From All Sides

Abstract

This article makes the case for expanding our conception of what it means to provide “professional training” to PhD students in departments of English. Rather than focus exclusively on placing students in tenure-track academic appointments, departments should prepare them simultaneously for careers both inside and outside the academy by focusing on the broad range of skills inherent to doctoral training. Such an approach not only will empower graduate students but also may transform the academy itself.

Positionality and Possibility: Reframing Tactics and Strategies for Graduate Student Community Engagement

“…Coordinating a community partnership program often requires difficult decisions about mediating crossinstitutional relationships; communicating effectively with community organization and campus administrators; anticipating and addressing logistical, liability, space, and funding concerns; writing and managing grants, which must be housed in a particular institution or department; negotiating transitions in anticipation of graduation; and balancing one's own labor conditions, as initiating a community partnership is often unpaid and challenging to translate into work valued by institutions beyond a "service" CV line. All of this must be accomplished within the changing landscape of higher education, which includes a pervasive neoliberal focus on revenue production that can eclipse civic engagement (Shaffer, 2012) and the swirling anxiety about publishing for job market competitiveness given the dwindling number of tenure-track positions (Ball, Gleason, & Peterson, 2015;Larson, Ghaffarzadegan, & Xue, 2014).…”