professional topics

The publisher Rowman & Littlefield has invited me to prepare a proposal for an edited collection tentatively titled The Postgraduate Seminar Essay in Literary Studies: A Guide for Writers and Readers. Although many books exist for undergraduate students on writing and research as well as for postgraduate students working on PhD dissertations, the seminar essay is a peculiarly understudied genre. This volume aims to serve as a resource for both students working on seminar papers and for academic staff who regularly teach postgraduates. The first half of the book will consist of essays providing guidance to postgraduate students working on seminar papers.

This Regular Session welcomes submissions on any aspect of Pedagogical Theory and Practice. Proposals addressing the SAMLA 90 conference theme, Fighters from the Margins: Sociopolitical Activists and Their Allies, are especially welcome. By June 15, 2018, please submit an abstract of 250-350 words, a brief bio, and any A/V requests to the SAMLA email address, samla@gsu.edu. 

http://bit.ly/esonlinecfp

English Studies Online: Programs, Practices, Possibilities

Call for Chapter Proposals

Edited by William P Banks and Susan Spangler

Dear colleagues,

Heather Lang and I are reaching out to writing studies faculty at liberal arts colleges to form a possible roundtable for the Association of Rhetoric and Writing Studies 2018 Annual Conference. The goal of this roundtable is to better represent the status of rhetoric and writing at the undergraduate level (beyond the first year) at liberal arts colleges.

Below you will find a draft of our proposal. We are asking for interested participants to send in 50-word summaries of your contributions by June 8th. That will give us a week to collaborate with participants and finalize the proposal before the June 15th deadline.

While university administrators have many ways to assess a program’s or department’s effectiveness, student retention is one of the more controversial measures.  Particularly, retention often seems inherently at odds with our roles as college professors since—fairly or not—issues of retention are conflated with concerns over grade inflation and academic rigor.  Yet, as studies show, universities lose students over the first two years of college for a variety of reasons: financial, the absence of strong academic mentoring and peer relationships, the strains of commuting, as well as family pressures and responsibilities that threaten to derail academic pursuits.