Ghosts of Semesters Past

Hello Fordham Grad Students and Beyond!

Since it is the week of May that is the traditional last week of the term, today I’ve been thinking about my final papers from previous semesters. I was actually backing up my files yesterday and came across these digital documents. A while ago, I had organized all my files into separate folders for each course I had taken in graduate school, but I’d also created a file called “Final Seminar Papers,” in which I put the final draft, and even some copies that were graded and commented on digitally, of final seminar papers into their own folder. As I was backing up, I read a bit of some of them.  It was a trip down seminar-memory lane!

For me, now in my dissertation stage, most of these papers are not directly related to my dissertation, because I did not conjure my diss topic until after my comps,.  I actually haven’t looked at these or thought about these papers in a long time.

For others, their seminar papers and end of term projects may be feeding directly into their dissertations. This kind of focus seems rare, but in hindsight, I wonder if I should have been thinking long term earlier, trying to tailor my seminar topics towards some kind of overall goal – head start on my dissertation!

My thoughts about these final seminar papers now that I am dissertation stage?

PUBLISHING: I’m wondering if I can somehow, one day after this dissertation project is put to bed, use one or more of these capstone papers as a jumping off point for a new project or article. Of course, this revision and conversion might take a few months, but the seminar work already done might be a good kickstart to launch myself into something different once my dissertation has passed and I need a break from the material.

NETWORKING/ CONFERENCE CONNECTIONS: Maybe check out the CFP’s for upcoming regional and national conferences and see if any relate to my old seminar paper topics…. Maybe I revise one of them for a conference, and test out the argument in a panel discussion.

TEACHING: Or, perhaps they will be useful for creating lectures and class assignments for future courses I may design or teach.  You never know a text or a topic as well as you do after you’ve written about it, so why not consider yourself a growing “expert” on the topic and include it on your future syllabi?

It is interesting to me to look back and remember my trains of thought at the time, and to think about how I interpreted sources and texts years ago, and to compare and contrast how I might analyze those same texts now.

Of course, some are more relevant to my field than others – but some were connected to my most recent research interests in ways I hadn’t realized or remembered. For example, although I am concentrating on early American lit now, my Modern American Fiction class yielded a paper on The Pawnbroker which dealt with some of the very images I am looking at now in early American fiction – the contexts are different, of course, but there are parallel insights about the way fiction functioned culturally – parallels which I find to be stimulating and motivating to my current project, at least in some kind of intanglible energizing way.

I’m curious – what has become of your seminar papers and end of term projects and research? Are they still close to your current work? Have you strayed far? In terms of relevancy of seminar work to the disseration, how do the different disciplines compare and contrast? How do you organize your papers from your courses once they are finished?

For those of you still in coursework, are you thinking about building bridges from one seminar to another, within and across semesters? Should grad students design their seminar papers around a central theme to get ahead on their dissertation? Or, are our “coursework” years supposed to be about breadth more than depth?

Share your thoughts!!! 

Neurodiversity and Autism Awareness Month

Hello!
       I hope everyone at Fordham and beyond had a nice Easter Break, and will continue to enjoy the upcoming holidays and beautiful spring weather!
      This month, I wanted to mention a cause that is dear to my heart: Autism Awareness. April is Autism Awareness Month, and in this post, I wanted to increase awareness by sharing briefly how my interaction with individuals with autism has shaped my academic interests and intellectual pursuits.

      I began graduate school as someone who loved literary studies. I thought, and still think, that studying and teaching literature, and art in general, could make the world a better place; that by extending conversations about art, we could forge connections and understandings between individuals and groups that would create harmony in the world. I know these are maybe naive ideas, but I truly feel that studying and teaching humanities provides a benefit to the world.
       In order to help put myself through graduate school financially, I began working as an ABA therapist in the home of a family with two children who had been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. What was incredible about working with these two boys was that it opened me up to understanding how diverse the human brain and mind really is. These boys each learned, thought, and processed information in ways completely different from each other, and completely different from anyone I'd ever met. It changed my whole perspective on the ways in which studying and teaching art, language arts, and humanities subjects could, indeed, have an impact on the world. Suddenly, I began to see that forging connections and understandings between individuals and groups was important to bridge not only cultural and social gaps but also cognitive, perceptive, and sensory diversities.
      This realization changed my life and changed the way I studied literature and narrative. I embarked on my dissertation project which studies the history of representation of mental disabilities in American fiction. I also began attending disability studies panels and conferences, which are great because they are interdisciplinary and thus have exposed me to a wide variety of graduate research and scholarship  related to disability, bodies, difference, and neurodiversity. I also began working at a school for children with Autism, hoping to be able to help more learners with Autism acquire the skills in the way they learn best, in order to become more independent and self-expressed.

         In celebration of Autism Awareness Month, I urge you to learn something new about ASD, or share what you know and have experienced with someone else to keep the conversation going!
In the meantime, check out the Organization for Autism Research, which gives grants to graduate students researching autism issues across disciplines such as psychology, sociology, biology, neuroscience, and more. And, here's a great article from The Chronicle in 2009 called Autism as an Academic Paradigm. 
Let me know if you have any other questions or thoughts!

"You're Doing Great" and other fantasies of grad life...

Hello Grad Students!
Today I've been thinking a lot about graduate conferences, most likely because I am presenting at one on Friday at the CUNY Graduate Center. The conference is entitled “Cripples, Idiots, Lepers, and Freaks: Extraordinary Bodies / Extraordinary Minds" -- it's an interdisciplinary conference that aims to look at literature, media, culture, problems of representation, and social practices through the lens of disability.

 Although I've helped organize a grad conference before at Fordham, and attended several over the years, I've never actually presented at a grad conference -- I'm so excited for the experience! I'm happy that this one is in New York City, and that I'll get to meet some great graduate students from across the city and beyond.
To me, grad conferences provide safe spaces to be bold, to try out styles of speaking and writing and interfacing, to learn to believe in your own thoughts, reactions, and responses, and to challenge yourself. I'm excited because I always find conference weekends to be so invigorating, both intellectually and emotionally.  There's something about the way a conference works that stretches me, that allows me to think in new ways, and that makes me find a renewed commitment to my work and field. Depending on my mood, I find it possible to be anonymous, and sit in the audience and think and listen, or to talk, try out ideas out loud, and make connections with people.  I find myself scribbling questions that I try to formulate as I listen to the speakers and make thoughts cohere. It's a very energizing and motivating experience for me.
There's been some talk in The Chronicle blogs about different types of conferences -- oh yes, leave it to us academics to categorize, classify, and analyze our own professional formats and venues! We've got it all divided it up by specific criteria: On what scale does it take place: nationally, regionally, or locally?  Who's participating -- professionals, graduates, or both? What kind of subject matter -- general or specialty? Is it organized by a department, a society, or a school? Is it organized around a theme, text, or author? Does it focus on a critical school of thought? Is it interdisciplinary? Will there be a publication that results from it? Who will you meet? What new ideas will you get?
All fun-poking aside, I actually do find it interesting to think about the dynamics of the "conference." Individuals tend to see the benefits of a conference according to his or her personality: some like the networking, collaboration, and the opportunity to get in front of audiences; some like the opportunity to think and have one-on-one discussions over the lunch or dinner breaks.
Interdisciplinary events have been key for me to expanding my horizons and thinking about my field (American lit) in new ways. Fordham, I feel, is pretty good about offering interdisciplinary events for the graduate community. (That reminds me -- the Communitas Event is coming up March 30th -- check here for more info about the Research Competition and the Ganon Lecture.) But I think always more can be done -- for example, my project on mental disability and literature could probably benefit from talks with neuroscience, biology, and philosophy grad students, to name just a few! I am fascinated by possibilities of stretching the boundaries of what we already know, of ways we know how to be.
One last note -- I've been thinking a lot about the purposes of professionalization as a grad student, and what some goals could be for myself at this conference coming up. I had a random idea today during yoga class, actually. I was in a particularly difficult pose that made me lose my balance a bit. As I stumbled out of the pose, someone next to me whispered, "You're doing great." As he said these kind words, my mind did a strange thing: it sort of immediately and unconsciously produced an image of myself at the conference. In the mini-movie in my mind that had suddenly appeared, I saw myself fumbling an important point in my paper, and the person next to me at the panel table whispered, "You're doing great."  The thought came up through the subconscious so clearly and vividly and unintentionally that it almost made me laugh. I mean, the class leaders always say that the class will draw out the bad stuff going on in your life, and I've definitely had emotions come to the surface during class before, but never had such a concrete narrative scenario risen to my mind's eye. I guess it made transparent some insecurities I have about presenting my work in public, but it also was a pretty clear wish for the same kind of encouraging, comforting and supportive environment in my work life that I enjoy in the yoga studio.  Afterwards, though, I got to thinking -- hey, why not? Why should the grad conferences be the safe spaces that help prepare us for the real academic world -- why shouldn't it just be like that always? Maybe the vision came to me as an intention to transform the post-graduate school world into a space that can also provide a warm kind of support that graduate conferences offer us?  Maybe the vision was telling me to use the CUNY Grad Center conference this weekend as a chance to extend my congratulations, or encouragement, or praise, to someone else. Maybe we graduate students can take this opportunity now, during this relatively short time in our careers, to use the grad conferences we create and participate in to help transform the future of our professional world and the way our profession works. Why not? It's up to us, after all, to decide what kind of world we want to be in.

-- Liza