We are seeking a complete essay draft (approx. 5000-7500 words) for possible inclusion as a chapter in New Essays on History and Form in Early Modern Literature, edited by Gail Kern Paster and Nick Moschovakis. This opportunity exists because serious health considerations have recently compelled the late withdrawal of an invited contributor. The volume is currently under contract with Routledge for publication in 2024.

Many graduate students within the broader humanities and social sciences want to pursue a teaching career either inside or outside the boundaries of higher education. As such, the time they spend working as teaching assistants and instructors of record in the college classroom constitutes valuable experience to them in many ways. In the absence of insufficient pedagogical resources and curricular training, the processes of developing and creating original courses and assignments aside from working through classroom management issues become difficult for graduate students.

The decline of the humanities in recent years triggered by falling enrollment numbers and coupled with pandemic-induced budget crunches have ushered in various forms of economic precarity for graduate students across North America, Europe, and beyond. The importance of securing funding to finish a dissertation, a master’s thesis, and miscellaneous short-term and long-term research projects cannot, therefore, be overstated for graduate students across the board. As such, this GSC-sponsored roundtable will attempt to answer some pressing questions about mastering grant-writing and fellowship-application writing, a genre of academic writing about which graduate students often receive very little formal training at a departmental level.