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The Reimagined PhD: Navigating 21st Century Humanities Education
Long seen as proving grounds for professors, PhD programs have begun to shed this singular sense of mission. Prompted by poor placement numbers and guided by the efforts of academic organizations, administrators and faculty are beginning to feel called to equip students for a range of careers. Yet, graduate students, faculty, and administrators often feel ill-prepared for this pivot. The Reimagined PhD assembles an array of professionals to address this difficult issue. The contributors show that students, faculty, and administrators must collaborate in order to prepare the 21st century PhD for a wide range of careers. The volume also undercuts the insidious notion that career preparation is a zero sum game in which time spent preparing for alternate careers detracts from professorial training. In doing so, The Reimagined PhD normalizes the multiple career paths open to PhD students, while providing practical advice geared to help students, faculty, and administrators incorporate professional skills into graduate training, build career networks, and prepare PhDs for a variety of careers.
248 pages, Paperback
Published August 13, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 6, 2022
It’s been claimed that graduate (or as we say in the U.K., postgraduate) education is ‘a mess’ (Cassuto, 2015). But how do we sort out the mess? How do we encourage a diverse student body that graduate education is worth investing in… and how do we make the ‘product’ itself something worthy of people’s investment, be that of time, money, energy and other resources?
This volume sets out to offer answers to some of these big questions. Highlights include an affirmative chapter by Leonard Cassuto and James Van Wyck, in which the former adviser-advisee pair reimagine doctoral supervisory relationships. In their speculative near-future of graduate education, gone is a culture where ‘my adviser won’t let me’ is a barrier to career exploration and professional development. Instead, the doctoral researcher is refigured as ‘the CEO of their own graduate education,’ with the agency ‘to choose, to pivot, to innovate, and to imagine multiple futures’ (p.50).
Equally illuminating is Michael J McGandy’s chapter on academic publishing, elucidating how academic and public profiles (‘prestige’ vs ‘relevance’) play out in what makes it to press, and the implications that the loss of PhDs from academe has on the face of scholarly publishing.
Despite coming very much from a US perspective, as a British reader I found the volume rich, relevant and thought provoking.
This volume sets out to offer answers to some of these big questions. Highlights include an affirmative chapter by Leonard Cassuto and James Van Wyck, in which the former adviser-advisee pair reimagine doctoral supervisory relationships. In their speculative near-future of graduate education, gone is a culture where ‘my adviser won’t let me’ is a barrier to career exploration and professional development. Instead, the doctoral researcher is refigured as ‘the CEO of their own graduate education,’ with the agency ‘to choose, to pivot, to innovate, and to imagine multiple futures’ (p.50).
Equally illuminating is Michael J McGandy’s chapter on academic publishing, elucidating how academic and public profiles (‘prestige’ vs ‘relevance’) play out in what makes it to press, and the implications that the loss of PhDs from academe has on the face of scholarly publishing.
Despite coming very much from a US perspective, as a British reader I found the volume rich, relevant and thought provoking.
October 28, 2021
The guide to alternate academic careers, and to a broader future beyond the professoriate, I wish I'd had when I entered the graduate studies programme. Highly recommended to prospective PhDs.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews