THE 24TH ANNUAL DICKENS SOCIETY SYMPOSIUM STUDENT WORKSHOPS

This post has been contributed by Katherine J. Kim (Assistant Professor of English, Molloy College).

From July 26^th-29^th, 2019, the 24^th Annual Dickens Society Symposium was held in beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah at the Hotel Monaco.  During the Symposium, two special lunch workshops geared towards undergraduate and graduate students were conducted.  While typical conference sessions usually allow participants to present papers and then address audience questions after all of the presentations have concluded, these two workshops provided a more casual mealtime round table setting for participants (some at their first conference) to experience presenting at a conference, to receive a substantial amount of feedback, and to create meaningful connections with other students and scholars.

Such workshops are not completely new to the Dickens Society, as there were both project (specific essay) and publication advice workshops for graduate students and scholars early in their careers during the 2018 international symposium held in Tübingen, Germany. However, the inclusion of an undergraduate workshop during the annual gathering was a new venture.  As the organizer of the Salt Lake City Symposium Leslie Simon noted, the undergraduate workshop “was inspired by the fact that [Utah Valley University], my school and our host institution, is primarily an [undergraduate] university.”  Along with Jamie Horrocks of Brigham Young University, Simon sought to “develop a workshop that would showcase undergrad work from the two universities and would give students a chance to professionalize, to develop their ideas, and to see what the wider academic experience is like.”  Creating these opportunities for instruction and interaction among scholars at varying career stages provided enjoyable and helpful experiences for participants, workshop leaders, and audience members.

The July 26^th undergraduate student workshop, led by Renata Goroshkova (Saint Petersburg State University, Russia) and Katherine J. Kim (Boston College) included six participants from two different Utah institutions: Kathryn Boyle, Lauren Wood, and Sara White from Utah Valley University and Joshua Jorgensen, Michela Miller, and Cassidy Peterson from Brigham Young University.  All six students came to the event with sophisticated essays chosen by their professors during the previous academic year.

The undergraduate workshop structure allowed each of the students to read three-minute versions of their papers that supplemented their eight-page papers (which were circulated for close study amongst the workshop participants in the month prior to the July event).  After these brief oral presentations,Goroshkova and Kim provided several minutes’ worth of pre-written comments specific to each of the undergraduate students. The experience then concluded with time for a casual open discussion amongst all of the Symposium members in the room. 

Participants found the workshop encouraging and helpful.  Joshua Jorgensen enjoyed the“creative but focused, free-flowing and yet academic atmosphere” of the workshop, and Sarah White discovered new insight she “otherwise would have never thought about” and is “excited to look further into” for the future development of her paper.  Reflecting on the workshop, Goroshkova explained that along with offering constructive criticism, one of her main aims in leading the undergraduate workshop was “to maintain interest in Dickens’s text, to show how deep and inexhaustible it is.”  Indeed, the purpose of exchanging ideas in this type of setting goes beyond individual projects on Dickens by attempting to inspire the continuation of fascinating, novel, and pleasurable research and scholarship.

The July 27^th graduate student workshop led by current Dickens Society President Natalie McKnight (Boston University) and Dickens Quarterly General Editor David Paroissien (University of Buckingham, England and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst) included Spencer Dodd (Iowa State University), Anna Dybiec (Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland), Marian Gentile (Temple University), Renata Goroshkova (Saint Petersburg State University, Russia),Michael Hatch (Arizona State University), Kristin Hutchins (Claremont Graduate University), Annabelle Miller (Grand Valley State University), and Eleanor Tsan (National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan). These participants from around the globe, like the undergraduate session students, exchanged papers prior to the Symposium in order to workshop them and to see examples of other people’s work.

In addition to providing individualized essay comments during the session and via emails, the graduate student workshop leaders McKnight and Paroissien offered some valuable professional advice for participants.  During this workshop,participants were able to present shortened versions of their papers to the group and receive recommendations on both their papers and their presentations.  Even though condensing complex arguments and essays can be challenging, McKnight remarked that “having to distill your argument into a 3-minute ‘elevator speech’ is a good practice both for preparing for conferences and interviews but also for revising an essay so that its focus is clear.”  Such comments on precision and effectiveness were further emphasized through specific suggestions given on the workshop papers and reminders of ostensibly basic (but too often overlooked) points such as using critical editions of texts and accruing sufficient contextual knowledge for projects.  Throughout the session, McKnight and Paroissien stressed the need for thoughtfulness, carefulness, and purposefulness in paper submissions to journals so that the participants can increase their chances of success with the difficult and lengthy task of getting work published.

The two workshops during the 24^th Annual Dickens Society Symposium in Salt Lake City proved to be successful learning experiences for participants and workshop leaders alike.  Simon even mused that “[considering] that all my students now want to go to [graduate] school, we apparently sold them on the idea of talking about books at the professional level!”  As the Dickens Society’s mission statement affirms, the Society’s purpose is “to conduct, further, and support research,publication, instruction, and general interest in the life, times, and literature of Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870).”  The Society fulfills its mission by providing such project workshops and professionalization opportunities to undergraduate and graduate students as well as to scholars in the early stages of their careers, consequently fostering continued interest in Dickens, developing the experiences and careers of young scholars, and cultivating the future of Dickens scholarship.

*Quotations were taken from solicited email reflections after the conference’s conclusion.