The GEA would like to invite all English graduate students to the second professionalization workshop of the semester Wednesday 10/16/13 at 11:00am in Anderson 1006. The focus of this workshop will be writing seminar papers.

Seminar papers present a daunting task to new students who are likely encountering this kind of writing for the first time. We will be circulating sample seminar papers that proved successful in second year review or other classes, and we will discuss some of the advice offered in Gregory Semenza’s Graduate Study for the Twenty-First Century: How to Build an Academic Career in the Humanities (2005).

We’ve decided to take this approach because different faculty have different requirements and expectations for paper writing, and we thought it’d be fruitful if graduate students who are out of coursework could discuss such expectations with newer students. Semenza’s chapter can ground our conversation as we consider the utility of his advice and test it against our experiences. New students are especially encouraged to attend, as are individuals who are out of course work: what do you wish you had known when you first began writing graduate essays?

The subsequent meeting will be either a CV workshop or a discussion about conferences and composing abstracts. We will discuss how to run this workshop on Wednesday. Please contact the GEA if you have suggestions or ideas for future workshops.