We proudly support graduate students in their pursuit of academic and non-academic careers.
We take an active role in helping our graduate students compete for good jobs in academia. We regularly offer job placement workshops every summer that help prepare graduate students for every step of the academic job search. These workshops combine group meetings with one-on-one advising sessions and mock interviews in order to make sure that our students are prepared to compete for jobs. Several members of the English faculty participate by helping with workshops and mock interviews.
Students interested in careers outside the academy also benefit from our internship and graduate assistantshipopportunities in areas such as publishing, museums, and special collections. Given that many academic job interviews also ask candidates to speak to how they’d forge connections to local institutions, these opportunities serve a dual purposeof preparing students for careers inside and outside the academy. We also sponsor workshops specifically for PhD students in the humanities preparing for non-teaching careers. Check out our most recent workshops in Beyond the Academy and our most recent talks in Career Conversations in the Humanities.
One way we support our graduate students’ professional development is through conference and research travel funding. Each year, our students present their research across the world at top academic conferences hosted by organizations such as the Modern Language Association, Association of Adaptation Studies, Literature/Film Association, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, Conference on College Composition and Communication, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, American Comparative Literature Association, and more. Students travel to archives such asthe British Library, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Texas A&M Science Fiction Collection.
The graduate program also supports our PhD students in participating in professional development seminars throughout the country. Some examples of seminars/institutes our students have attended include: Dickens Universe, Futures of American Studies Institute, HILT (digital humanities), Rare Books School, and The School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell.
But we know successful professional development isn’t just about funding. That is why our program offers innovative and interdisciplinary seminars, workshops, working groups, field trips, speaker series’ and development opportunities for PhD students every step of the way. Moreover, our faculty are committed to supportive mentorship and building a diverse, intellectually curious community of scholars.
Read more about our current Graduate Student Working Groups, Recent Achievements, and Teacher Preparation to see how else we support our students’ professional development.