English 9008
Essential Skills & Graduate Development
Professor Kate Stanley.
Winter Half Course.
This course introduces essential skills and methods in literary studies, focusing on the process of scholarly research. We will consider how the research skills we are developing in grad school can be put to work in a variety of contexts, both within and beyond the university. Students will be guided step-by-step through the formulation of a focused and persuasive research project proposal, from conducting scholarly searches; to constructing generative research questions; to compiling relevant literature reviews; to articulating a project’s structure, methodology, and original contribution. This process will scaffold research projects for our graduate program (eg. course essays, independent research projects, grant or fellowship applications, dissertations, conference papers, scholarly articles etc.) as well as for various non-academic or alt-academic areas of work (eg. for arts/non-profit grant proposals; government and NGO projects; private sector research and development etc.). The course will also feature guest speakers and workshops that support students in articulating the relevance of their graduate skills and humanities expertise for a range of career pathways. Students will complete the class with a literature review, research proposal, cv and resumé.
