Learn to Intern

Hi Everyone,

I’m Jen, a senior and English major as well as a (hard) Work(ing) Study Student in the department. I am one of the three graduating seniors who have chosen the journalism specialization within the English major. What a small, immensely talented group we are! As you may or may not know, considering our number is so small, the journalism specialization within the English major requires an internship for academic credit. I’m going to talk a little bit about that in case you too are in the journalism biz or maybe you just want to do an internship instead of a class for fun.

I completed my stint in the real world of reporting last semester with Worcester Magazine, an alternative weekly magazine that you’ve probably seen around in the UC or various small businesses around the city. It was a very enjoyable experience, particularly because I got to know a bit more about Worcester, which is something that I feel many Clarkies could stand to do once in awhile. I also got to do some cool things (for free!), which is one of the very fun parts of journalism. For example, I took a cooking class and got a psychic reading! I was published in every single issue and have something substantial to write on my resume. Overall, good deal.

Please note that the expectation of monetary compensation from your work is allowed by Clark but fairly uncommon, and especially unrealistic in the print-journalism industry, which I’ve heard is terminally ill. The skills you learn, however, will translate well to online-publication employment.

You can apply to or find out more about internships for credit here. Each semester-long internship requires 140 hours total, which is about 10 hours a week. You’ll need to write up a proposal and grab a faculty advisor (mine was Professor Elliott) who will check in with you periodically and assess your final project, which is required and can really be anything. Mine was a portfolio and a reflective essay. Credit is given on a pass/fail basis, so if you can hold it together to some extent, you’re in! I think this system is good because there is less academic pressure to do well in a non-academic setting. Just focus on your work and you will be fine. To apply for a single-semester internship, your GPA must be 2.75, and 3.0 for a year-long internship.

One kind of inconvenient thing about the system is that you must pay “tuition” for one class if you want to complete your internship during the summer, so that option takes some consideration on your part.

Again, you can see the link above for all the information or contact the kind and helpful Career Services staff at careers@clarku.edu or 508-793-7258. I know other Clarkies who have interned at the Telegram and Gazette, and a Communication and Culture major who has interned with a music website and has had the opportunity to interview several esteemed musicians in the metal community. Additionally, I was glad to leave the position of WoMag intern in the capable hands of fellow-Clark English major, Vanessa Formato, as seen here. Best of luck. Hope to see your name in print soon!

Jen

Genre and the Myth of the Vulgar Cage

Hey sports fans.

Genre fiction. Westerns. Fantasy. Swashbuckling tales of high adventure on the Spanish Main. Genre has always been a medium of set pieces, of stages and moods. A Western has six-shooters, fedoras, silent types and rotten-toothed gunslingers with hearts as black as coal. Westerns aren't about analytical functionalism.

The literary community has, traditionally, treated genre fiction as a kind of bastard cousin, a discipline the content of which is dictated by trappings. A few novels manage to escape this stigma(1984, Borges's ventures into Magical Realism, Ender's Game), but most genre pieces remain outside the world of modern literary criticism. Pointedly shunned by literature's "highest" circles and scholarly environments (with the partial and debatable example of Science Fiction, which has infiltrated modern literature to some extent thanks, in part, to its pedigree), genre fiction exists in a realm almost strictly cultic/commercial.

That genre fiction is nothing but its set pieces is what R. Scott Bakker, writer and philosopher, calls the Myth of the Vulgar Cage. Good genre transcends place and time to address themes of ontological and human importance. Great genre seizes on its component parts to create an even richer philosophical experience. The gnostic complexity of magic and sorcery, if utilized with skill and thought, provide a vehicle for complex questions of functionalism, realism and Nietzschian Will. The moral and eschatological underpinnings implied by pantheons of gods, the heavy yoke of feudal responsibility and its attendant injustices. The grim despair of the expansion-era West weighing down on the shoulders of penniless unfortunates (please, read Cormac McCarthy). Genre is at its best not when it leaves behind its attendant tropes, but when it novelizes and explores them.

Word of the Day: Calumny.
Book of the Day: Slaughterhouse Five by the late and much-lamented Kurt Vonnegut.
Author of the Day: Ernest Hemingway, writer of novels, screenplays and short stories in profusion. Lover of bullfighting and alcohol.
Author vs Author of the Day: Wallace Stevens vs Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Result: Stevens accidentally imbibes Hawthorne along with a pitcher of martinis. There is much rejoicing.

Early Science Fiction in the Arab World

Written sometime between 1268 and 1277 CE, Ibn al-Nafis' Theologus Autodidactus is an often-overlooked treasure in the literary canon of the Middle Ages. It features the first instance of a coming-of-age story, the earliest recorded desert island (or isolation log) story and, perhaps most remarkably, is considered by many the first example of a science fiction story. Copies are fairly easy to find online (try Amazon) and the book is definitely worth a read. As a harrowing theological/philosophical journey, al-Nafis' book is a well-crafted work of art.

Word of the Day: Carious.
Book of the Day: A Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Author of the Day: Jorge Luis Borges, surrealist/magical realist/modernist and possibly the most widely-read man in recorded history.

Enter The Martin

Greetings, sports fans.

I'm Micah Martin, a History Major, English Minor, and one of the department's indentured laborers. I handle mail, archival and secretarial duties and any miscellaneous tasks that spring up. In the coming months, preceding my graduation in May, I'll be posting here about life at Anderson House and goings-on in the department. I'll also discuss theory, writing, conventions of genre and style and the science of tropes in modern fiction mediums. To those of you with questions about the department, literature or anything related to English in general, please post! I'd like to get a few good discussions going here on the blog.

Micah out.

Word of the Day: Vociferous.
Book of the Day: Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
Author of the Day: Canadian Sci-Fi and Fantasy author R. Scott Bakker, a strong advocate for the inclusion of philosophical themes in genre fiction.

After Long Silence. . . .

Due to the fact that I have been chairing for the last year and a half, I have not had time to keep up with the blog. However: I have also finally hit on the idea to have the Work Study students in the English office begin to be the main contributors. I wonder if the blog could be a kind of English Times in real time--we'll have news, photos, announcements take place here as well as the usual places. Towards that end, I have invited five new authors; please welcome them effusively:

Micah Martin

Milla Smith

Jen Cantin

Devon Grayson-Wallace

Daiva Slotkus Miksyte

I also have the assurance that they will not shirk their appointed tasks to dabble in posting!

Thanks!

Jay