic's career (Peters is much better for graduate school), but the opening
chapters are still helpful for graduate students.
Deneef, A. Leigh and Craufurd D.
Goodwin, eds. The Academic's Handbook. 2nd ed. Durham: Duke UP, 1995.
(3rd ed. 2006 with limited preview at Google
Book Search)
This
collection of essays usefully covers a wide range of topics related to the job
market, teaching, research, and administration. The opening essay on the taxonomy of colleges and
universities is especially helpful for those unfamiliar with the distinctions
among different kinds of institutions of higher learning. (I have not consulted the 2006
edition.)
phds.org is a very useful website
that ranks graduate programs in many fields and allows users to rank programs
according to their own selected criteria.
Click here to
analyze rankings in English graduate programs.
Much of
the data at phds.org is based on information gathered by the National Research
Council in 2005-2006 for a study of doctoral programs in 2010 (click here to request a free copy of this report,
and click here
for a brief explanation of the methodology). The previous study, Research-Doctorate
Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change, was published in
1995 based on 1993 data; click here
to download the overall 1995 rankings for English doctoral programs.
phds.org
also gathers data from the Survey of Earned
Doctorates, a resource that I have not examined in depth.
Another
source of information is US News and World Report, which publishes their oft-maligned
rankings each year around April.
The magazine has recently begun to publish these rankings in a separate
publication entitled America's Best Graduate Schools. These lists are usually limited to the top 25 programs in
the country, but the online 2009
list contains 104 programs.
As with
all numerical rankings of this sort, you should take this information with a
grain of salt. It is impossible to
quantify intellectual status.
Still, reputation matters a great deal in academe—don't believe
anyone who tells you otherwise.
I'm
always surprised that so many novice academics in English do not think about
the importance of building a personal library of books that will be essential
for the rest of their careers.
Here I recommend only essential reference works for scholars in nearly
any subfield of literary study.
Reference works, more than monographs or essay collections, are most
worth the expense of purchase since you will return to them over and over
again. You should also work to
build a library of important books within your own particular subfield.
The
best online tool for finding new and used books is BookFinder.com. This is a meta search engine that searches abebooks.com, Amazon.com,
Powells.com, etc., etc.
The
essential vade
mecum for literary study is James L. Harner's Literary Research Guide: An Annotated
Listing of Reference Sources in English Literary Studies, 5th ed. (New
York: MLA, 2008). Harner indexes
and evaluates over a thousand reference sources, and his book should be the
starting point of any serious research project. This edition will probably be the last one to be printed, as
Harner has now adapted his guide for the web.
Other
books that you should own and have near at hand: a good collegiate level dictionary; The MLA Handbook and/or The Chicago
Manual of Style; The Oxford Companion to English Literature and/or The Oxford
Companion to American Literature; M. H. Abrams's Glossary of Literary Terms and/or Harmon
and Holman's Handbook
to Literature; the Bible (ideally an annotated edition such as The New Oxford
Annotated Bible); and a guide to classical mythology (I have Edward Tripp's
Meridian
Handbook of Classical Mythology).
You should also try to get a handy guidebook for literary theory, though
the best ones are often expensive, such as The
Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (link works for
Marquette users only) and The Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory. Anyone who works with poetry (and
perhaps even if you don't) should try to acquire The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and
Poetics.
Madsen, David. Successful Dissertations and Theses: A Guide to
Graduate Student Research from Proposal to Completion. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992.
I found
this book especially helpful for its advice on locating a topic and writing a
proposal (see Chapters 3 and 4).
Much of Madsen's discussion derives from examples in the social
sciences, but it is nonetheless quite useful for those working in English.
Sternberg, David. How to Complete and Survive a Doctoral Dissertation. New York: St. Martin's P, 1981. (limited preview at Google
Book Search)
Sternberg
is very good on developing structure and effective work habits in order to
remain productive on such a long-term project as a dissertation.
Bolker, Joan. Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day:
A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis. New York: Holt, 1998. (limited preview at Google
Book Search)
In
contrast to Sternberg's practical advice, Bolker's discussion is focused more
on the psychological angles involved with writing and revising, as well as
working with the adviser. Bolker
and Sternberg should be seen as complementary.
Becker, Howard S. and Pamela
Richards. Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start
and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986. (2nd ed. 2007 with limited preview at Google
Book Search)
Don't
let the title fool you: Becker's
book is useful for writers in any academic field, especially when he addresses
the many self-defeating mechanisms that intellectuals tend to employ.
In this
section, I attempt to focus first on publications in journal articles, then on
adapting a dissertation to a book, then on the broader world of scholarly
(book) publication.
When
trying to publish in journals, you should first acquaint yourself with many journals
in your subfield to assess their specialties and preferences. That is, browse and read recent issues
of the relevant journals, and get to know them well so that you can describe
how one is distinct from another.
You should also examine how selective they are by going to the MLA Directory of
Periodicals to determine how many submissions they receive per year
compared to how many essays they publish.
To reach the MLA Directory of Periodicals, go to the MLA
International Bibliography (link works for Marquette users only), and click
on "Search," then "Directory of Periodicals," and type in
the name of the journal in the title field.
You
should also consult recent issues of the journal to find out if they contain
"Editor's Notes" that specifically discuss the editorial process and
the kinds of articles the journal is looking to publish. In 2001, PMLA included a series of editorial columns
by Carlos J. Alonso about the prospects of publishing in the journal; they
appear in vol. 116, nos. 1, 2, and 3 (JSTOR; for Marquette users,
these links work only while on campus).
Pasco, Allan H. "Should Graduate Students
Publish?" Journal of
Scholarly Publishing 40 (2009): 231-40. (Project Muse: Marquette
and elsewhere)
Pasco's
answer is: it depends. He rightly
notes the significant investment of time and effort required to adapt a good
seminar paper for publication.
Graduate students who have not yet tried to publish their research (or
who have not yet succeeded in doing so) should read this article. Important quotation: "publication
requires not just good work but also the humility to accept appropriate
suggestions, the courage to reject wrong-headed commentary, and, especially,
the persistence and courage to continue trying" (235-36).
Budd, Louis J. "On Writing Scholarly Articles."
The Academic's Handbook. 2nd ed. Ed. A. Leigh Deneef and Craufurd D. Goodwin. Durham: Duke UP, 1995. 249-62.
This
brief discussion has a great deal of practical advice, and Budd's notes contain
references for further reading.
Perlmutter,
David P. "Take Time for
R&R." The Chronicle of
Higher Education, 8 January 2008.
This
essay offers practical advice on how to respond to revise and resubmit letters
from academic journals.
Belcher,
Wendy. "Parsing the Decision
Letter." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 13
February 2009.
This
essay explains how to interpret a somewhat vague letter from a journal editor.
Harman, Eleanor and Ian
Montagnes, eds. The Thesis and
the Book. Toronto: U of
Toronto P, 1976. (limited preview
at Google Book Search for the 1976
and 2003
editions)
The
essays in this collection are reprinted from the journal Scholarly Publishing, and they discuss
the distinctions between the thesis and the book and how to get from the former
to the latter. (I have not read
the revised 2003 edition.)
Germano,
William. From Dissertation to Book. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005.
As the
former publishing director at Routledge, Germano knows a lot about how to
publish and market academic work.
This brief book is mainly helpful for its advice about the conceptual
processes involved with adapting a dissertation to a book.
Luey, Beth. Handbook for Academic Authors. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. (limited preview at Google
Book Search for the 4th ed.)
Luey
covers the gamut from journal articles to monographs to anthologies to
textbooks. The discussion of each
facet of scholarly publishing is thus abbreviated, but she includes much useful
advice on each topic and lists references for further reading. (I have not read the 4th edition.)
Germano, William. Getting It Published: A Guide for Scholars and
Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001. (limited preview at Google
Book Search for the 2nd ed.)
This book
is a storehouse of intelligent, practical advice presented in an engaging
way. Very highly recommended. (I have not read the 2nd edition.)
If
you're looking for suggestions about delivering an upcoming conference paper,
start with this entertaining list of dos and don'ts. Peters in Getting What You Came For also has suggestions for the scholarly
presentation.
Kerber,
Linda K. "Conference Rules,
Part 1." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 14
March 2008.
Kerber,
Linda K. "Conference Rules,
Part 2." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 21
March 2008.
Kerber,
Linda K. "Conference Rules,
Part 3." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2 May
2008.
Three
related discussions on how to chair a conference panel, present a paper, and be
a commentator.
Heiberger, Mary Morris and Julia
Miller Vick, eds. The Academic Job
Search Handbook. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P,
1996. (limited preview at Google
Book Search for the 4th edition)
I found
this book to be an excellent resource when I was on the job market. Read the whole thing through, and then
reread those sections that are immediately applicable to your current
situation. I have not examined the
third edition (2001). Marquette's
library has an online version of the second edition. The authors (and others) write an ongoing series of columns
for the series "Career Talk" in The Chronicle of Higher Education (Jennifer S.
Furlong has replaced Mary Morris Heiberger, who died in 2003).
The MLA Guide to the Job Search:
A Handbook for Departments and for PhDs and PhD Candidates in English and
Foreign Languages. New York: MLA, 1996.
This is
a useful collection of essays, though I did not find it as helpful as The Academic Job
Search Handbook.
Baron,
Dennis. "The Hiring
Season." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9
November 2001.
Baron,
Dennis. "The Job
Interview." The Chronicle of
Higher Education, 21 January 2002.
Baron, Dennis. "The Campus Visit." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 25 February
2002. (public)
Baron,
Dennis. "The Job Search:
You're the One." The Chronicle of
Higher Education, 12 April 2002.
In
these first person articles, Dennis Baron, a professor at University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, writes about the job search from the perspective
of the department doing the hiring.
For those unfamiliar with the process of hiring, these articles are very
illuminating and should be read before going on the job market.
The
title says it all. Moore weighs
the pros and cons of going on the market or waiting another year.
All of
these articles offer helpful advice for their respective topics.
A
valuable set of professional suggestions for those in graduate school or at an
early stage in their careers.
Goodwin, Craufurd D. "Some Tips on Getting
Tenure." The Academic's Handbook. 2nd ed. Ed. A. Leigh Deneef and Craufurd D. Goodwin. Durham: Duke UP, 1995. 150-57.
A
brief, useful discussion of the tenure process.
Baron,
Dennis. "Getting
Promoted." The Chronicle of
Higher Education, 5 September 2002.
Baron,
Dennis. "A Look at the
Record." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 7
November 2002.
Baron,
Dennis. "External
Reviewers." The Chronicle of
Higher Education, 7 January 2003.
Baron,
Dennis. "Promoting Late
Bloomers." The Chronicle of
Higher Education, 25 April 2003.
Baron,
Dennis. "When Tenure
Fails." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10
June 2003.
Baron,
Dennis. "Life After
Tenure." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 21
July 2003.
Baron
continued his "behind the scenes" series of articles with this group
on the promotion and tenure process.
Portions of The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career and essays in The Academic's
Handbook are also useful for understanding how promotion and tenure works.
How to
choose external reviewers for your tenure case.
Tips on
preparing your tenure file.
Confused
about professional academic jargon and acronyms? Don't know what "ABD" stands for? What exactly is a "dossier"? The authors provide a glossary series
for the academic novice who might be too embarrassed to ask what seem like
na•ve questions.
www.successfulacademic.com/suggested_books/index.htm
This
website is maintained by Mary McKinney, an academic career coach. I don't know anything about her
services, and so I am not endorsing her in any way. But she provides a useful list of books that relate to the
professional aspects of academe, including many that I don't list here, such as
Emily Toth's Ms.
Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia.
All-But-Dissertation Survival Guide
This
website offers a free email newsletter (past issues are archived on the
website) and links to other relevant resources. The newsletter discusses both motivational issues and
conceptual strategies for finishing the dissertation. This website is maintained by the company MentorCoach;
again, I know nothing about their services and am not endorsing the company in
any way.
The Chronicle of Higher Education (click here for
Marquette users)
I
recommend browsing academe's trade journal, which tracks important news stories
related to higher education and includes helpful "first person" essays
about succeeding as a graduate student and as a professor. Unless you are connecting via an
institutional subscription, you will need a subscriber's username and password
to access some of the articles.
Return to Stephen Karian's Home
Page
Last updated: November 8, 2010