In a response to the Minnesota Conference on the Future of Doctoral Study in English, discusses how to guide English graduate students through both their graduate study and their professional careers. Emphasizes the need to reinforce the connection between graduate and undergraduate study. (MM)

A reply directed to George Gleason's The Job Market for Women: A Department Chairman's View," which appears on pp. 927-30 of this issue. (RD)

Provides a detailed course description for English 812, one of the nine rhetoric and advanced writing courses offered in the Graduate College of Arts and Sciences at Georgia State University. Offers also a critical statement about teaching the course. (PA)

Answers two questions regarding preparing English teachers for two-year colleges: whether a PhD is appropriate for teaching in a two-year college (yes and no); and what graduate departments can do to help their students find work (candidates for two-year college teaching jobs need teaching experience beyond traditional freshman composition…

Discusses numerous solutions to enlarging the pool of interested and qualified undergraduate students of color, attracting and retaining graduate students of color and helping them in the job search, and increasing the numbers of faculty members of color. Notes that these include funding, mentoring, and coverage and validation of interdisciplinary…

Uses the term "shape shifting" to describe a set of evolving, institutionalized practices that are open to both dark and benign interpretations. Discusses ways to foster diversity. Presents a practical guide on how graduate programs can be more proactive in preparing students for positions that demand a diversity of specialization and skills. (SG)

The PhD dissertation is the ultimate educational product. It reflects the training of its author and the technical, analytical, and writing skills he or she developed in a doctoral program. Successful completion of the dissertation and the award of the PhD certify that the degree recipient can do independent scholarly work. That much is generally…

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…

In a response to the Minnesota Conference on the Future of Doctoral Study in English, argues that English departments can define future study in English by focusing on the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Claims that, taken together, the three disciplines are potentially concerned with all issues involved in how we use words to make, do, and…

In a response to the Minnesota Conference on the Future of Doctoral Study in English, asserts that the English faculty in two-year colleges should not be omitted from discussions of graduate study in English. Offers several recommendations for graduate education in English, particularly in relation to the implications for instructors in two-year…

Gives responses from English graduate students to the question, "What bothers you most about graduate school?" Considers the role that the study of literary theory should have in graduate English studies. Argues that theory should become more like a verb than a noun, which it currently tends to be. (HB)

Offers guidelines that specify the kinds of information that will assist faculties in identifying and rectifying problems in their graduate programs. Directs attention to eight areas: department goals; graduate admissions; retention and attrition of students; financial support for students; preparing students for careers within and outside the…

Suggests that the intellectual challenges of contemporary literary study be seen as enriched by, rather than in competition with, knowledge of the history of literary theory; and that English departments cultivate a determined antagonism to disciplinary territorialism, whether in faculty hiring, curricular design, or graduate admissions. (RS)

Power relations between professors and graduate students are fluid, in many ways under continuous negotiation. This is especially true in electronically mediated interchanges. Although a professor's power and authority far from disappear in a MOO (multi-user object-oriented domain) session, the power and influence of the students rise to challenge…