Topic 4: Developing a Professional Identity as a Researcher and Scholar

Columbia University Department of English and Comparative Literature

This Snapshot describes how the doctoral program in the English and Comparative Literature helps teach students to become a researcher and scholar.

Making the shift from considering oneself a student to seeing oneself as an active and contributing member of the discipline is an important change in professional identity. Self-identifying as a chemist or an historian implies active participation in a broad disciplinary community of researchers and scholars. It means embracing the identity of a steward of the discipline, responsible for the future of the field and the next generations of scholars.

Summary Description

In the field of literary studies, there are perhaps three main challenges that face many graduate students in their development as researchers and scholars. One is that of transforming what often begins as a passion into scholarship that pursues sustained and disciplined questions and contributes to knowledge production within the field of literary studies. Another is that of situating one's work within the increasingly interdisciplinary environment of today's humanities departments. How does one gain competency in a field that overlaps with his or her research interests, and how does one integrate "outside" knowledge into work that remains relevant to the discipline? The third is clarifying for oneself the relationship between teaching and scholarship, ideally in such a way that one reinforces the other rather than becoming compartmentalized activities. At every stage of the doctoral program, our department seeks to support graduate students in achieving these and related goals.

In the coursework phase, the acquisition of valuable skills is somewhat ad hoc. Students are exposed to various models of literary scholarship through their course distribution requirements, and in the second year all students are required to take a course called The Discipline of Literary Studies. This course surveys intellectual and institutional trends in the development of literary studies from the late nineteenth century to the present and thereby offers a context within which students may better understand the approaches used in the courses they have been taking. In their second year, students now have the option of leading discussion sections in undergraduate lecture courses, in which they work in collaboration with the professor and are responsible for helping undergraduates pursue discipline-relevant questions. The hope is that this process will benefit graduate students by giving them more opportunities to teach literature and in so doing affect the way they pursue scholarship in the field. In addition, a wide array of conferences and talks are held at the university on a regular basis, the most relevant of which are regularly advertised on the department listserve, encouraging graduate students to attend and participate.

As they progress through the program, graduate students are increasingly asked to situate their own work within and between the research and scholarship paradigms to which they have been exposed in the coursework phase. When they begin to prepare for oral examinations, graduate students seek out four professors to serve on their exam committee. Rather than being provided with a reading list, graduate students work with their committee members to design a reading list that strikes a balance between teaching and research as well as tradition and innovation. The oral exam process is in many ways the first official task in which students begin to formulate and articulate both their teaching and research interests.

At the dissertation stage, the advising system is designed to give graduate students an integral combination of responsibility and guidance as they develop their dissertation projects and in so doing, their own identities within the field of literary studies. In addition to receiving support from their dissertation committee throughout this process, graduate students are encouraged to join groups which are organized and led by their peers. Currently, there are a number of theme- and period-oriented readings groups as well as dissertation reading groups, in which graduate students share drafts of their work-in-progress. Throughout the program, but especially after oral examinations, graduate students are encouraged to present their work at professional conferences and, with the support of their advisors, submit polished work to professional journals.

To complement the aspects of the program which contribute to professional identity and development, our CID work this year focused on cultivating and hosting a dialogue amongst graduate students about the status and future of the discipline. To this end, we hosted two events, one featuring a guest speaker whose scholarship focuses on the history and status of literary studies and another organized and led by graduate students, which pursued the question, "What is a literary field?"

Goals for Students

By the time students complete the PhD, they should have a solid grasp of the skills and knowledge base associated with their specific field. Amongst their peers in the field and before those who will evaluate them for jobs, they should:

In order to continue to develop their professional identities, they should:

Program Context

Our department is known for its spirit of innovation and flexibility and for the quality of self-motivation it seeks out and encourages in its graduate students. We believe that these aspects cultivate a sense of ownership and professional identity and, in the long run, equip graduate students with the skills and mentality necessary for their careers as scholars.

Tools and Resources

How Do We Know?

Like most sequential doctoral programs in the humanities, students are evaluated at three junctures--at the Masters (M.A.) stage, at the Oral examination stage (M. Phil.), and at the Dissertation (Ph.D) stage. In addition to receiving grades for coursework and a written evaluation of their M.A. essay, sequential M.A. students receive an end-of the-year evaluation, which ensures that they have done work of high quality and met the program requirements.

The oral examination marks the second major evaluative benchmark in the program. While the exam itself is important, the regular meetings with committee members are as if not more crucial. A few weeks before the exam, students take a pre-orals exam. If it becomes clear that they are not sufficiently prepared, the exam will be rescheduled for a later date.

At the dissertation stage, there are several evaluative junctures. The first is the prospectus, which must be approved by all three committee members. Graduate students then submit the draft of their dissertations on a chapter-by-chapter basis, each of which receives feedback from the committee members. As necessary, graduate students are asked to reformulate problematic aspects of each chapter, and sometimes, the chapter in its entirety.

As they finish up their dissertations, graduate students also work with the Director of Placement, who helps prepare them for job applications and interviews.

The dissertation defense marks the final evaluative moment for graduate students. This culminating rite of passage provides a key opportunity for graduate students to discuss the development of their work and to receive feedback which will help them think critically about their project and make plans for future developments.

Evaluation also occurs on a department-wide scope, through tracking attrition rates and time-to-degree as well as job-placements results and publication data. In addition, we would like to design an exit interview in order to analyze the factors contributing to attrition.

Unanswered Questions

Perhaps, the biggest ongoing challenge for our program is that of striking a balance between independence and flexibility on the one hand and setting useful parameters and guidelines on the other hand. As a relatively large program which encompasses a variety of approaches to literary studies, the question remains as to how to meet the variety of needs and interests that fall within the scope of literary studies today. The tight but ever-shifting job market also poses a series of difficult questions about how best to equip graduate students for success in the profession.

Contact Information

Jonathan Arac ja2007@columbia.edu

Hannah Gurman hrg2005@columbia.edu