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Seminars and Workshops page
This workshop is intended for graduate students who seek practical experience and advice in preparing for the job market. We will discuss issues such as when to go on the market and how to define the scope of your search, as well as attempting to demystify the interview process. We will consider a variety of documents generally submitted as part of an application package, including the job letter, cv, statement of teaching philosophy, and dissertation abstract. As we explore the practical aspects of these application materials, we will also engage in a broader discussion of interdisciplinarity and the range of academic positions available to ecocritics.
In the latter half of this workshop, participants will be divided into three or four small groups led by tenured faculty members. In these groups, students will be given the opportunity to workshop their own job letters and cvs, receiving feedback from other students and the faculty member leading their group. If for reasons of confidentiality students do not wish to workshop their documents, they may choose not to attend this part of the workshop. However, we strongly encourage students to participate in the full workshop, which will be run in a cooperative, collaborative spirit intended to strengthen the applications of all participants.
Following registration in this workshop, participants will be asked to submit electronically a sample job letter and a copy of their cv to Mike Branch. Please also submit a copy of the job ad to which you are applying. Given that many jobs will not have been posted by the time of the conference, you are welcome to apply to an old job ad for the purpose of the workshop. Your materials will not circulate beyond the other workshop participants.
Although this workshop is open to all graduate students, it will be most pertinent to PhD candidates who plan to apply for academic jobs in 2009 or 2010.
Workshop Leaders
Michael P. Branch is Professor of Literature and Environment at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he recently completed appointments as Fitzgerald Distinguished Professor of the Humanities and Director of Graduate Studies in the English Department. He is the editor of Reading the Roots: American Nature Writing before Walden and John Muir's Last Journey: South to the Amazon and East to Africa, among other books, and he regularly teaches courses in colonial and nineteenth-century American literature, American romanticism, literature and environment, literature and film, early American nature writing, American novel, and Core Humanities. A past president of ASLE, Mike has served as Book Review Editor of ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment for more than a decade, and his work as a mentor to graduate students was recognized in 2006 with UNR's Vada Trimble Outstanding Mentor Award.
Paul Bogard (Senior Graduate Student Liaison) earned his PhD in Literature and Environment at the University of Nevada, Reno in August of 2007. He is now visiting assistant professor of English at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, teaching courses in American Literature, Nature Writers, and Environmental History. His first book, Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark was published by the University of Nevada Press in September of 2008.
Angela Waldie (Junior Graduate Student Liaison)is a PhD Candidate in English at the University of Calgary. She has been a member of ASLE since the 2003 Conference in Boston, and has come to regard ASLE as her academic home. Raised in Creston, British Columbia, and having attended the University of Victoria, the University of British Columbia, Utah State University, and the University of Calgary, she has become increasingly interested in exploring how literature can inform our awareness of place. Angela's research interests include western Canadian and American literature, ecopoetics, bioregionalism, species extinction, and literary ornithology. When not reading, writing, and teaching, she can be found gardening, weaving, salsa dancing, practicing yoga, swimming in mountain lakes, and hiking in the Rockies and Purcells.
Seminars and Workshops page
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