As the academic job market continues to shift, Boston College professors are thinking about how to prepare the next generation of academics for successful careers post-graduation.
I had a conversation with Dr. Tina Klein, Professor in the English department and the Director of the English PhD program, which has been condensed and slightly edited. She decided to experiment with different types of assessments to help students gain skills beyond the typical research paper.
Can you explain what course you teach and what type of projects you have your students do?
The course I teach is ‘Issues and Methods in American Studies.’ It’s a grad course, mostly MA students, but there are usually a couple of PhD students. It’s really a cultural history class. The reading for the class is works of American cultural history and American studies that are text-based, grounded in the interpretation of some kind of artifact. We don’t look at any narrative texts because I know the students are already adept at interpreting those. For the final project, I ask them to choose a non-narrative cultural artifact (their choice is wide open) and do a cultural-historical analysis of it.
That starts with a formal analysis of the artifact and then locates it in a significant historical context: when it was produced, how it circulated, or in what ways it was consumed or used. They can approach their artifact biographically, in relation to genre, in the context of social or cultural movements, etc. I give them guidelines for how to connect their artifacts to these histories in meaningful ways, and plenty of small scaffolding assignments.
While they write a complete research paper, the final project is a website rather than a traditional paper. So, basically, they write a regular research paper, albeit in a more public-facing voice, and then design a Google site around it. This invites them to bring in a lot of their visual evidence.
Homepage of Xinying Li’s An American Fantasy
Can you explain some of your thinking behind the assignment for your graduate course? What were some of the reasons why you chose the type of assignment you did?
A couple of reasons. One reason is that it really challenges students to think differently. By the time they get to be an MA or a PhD student, I know they’re going to be pretty good at writing a standard paper. So this assignment challenges them to think and write in a slightly different way: how can you use visual material to communicate complex ideas in combination with analysis? I also think it’s very useful for students. It can be the foundation for a conference paper with slides, or allow them to approach a topic they are already interested in from a fresh perspective. It can also be used in teaching: many students who’ve taken the class have used parts of the assignment in their First Year Writing Seminars. Finally, I really like the idea of inviting students to write in a more public-facing voice, which can liberate students and free up their thinking as well as their writing.
When it comes to the conference paper, I know for me, but as well as other MA students, when I first entered graduate school, I had no idea how to shift into that public-facing, less formal type of writing that’s appropriate for things like conference papers or presentations.
Exactly. This assignment helps students make that switch. If you’re not writing about a literary text, if you’re writing about something that’s in any way visual, why not have images of it? Frankly, it’s much more interesting to read and to listen to.
This is a different assessment type than a standard research paper or a potential journal article. What type of grading parameters did you have for this assignment? What type of expectations did you initially have for the students?
In the essay itself, I’m looking for all the usual things. Is the writing clear and concise? Is the analysis coherent and complete? Are claims supported with evidence? Do the ideas flow logically? I also assess aspects of design. Are they using the visual or audio material to engage the reader, or is the page just a basic design? Are the text and images carefully integrated? Does the visual material support the analysis? Or is it basically a research paper with a couple of images plunked in, but not really in conversation with the text?
Page from Emily Chen’s The Chiikawa Guardian
What do you feel were the strengths of this assignment for your course?
It’s a lot of work for the students. It’s all the familiar work of writing a research paper, plus the new challenges of writing about an artifact in a way they’re not familiar with and creating a website. So there are a lot of things that are really new. I think there’s value in stretching your brain in those ways.
I actually love sharing work with my peers because I am sometimes so clueless about different ways to approach things. So I feel like that’s a great way to prepare them to do that and to learn from everybody else.
I agree. In a preparatory small assignment, all of the students worked together interpreting a single painting, sharing their ideas and research results, and then writing a short paper. One of the PhD students in the class said he appreciated this opportunity for collaborative work. When everyone’s working on the same thing and can learn from each other, that is valuable and rare, so I consider it a strength. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for collaborative work in graduate school. And even something as simple as going over a reading together and crafting a presentation around it gives you a chance to collaborate with someone.
What did the final results look like?
They were terrific. The range of artifacts and approaches was impressive. Emily Chen, a first-year PhD student, wrote about a plushie manga character in relation to a number of post-war Japan’s apocalypses. Indie Murphy did a queer reading of a 1993 Vanity Fair magazine cover featuring k.d. Lang. Lizzie Taylor investigated a 17th-century silver Dutch drinking cup, which took her to all kinds of places she had no previous interest in. And Xinying Li got an exemption to write about a movie and did an analysis of color in An American in Paris that connected it to postwar American national identity. A few years ago Emily Beckler Rourke, who is now a PhD student in our program, explored the history of Somerville’s gentrification through a piece of public sculpture in Davis Square. Each one was an original, authentic work of scholarship – they are now the experts on those artifacts.
With a regular research paper, it would be harder for them to make some of the conceptual leaps they did for this project. The incorporation of visual material – photographs, paintings, TikToks, maps, advertisements, brand logos, archival video footage – allows students to make really insightful connections. So the project allows them to develop complex arguments.
Page from Indie Murphy’s Under the Cover: k.d lang in Vanity Fair
Page from Lizzie Taylor’s An Education in Intoxication: Socially Drinking Across Cultures
What would you say to a faculty member thinking about either adapting this assignment or trying out a new assignment type in a graduate course? What advice do you have for them?
Do it – it’s fun and creative and intellectually challenging. And don’t be worried about the technology- I don’t have any tech skills at all. The first time I did this project, I worked with Nirmal Trivedi from the CTE. He came in, showed the students how to use Google Sites, and made himself available to answer questions. He was there on call for me, so it was really helpful. He really got me over the hump of being afraid to deal with any kind of tech stuff.
Homepage of Emily Beckler Rourke’s Fading Figures in Davis Square
