Tag Archives: Academia

Academic Writing

Revalidation Exam: ENGL 725 – Victorian Novel

Note: In 2003 I started a PhD in English at the University of South Carolina. I never finished the dissertation. In 2012 I switched careers to IT, and eventually all my coursework expired. In 2020, after a job change brought us back to Columbia, I decided to try and finish. One of the first steps was revalidating all my old coursework. For one class, I had to write an essay. The essay prompt was defined by me in concert with the English faculty examiner. I submitted the finished essay this last weekend. (DL, Dec. 7, 2021)

Original Course Description:
Survey of the development of the novel form, with study of major and lesser-known figures, in relation to social change and publishing conditions; authors include Dickens, George Eliot, and Hardy.

Instructions:
Write an essay in response to the prompt below. Essay length is at the discretion of the student but may be considered by the reader as part of the evaluation. This is a take-home exam. Expectations in regards to proofreading and source citation may accordingly be high.

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Academic Writing

Job Application Cover Letter

Note: I only ever applied for one tenure-track position before I left academia for a career in IT. This is the cover letter I attached to my application. Looking back, it is a neat encapsulation of many activities and ideas that were significant in the first decade of my post-college life. (DL Sept. 8, 2021)

I am writing to apply for the position of Professor of Literature at Houston Baptist University. I believe that my professional training and research potential, my breadth of teaching experience, my personal commitment to a classical focus in education, and my missions-oriented cross-cultural experience make me an excellent candidate for the position.

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Academic Writing

A Letter of Thanks

Note: In October of 2008 I presented at my second academic conference. Holly and I went to St. Louis together and spent a glorious few days as grown-ups without our small children (then 5 and 3). We saw the St. Louis arch. We went to the St. Louis Zoo. We bought fudge. And–momentously–we had our first alcohol. Champagne on a whim at the hotel followed by bad beer at a pizza place led two Bob Jones graduates out of a lifetime of teetotalery into the world of social alcohol consumption. All-in-all an excellent memory. This letter I wrote to the English department afterwards captures the professional aspects of the conference. (DL, Sept. 8, 20201)

I would like to express my gratitude to the English department for generously sponsoring my participation at the Sixteenth-Century Society and Conference in St. Louis on October 22 to 26 of this year. I feel privileged to have been selected for such support, especially during this time of economic trouble when the university is under additional financial pressure.

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Academic Writing

Ninth to Twelfth Grade Latin Textbook Examination Report with Recommendations

Note: In 2008, I took a job as a Latin and American Literature teacher at a large Christian school. The goal was to pursue my calling and do what I loved (teach) while paying the bills and finishing my doctoral dissertation. Practically my first official task was to select the textbooks and develop the scope and sequence for the high-school Latin program. The school already had middle-school Latin and one of the reasons I was hired (instead of a pure literature teacher) was to establish a high-school Latin program. I prepared this textbook review as part of that process. Looking back, I’m impressed by this. I’d forgotten how thorough and clear it was. It should be clear to anyone who reads it how heavily my approach to Latin pedagogy leaned on grammar and vocab study. That kind of study is not easy work, and it’s hard to sell to students these days (and perhaps rightly so, but that’s a different conversation). But I still believe if you’re going to study a dead language, the best way to do it is the old-fashioned way. Those Renaissance schoolmasters knew what they were about when it came to teaching Latin to young people. (DL, Sept. 8, 2021)

Goal:

The purpose of the examination process is to select a multi-year Latin curriculum for grades nine through twelve. Upon adoption, the first-year course will be held in 2008-09, with successive courses added each year until the complete cycle has been implemented.

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Academic Writing

Form and Structure in The Rape of Lucrece

Note: In July of 2001 after finishing my MA in English at Bob Jones University, my parents sponsored my attendance at Cambridge University’s International Shakespeare Summer Program, a non-credit continuing education program for anyone above 18. There I had the privilege and delight of learning from a brilliant scholar-teacher, Charles Moseley. Dr. Moseley fit every ideal I had for the perfect literary scholar–breadth of learning, erudition, stylish good looks (complete with coat and tie and a white goatee), and a British accent. It was like learning from someone from the same circle as Tolkien and Lewis, and it was mesmerizing. He said kind words during our interactions about my suitability for doctoral study and validated the quality of the literary education I had received at BJU that left a lasting mark of encouragement. I wrote this paper for his three-week class on Shakespeare’s poetry. A major portion of the argument is a direct response to something he had said in class about the structure of Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece. The paper was written with him as the primary audience. Looking back, it is typical of an approach I used often in my literary analyses–direct analysis of the structure and purpose of the text, a method similar to that used in explicating the meaning of the Bible. (DL, Sept. 19, 2021)

To discuss the importance of form and structure[1] in The Rape of Lucrece we have to know what we mean by “importance.”For our purposes here, importance signifies how large a role form and structure play in getting the poem to do what Shakespeare wanted it to do; it is a measure of how integral they are to the poem’s success as Shakespeare would have defined success. I begin, therefore, with a brief statement of what Shakespeare wanted Lucrece to do.

It is clear from the poem’s dedicatory epistle and from the historical context surrounding the poem’s composition that Shakespeare wrote Lucrece to impress an educated, courtly audience already very familiar with his subject matter—to impress them with his skill as a poet. In addition, it is reasonable to assume based on the Renaissance uses for poetry and modes of reading poetry that Shakespeare was also trying to say something significant. If accomplishing these two goals is taken as the measure of the poem’s success, it is to be expected that form and structure will be important insofar as they are avenues for impressive technical display and/or communicative tools.

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Academic Writing

Twitching the Mantle Blue

Note: I wrote this paper for a 500-level survey of Milton that I took in the fall of my second year as an English major at Bob Jones University. The class teacher was my favorite Bob Jones professor (and the favorite of many literature students at BJU), Caren Silvester. I took eleven classes from her over the course of my BA and MA studies, but I never received higher praise for any paper than I did for this one. She asked for a copy for her permanent file. The analysis in the paper demonstrates the habit of mind that characterized so much of my literary analysis while I was a literary student and so much of the rest of my thinking since–break a thing down into its constituent parts to understand how the whole operates. (DL, Sept. 19, 2021)

John Milton’s “Lycidas” is a pastoral elegy written upon the death of Edward King, a Cambridge acquaintance of Milton’s who drowned at sea. It stands squarely in the pastoral tradition of Theocritus and Bion. However, “Lycidas” is more than a traditional lament for a lost friend and peer. Milton uses the pastoral apparatus to illustrate the hope that arises from despair when the sorrowful look to Christ, the Good Shepherd.

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