ENG 5000-101 BIBLIOGRAPHY & RESEARCH
Spring 2025
Dr. Alonzo Smith
Office Location: Sanford Hall 448 Email: smithw2@appstate.edu
Course Description: ENG 5000-101
Gregory Colon Semenza of Graduate Study for the Twenty-First Century posits “many graduate students continue to be regarded as apprentices even though they are expected to design and teach their own classes, serve on university committees, and conference and publish regularly (1).
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the attrition rate for American graduate programs is at an all-time high, between 40% and 50%. Of those who finish, only one in three will secure tenure-track jobs. In such a challenging academic environment, this course’s central goal aims to introduce you to the larger context of the profession, positioning you to use your graduate education to contribute to the many and varied discussions and debates ongoing in the fields associated with English.
As such, ENG 5000-101 is an introduction to English Studies as a profession. We will consider the specific skills and strategies for study and research that will support your scholarly development. However, we will also look close to home at the Appalachian State University English Department: to see how the graduate faculty and their research projects represent fields and subfields, and how your research interests might fit into and mature within this department. In our quest to better situate you for a career in the academy or alt ac profession, we will host an alt academic expert, annotate weekly readings to facilitate and encourage more robust, sophisticated, and scholarly discussions, produce an academic journal review and multimedia presentation, complete an academic book review and multimedia presentation, conduct a faculty interview, and curate a final portfolio
consisting of a curriculum vitae, academic conference presentation, and scholarly seminar paper. Importantly, rather than teaching graduate students how to be graduate students, then, the course prepares them for what they really seek: a successful academic/alt ac career.
Course Texts:
Belcher, Wendy. Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks, Second Edition: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success (Chicago Guides to Writing,
Editing, and Publishing) Second Edition.
Griffin, Gabriele. Research Methods for English Studies. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
Semenza, Gregory Colon. Graduate Study for the 21st Century. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave, 2010.