You know that graduate school is getting to you when teaching a summer course is considered a “break.” While working on her dissertation on the dictator novel in Latin American and Franco- and Anglophone African literatures, GW alumna and current NYU graduate student Magali Armillas-Tiseyra, decided it would be good to slow down this summer by teaching a course on the short story. The short story has always been significant for Armillas-Tiseyra. She remembers analyzing the mechanics of short stories in creative writing courses at GW. “I thought focusing on the short story would be a great way to allow students to read broadly while also allowing us to work on the mechanics of close reading and textual analysis. When you’re trying to get through a whole novel with the class, this kind of focused work can sometimes get put aside, and I wanted to be forced to focus on this with my students,” she said. However as easy as it was for Armillas-Tiseyra to choose this topic, it was hard to choose the actual stories. The course will span a broad range of authors from Europe, Latin, and North America.

Teaching is not new to Armillas-Tiseyra. Previously she taught a Spanish language course and has TA-ed for several introductory courses and seminars at NYU. However, she still finds herself learning every time she teaches. She said, “It’s your opportunity to put what you care about into action. It’s hard, often humbling, work, but it’s also a great learning experience and even fun.” Armillas-Tiseyra maintains that the adjustment between being a student versus a teacher is a welcome one.

When Armillas-Tiseyra is not teaching, she is pursuing a PhD in Comparative Literature. Originally she intended to apply to English programs, but as a senior at GW working on her thesis about Anglophone Caribbean literature and taking Spanish courses with Sergio Waisman, Armillas-Tiseyra found her focus shifting. “In shopping departments, and in particular at NYU, I began to realize that the classes and work that really interested me were in Comparative Literature rather than English,” she said. “I found the prospect of the much broader literary horizons (technically, everything) and the linguistic challenge really exciting.”

Armillas-Tiseyra found the GW English Department very encouraging. She cites Tara Wallace, Judith Plotz, and Maxine Clair (her creative writing adviser) as her best guides. “I’d always ‘known’ that I’d go to grad school, but at GW I was actively encouraged and supported in the process. I realize now, talking to fellow graduate students and looking at undergrads here at NYU, that I was really very lucky,” she said. This encouragement was necessary during her busy senior year when she ran the GW Review, wrote two theses, and worked at the Writing Center. She said, “My last year was tough, and in a lot of ways my first year of grad school was even tougher–I got here and realized that most people wait before coming back, which makes them very different students.” Although Armillas-Tiseyra does not regret her decision to start graduate school immediately after college, she believes taking one year off could be beneficial.

Armillas-Tiseyra does see an advantage of applying to graduate school right after graduation: the graduate programs seem less intimidating. She realizes she is lucky, but luck has only so much to do with her success at NYU right now. “I feel very lucky to be where I am, but, from this end of things, I also understand that, in some ways, getting in is luck and the difference comes in the sort of career (if that’s the word) you build while you’re actually in there,” she said. Since she started NYU, Armillas-Tiseyra has been working on conferences, organizing lectures, and helped to start a departmental colloquium series and system for student representation. She said, “I am so much prouder of the things I’ve done–particularly within department life, such as starting a colloquium, in the last few years than I ever was happy or devastated by my response letters.”

However, getting into graduate school is a different matter than staying in graduate school, which is what Armillas-Tiseyra sees as the main conflict now. She recognizes the bad job market after graduate school for literature majors and knows many people who did not pursue this field and are happier for it. “But there’s no point going through this (long hours, low pay) unless you absolutely love the work; one of the advantages of being relatively young for me is that I feel I have time to change course in the future, without having to sacrifice what I’m passionate about at the moment,” she said.

We wish Armillas-Tiseyra the best of luck with her PhD and summer course! For more information on her course on the short story at NYU this summer click here.

Natasha Simons can read 700 words per minute, cites her final paper for Jeffrey Cohen’s Chaucer course as one of greatest accomplishments as an undergraduate, had a 3.8 GPA., and had two and a half years of publishing internships. Naturally one would expect a woman as talented and experienced as her to get a job immediately after graduating last spring. Think again. “I slowly came to the realization that I was one of the unemployment horror stories passed around the class of ‘09, and it was entirely unpleasant,” she said.

Never fear though, being the witty woman she is, Simons is now the Assistant to the Editor at the National Review, but getting there was a long hard struggle. After taking the summer off to travel, she only applied to jobs she thought she was qualified for, but with this selective process she had to wait a whole month before her first interview. From then on, Simons dove into the job market, a grueling exhausting task. “I started applying to 3 or 4 jobs a day, then up to 10 by November,” she said. “I was living at home, the only one of my friends to be doing so. Not [that] they had jobs either, mind you! Or they were just nannying or bartending or something — no one seemed to be on track.”

Soon Simons realized that if she wanted to get anywhere, she would have to apply outside of the publishing track, a hard decision for her to make. However it did lead her to a job as a legal assistant in DC, a position she was reluctant to take because it was an entirely different field and could lead to an entirely different life. She said, “But you get to this place where you just feel like such a failure, and I did end up taking that job. Exenuating circumstances, or what I like to call fate, stepped in and made it impossible for me to move to DC at that time. I had to give up the job, all the while thinking ‘Oh no, it took me five months to get that one, and now I’ll be unemployed forever.’”

Obviously Simons was not the only graduate of 2009 that was left jobless. Blame it on the economy, but she sees many reasons why the current generation of college graduates is at such a loss. “We’re a generation of a Protestant work ethic, no matter our religion. We were raised to believe this was a meritocracy, you know? So we got real focused real early,” she said. “I was looking at colleges and job paths as early as 10. We did everything we were supposed to, we went to the best college we could, we got good grades, we held jobs down all through our copious studies, we upheld our half of the contract. And when we came out on the other side, hands extended, what happened was we were denied. And continually denied.” Simons’s personal struggle was recognizing that most of her internships did not matter in the end. She said, “I applied to be at Random House in the EXACT division I’d been a fabulous intern at, knew people there, tried to pull strings — I barely got the time of day. No interview. Nothing.” Furthermore, current graduates are expected to earn far less than their parents. Regardless of why so many twenty somethings are out of a job, Simons is certainly sure of the anger she feels. “There’s a lot of resentment and we’re all angry, but it feels so immature to say that sometimes… Are we having a teen rebellion or something, to come out and say we deserve jobs for the hard work we put in?” she said. Simons recommends this website for anyone else in her situation.

However Simons’s story is not about unemployment, but finally getting the job. Only one week after she rejected her DC legal assistant position (although she does recommend the legal field, since it always needs people), she was offered her current job. She said, “My mother caught [my now-boss] Rich Lowry’s post on The Corner requesting an assistant and forwarded it to me — I read there regularly but missed that post, so I basically owe my employment to my mother! She’s very proud of that fact, as you can imagine.” Simons’s job as Assistant to the Editor at the National Review is a “catch-all” job as describes. “It’s great to have so many different types of tasks to do because I’m never bored; one hour I am editing one of Rich’s columns, another I am doing payroll for the authors, and another I am updating the NRO Twitter feed,” she said. Simons loves her new job and hopes to stay in the field for awhile.

Simons recognizes GW’s influence on her current career path. Her work on Wooden Teeth aided with organizational skills. She said, “The detail-oriented work of keeping a literary magazine going directly applied to a lot of the stuff I’m doing now. Just keeping on top of things and remembering to get it all done — that’s the technical side of things.” Simons also notes that all of the reading and writing English majors bury themselves in is useful. “Reading a lot of different books and doing all that analysis, sounds corny, but it does prepare you for getting used to a publishing type of career,” she said. And like many GW English majors, Simons has a few favorite professors to recommend, Jeffrey Cohen, Patrick Cook, and David McAleavey.

Although Simons is a success story in this tough economic environment, she does not expect the job struggle to end soon. She notes that even when she was searching for jobs, she was still writing. She said, “I freelanced for a couple of sites and ended up working on a book deal through having an online presence.” Simons is willing to offer advice to anyone about to graduate or struggling with the job market. You can email her at ndotsimons@gmail.com.

It is not uncommon to walk into college with one major and come out with an entirely different one and luckily for 2002 alumna Ayanna Jackson-Fowler, that major was English. Although Jackson-Fowler entered GW as a pre-Med major she quickly realized her real passion. She said, “I really enjoyed studying and creating literature. So, I figured that I should devote my life to doing this.”

As anyone reading this blog should know, there is no shortage of devoted professors within the English department, so Jackson-Fowler easily found her niche. She remembers particularly loving her classes with James Miller, Cynthia Leenerts, and Marshall Alcorn. Each professor had a long lasting impact on Jackson-Fowler. Dr. Miller introduced her to Zora Neale Hurston, Dr. Alcorn made critical theory accessible, and Dr. Leenerts introduced the concept of academic freedom in her course. “I was able to create my own paper topics,” said Jackson-Fowler. “I was so excited to get the opportunity to write about whatever I was interested in.”

Through all of these various teaching methods and texts, Jackson-Fowler learned what she really wanted to do with her life, teach. Not only did GW help her decide her future career, but also give her the skills to achieve in that career. “Each course that I took demanded a lot of me mentally, and this was beneficial to me because, when I got to graduate school, I found that I was already working at a more advanced level,” she said. If things ever got too complicated Jackson-Fowler easily found advice from various professors such as Debra Bruno and her adviser, Phyllis Mentzell Ryder.

It was not until graduate school that Jackson-Fowler really found her literary focus, Early Black Writing. After taking a few eighteenth and nineteenth century British literature courses she became fascinated by the work of former black slaves in the British Empire. “Studying Early Black Writing allows me to merge my interests in African American Literature and Eighteenth-Century African British Literature,” she said. ” Through exploring Early Black Writing, I am able to study the works of writers who are transatlantic, figuring in both American and British literature.” Jackson-Fowler’s dissertation explores the influence these writers had. She said, “I explore how the rhetoric of early black writers like Phillis Wheatley, Ignatius Sancho, Ottobah Cugoano, and Olaudah Equiano influenced radical women writers of the Romantic period.”

Eventually Jackson-Fowler would love to teach as well as research. She had the opportunity to teach and learn her teaching style through the Composition and Creative Nonfiction class she taught at Texas Tech. Jackson-Fowler’s main priority in the classroom is student participation. She said, “I have my students sit in a circle (as opposed to rows), and I prompt them to discuss the works that we read by asking them pointed, in-depth questions. This method is quite efficient because I find that students are able to learn from each other as they engage in discussion.”

Even though Jackson-Fowler has gone beyond GW and eventually hopes to teach like some of her favorite professors here, she still looks back at the university fondly. She may miss the Hippodrome and her old dorms, but there is one thing she can still do to keep herself involved in the GW community. “I also miss walking through The Quad on the main campus. Whenever I visit GW, I always make it a point to walk through there,” she said.

We hope to see her around campus soon and look forward to hearing more about her work.

English major and creative writing minor Gowri Koneswaran (class of 1997) writes:

I’ve been thinking about the folks in the English department a lot lately! For the past four years, I’ve been working down the street at The Humane Society of the United States. For some of my non-creative writing, check out this article I co-authored on meat, egg, and milk production and climate change.

Back in 1997, I graduated from GWU with a major in English and a minor in Creative Writing. David McAleavey was my advisor (and first creative writing professor) and I was also privileged to study with Cornelius Eady, Jane Shore, and Jody Bolz — as well as participate in the Lannan Fellows program with the Shakespeare Folger Library.

These days, I have been exploring the world of spoken word poetry. I’ve taken a couple of workshops with slam poet extraordinaire Regie Cabico of the arts and activism organization Sol y Soul and I regularly perform at open mics at Busboys & Poets, Bohemian Caverns, and Black Cat. I’ve also been collaborating with other poets on group pieces like this one that some friends and I performed at a show in July. I send my best wishes to the faculty, staff, and students in the department! You can connect with me at www.facebook.com/gowrik

We love to hear from our alumni. Thanks for writing, Gowri! … and we look forward to the day when we invite you back to celebrate publication of your first book of poetry.

Department alumnus Keith Feldman writes:

I’m pleased to report that I write you from my new office at UC Berkeley, where I’ve just begun a tenure track position in comparative ethnic studies. As you might imagine, I’m thrilled—and deeply humbled—by the opportunity to work in such a generative atmosphere.

I was hired in part because of my interest in what have often appeared as new forms of racialization haunting both foreign and domestic spaces in the wake of 9/11. When asked to narrate how and where such an interest emerged, I often turn to my experience at GW, where I’d started as a grad student in the fall of 2001, and was taking Bob McRuer’s seminar on literary theory and Kavita Daiya’s seminar on postcoloniality. A quirk of scheduling had us reading selections from Frantz Fanon in both classes early on in the semester—precisely the moment when questions of race and imperial power were smoldering in the embers on the other side of the Potomac and the new blast walls erected around the State Department. I distinctly remember the care both Bob and Kavita showed in helping us think race and gender, violence and liberation, religion and secularity, modernity and coloniality, not to mention philosophical questions about the shape of the human and epistemological questions about the legibility of decolonial knowledge production. Couple that with searching discussions on the work scholars can do while on shifting global terrain and my research trajectory quickly emerged, one that has only become more complicated, more exciting, more pressing in the age of Obama.

After two wonderful years in Foggy Bottom—connecting with faculty in American Studies and the Human Sciences as well as in the English Department—I moved to the PhD program in English at the University of Washington in Seattle. With amazing mentors in both locales I was able to write an interdisciplinary dissertation on the question of Palestine and U.S. imperial culture and connect with an inspiring cohort of scholars.

And now I’m here, daunted, nervous, writing you when I probably should be revising my syllabi for the fall, not to mention that pesky book manuscript. Wishing you all the best for a new semester! Oh, and drop me a line anytime: kpfeldman@berkeley.edu.