Why enroll in the UW-Madison English Graduate Program?
As the Director of Graduate Studies as well as a member of the literary studies faculty at the University of Wisconsin English Department, I would like to offer prospective students a faculty perspective on what distinguishes our department. Forgive me if this statement is long; it is hard to be brief when this department has so much to recommend it.
Let me start by talking about the resources provided by our wonderful faculty. Ours is a faculty that has an extremely capacious view of English studies. More than a third of our faculty come from areas other than literature (6 in creative writing, 4 in rhetoric, and 5 in English Language and Linguistics), and those faculty find that their interests—and their work in teaching and research—are valued by the department at large. Several individuals teach and write in multiple areas: creative writing as well as literary studies, or rhetoric as well as literary studies. Our faculty also tend to be willing to work with graduate students from all areas of the department. It’s not at all uncommon to have dissertation committees made up of faculty from several areas of the department, even from all four of the areas, and our graduate students seek advice—and are encouraged to do so by their committee chairs—from faculty across the broad range of English studies. Rather than representing any particular trend in scholarship, collectively our faculty represent a vast range of methodologies, and because all our faculty have the opportunity to teach graduate courses, our students can benefit from this intellectual range.
We have a remarkably active faculty. Nearly all our faculty have at least one—and a significant number have several– publications in major journals and by major presses each year. Moreover, our faculty are publishing both in journals that speak to particular areas of English studies, and also in those that are cross-disciplinary, widely read, and very visible. Significant numbers of our faculty are themselves in charge of journals or of important book series at university presses around the nation, and many more serve on editorial boards. For instance– and this is by no means a comprehensive listing—Tom Schaub edits Contemporary Literature, while the editorial board includes several current departmental faculty–Richard Begam and myself. Russ Castronovo and Leslie Bow both serve on the editorial board of American Literature, Russ serves on the board for American Quarterly, and I am on the board of American Literary History. Ron Wallace is the editor of the University of Wisconsin Press Poetry Series (the Brittingham and Pollack Poetry Prizes). Numerous faculty—among them Cherene Sherrard-Johnson (Legacy), Michael Bernard-Donals (Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association and College Composition and Communication), Sara Guyer (diacritics), and Jane Zuengler (TESOL Quarterly), have edited special issues of journals or are on their editorial boards (or both). A list of recent faculty book publications can be found elsewhere on this website. Because so many of our faculty are so active– not just in publishing but also in attending and in organizing conferences, and in lecturing around the nation and the world– they can mentor graduate students in professional development extremely well, and they know people whose work can be of benefit to those students. Nearly every faculty member I've spoken with is generous in her or his willingness to share this knowledge with graduate students, and many actively help graduate students find venues for their work. Some are also happy to co-author and co-edit essays and books with graduate students.
Our faculty use their contacts to bring exceptional speakers to the department, to the benefit of all of our own faculty and students and to the benefit of the University of Wisconsin community. We enjoy an embarrassment of riches: in the 2006-2007 academic year alone we brought in something like twelve speakers sponsored by four colloquia in the department, and these four– the Contemporary Literature Colloquium, the Americanist Speakers' Circle, the Middle Modernity Group, and the Modernisms and Modernities Group – are among several others, sponsored by faculty and graduate students, that invite speakers, hold discussion and reading groups, collaborate on projects, and foster connections with other departments and units on campus. Indeed, some of the groups in which our students participate, such as Border and Transcultural Studies Research Circle, are based in other units in the university or, as with the recent seminar on Testimony, organized by Sara Guyer and some of her students, are funded through campus wide competitions for Mellon funding. Creative Writing sponsors numerous on-campus reading; its recent visitors have included some of the most important writers of contemporary literature. Reaching beyond this campus, the Minority Studies Reading Group that Sean Teuton leads sponsors annual conferences with partner institutions including Stanford, Cornell, and Michigan, for which students have in the past prepared collaborative presentations. A complete list of the varied groups in which students participate alongside faculty, from the Beowulf Club to a group that discusses new books of poetry, is available on this website.
The ecumenical spirit suggested by what I've said so far is also visible in the number of our faculty with joint appointments and other collaborative relationships with other units on campus. Gender and Women’s Studies, Jewish Studies, Global Studies, Ethnic Studies, American Indian Studies, African Languages and Literatures, Irish Studies—the list of the other units with whom we collaborate to teach courses, mentor graduate students, develop curricula and scholarly activities and projects goes on and on. It also speaks to the generosity with which so many of our faculty contribute to the many different facets of the humanities on this campus, a generosity that shows up in their willingness to hold governance appointments in those other units as well as English, and in their willingness to serve in university administration as well. Currently, for instance, Susan Friedman is directing the Institute for Research in the Humanities, and David Loewenstein is directing the Center for Early Modern Studies, while Leslie Bow has just finished an extended term as Chair of Asian American Studies.
Cross-disciplinary breadth is further fostered in University of Wisconsin Department of English graduate students through the requirement of a minor field within the Ph.D. Whether students take the required minimum of ten minor credits (often in fact twelve credits, acquired in four three-credit courses) in one department or through several departments, this requirement insures that our Ph.D.s acquire real interdisciplinary training, while they get to sample the extraordinary resources of this world-class research university. A number of our students gain opportunities to be teaching assistants or lecturers in interdisciplinary programs and departments, including the Gender and Women's Studies Department, the Afro-American Studies Department, the American Indian Studies Program, the Asian American Studies Program, the Chican@ and Latin@ Studies Program, the Institute for Environmental Studies, and the Integrated Liberal Studies Program.
The varied teaching experiences available to our graduate students are another strength of our program. For teaching within this department, students in literary studies regularly act as teaching assistants in both introductory literary courses and introductory composition courses. Many have opportunities to T.A. in one of the three survey literature courses we require of our undergraduate majors (two in different periods of English literature and one in American), and some have opportunities—particularly as they near completion of their degrees—to teach upper level undergraduate courses, or even to serve as lecturers in the intro lit sequence. In addition, our Writing Center is one of the very best in the nation, and many grad students tutor there or become involved with affiliated programs such as the undergraduate Writing Fellows program or Writing Across the Curriculum. MFA students are able to teach both creative writing and composition. Both the English Department and the College of Letters and Science provide ongoing training in pedagogy, as well as brown bag lunches and presentations on matters of pedagogical interest. By the time students complete our program, they are effective and experienced teachers, skilled in teaching writing and literature. For more detailed information on this topic, see the document on grad student teaching elsewhere on this website.
Some of the things that most recommend this department are hard to detail, since they are intangibles having to do with the excellent esprit de corps among the graduate students. This spirit may be fostered partly by the large shared offices, often big enough to hold a couch and other comfortable furniture, that create a comfortable atmosphere for the sharing of teaching resources and other forms of mutual support. No doubt it is fostered also by the lively and challenging but never cut-throat exchanges that take place in our classrooms. It may also be a consequence of the diversity of our students, who come from varied backgrounds and varied types of institutions in all parts of the nation and many continents. And it certainly has to do with Madison’s wonderful grad student (and younger-adult) culture that fosters lots of social contact and friendships both inside and outside the department. This includes an active night life involving, among other things, varied music venues, excellent arts and cultural facilities both on campus and in the city, loads of restaurants representing cuisine from all parts of the country and globe, a terrific network of bike trails, informal sports leagues and pickup games, innumerable lectures and public events throughout the city, and rich opportunities for political involvement and for service to the community.
There are other programs out there that offer more money than we are currently able to provide, but, with a faculty deeply committed to teaching and mentoring and with a vibrant community to support students during their years here, we offer skills and opportunities that are going to translate into real success on the job market and beyond. I encourage you to explore this web site to find out more. Don’t hesitate to contact individual faculty members if you wish to learn whether their research and teaching interests correspond with the areas in which you hope to study.
Sincerely,
Lynn Keller
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