Making the Grade

Kevin A. Morrison is provincial chair professor in literature at Henan University and author of several books including, most recently, In the Footsteps of Jack the Ripper and His Victims: Study-Abroad Pedagogy, Dark Sites, and Historical Reenactment (Palgrave, 2019).

Concrete, rhetorically rich, impactful, and engaging in multimodal literacy, this timely volume is an essential contribution to writing scholarship on demystifying the role of seminar essay writing in graduate-level and professional literary studies. Each essay in the volume speaks to distinct and multiple audiences—professors, students, junior scholars, and writing center directors and consultants. As a result, it creates a dialogic and engaging space to (re)frame the seminar essay as groundwork, or apprentice-level work, that allows new scholars and junior faculty to develop their literature-based research and writing skills and leverage these skills in broader ways. The volume will help faculty scaffold the graduate seminar essay assignment and evaluation with intentionality and to stage the graduate seminar essay as a meaningful and rewarding process for both the facilitator and the emerging scholar.

• Introduction: The Graduate Classroom StapleKevin A. MorrisonPart One: The Seminar Paper: History, Conception, Experience1. Essaying Assessment and Assessing the Essay: The Graduate Seminar Paper as Disciplinary PerformancePhil Robinson-Self2. The Cost of Ambiguity: How Students Experience the Graduate Seminar Paper GenreGabriel Morrison and Thomas DeansPart Two: Argument, Ethos, Intervention 3. The Seminar Essay as Academic Literary Criticism: Strategies for Entering the Scholarly ConversationAlmas Khan4. Writing with Authority: Ethos and the Seminar Essay in English StudiesElizabeth Vogel5. A Scaffold for Scholarship: Re-vising the Seminar Writing Assignment Janet G. AutenPart Three: Reading, Writing, Revision, and Presentation6. Setting Up for Success: Strategies for Managing Research and WritingMarilyn Gray7. Time Management is Everything: Useful Tips for Graduate StudentsNatalie M. Dorfeld8. Peer Review, Revisited: Graduate Writing GroupsMark Celeste9. Presenting Research Ideas in a Seminar SettingLucinda BeckerPart Four: New Directions, Expanding Possibilities10. Digital Methods and Visual Essays in the ClassroomLisann Anders11. Structural Shifts and the Graduate Literary Essay: Examples for the Twenty-First Century ClassroomShanthini Pillai12. Not for Everyone: Experiments in AssessmentKevin A. MorrisonCoda: Demystifying the Seminar PaperJessie Reeder