Pivot: A Four-Session Series for Folger Institute Consortium Graduate Students

Summer 2020

Graduate students working on their dissertations have been profoundly affected by reduced travel possibilities and access to physical collections and the scholarly communities on which they depend. Many are struggling to maintain a research agenda while retooling to remote instruction, preparing for an uncertain job market, and rebuilding social and professional networks.

Emerging from the May 2020 Folger Institute Consortium Executive Committee meeting, the Folger Institute will be offering a four-part series for consortium graduate students addressing what it means to write a dissertation at this moment.

CEC members Amanda Bailey (University of Maryland, College Park) and Holly Dugan (The George Washington University) will lead this new series, which comprises four sessions, beginning the end of July and running through the third week of August. Each session explores challenges and strategies for conducting dissertation research during difficult times. These are provisionally oriented to address Resiliency; Libraries, Archives, and the Networked Dissertation; De-Canonizing the Early Modern Dissertation: Anti-racist Scholarly Practices for Dissertation Writers; and Next Steps.

Consortium dissertation writers wishing to participate should submit the pre-series questionnaire.