From Tragedy to Knowledge, From Darkness to Light

Hello GSAS students and friends,
    This week the mass-shooting in Colorado has both saddened and unnerved me. While my heart goes out to the survivors and the families of the victims who are enduring this terrifying and life-altering tragedy -- as my tears fall while I hear fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, sisters, and brothers talk of the loved ones they lost --  my intellectual side simultaneously has been tossing and turning over the cultural and social implications of this horror that need not have happened. Since the event, I have thinking about how graduate study and scholarship might be useful in shedding light on this tragedy and perhaps preventing future ones. To me, if graduate study can’t be used to helped improve society in some way and make the world a better place, it shouldn’t even exist.
   Here are some seeds of scholarship that might be cultivated by those within academia and brought to bear on the public consciousness.

1.)    Studies in sociology, political science, and law on gun control and policy. Can scholars and academics study this issue so that politicians can stop saying, “We need more studies on how gun control laws would actually impact these kinds of events.” A certain politician has said that he didn't think any particular law would prevent people who are intent on doing harm from carrying out their harm -- is this true? What basis is this claim made from? I'd like to see some scholarly discussion on this so that we as a society have some real basis from which to draw our conclusions.

2.)    Studies in poli/sci and American Studies Programs and American History on the 2nd amendment – how can we make the public more aware and in touch with the origin, purpose, and effects of this amendment? What is, actually, the right to keep and bear arms, and why do we have it, who and what does it protect, and what does it mean for a society, and how can we view this right in light of 21st century advancements in both ethics and technology? Instead of just reflexively saying, “We need to protect the second amendment,” let’s strive to increase an awareness about what it really is. Let’s open a conversation about this right of ours, and make the conversation more accessible to all. The effects of this amendment, or right, have a bearing on our lives whether we want it to or not. We need to become more familiar with our rights and why we have them. Graduate and academic conversations can be a starting point for getting this conversation into the public consciousness.

3.)   Studies to increase awareness of and education about mental illness, mental disturbances, and mental health. Academics have to research more about the relationship between our societal choices and values and the state of our individual and collective mental health. What can we do to nurture our psyches, and what can we do to prevent our psyches from becoming diseased, disordered, and disconnected from reality?

These are just some preliminary thoughts about what discussions must, I believe, begin to rise up out of the horror and pain of this needless tragedy. Again, my thoughts and love are with the survivors, the victims, and family and friends whose lives were all changed forever on July 20th.
Until next time, Liza

Business Cards Available for GSAS Students

Hi folks! I hope everyone had a good Monday!
    Soooooooo, I discovered something cool today on the GSAS page of the Fordham website! GSAS students can order their very own BUSINESS CARDS!
    At conferences, I have always been impressed by the students who whip out a nice card when I ask to exchange contact information. I think it is the sense of direction and focus that the "business card" evokes. Not that one goes to graduate school to emulate the corporate world lifestyle, but the act of pulling out a nice business card gives off a sense of dedication to your chosen career path. It signifies commitment to academia as a career; it shows that you have self-confidence in your career path. It shows that you see yourself as a viable contributor in your chosen field.
   I have often thought of making my own business cards, to give out when attending networking-worthy events such as conferences, lectures, meet & greets, socials, talks, readings, and undergraduate alumni events. But I worried that homemade ones would further call attention to the self-perceived amateurism of my life as a graduate student that I was so desperate to hide and run away from.
   Looking back, I am sure I could have designed some decent ones and nobody would have thought twice about it. In fact, I am sure most of the ones I've collected from students over the years were probably homemade, although I certainly didn't nitpick or think about that when I received them.
  But it somehow makes me happy that we can order OFFICIAL ones from Fordham. Does it make me feel validated or legitimized somehow? Perhaps... or else I just think it is cool and functional at the same time.
  The information that you'll need to order them can be found on this page: Click Here! The deadline to order them for this year is September 15th, so I wanted to let everyone know about it! The price is pretty reasonable -- $30 for 500 -- which would be just about equal to the cost if you made your own!
Here is what they look like! They are simple but effective, and "official" looking.

Find the order form here!

What do you guys think? Will you order these? Let me know what you think!  Do you have them already? If so, let me know how they came out!

An Origin Story, with Fireworks

Hello Readers,
     Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a nice 4th of July week! As I celebrated 4th of July, with city-folks trying to stay cool, donning red, white, and blue, and with crowds gathering together to watch as fireworks burst overhead, I was prompted to remember what inspired me to follow my current path as an Americanist in the graduate English department. Without any irony on my part, I have to say that it is sort of a patriotic story -- probably the only genuine feeling and act of patriotism that I have experienced in my adult life. (Which, I guess, is sad.)

Photo from The Library of Congress Website

     Before I tell the inspiring story (ok, the irony is back), first I'll just give a little bit of reflection on the reflection. Since graduate students' interests have a tendency to morph as they learn more, think more, and work through the critical problems they encounter, it makes sense that I was not always an Americanist studying 18th and 19th century novels. But it is also true that to commit to a certain discipline of scholarship for so many years at such a high level, it is not uncommon that graduate students often have specific reasons for choosing what to study -- sometimes practical, sometimes academic, and sometimes emotional reasons --  as well as a great degree of conviction about what that field means to them. Becoming an Americanist who studied novels was not a given for me, and even now, on a daily basis, I do not consciously think about the reasons that turned me in that direction. But on Independence Day, as flags waved, I felt more connected to that origin story than I usually do.  I thought I would share the reasons that I study early American literature, and then invite you to share your stories about why you study what you study.
    My path as a student of literature began as an undergraduate, when I studied Early Modern, Modern, and Contemporary Drama, and also wrote a lot of poetry. As I began my Master's, I shifted my focus from drama to novels, and from poetry to fiction. I believe that happened for a practical reasons: at Fordham, the Modern Drama teacher was retiring as I began my coursework, and I began to choose classes that were centered on fiction writing and novels, and it just kind of stuck. As the semesters raced by, I fell completely in love with Victorian novels -- the classics such as Vanity Fair, Jane Eyre, Our Mutual Friend, and Wuthering Heights, and the Gothic greats like Dracula and Frankenstein, and off-the-beaten path sensation fiction such as Lady Audley's Secret.  I couldn't get enough of them -- they were like candy to me, and writing about them was proving to be so much fun. The Master's program for English required, at the time, a certain number of British Lit courses and a certain number of American Lit courses, so of course I made the rounds, but whenever I could take a class that centered around Victorian novels, I signed up.
   I had a couple of great American classes, too, and read and re-read some American classics, but they just weren't stacking up to the delicious Victorian dishes I had become so hungry for.

   This all changed when I went for an innocent visit to see an old college friend who happened to live in Washington, D.C. Believe it or not, I had never been to that city before. When my friend Heather heard that, she took it upon herself to arrange for me to see at least all the monuments and a couple of the special exhibits and sites/ sights that were so special to the city. I never in my dreams believed that a little sight-seeing would alter the path of my life! As I took in one site after another, I began to feel something I had never felt about the United States of America, and to think thoughts I had never thought about the origin of our country.
   It was, to be precise, the words that did it. It was the words I read as I crossed through FDR's monument, that ran through my brain as the fountains and waterfalls flowed and trickled around me. It was the words carved into Jefferson's and Lincoln's echoey stone houses that gave me the feelings down to my bones about the bravery of starting something so new -- of fighting for independence with nothing more than ideas pressed out into the world in the form of language.  As I read the inscriptions, something deep down inside made me want to study how it could be possible for a nation to create itself -- and how stories and words and language were the key instruments in doing so. And somehow it resonated with me personally, too -- could language and stories create not just a nation, but an individual? How does this all work? Can you trust it?

    This feeling was more than an appetite for the sweet treats of Victorian novels -- this desire was about wanting to know HOW, and WHY, and WHAT HAPPENED ALONG THE WAY. It was curiosity about the very ground I walked on, the rules I lived by, the customs I followed blindly, the social hierarchies that governed my life, the values that shaped my choices and beliefs about work, education, freedom, family, and self-hood. I was feeling, for the first time, a part of a nation, and I wanted to know more about its origins, and if the language behind those origins could be trusted and believed in.
   That was the weekend I decided to become an Americanist. I remember telling Heather about my decision as we were sitting underneath some pretty flowery trees near the National Mall. I said, I think it could matter, at least to me, to learn about what was written then, and to think through it, and to see where it veered off track. She said, "It's good if it matters." I remember feeling elated about this decision, as if it were a revelation that the universe had been waiting for me to have. I left DC that weekend feeling a renewed energy, and that fall I began my PHD and declared my field as American Literature. I had new purpose!
   Now, when I am feeling challenged and unmotivated, I do try to remember that weekend, and to recall my revelatory feelings about American literature. For me, no matter what happens in the rest of my life, I'm sure that fireworks on the Fourth of July will always remind me of that refreshing wonderful feeling of true conviction about the next step in my life path. That feeling is not so easy to come by, and I am grateful I had the experience even once in my life, even if my path twists and turns from here.

    It may sound cheesy, but that is my story of why I committed to my major field. With all that said, I am sincerely interested in your personal stories -- what drew you into what you are studying? Was it a moment, a weekend, a person, a book, an experience? And when you are frustrated and stuck, what brings you back to that moment of origin? Please share!!!
Until next time, Liza

Summer Grad Life

Hello Readers!
Happy July!
       As I was racing to make headway on a dissertation chapter by June 30th, I took a bit of time off from blogging at the end of June --  but now I am back and will provide the GSAS community with what I hope to be insightful and entertaining blogs about Grad.Life for the rest of the summer! I hope you check in periodically to see what is going on in the GSAS world!
       I was thinking that new graduate students, or family members/friends of graduate students, may wonder what a typical summer is like for a graduate student. It seems like a sort of mysterious segment of time from the perspective of someone who has never experienced it, so I thought I would devote the first blog of July to describing and investigating the "grad-life summer."
      After some thinking back on my summers as a graduate student, I guess the short answer is that there really is no typical summer for a graduate student. Unlike law students or medical students, graduate students don't always have a structured "place they ought to be" for the summer that is designated by their school, department, or program. There is no "best practice" -- like the way law students all get a summer job at a local firm or clerking for a judge. For graduate students, it definitely depends on your unique situation and department. Some departments require students to register for certain classes over the summer; some have the option to take courses; some take no classes at all. Some use the summer to write a thesis or dissertation or an article; and, sometimes there is funding available for these projects, and sometimes there is not. Some students teach the summer session; but courses are limited, so most do not. There is the possibility, but not usually the requirement, of a professional internship; yet, there are some graduate students that work a full time day job and so for the summer take "off" from being a graduate student while still holding down their full time jobs.

Students on an archaeological dig!

      In my experience as a grad student, the summer is time that is less structured than the regular semester periods, but it still needs to be productive in order to succeed in the program and as a scholar. It is a time to set and try to achieve both academic and personal goals. These goals could be oriented towards academic research or work -- trying to get ahead on reading lists for upcoming exams, catching up on reading journal articles published in your field, or committing to a personal project, clinical study, or field work. You may enroll in a class to try to get ahead in your coursework. On the other hand, these goals could also be more personal -- making money to help sustain you for the next semester ahead, or visiting family whom you haven't seen all semester, or catching up on pleasure-reading or a updating a personal blog, or starting or completing a personal writing project, or furthering a practice or enjoying a hobby. Summer for a graduate student can be a time that is really tailored to suit one's own personal needs -- it provides more freedom and choices than the fall and spring semesters.
       While grad students may have the freedom of less structured time in the summer months, the one thing graduate students don't have (usually!) is the freedom of having extra money. But the GSAS has, in recent years, opened up opportunities for Summer Fellowships that may make research in distant libraries, archives, and research sites possible. Information on these summer grants may be found at this link: GSAS Summer Fellowships. The deadlines for these grants are in December and March, depending on your specific department, so if you want to plan ahead for next summer, you can start thinking about your application during the Fall semester!
     Personally, this summer will be about maintaining my "day-job" while making great strides on my dissertation chapters. This will entail long afternoons and early weekend mornings of writing and researching, and some afternoons and evenings in the library.  Note about the library: during the Summer Session at Fordham, the library stays open on Monday-Thursday til 11pm. When classes are not in session ("Intersession"), the library follows a 9 to 5 schedule. This year, the Summer Session goes until August 2.  Here is a link to the Summer Session calendar and homepage!

     Overall, think about summer as a time when productivity may mean very different things to each particular student -- but productivity is a must! But don't forget to plan to enjoy the summer weather, too, and budget time in your schedule for enjoyment and leisure. As a graduate student, you one may feel like you always "could" be doing something to further your progress, and most of us feel guilty when we are not. But be realistic -- you need time for yourself, too. Summer is the perfect time for this;  plus, it's important not to feel cheated out of summer, because overall productivity for the year will suffer! And for the graduate student in your life, make sure you support them through the sunny beach days that make it nearly impossible to be stuck inside a library -- give them the encouragement to keep at it but also to take care of themselves and take advantage of the flexibility that the summer may offer them!
I'll be back with a new post soon, tackling some important issues for grad students that have evolved around the nation in the past few months. Keep reading, and enjoy the holiday week!
Til next time, Liza

Monday Morning Brainstorms

Hello Readers! Happy Monday!
     Within a few minutes of waking up this morning, I happened to find myself reading newest post in the blog "Brainstorm" in The Chronicle, and it got my wheels turning, so I thought I'd open up my own post and start writing. I had to stop in the middle of writing, and finish it up and post it this afternoon, but I kind of liked the distinctive style the morning writing had yielded -- so here it is!
      Writing when I first wake up is always an adventure in crossing over from the dreamy, abstract, fluid, intuitively profound recesses of my brain into the more concrete, sensory edges of my brain that meet the outside world with wary calculation and skepticism. So when, upon waking, I reached for my computer and began skimming through Facebook posts and mass emails that had transpired overnight, I somehow, by no conscious intention nor deliberation, ended up opening The Chronicle and being drawn to click on a link to a post entitled "A 'Tempest'-uous Reprieve for Western Civ." Perhaps the title, combined with the blog title "Brainstorm," appealed to my still-tempesting dreamy thought-trains, or perhaps it was a random series of clicks that brought me to it, but regardless, I was drawn into David Barash's post, and, as my mind awoke, I found myself beginning to process thoughts, and have the beginnings of something to say.
     Although the tongue-in-cheek sentences about "the decline and imminent fall of Western Civilization" and Thomas Jefferson's quotation “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just” evoked some apocalyptic images in my sleepy mind, the  phrase in Barash's post that struck me out of dreamland and into reality was the phrase "coarsening of our public discourse."  The word "coarsening" had the effect of someone grating the interior of my mind, as if I was crossing from a silken landscape into a sandpaper world. The phrase "public discourse" jolted me from the world of fairydusted sunlight streaming into my window into the world of academia, as if a disembodied hand had thrust my academic hat upon my head before I could stave it off. It was too late -- I was yanked into the discussion.
     As I made my coffee, I thought about this phrase -- "the coarsening of public discourse." Suddenly even the coffee grinds I was dumping into my Mr. Coffee pot seemed to scream the word "coarse" at me, as if each object my senses would encounter this morning would metonymically reverberate with the rough scratchiness of the world around me. What did the connotations of the word "coarseness" actually register about our Western world? Why did the author's phrase strike me in such a sharp way this morning? As we have gotten more technically savvy and slick and sophisticated as a culture, have we become roughened in another way -- less refined and propituous? Have we lost the ability to be gracious? Has our taste for the finer, subtle things been replaced with a gluttony for bigger, more, faster, flashier? I thought about my lazy reach for my Macbook as I woke up and my half-asleep stroll through Facebook and email subscriptions and wondered if the instant access to a virtual version of the social network was contributing to what Barash is sensing as an imminent vulgarizing of our cultural infrastructures.
     As I sipped my coffee and sank back onto the plush brown couch where I do most of my writing, I began to think about what aspects of society have become coarsened. Overall, I agree with the author that there are indeed indelicacies about Western civilization’s trends in communication: I see crudeness in many elements of our society -- in our speaking, in our parenting and educating of our children, in our political campaigning and rhetoric, in our writing of movie screenplays and songs – in our relationships, in our self-awareness, in our definitions of success and self-worth. But as I drank my coffee, and my head began to clear away the dreamy cobwebs from the night's sleep, I started to fervently believe that maybe nostalgia was at work in Brainstorm's post -- were we really so much more refined and full of elegance and superior aesthetic taste in decades past, or was that image simply a romanticized, nostalgic version of the past that we like to conjure as a way to disengage ourselves from the crudity we feel and see around us?
      At the end of the day, the author finds optimism in a performance by Christopher Plummer in the recent  film adaptation of "The Tempest," which instilled hope in the author that there still exists some kind of high-brow artistic possibility in the Western world. I like that essay ends with optimism, but I still question the fundamental premise that popular culture is essentially a cess-pool save for a few diamonds in the rough.
      Another day of teaching at my day-job and writing for the dissertation lay ahead. I know my thoughts today will be clouded by these diametric thoughts of coarseness and refinement  -- but I hope that my brain can whip up a perfect storm so that I can somehow transcend the stereotypical conceptions of this binary. That is my thought of the day! I hope it helps stir up a brainstorm in you as you begin your week!

"You're a Grand Old Grad"

Happy Flag Day!

When I was little, my siblings and I used to write parodies to the tunes of common holiday songs. Here's a ditty I wrote about grad students, inspired by "You're a Grand Old Flag," apropos for today.  I'm hoping this goes viral.

"You're a Grand Old Grad"

You're a grand old grad, you're a hard working grad,
and forever in peace may you grade.
You're the servant of, the school you love,
You teach and research, and get paid!

Every term goes by, and you try not to cry,
Remembering the struggles you had!
Should years pass by, til it all ends,
Keep your eye on that grand old grad!

Have a great Flag Day everyone, and Happy Birthday to the Army!
Til next time, Liza

Blogs for Grads!

Hi Readers!
Thanks for tuning into last week's post -- it had the most first-day hits ever! This week, I wanted to share a list I found about other graduate-school related blogs -- it's called the "Top 50 Blogs Every Graduate Student Should Read," and I found it by googling "graduate school blogs." I was looking for other blogs like Grad.Life, to see what other graduate students are writing and thinking about. I hit the jackpot when I found this list!
Some of the "blogs" listed aren't really blogs -- more like websites that provide information or links to resources. But the blogs that are on the list are some I have never heard of before, but that I am glad I found. The list is from January of 2011, but most of these blogs are still in action and have current posts that are full of information, anecdotes, perspectives, and ideas about graduate school life. Even the ones that aren't super current have great archives to browse through.
The first one on the list, "Adventures in Gradland," actually has since changed it's name to "Adventures in (Post) Gradland" -- author defended in May! There is hope!! :)
There's one called "Dissertation Diva" that has some clever and funny advice-column-esque Q & A posts,  plus lots of advice for writing the dissertation.
I also got sucked into the archives of "To Do: Dissertation," -- I laughed because on my "To Do" lists that I scribble down onto the margins of my planner each day always start with: To Do: Diss, which is obviously so ridiculous to write down on my To Do list -- as if I could forget that this monster that is holding up my life is hanging over my head!!!!
The list is broken up into 5 sections: general life support, specific graduate program blogs, study tool resources, writing resources, and work and money. In the last section, I enjoyed browsing through "Broke Grad" -- it reads like a magazine geared towards helping graduate students become financially savvy in the real world.
Well, I hope this list is helpful in your time of need and does not increase the procrastination factor!
Til next time---
Liza