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The EBook -- Our Survival Guide for Oxford and Graduate School at Ole Miss
The Contents, in sections for browsing, follow, but you can also view
the entire EBook in one page. That is a large, slow-loading file (160+KB), but you may find it better for saving a complete copy to disk, printing, etc. The one page version is up-to-date with the sections (even if the time stamp on the page is different).
It is my great pleasure to present this first edition of the EBook.
The history of the book begins in the Spring of 1996, when the graduate
students in English came together to form an official university organization,
the English Graduate Student Body, in order to address the academic and
social issues affecting us as scholars and members of the Ole Miss community.
Creating the EBook was one of our immediate priorities. For a long
time, we looked for a single source for authoritative information and advice
about the degree programs and other aspects of our professional lives.
In that same semester, the faculty authorized the EGSB to create a handbook
for graduate study in English.
EGSB president John Glass gave the job of creating the EBook to
the Ad Hoc Committee of the EGSB, which it has been my pleasure to Chair
this year. The committee decided that the EBook
would not merely
collect the policies and procedures, but would instead serve as a complete
introduction to life as a graduate student in English at Ole Miss. To that
end, you will find information about the department of English, the University,
and living in Oxford. The book was co-written by a team of colleagues,
using personal experience but also the collected institutional wisdom of
several generations of students as the basis for what they wrote. Some
of what you read will be in a professional tone, some in a more chatty
voice. Taken as a whole, the EBook
represents our best effort at
making your entry into and progress through Ole Miss as smooth and successful
as possible.
This is only the first edition of a book that will necessarily change
with the policies of the department and also with the experiences of the
students. As a collective body, we learn more with each semester--with
each course taken, each thesis written, each comprehensive exam passed,
and each dissertation defended. Perhaps as you use this book in your own
orientation to the department and the university, you can make the current
EGSB aware of places where the book falls short of its lofty ideals.
This first edition of the EBook was created by: Vince Brewton,
Eric Cash, Kate Cochran, Debra Rae Cohen, John Cox, John Glass, Maggie
Gordon, Dan Haley, Julia Haley, Kitty Keller, Jennie Lee, Julie McGoldrick,
Michael Raines, Christina Riley Brown, Greg Brown, Brenda Robertson, and
myself.
Pete Froehlich, Editor
Welcome from the EGSB President
The English Graduate Student Body has had a most productive first year.
We have implemented a governing structure, elected officers, established
a faculty seminar series, created mentoring programs for incoming English
graduate students, held parties, raised funds, and have published an EGSB
directory, monthly newsletter, and the book you are now holding, the EBook.
All of this was accomplished in our first year, but we have much left to
do. We graduate students established the EGSB because we felt we needed
a formal structure in which we could organize our voices and our concerns.
It is easy to get lost in the university system, and the EGSB helps to
maintain English graduate student solidarity by providing us an arena in
which we can communicate with each other, with the department, and with
the university community.
Any English graduate student is automatically
a member of the EGSB. I encourage each of you, both incoming and veteran
students, to get as involved as your schedule allows. We will be continuing
our good work from last year, but there are always new concerns, as well.
Some of the issues we will be looking at this year are: raising funds for
travel awards, broadening our faculty seminar series, examining the systems
of comprehensive exams and graduate instructor benefits, and creating an
informational document about English faculty scholarship and involvement.
Any graduate student may serve on any internal EGSB committee and attend
our full meetings. It is in your best interest to get involved -- with
a particular issue, on a committee which seems worthwhile, or as an elected
officer. This year I look to make the EGSB an even stronger and more comprehensive
organization, and I hope that each of you will help me see that goal to
its fruition.
Sincerely,
Kate Cochran EGSB President
Disclaimer and invitation: What follows is opinion. These are opinions intended for English Graduate Students, from English Graduate Students. It does not in any way reflect the official feelings of the Department of English, the Graduate School, or the University, as such. So in one sense, you must take this with a grain of salt; in another sense, you know there isn't a party-line being towed here. This is all we know and a great deal
that we think you should at least hear; and thus it passes as close as
possible for Truth.
The EBook is so named because it was to be the English Grads version
of the MBook (the student handbook). It wasn't conceived primarily as an
electronic publication--no resemblance to "email" or other e-words intended.
We simply couldn't give the kind of viewpoint we intended if it were an official publication of the English Department, and so we turned to the electronic medium.
But, this gives us a marvelous tool too.In
the text, when you see a graphic like the inkwell here, you can give your
comments, suggestions, or rewrites to the current editor for the EBook
(who's also the Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee). In this way,
the EBook stays alive and interactive; if the editor finds the comments
you provide useful, either as new information or a different point of view,
he or she can include them. Please consider adding your experience to this living work.
