cfp

ADE Bulletin: English Majors’ Career Outcomes

Due Date: 12-01-2020

The ADE Bulletin, a peer-reviewed journal, seeks papers on English majors’ career preparation and outcomes. Study in the humanities helps undergraduate students build attentive, creative minds, with a deep understanding of our cultural moment rooted in historical awareness—an expertise in what it means to be human, and the diverse ways of being human, in our ever-changing world. Careful reading and analysis, creative problem solving, aesthetic awareness, nuanced communication that is attentive to the needs and concerns of a variety of audiences and presented in a variety of forms—written, oral, visual, digital—these and many other skills are routinely taught and practiced in English courses. We know that these valuable skills can serve personal development and inner growth, create informed and democratic citizenship with a deep understanding of the workings of power, and help one to navigate a complex, globally interconnected world. Institutions and other constituencies are pressuring many English studies programs to justify their work based on career readiness, yet professors in English departments have often spent their entire careers engaged in one employment sector—higher education. They may thus feel unsure how best to support students in translating the valuable skills that English studies bring to the many employment sectors that are potentially open to graduating majors and minors. The ADE therefore seeks papers that

  • report on actual career outcomes for undergraduate English majors and minors,
  • gather case studies and other forms of evidence of departments’ effective strategies and curricular innovations for working with students on career preparation and professional development,
  • advise departments on how to prepare students to explain how their study has practically readied them for a variety of careers and developed in them skills and values that are needed by hiring institutions in a variety of economic sectors,
  • coach faculty members to speak knowledgeably about such matters, and
  • help departments to explain to a variety of constituencies how their work meets these challenges.

Please send manuscripts (10–30 double-spaced pages) in Word by 1 December 2020 to areiser@mla.org. For more information, visit https://www.ade.mla.org/ADE-Bulletin.