Presents six responses to an article in the same issue of this journal. Recommends closer contact between baccalaureate institutions and doctoral programs. Expresses a "hope for the new" in the form of more inventive candidates for assistant professorships. States that the conventional admissions process does not work as well for…

Offers a utopian vision of what the place of rhetoric should be in a department that thinks of itself as literary. Argues that a Ph.D. in English that encompasses both literature and rhetoric works because it is really a degree in rhetoric. (TB)

Contends that the academy has forgotten the origin of the dissertation and has turned it from a substantive contribution of scholarship to an instrument of evaluation. Argues that continuing to treat the dissertation in this way maintains an unequal power hierarchy of "masters" and initiates--it should be seen as the first serious scholarly…

A graduate teaching assistant who lived through the Northridge quake in Los Angeles County reached some realizations about her habits of thinking in the wake of that experience. As students schooled or even trained in poststructuralist critical theory and/or protocols of postmodern cultural critique, this teaching assistant and some of her…

Instead of being encouraged to act in a professional manner, graduate students are continually reminded of their professional inferiority by the English department. (HOD)

The violence of any literacy acquisition in the contact zone between the powered, the disempowered, and the empowered is never clearcut. But, nevertheless, calls to theory literacy from the late 70s and early 80s have been answered with a rush. Michael Berube writes that "graduate school in English seems to have a very bad effect on people…

Communication among teaching assistants can be as complicated as communication among full time faculty members, so that power relationships influence the rhetoric they use when they talk about being students, teachers, and professionals. Analysis of the political dimensions of teaching assistant interaction in the English department at the…

Lists for comparison the average of pre- and post-MA salaries and stipends per course paid by 68 universities. (CRH)

Suggests that unemployed English graduates and career changers need information, careful long-term nurturing through support groups, and lessons in marketing and extending the abilities they have. (AEA)

Cautions that the economic woes faced by many colleges involve the risk of losing many graduate programs. Describes a scenario in which primarily research-oriented staff are forced to teach, thus forcing the collapse of graduate programs at all but a few institutions. Discusses a typical workload at many universities and its implications. (PA)

Women who wish to assume full voice in their writing have no choice but to raise questions regarding their status and the status of creative writing within the academy. Tillie Olsen and Elaine Showalter have documented the bias in texts taught at the university in which women have little place, if at all. The effects are devastating: if the voices…

A graduate student who was the only composition person in a two semester teaching seminar experienced the dilemma of defining and establishing that identity in the midst of a classroom struggle between cultural studies and literary theorists on one side and creative writers on the other. The factious teaching seminar mirrored the fact that English…

Ever since the publish-or-perish era began sometime ago, academics in the humanities have experienced a widening gap between their two primary obligations, teaching and research. Bad enough for tenure-track junior faculty, the tension between the demands of writing, delivering, and publishing papers is even worse for graduate students because of…

Identifies the slippage that often occurs between graduate school in English and the actual classroom realities of professional life. Suggests six areas of professional development for graduate students in English. Claims that such development might help teachers achieve greater happiness and success in their new surroundings. (HB)

In recent years, traditional teacher training programs for graduate teaching assistants which value a rather narrow definition of academic work have produced a limiting path of professionalization. The problem can no longer be figured as a matter of emphasis--should more training resources be directed toward pedagogy instead of content area…