[This is Part 3 of Reflections on a PhD in Literature. Read Part 1: The Basics and Part 2: What it Takes. See also the short speech at the Rutgers’ School of Graduate Studies Convocation by the author as the student speaker of the event.] A lot of my friends have talked about rediscovering the joy of … Read More
It has been over five years since Jeffrey Beall, who coined the term “predatory publishing” and maintained a list of such publishers and journals (see archived version), was forced out of the University of Colorado Denver and had to shut down his list. We are still talking about predatory journals and predatory conferences. Now the … Read More
[This is Part 2 of our three-part series Reflections on a PhD in Literature. Read Part 1: The Basics]. Now that I’ve explained the structure of a PhD in literature (and more or less, I think, other PhD programs in the humanities and social sciences), I want to talk a little bit about what it’s … Read More
[This is the first post in our three-part series Reflections on a PhD in Literature.] During the time I’ve been involved with the Books We Read project (including this blog), I’ve been working on a PhD in English at Rutgers. Actually, I’ve been working on that PhD for about twice as long as this project … Read More
I recently attended an event celebrating the release of Douglas Stuart’s new novel, Young Mungo. The release was hyped up by a dear friend who introduced me to his work, and I came to realize that Stuart was receiving attention at large. First, Jeremy Denk included Stuart’s debut novel, Shuggie Bain in his reading list … Read More
The issue of climate change has unfortunately become an integral part of our daily lives. It is impossible to get through a day without seeing something climate-related in the news, on the internet, via social media, etc. Whether it’s the latest science report on world’s escalating temperature, rising sea levels, or rough weather such as … Read More
“Adult-use cannabis sales set to begin in New Jersey,” says the headline from the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission, issued a few weeks ago. The start date is April 21, 2022, nearly a year and a half later after the citizens of the Garden State voted on the legalization of marijuana on the November ballot … Read More
[This post was written in mid-March, 2022. Scroll down for updates to follow the story of warship Moskva and the stamp.] True or false? The Ukrposhta, the Ukrainian Post Services released a stamp with a soldier giving the middle finger to a Russian warship. In the past few days a social media post went viral … Read More
With Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine, war is back on the minds of the West––even though, as Syria, Yemen, and other sites of conflict should remind us, it never really left. A recent New York Times essay by the Ukranian poet Ilya Kaminsky meditates on the role of poetry in times like these. Kaminsky’s own … Read More
The School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (SEBS) is committed to support students throughout their studies at Rutgers. The SEBS Academic Support page provides not only an Academic Success Calendar, but also lists two special courses. Organized by the Office of Academic Programs, the Academic Mentoring course aims to help first-generation SEBS students with their transition … Read More