Professional Issues
“Budget protects learning and research,” claims the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. “A bad budget for the future of post-secondary education, research and job training,” says the Canadian Association of University Teachers. It’s hard not to conclude that institutional self-positioning has at least something to […]
The findings aren’t surprising, actually. According to an article in The Toronto Star, March 15, 2013, graduates from the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine) do have an easier time finding work immediately after the degree. But students from liberal arts programs like English Studies also fare […]
The CAUT Bulletin (http://www.cautbulletin.ca/) reports that the Edwin Mellen Press is suing McMaster’s Associate University Librarian Dale Askey for defamation, and this because he blogged what he understood to be a “professional opinion” about the Press’s general level of achievement in scholarly publishing. “The post, and comments following […]
Today, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael Bérubé considers the structural disconnect between PhD training in the humanities and the academic job market. “Graduate programs in the humanities,” he writes, “have been designed precisely to replenish the ranks of the professoriate; that is why they have such […]
Here’s the blurb for English Professor Ajay Heble’s public lecture at McMaster University, January 24th, 2013. As a teacher of literature, I’m often called upon to account for what I do: just why do I “profess” literature, why does a study of literary texts matter? In this talk, […]
