Student Blog Archives

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Introduction to the Arizona State University 19th Century Colloquium and Our Structure

Greetings!
Let me first say that it is an honor to be able to web-log along with other members of the caucus this year. My name is Kent Linthicum, and I am one of the Graduate Coordinators of the Arizona State University 19th Century Colloquium. The ASU 19th Century Colloquium is a group for graduate students to discuss their own work and consider other important developments in the field of literature. Throughout the course of the year our colloquium hopes to further provide voices for the NSGC blogs as we will be having various members of the colloquium contributing entries. My particular interests are literature, science, and the environment in the 19th-century. My desire in this first post is to describe the process by which our colloquium was created and hopefully provide any tips for folks who might want them.

So, returning to 2011, when I arrived at Arizona State I was pretty excited, minus the heat.
As a digression, I had experienced culture shock before, but not temperature shock. That first summer in the Valley of the Sun was quite intense. This being said, subsequent summers have been fine and even enjoyable, one just has to acclimate. If it gets to 50 degrees Fahrenheit though, now I have to get out the jacket, hat, scarf, etc…I know my more cold weather colleagues will snicker lightly, but come talk to me when you can walk around in pants when it is 105 degrees and think to yourself ‘this is nice’.
Nevertheless, that first summer the new graduate students had a month long Teaching Assistant training, which was quite comprehensive. Eventually, the semester began and the first few classes I had were exciting, covering research and theories of teaching. And even my first batch of freshmen were intriguing as I tried to guide them through the writing process. But something was missing, and I realized it in my Old English class. Every other Thursday, in Old English, the medievalists would always be talking about their colloquium which occurred on Friday. They would talk about whose paper they were going to read and where they were going to get dinner afterwards. I was envious, because I did not get to meet with my colleagues except for our classes.
I talked with my peers about forming a colloquium, that we might meet and talk about each others’ work. It took a bit of organizing, but by the next year we had our first few dates set. Starting out, we met once monthly on Fridays, where we would meet to discuss one peer’s writing: either a seminar paper, conference presentation, section of a thesis. I would ask for volunteers who wanted to have their work reviewed, and then would send it out to our e-mail list the week before the meeting. Then on the third Friday we met for an hour to talk about the paper.
The very first peer review involved my paper on Mary Shelley’s The Last Man and ‘slow violence’ and Kaitlin’s paper on Frankenstein and The Island of Dr. Moreau. The review was a success, helping make the ideas contained in the papers that much more clear and persuasive. So when Kaitlin and I presented these papers at conferences they were well received. And the colloquium continued smoothly: I would e-mail everyone once a month, reminding them of the meeting, Kaitlin secured a room for us, and we would meet. At a very basic level that was all the logistical work that was required, but of course there is more than just that.
If there was and is one item that I want to stress as essential to our success it is enthusiasm: our colloquium lives through our own energy. Were I able, I would tell everyone how to grow enthusiasm, but unfortunately I cannot, which is frustrating. For us, it seems that our willingness to commit to peer-reviewing and to meeting is key to our success. So, we have made it an aspect of community for 19th scholars at ASU.

This year we have moved to bi-monthly meetings, with a somewhat expanded scope (after a contingent of us met over summer too). Here is a list of what we are currently doing:
  • Peer-review: this is the core of our work together and remains so today. Half of our meetings are dedicated to discussing each other’s work. Roughly we read and comment on a colloquium member’s work and then talk about it in the meeting. We are very flexible about what we read: for-class essays, conference papers, portfolio papers, articles to be published, or dissertation chapters, always with a focus on professionalization.
  • Article discussions: Also a core element to our work, we discuss either cutting edge or foundational work in the field of 19th century literature, like M.H. Abrams or recent articles on New/Neo Formalism. What we do is ask one person to lead our discussion and then we spend the meeting discussing the text and placing it in context with our work and the field.
  • Mock Examinations: This is a new addition for us this semester. To help prepare each other for our comprehensive examinations (or Oral examination or Field examination) we hold a mock version of it before hand. The student sends us their reading list(s) and the colloquium generates questions. Although individually we might not have all read the works (because of varied specializations of interest within the field) collectively we cover the lists fairly well. Then we sit down with the student who will be examined and we ask them questions, and then afterwards give them feedback. Our November post will go into more detail about this process!
  • Pedagogy Workshops: Lastly, we ask one of the faculty members to visit us and cover an aspect of teaching in the literature classroom, like syllabus design or classroom management, etc. We try to plan this for the end of the semester to make it a bit easier on everyone.

So, in a blog-shell, that is the system and mechanics of our colloquium. More interestingly, in the coming months we will have various voices from the colloquium writing entries to talk about themselves, their work, or other items. I hope that this insight has been valuable. We are looking forward to an excellent set of discussions on the blog and are excited to be a part of the conversation!

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Quarterly Editor’s Note: Interdisciplinary Idea(l)s & Graduate Studies in Romanticism

It’s been an exhilarating and frenetic start to autumn, not least because I’ve been entrusted with managing this extraordinary blog in addition to taking up my first position at Northwestern in the capacity of graduate fellow at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art. There, I’ve been—and will spend the better part of this year—gearing my energies towards the organization of an exhibition of William Blake’s art in relation to his reception into the literary, musical, and visual cultures of the long-1960s. In many ways, it’s a dream year. Yet, the first five weeks of the quarter—serving as both a curator and editor of sorts—have become cause for new meditations on new possibilities. Convening a group of accomplished scholars working on romanticism and re-constructing Blake as an artist whose work becomes an impetus through which further acts of artistic production became catalyzed has led me to consider the role our blogging community plays in the generation of new approaches to both research and teaching. At its core, it seems to me that the blog represents a space in which our experiences are shared, best practices are disseminated, the rush of new insights are felt, and that new directions in scholarship become swiftly circulated so that others might immediately benefit. To my mind, it is when this dialogue takes place at the nexus of differing disciplinary practices that it proves most effective. These commitments inform how I’ve gone about organizing the blog for the coming academic year. As a result, in what follows—my first “editor’s note,” an exercise I hope to repeat quarterly, not as a point of privilege but as a means to synthesize and highlight certain aspects of the blog’s discussion from time to time—I introduce this year’s new authors, discuss my launching of a contemporary artist in “E-Residence” position with the blog, and present an imagining of how these matters might play out. Moreover, I invite comments and suggestions as to how others feel about the goals and objectives of the blog, and specifically about what others might wish to see addressed in the coming months.
At the center of all this is how truly excited and elated I am with respect to the Romantic Studies graduate blogging team joining the community with the advent of the 2013/14 academic year. Perhaps, it is because I am the resident art historian of the NASSR Graduate Student caucus, but what I enjoy most about this collective of emerging scholars is the dazzling array of interdisciplinary work that—to my mind—comprises the very best in scholarship presently being undertaken in our field. In this regard, I am extremely delighted to welcome the graduate students who will begin writing for the blog, all of whose work stands at the interstices of romanticism and a veritable range of disciplinary practices, from economics and gender (Renee Harris), to the medical sciences (Arden Hegele), to the digital humanities (Jennifer Leeds), and all the way to archaeology (Deven Parker). Given the critical mass of perspectives and viewpoints this fall’s new cadre of bloggers represent, the discussions that take place here promise to be important, insightful, and vital ones. Just as well, I am thrilled to welcome the first scholarly collective to be featured on the blog—the highly enterprising Arizona State University 19th Century colloquium. In principle, I believe it’s crucial for us to chart, not only the ideas and practices that we come up with on our own as romanticists (and/or as scholars of the long eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries generally), but also the advances that necessarily come about through the social networks with which we identify. After all, it is my contention that when we do our best work, we often do so when we operate neither in scholarly isolation nor in seclusion, but when we combine minds and efforts taking part in robust scholarly communities.
Further, I am ecstatic that Nicole Geary (Printmaking MFA, 2013) has accepted the caucus’s invitation to join the blog as this year’s Artist in (E-)Residence. Because Nicole’s work as a printmaker and sculptor intensely engages issues of contemporary ecology, geology, and memory—and does so within the artistic key of a research-based practice predicated upon on a scientific methodology—I thought Nicole a particularly well-suited artist to take part in the NGSC. Her art grapples with a set of social/environmental problems and critical and aesthetic possibilities resonant with the scholarship presently being taken up by a number of caucus members. While the idea is an experiment on my part—though not entirely original, in that other communities have sought out insights that might be gleaned from scholarly/artistic collaboration—I am eager to see how an artist’s perspective will illuminate our own work as scholars in new ways. Also, I find myself enticed by the prospect that our community might contribute to the production of art within our own social/cultural horizon. Ultimately, it is my hope that the Artist in (E-)Residence caucus post might prove sufficiently viable so as to alternate in succeeding years between a poet and an artist working in visual or other media (musical, architectural, or otherwise).
In any event, I enthusiastically anticipate a quarter, and year, for this graduate student caucus wrought with brilliant possibilities for intellectual revelry, debate, and jouissance at every level. Indeed, posts have already been proposed taking up a range of topics from thinking through contemporary issues of fracking with Percy Shelley, to issues of gender and sexuality as they pertain to Michael Suk-Young Chew’s recent book, Jane Austen: Game Theorist, to the critical issue of the contingencies, risks, and rewards associated with open-access online scholarly engagement.
The year promises to be lively. The state of graduate studies in romanticism is strong. Therefore, I say, please join in the discussion, either by way of comments or as a guest blogger. We look forward to your participation.
 
 
 

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Emerging Connections: Graduate Student Professionalization Workshop, June 12, University of Tokyo

This year’s NASSR supernumerary conference, “Romantic Connections” offers graduate students a special opportunity to network in a global community of Romanticists. We invite graduate students at any stage of their degrees to attend “Emerging Connections,” a one-day workshop to be held at the University of Tokyo on June 12th, 2014. The graduate workshop precedes the main NASSR conference, “Romantic Connections” which runs from June 13 to 15, 2014. Abstracts for conference presentations are due November 30 (though the workshop is open to all graduate students, whether presenting a paper or not).
Panels will be led by scholars from North America, the U.K, and Asia. We will cover a broad range of topics, including skills, professionalization, and the future of the academy. An evening reception will provide the opportunity to network with other young scholars. Fees for the day (excluding accommodation) will be around $100 (10,000 yen).
Registration for Emerging Connections will be available alongside registration for the larger conference. For questions and information about the event, please contact graduates@romanticconnections2014.org.
Provisional timetable:
9.30 Welcome and Introductions
9.45 – 11.00 Research in a Connected World: new research trends and technologies, journals and digital forums, publication advice and strategies, collaborations
11.00 – 11.15 Coffee break
11.30 – 12.30 Approaches to Education: teaching philosophies in different cultures, comparing university systems, defining the value of liberal arts study in the 21st century
12.30 – 13.30 Lunch break
13.30 – 15.00  Careers in Global Context: the academic job market in different countries, international post-docs and study opportunities, alternate and non-traditional careers, career management strategies.
15.00 – 15.30 Roundtable: The Academy in 2050
16.00 – 18.00 Cultural event (Tour of local sites, etc)
19.00 Evening Reception
 
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The Day After Payday: Graduate Students, Gleaning, and Apocalypse

Jean-François_Millet_(II)_-_The_Gleaners_-_WGA15691Finally after a long, cold summer, payday finally arrived! It was yesterday, the tenth of October. The frost has melted and the money has blossomed. It is for some the first payday since school ended in June. Sure, it was a glorious summer, sitting everyday in a library, reading and writing. After all, as long as you “do what you love,” the conditions in which you live do not matter. So I’ve been told.
One point of reference for this frugal summer has been Agnès Varda’s 2000 documentary, The Gleaners and I (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse). Varda’s film covers the history and contemporary practice of gleaning in France. Gleaning is the agricultural practice of gathering scraps leftover from the harvest, such as grain, potatoes, or whatever is available. It is a practice largely reserved for indigent peoples. While I initially picked up this film for the short interview with psychoanalyst, Jean Laplanche, since viewing the whole documentary, I have thought much more about gathering scraps.
Historically, gleaning has been considered a common practice, recorded as far back as the Bible, at least. It was often conducted by women and in groups.  But in 1788, gleaning was criminalized in England (collecting dead wood on the property of someone else was made illegal in the same year, which informs the plot of William Wordsworth’s “Goody Blake and Harry Gill”). In many court cases involving gleaning, it was actually the land-owning farmers who were the accused, namely for assaulting gleaners.[i] But regardless of who brought charges against whom, according to the “law,” there was one less way to survive.
Today—or at least thirteen years ago—Varda observes that gleaning has become somewhat of a solitary practice. Not only do gleaners search farmland for leftovers, but also the markets, garbage bins, and alleyways. Largely urban dwellers, Varda discovers that a good gleaner knows which grocers, bakers, and even which fishmongers throw away food before it has spoiled. It is striking how many of the people Varda meets glean out of repulsion to the capitalist culture’s insistence that consumers continuously purchase commodities. For some, their commitment to glean is very much a moral issue.
In Seattle, where I live, it is illegal to forage in public parks, another form of gleaning. Over the summer I heard a news broadcast about how foraging is illegal here but that the Seattle Parks department is becoming more tolerant and actually teaching people how to forage for things, like nettles, without destroying ecosystems.
I am simultaneously pleased and troubled by this decision. I am pleased because it seems wise to use these spaces to also grow and harvest food so that urban dwellers are not limited only to imported products, which cost more money and require more fuel for distribution than locally grown products.
But if gleaning is given a bit of a (neoliberal, hip, west coast) shine to it, in the same move we become complacent with regards to very real things that cause some people to glean out of necessity, for instance, corporations and governments that rely on interns, or universities that rely on adjuncts and graduate student teacher assistants.
In a “roundabout” way, such complacency is already recognized. Shifting attitudes with respect to foraging in public parks (in other major cities, as well) follows from fears about an “uncertain future,” namely: “Climate change, extreme weather events, rising fuel prices, terrorist activity.”[ii] The reason that cities are softening up on gleaning is not because the poor have suddenly found a place in the proverbial hearts of middle-class Americans. Rather, gleaning needs to be appropriated by the so-called “creative class” in order to survive the next 9/11, tsunami, or cosmic collision.
Here I am reminded of Slavoj Žižek’s now well-circulated quote concerning apocalypse: “we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on…it’s much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.”[iii]
In other words, rather than make it so that a real majority in the world has access to basic health care, clean water, safe food, warm shelter, as well as access to a quality education—and thus possibly diminishing the desires of some to destroy the planet or large sums of it—we are learning how to identify and cook nettles, and openly admitting that we are doing so in preparation for the next big catastrophe.
Perhaps there is no solution. Perhaps the damage is too great. But too great for what? Yes, climate change is real, its current trajectory is being driven primarily by human actions, and its effects will be profound, and most likely, profoundly bad.
And yet, this past weekend at the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts’ annual conference (this year’s theme was the “Postnatural”), I heard about another approach. One of the keynote speakers, Subhankar Banerjee, an artist and environmental activist, spoke about “long environmentalism.”
The concept itself is still being worked out, but I would contrast it to assumptions that technological innovation is going to suddenly fix that whole climate change problem. Likewise, governments, corporations, and universities are not going to suddenly care about the needs and welfare of the displaced, the underpaid, and the overworked. I would say that these two seemingly disparate issues both require a similar “long” solution. For any problem humans and other species face today, the solutions require drastic changes to our ways of living: no quick turnaround is to be had. It’s great that cities are legalizing foraging and the colleges are starting recycling programs. But these are paper towels on a massive oil spill.
I do not promise organic unity in the conclusion of this post. That would be perverse. Instead I conclude with an anecdote:
Walking through campus after the English department’s annual reception during the first week of classes (that is three weeks ago), a number of my fellow graduate students and I came across a box of cookies left on top of a trashcan. One of us grabbed the box, to the horror of some and the ecstatic glee of others. As hands reached into the assortment of cheap, sugary treats, I announced to my cohort, “We’re gleaners!” At least one of them looked at me and understood my meaning. We smiled our intoxicating smiles and forgot for a second that we were really gleaning.
 
 

[i] King, Peter. Crime and Law in England, 1750-1840: Remaking Justice from the Margins. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. 281-338. Print.
[ii] McNichols, Joshua. “Urban Food Foraging Goes Mainstream In Seattle.” KUOW.ORG. KUOW News and Information, 1 Aug. 2013. Web. 10 Sept. 2013.
[iii] ŽIŽEK! Dir. Astra Taylor. Zeitgeist, 2005.
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Call for Nominations for NGSC Co-Chairs

The NASSR Graduate Student Caucus (NGSC) invites nominations for 2 Co-Chairs to serve on its Board. Nominations should be emailed to the current Chair, Kirstyn Leuner, by Wednesday, October 23. Following nominations, a ballot will be available for electronic voting. Ballots will be collected and results tallied by the Chair and NGSC Faculty Mentor, Prof. Jill Heydt-Stevenson (CU-Boulder).
Self-nominations are welcome. NASSR membership is not a requirement to run as a Co-Chair, but it is a requirement to serve as a Co-Chair. All nominees must be graduate students studying Romanticism.
Nominees (if nominating yourself) should provide a brief bio and statement of interest and agree that, if elected, they will be willing to serve for one year. (CV is not required for nominations.)
Co-Chair responsibilities include:

  • Organizing and chairing the NGSC  professional roundtable at the annual NASSR conference
  • Organizing a graduate student pub night at the annual NASSR conference
  • Serving as a liaison for graduate students in the field to the NASSR Board and for NASSR events
  • Working with NGSC Faculty Mentor (Currently, Prof. Jill Heydt-Stevenson)
  • Working with NGSC blog editors to maintain and grow web presence
  • Overseeing and revising by-laws, as needed, under supervision of the NGSC Faculty Mentor.

Furthermore, we encourage nominations of graduate students who are driven, creative, and who would contribute innovative ideas for how this organization can grow and evolve to meet the needs of our changing field.
Email nominations to: Kirstyn.Leuner@colorado.edu.
Service is an opportunity to help the NGSC grow and serve graduate students studying Romanticism. If you have ideas about how to make the NGSC stronger or can help it do a better job, please nominate yourself! Or, if you know someone who you think could contribute to the NGSC, please nominate him or her. If you have questions about the position or the organization, please email us and we would be delighted to address them.
NGSC Mission Statement: The NASSR Graduate Student Caucus (NGSC) is intended as a venue, under the aegis of NASSR (North American Society for the Study of Romanticism), for graduate students interested in the study of Romanticism to make contact with one another and to share intellectual and professional resources. We are committed to working together to further the interests, not only of the graduate student community in Romantic studies, but also of the broader profession, by helping to train active and engaged scholars who will continue to strengthen and advance themselves and the discipline. All graduate student members of NASSR are invited to attend caucus meetings and to participate in elections and panels. This is an opportunity for you, the future professional scholars of Romanticism, to take part in an organization designed to address your concerns as student-scholars, to attend to your needs as pre-professionals, and to celebrate your and your peers’ triumphs.
Thank you,
Kirstyn Leuner, Chair
Jill Heydt-Stevenson, Faculty Mentor
 
 

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Online Academics: Questions for Grad Students

This is a post about an issue near and dear to our hearts as bloggers and blog-readers: digital authorship, authority, and recognition. Kathleen Fitzpatrick, author of Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy, spent two days at Lehigh University. September 12th, she gave a presentation called “The Future of Authorship: Scholarly Writing in the Digital Age” and September 13th, she spoke informally with grad students and faculty. Here’s some food for thought based on her visit.
Fitzpatrick started out with the basics: what kinds of authorship do we as academics value, and why? We value work that is done on an individual basis, thus making it simpler to claim ownership and award credit for the work produced in a final, polished product: I wrote this journal article, did all the research and drafts myself, gave credit through proper citations, and went through the process of revision and peer review and, finally, publication. Lots of people are involved in this process, from the other authors cited in the article, to the editorial board and anonymous peer-reviewers. But we don’t see those names on the by-line.
And this is Fitzpatrick’s point. With so many people involved, we recognize that an article is not published by the author alone, even if we pretend this is the case in our C.V.s and tenure reviews and job applications. Fitzpatrick argues that reading and writing are social activities and are continuing to become even more social through digital media forums like online journals, blogs, social media, twitter, etc. She claims that we need to rethink the ways that we share information through technology, how we reach and interact with an audience, how we control (if, indeed, we should) quality and authority, and how we give credit for all the labor that goes into commitment to an online community. We need to consider the process as much as the final product, if not more so, in order to benefit from the development of an idea through over time, which is what makes online work so exciting. One of the last points with which she ended her talk was the emphasis on the spread of knowledge for its own sake, in order to let it grow and expand into different forms and fields. Make it as accessible as you can. Certainly, none of us are in it for the money, after all.
I don’t consider myself to be hugely involved with all the newest technologies associated with digital information, and things like “open access” are still mysterious to me (and, I’ll admit, I’m still trying to figure out how to best use Twitter, both personally and professionally). Yet, I am involved with blogging (obviously), as we all are and, like many grad students, have been published more online than in print. I love the idea of sharing my thoughts and knowledge with others without worrying so much about polishing them into full-blown articles. Fitzpatrick’s idea of watching a project develop over time is an appealing notion because it gives you a more three-dimensional sense of a scholar and allows you to see the different angles of his or her interests. I also think the immediacy of the internet can be an incredible benefit if used with caution. Sometimes the process of conventional publication takes so long that the information can be all but obsolete by the time it reaches the people who need it. I also like that I don’t feel like I have to make any ground-breaking claims when I share this information. Many of my fellow bloggers have written on very similar topics in the last year, and many other forums of all different kinds have discussed the idea of digital authorship. But we don’t all read every blog out there (couldn’t, in fact), so ideas of absolute originality are a little more fluid. I will not claim to be saying anything completely new here. And that’s okay! I love reading blogs as well as contributing to them for all of these reasons.
Two important questions pertaining to grad students came up during Fitzpatrick’s informal seminar. The first engages with the amount of prestige required to take risks like digital publishing in academics and to convince a conventional academy that such online contributions count towards anything. As we all know, grad students have no prestige. Should we be taking these risks in such a tenuous job market? Should we be putting energy and time into online projects and collaborations if it could be spent on more conventional types of publication? All the “self-help” books on grad school, academics, and writing for publication that I’ve read have either ignored the possibilities of the online world altogether or advised young academics to stay away from them because they don’t “count.” Certainly, there are many problems with being able to publish anything instantly, the least of all being plagiarism, quality control, and authority. It’s refreshing and comforting to hear an established academic say that, yes, blogs and online publications can count and count for quite a lot at that. As Fitzpatrick says, reading, commenting, and keeping up with blogs and other online forums is also time-consuming and a lot of work, but these communities couldn’t exist without the interactive, conscientious, “peer” participant. We all, even by the act of sharing and commenting on online work, claim some part in its continued existence. Such activities create a new kind of credit for work by helping to get a writer’s name out there and recognizable, which can open up so many other opportunities. These kinds of activities should be taken seriously because they are serious! That being said, they are still not taken seriously on a job application, which, as I understand it, still credits conventional print publication (in addition to many other things, of course) and will do for quite some time. Fitzpatrick’s advice is to work towards a balance of traditional and more innovative publications and academic activities: online exposure can lead to name recognition, but it all comes down to that C.V.
One of the online authorship issues that grad students in my department have been worried about is the potential complications caused by publishing dissertations online, and this was our second question. Our university automatically publishes all dissertations (and theses) in an online, open access depository, with the option of a one-year embargo. We’ve been concerned about the possibility of being denied publication because our work would already be available through this open access forum, and we have heard horror stories of this happening. One year is certainly not long enough to get something published. However, Fitzpatrick posits this as another positive opportunity to get your name out in order to lead to other publications. I, myself, have cautious, mixed feelings about this related again to prestige qualifiers. I’d be interested to hear what others think about the idea of mandatory open access and what discussions have occurred in your departments about it.
The relationship between academics and digital possibilities is a huge and ongoing conversation, and I’ve really only summarized the ideas Fitzpatrick shared with us and added a (very) few of my own anxieties about online academic networks and forums. I’d like to end by inviting you to participate in this conversation with me. What have you heard about the pros and cons of online publications, blogs, and forums? How much do you value your own participation in such forums as either readers or participants? And the big question: how do we get such activities to “count,” IF we think they should count, in our current positions as grad students? What other issues complicate this question for you?
Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s Blog

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Call for NGSC Bloggers 2013-2014

NASSR Graduate Students and Advisors of Romantic Studies Graduate Students:
The NASSR Graduate Student Caucus (NGSC) invites applications for new bloggers for the 2013-2014 academic year. We ask that NGSC bloggers commit to contributing about 1 post per month (or approx. 8-10 total per year) and to serving through September 2014.
To apply, please submit a short statement of interest, along with a current academic CV to: JacobLeveton2017@u.northwestern.edu. Applications are due on 23 September 2013. Applicants will be notified by 1 October 2013.
As always, we welcome posts on a wide range of topics and issues of importance to our authors that represent their range of expertise, scholarly experiences, institutions, research interests, and issues relating to student life.
Importantly: Posts need not be works of honed researched scholarship and sustained argument (though, admittedly, this can be a tough habit to break!). Posts can be as brief as a paragraph or as long as a few pages. Posts can also be a collage of images as well as thought experiments, original poetry, or a recently read poem or literary excerpt, or artistic piece or performance that you would like to share. Collections of links, reports on travel, or summaries of scholarly talks attended related broadly to the field of Romanticism are likewise warmly invited.
We hope this space is one where we can enjoy writing fun, lighthearted reflections or humorous quips as well as serious contemplations about our field. Fostering a supportive and meaningful community of graduate students is at the heart of this successful enterprise; we hope you will choose to take part!
If you have any questions about blogging for the NGSC, please send us an email and we’ll get right back to you.
Sincerely yours,
Kirstyn Leuner (Dept. of English, CU-Boulder), Chair, NASSR Graduate Student Caucus, and Co-Editor of NGSC blog
Jacob Leveton (Dept. of Art History, Northwestern U), Managing Editor, NASSR Graduate Student Caucus Blog

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How To Do Archival Research (Report of the NGSC-sponsored professionalization roundtable from NASSR 2013)

If you happened to be at the NGSC-sponsored roundtable at the NASSR conference in Boston two weeks ago, you know that it was one of the best events we have organized so far!  Truly, it was probably the highlight of the whole conference for me, and that’s saying something.  Fun, Interesting, and amazingly useful, the panel brought together five incredibly accomplished (and let’s just say it: frickin’ cool) scholars in our field for a mini-course in archival research.   I’ll do my best in this post to translate my notes (along with Kirstyn’s, thanks, KL!) into an efficient reference for anyone preparing to spend quality time in some alluring repository  of old books, papers, and objects.  If you’re like me, then even if you don’t have a research trip in the works right now, you might just find yourself itching to plan one.  Anybody want to meet up at the British Library?
Special thanks again to our panelists Michelle Levy, Devoney Looser, Andrew Burkett, Dan White, and Jillian Heydt-Stevenson for sharing their insights.   I have taken the liberty of organizing this post according to topic (rather than strictly by speaker), but have noted broadly who covered what.  Now, here we go!
How to integrate archival research into your studies (Michelle Levy)
Before you embark upon archival research, take some time to approach it thoughtfully and deliberately.

  • Consider what types of research actually requires the use of archival materials—that is, stuff that has not been republished in other more readily-available formats, or that contains vital information in its original material makeup.  Book History and Material Studies projects require this, as do many kinds of academic side-projects such as critical editions, biographies, or edited collections of letters.  Though these types of publications will not qualify a person for tenure, they become very useful resources; you might ask an advisor if they have such a pet-project in the works that you could help with—or eventually, you could do one of your own. (Also, think about where/how you might publish such a project, including in digital formats—check out PMLA’s “Little-known Documents” as an example).
  • Be sure to build in TIME; archival research cannot be done at the last minute.  You need time to sift through materials before you find the gems that matter.  You need time to write applications for research fellowships, including the lead-time for letters of recommendation.  You need time to learn the research techniques that reveal the documents’ secrets (see next item).
  • Build research skills before you go. Take a course in book history or bibliography if you possibly can.  Use the Special Collections of your home institution to get a sense of how they work, how often they contain non-catalogued materials, and how vital it is that you form a good relationship with the librarians.
  • Take time to figure out WHERE you will need to go in order to look at the documents you need, and whether that institution provides any research fellowships.  Some large institutions in the US do (like the Huntington, the Pforzheimer, and the Harry Ransom Center); most institutions in the UK do not (in which case, you might apply for a fellowship from your own university or some other funding body).

How to apply for research fellowships (Devoney Looser — see full text of her very useful handout HERE).

  • Remember, the surest way to not get funding is to submit a shoddy application.  You are in competition with lots of other smart people.
  • Give your advisors plenty of lead-time to write you letters of recommendation (a month is polite).
  • Show that you have specifically researched the holdings of the institution you plan to visit.  Use their online catalogues and finding aids, talk to others who have researched there, and even consider calling and talking to the librarians and curators (as long as you’ll be asking them smart questions, and not ones you could have answered yourself if you had just looked at their website).
  • The Project Narrative is the most crucial part. Don’t let another critic’s voice take center stage.  Explain WHY your research is exciting and important.  It is not enough to “fill a gap”—you must explain WHY the gap needs to be filled. And never begin your narrative with a quote from someone else!
  • Remember that you’re writing to a committee that comes from several disciplines, not necessarily including Romanticism.  Be sure that an educated non-romanticist could understand the importance of your project.
  • Don’t give up if you don’t get the fellowship!  Seek feedback, improve your application, and keep trying.

Tips for planning your research trip, including some packing essentials (Michelle Levy et al)

  • When planning your research trip, travel off-season if you can; it will be cheaper and libraries will be less crowded, which means you will get your books faster and librarians will be more available to help you.
  • Learn the archive’s rules and procedures before you go, so you don’t waste valuable time when you’re there.  You can usually order your books in advance, and occasionally you have to do so.
  • Read as much as you can before you go, including electronic forms of your primary documents, so that you can focus your precious time on the info you can’t get otherwise.  Software like Adobe Professional is useful for taking notes on PDFs.
  • Use a number of resources to plan the trip.  Contact the archivists (with smart questions, of course); they are really helpful.
  •  ALWAYS get a letter of endorsement from your advisor, printed on university letterhead and signed in BLUE ink.  Some institutions will not allow you access to their archives without this. Also, be sure to check whether they have other requirements, such as more than one form of ID, or a passport, or proof of current address.
  • Every institution will have its own rules and restrictions on what you can bring into the archives, (be sure you understand their policies involving photography and reproduction)  but pack yourself a basic “research baggie”—it will probably include pencils, a ruler, some paper, a magnifying glass, your laptop, a camera, and a jacket or sweater—libraries are CHILLY!

How to get the most out of your time in the archive itself (Andrew Burkett and Dan White; check out the full text of Andrew Burkett’s talk HERE)

  • Have a plan, but be open to discovery!  Let the archive drive you, but have a clear sense of your research questions (start with the broadest one, which is “I want to learn everything about _____.”)
  • Expect to be overwhelmed completely by the avalanche of information you might uncover.
  • MAKE FRIENDS with the archivists and curators. They can help give you a roadmap through those materials and focus your search.  Some archivists will be very helpful, others markedly frosty; kill them all with kindness!  They hold a lot of power, and if they decide they like you, their input can radically impact your work.
  • Allow yourself to enjoy your time while searching through the materials. Talk to other people working there. These work sites are dynamic and alive and exciting.
  • Embrace the fellowship in your fellowship!  Think of time at the archive as professionalization through sociability.  Learn how to talk about your work in a way that excites other people who are not necessarily in your field.

How to manage the notes and pictures you gather (Dan White)

  • Approach your note-taking systematically; essentially what you’re doing is amassing a body of notes from which, at a later point, you are going to produce scholarship.  The more clearly and obviously you can organize and tag what you gather, the more you’ll thank yourself later.   You’ll likely develop a system that’s unique to you, but as you do, imagine how your future self will be using your notes.  You want your notes to help you create ideas for scholarship.
  • ALWAYS record full bibliographic information for every item you look at!!
  • Have a system of naming your electronic files; long names are useful and perfectly acceptable; include key info such as author surname, keywords from title, date, other keywords.
  • Include cross-references for yourself, as you think about linkages you’re finding.  Within the file of notes on a given item you can include items like  “See ‘full name of file’ and ‘full name of file.'”
  • In your file for each item, clearly differentiate your transcriptions from your meditations (perhaps with different-colored text?), but definitely include BOTH!  Your epiphanies will be easily forgotten in the deluge of information you gather, so cherish each fleeting thought and keep a running narrative for yourself.
  • Don’t forget that there are different kinds of notes; if an electronic copy of a given text is available, you can download it and (with proper software) take notes on the PDF.  i
  • On a shorter visit (one month or so), it’s probably best just to spend your time gathering as much info as you can.  If you have a longer research period, you’ll probably want to work in some more formal writing/processing sessions for drafting the chapters or articles you’re working on.  Keep in mind, though, that the research narrative you produce in your notes is part of that drafting process.

How to go about locating and working in private, lesser-known, and otherwise unconventional archives (Jill Heydt-Stevenson)
Occasionally you might find yourself searching for texts or objects that don’t end up in academic institutions.  (Professor Heydt-Stevenson spent her summer researching collections of Paul and Virginia memorabilia, everything from handkerchiefs to cuckoo clocks, things that have mostly ended up in the hands of private enthusiasts who have all sorts of different reasons for collecting, and house their collections in their homes).  So, how do you go about finding such repositories, and how can you prepare to use them?

  • Search for clues about these kinds of collections on the internet, and definitely ask anyone you can think of who might know about anything useful.  If you have friends locally, they can give you a spring board for people who won’t be on the internet.  When trying to set up a visit don’t be afraid to use the phone!  Keep in mind that some private collectors are older, and may hail from an era before email was so prevalent, or may live in the countryside with spotty internet access.
  • Be prepared for the personalness of the research, and of your interactions with the collectors and their space.  Keep in mind that you may be in someone’s home, going through their prized possessions, and your people skills will be very important.
  • Be prepared for a huge difference between what the private collector does, versus an institution.  What matters to them may not be what matters to you, and you must respect this.  There will likely be no catalog, and little recorded information or analysis for each object.   You will also likely not have a lot of time with the collection.  These are huge challenges for a scholar.
  •  Bring notepaper as well as a computer to take notes in this house. There may be no wifi.
  • Have a really good camera on you – not an iPhone camera. Take lots of photos!
  • Be sure to ask the curator and owner if they want to be cited.  Some do, and others feel intensely protective of their collections and do NOT want publicity.
  • Be prepared to see one thing, or 300 things, depending on the situation.
  • Be prepared to do a ton of socializing and talking, like a job interview.  The curators will likely be thrilled that someone is interested in their collections, and will want to know all about what you’re planning to say about them.  All this talking will take up some of your research time, but be gracious and keep in mind that  it will likely enable you to do more research with the collection in the future.

 
Happy researching, everyone!  And if you want more information, be sure to check out our collection of posts on Libraries & Archives.  (You can access this from the drop-down menu for “Categories” on the right side of the page).
 

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“Writing a Winning Fellowship Application” by Devoney Looser

Devoney Looser
Department of English
P.O. Box 870302
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85257
Devoney.looser@asu.edu
http://www.devoneylooser.com
NASSR 2013 Graduate Caucus Roundtable

Writing a Winning Fellowship Application

Know your project, and research the competitions that best fit your needs.

  • Dissertation fellowships
    • Support late-stage (usually final year) completion of your dissertation.
    • Look at Academic Jobs Wiki page, Dissertation Fellowships Page
    • Consult with your advisers/mentors
  • Long-term fellowships
    • Post-doctoral or pre-doctoral, 6-12 months, to complete large projects
    • May allow you to dictate your whereabouts
    • May involve residency in a particular institution/library
      • Long-term fellowships at libraries may involve agreeing to give a lecture but rarely involve teaching
      • Post-doctoral fellowships at universities usually involve teaching
    • Seek advertisements through your professional organizations
    • Seek advertisements through research institutions or libraries
    • Consult with your advisers/mentors
  • Short-term fellowships
    • Two weeks to 3 months to travel to a particular collection for research toward a book, book chapter, or essay
    • Requires SPECIFIC knowledge of collection and why it is necessary to undertake your research there
    • Seek advertisements through your professional organizations, listservs, institutions themselves, etc.
    • Some fellowships offer residency and access but not travel (e.g. Chawton House Library). Be prepared to combine resources/funding
    • Consult with your advisers/mentors
  • Workshops
    • These fellowships require you to work in a group to complete readings, participate in conversations, and/or share your research in progress.
    • NEH Summer Seminars and Institutes for College and University Teachers now reserve two slots for graduate students.
    • Start now to track early post-doctoral opportunities, e.g. National Humanities Center Summer Institutes in Literary Studies: http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/sils/
  • Graduate student travel to conferences
    • Usually require an accepted paper, application, and recommendations
    • Seek advertisements through your professional organizations
    • Seek internal awards at your institution (department, college, university, graduate students organizations, student fees, etc.)

 
Leave yourself plenty of time

  • The surest way not to get funded is to do rushed, last-minute work.
    • Produces shoddy applications
    • Prevents you from building a reputation as someone who does smart, careful work
    • Frustrates advisers/recommenders who want you to be known for doing smart, careful work
    • Remember: a fellowship is not a lottery; it’s a competition. Train for it!
  • Applicant packets have many parts, all of which are important.
    • Project description (length specified; follow it!)
    • CV
    • Letters of recommendation (2-3)
    • Budget
  • Share your application packet with peers and trusted others for feedback.
  • A month prior to the deadline, ask recommenders whether they would be willing to write for you.
    • It is polite to give your recommenders a copy of the draft of your project description after he/she has agreed to write.
    • The more information you offer a recommender (project description, CV, etc.) the more detailed a letter he/she will be able to write.

 
Sell your project

  • Project narratives: a genre to study and master.
    • Start with the big picture
      • Your first paragraph should give readers the information they need to answer this question:  “This writer is studying (TOPIC) because he/she is trying to discover (QUESTION) in order to understand (PROBLEM) so that (ARGUMENT).” (The Craft of Research)
      • What does your project offer that advances current conversations and debates? Why should scholars in your field(s) be interested in what you are doing?
      • Do not rely on “This fills a gap!” How and why?
    • Show that you are joining ongoing conversations/debates, but don’t let other voices have the floor for too long.
      • Reference some names or concepts, if you must, but this is not the place for long quotations from other scholars.
      • Why start a paragraph with another critic’s name, if you can help it?  Make an argument or a concept the first part of a topic sentence, not the critic.
    • Seek examples of successful applications.
      • Do you know anyone who has gotten one of these fellowships recently who might share his/her application packet? Does your adviser?
      • Look at the people who received funding in past years (often listed on the website).  Do you have connections to any of them to ask for advice or feedback on drafts?
      • Scrutinize what kinds of projects were funded.  Does yours seem to “fit” in its title, topic, conception, and/or scope?
      • Large organizations (e.g. NEH) will sometimes be willing to share model applications upon request.
  • Remember: you are writing to the committee reviewing applications.
    • Who is on this committee?
      • It is likely that they are academics and affiliates of the granting agency, not necessarily in your precise field.
      • They may be past recipients of these fellowships.
      • They will likely be rank ordering applications based on the worthiness of the project, its promise, and demonstrated need/fit.
      • Consider whether you should enlarge your rhetorical frame or give more cues to readers not directly familiar with your subfield.
        • Include full names, titles, dates for any texts/authors you mention that may not be well known to evaluators.
        • Consider adding brief descriptive adjectives on first mentioning a lesser-known figure, e.g. “the once-celebrated historical novelist Jane Porter.”
    • Be as clear and direct as possible.
    • Present any needed background information as part of an argument, not as part of a summary. Don’t lecture your readers; lead them.
    • Get rid of: cute or clever titles (use descriptive keywords + argument) and opening paragraphs that are flying at 30,000 feet (“In the beginning, there was literary criticism.”).
  • Read more academic self-help literature on this question. 

 
Show compelling need

  • How will this agency determine need, and do you “fit”?
    • Read the call for applications.  What kinds of need are you asked to demonstrate?
    • Is there a specific way you can show rather than tell, e.g. not “I am but a poor graduate student,” but “This fellowship would make it possible for me to complete needed research, as my university does not currently fund graduate students’ international research travel.”
  • Demonstrate knowledge of the program/library you want to invest in you.
    • In ways subtle and unsubtle, echo the keywords in their call.
    • If applying for a travel-to-collection fellowship, include 1-2 paragraphs (often toward the end of the project narrative) in which you specifically name the resources that you plan to consult and why.
      • Research the collection in question. What does it have that is unique?  What are its strengths?  Know your library!
      • Name the specific categories of materials and even specific titles that you will plan to consult and how they may meet your research needs.
      • Make sure that you are not proposing to travel to read something easily accessible elsewhere (Google books, ECCO, NCCO).
      • Do not suggest that you will complete more reading/writing than you can reasonably do in the amount of time stipulated.
      • Be specific about outcomes. “In three months, I will finish my book” is much less persuasive than “During the first two months of the fellowship, I plan to revise chapters three and five, using xyz. In the third month, I propose to complete research for the book’s conclusion, using abc.”
  • Budget realistically
    • Ask your adviser or someone who has applied previously to share a sample budget.
    • Use categories that are allowable within the grant.
      • What are the actual costs for airfare, hotels, etc.?  Use them.  Reference them.  Estimate upward if you would be traveling at a time it is more expensive.
      • Consult federal per diem rates for a particular city to estimate costs for lodging and meals.
      • Does your university’s Office of Research help with budgets?
  • Never, never, never give up!
    • All of us have been rejected.  Multiple times.  Dust yourself off, and try again next year or in another competition.
    • Seek constructive feedback. Ask trusted others, not the organization itself, why your application might not have been successful.
    • Some large organizations do allow you to ask for comments on your application (e.g. NEH). They specify this in their instructions.

[Editor’s note: published with permission of the author]

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“Maximizing (and Enjoying) Research Time in the Archives” by Andrew Burkett

Andrew Burkett
Assistant Professor of English, Union College
Roundtable Talk:  “Researching in the Archives”
NASSR 2013, Boston University
August 9, 2013
11:30-1:00 PM; Conference Auditorium

 

“Maximizing (and Enjoying) Research Time in the Archives”

 

I wanted to begin my brief remarks today first by thanking Kirstyn and her co-organizers for putting together this exciting roundtable and for inviting me to share some of the story of my own experiences in archival research as well as some ideas about how we might all approach future archival work a bit more efficiently and with, perhaps, a bit more enjoyment.  In doing so, I’m going to limit these remarks to thinking about how to maximize—and to appreciate more fully—one’s time once at the archival research site.  And I wanted to note too from the start here that I’m basing these insights largely on my own experiences while working with the Charles Darwin Papers while a Visiting Scholar in the Manuscripts Room at the University of Cambridge’s University Library (or the UL, as it’s affectionately abbreviated).  So, these notes are made in relation mainly to my work at a single-author archive, and some of these ideas thus might not translate seamlessly into other forms of archival research.  That said, I’ve worked to keep my remarks broad enough so as to speak—as best as possible—about “Researching in the Archives.”
A few very brief notes about my archival research project:  I spent roughly two years—on and off—completing the research for the final chapter of my dissertation (which focuses on the role of the idea of “chance” in nineteenth-century cultural and scientific production) at the UL, where I was looking at Darwin’s unpublished manuscripts concerned with the concept of species variation and evolution.  Before leaving Duke and even up until my first days of arrival at Cambridge, I envisioned my archival research as an unearthing of what I—at the time—speculated to be Darwin’s investments in Romantic poetic forms and philosophies, and I hoped to substantiate that thesis by uncovering in the unpublished papers evidence (textual, conceptual, etc.) of an indebtedness to Romantic notions and representations of the aleatory.  Unfortunately, though, I found very little evidence of this sort, and while some of these research endeavors were indeed fruitful to some extent, I found myself moving into something like a state of panic, as my assumptions about what I would find among the papers were rather quickly overturned.  And this leads me to my first major point about working in the archive—be more than willing to adjust your research program as and when you are in the act of investigation.  The more rigid I became in my initial weeks to seek out such evidence, the more I realized that I wasn’t paying the archival materials the respect that they deserved—indeed, that they demanded.  So, I feel that while we certainly need to bring with us expectations of what would be successful outcomes of research, we also need to be able to adjust to the contingencies of the archive.  Once I began to let go of that desire to find what I believed I was seeking, I actually started to stumble upon so many new forms of evidence that took my work in radically novel and exciting directions.
Fortunately, these initial interests led me to uncover—by chance—a largely unpublished sector of the archive dealing with what is referred to by the curators of the Darwin Papers as Darwin’s “Botanical Arithmetic” drafts.  Of course, I won’t go into the details of this find, but I’ll note briefly here that, while Darwin made these numerous and extensive statistical calculations involving the bio-geographical distribution of continental plant species just before the 1859 publication of the Origin of Species, only a few scholars had investigated, at the time of my research, Darwin’s botanical studies that played such a crucial role in his discussion of the key evolutionary concept of ‘variation under nature’ in Chapter II of the Origin.  So my point here, which builds off of my last, is that we must be prepared to evolve as archival researchers if we are going to make new discoveries in unpublished materials.  And this leads to my next piece of advice as well:  this sector of the archive opened wide before me—which was obviously exciting and promising—but as it did so, I was quite overwhelmed with the number of volumes and boxes of documents dedicated to these complex mathematical calculations.  I was also extremely surprised to find that even with an author as famous and celebrated as Darwin that some of these materials were impossible to seek out via electronic research methods and that I had to do the leg work of catalogue searches and even sometimes had to stumble around blindly through volumes and boxes in this sector—page by page, or leaf by leaf—as a number of the boxes were (surprisingly) not fully marked or catalogued, given the relative obscurity of these drafts.  So, part of my second major point here is to expect at some point—and even perhaps for several days at a time—to be overwhelmed completely by the avalanche of information that you will likely trigger in your work, regardless of your project.  The question then becomes:  how does one move through such mountains of information to seek out those five or ten documents that will be most important for your argument and that you might wish to transcribe or even pay large sums to have imaged?  My answer here is a quite simple one:  befriend the archivists and curators and even other researches working among the papers in which you are interested.  Upon finding these materials, I quickly sought out and turned to Adam Perkins, the Curator of Scientific Manuscripts at the UL, and he proved to be an invaluable source of information about the micro-sectors of the “Botanical Arithmetic” drafts that made the most sense for me to look into first (and even provided me with an order through which to move among the papers) based upon the more global concerns of my chapter focusing on the concept of chance—and more specifically to Darwin—the development of his theory of organic variation.  Adam let me know that (by chance) David Kohn, one of the few scholars who had studied and written about these papers, had been seated only a few tables away from me for several weeks during my work in the Manuscripts Room.
This serendipity leads me to my third and final set of remarks—personal observations really—about working in the archives:  really do allow yourself to enjoy your time while searching through the materials.  David was more than excited to talk with me about my project and to give me advice about things such as where I should look next in the archive and ways to proceed efficiently with the work (many of which I’m borrowing from in my own remarks today), and I soon realized after befriending Adam and David that archival research sites are just as—or perhaps even more “alive,” so to speak—as any of our other work sites (e.g., our departments, our classrooms, our offices, etc.).  Archival centers are extremely dynamic, unpredictable, and—as such—exciting places:  they can certainly be intimidating and overwhelming but, more often than not, if we are willing to accept their contingencies and surprises, they are almost always prepared to greet us with hospitality and—most certainly—with vitality.
[Editor’s note: published with permission of the author]