This paper reports on a desktop review study of undergraduate and postgraduate English studies (both English literature and English language) module offerings (n = 48) of 24 English departments at 17 South African higher education institutions (HEIs) conducted in 2017. The review focused on the presence and purpose of the term, decolonisation, in…

The Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing, usually housed within the English Department, has become a progressively more popular field of study among students and budget conscious administrators. But for all its popularity, it is a field that has been left generally unexamined by scholars. While there have been numerous scholarly studies…

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…

Suggests that English graduate departments ought to begin discussing what will make graduate education more organic to the teaching experience of the graduate student. (RB)

Explores some aspects of a "literary education," and concludes that a literary education helps one to live alertly in a culture which is "idiotically" stratified. (JM)

Suggests that working beyond the academy should be understood not as an abandonment of the academic job market, a response to failure, or a curse: instead, it should be understood as a new avenue for intellectual work, one that neither graduate-school programs nor the Modern Language Association would be wise to ignore. (RS)

Presents the results of a survey on the salaries paid by English departments with established Ph.D. programs of nationally recognized quality. (RB)

Calls for college English faculty to embrace the challenge of a diversity that includes nonelite institutions. Suggests that graduate students in English who find themselves in nonelite undergraduate institutions teaching mostly nonmajors will have to learn a second language: the language of accommodation. (RS)

Suggests that the technical and professional writing concentration in the English department at Eastern Michigan University serves as an example of the way Master of Arts (MA) programs often reflect the economy of a particular region. Discusses the MA program at Eastern Michigan University. (RS)

Uses a baseball metaphor to advise students who want to pursue a doctoral degree--in many ways the Master's program at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, is like a triple-A minor league farm club, preparing players for the big leagues of the doctoral institutions. (RS)

Involving graduate teaching assistants (GAs) in the development and implementation of rubrics has many benefits. GA involvement increases their sense of ownership of the rubrics and makes it more likely that they will regard the rubrics in a positive light. GAs have insights about the students whose work will be evaluated by the rubrics; and, as…

Alice in Wonderland must be appealed to in order to understand the plight of the young Ph.D. in English. (JH)

Suggests that English departments have seen their power to shape the identity of their members diminish. Argues that an important part of the preparation of future professors takes place in a master-apprentice setting strengthened by an economic atmosphere that encourages students fearful of getting jobs to identify with those faculty members…

Notes that four computers and writing specialists and one librarian who had found work in a variety of nontraditional, nonteaching positions were asked to meet at LinguaMOO and talk about their careers. Contains a version of that conversation as edited for print purposes, and the annotations and responses made after the fact by the participants.…

Contains the results of a recent survey on the employment possibilities for doctoral students about to receive their degrees and those who graduated since 1971 with a Ph. D. in English. (RB)