As you no doubt know, the academic job market has been evolving in the last few years, and preparing for it is a stressful time for graduate students and those trying to make moves to new institutions or roles. This year, some colleagues and I across universities are continuing our free Zoom workshop series, Jobs in English and Transdisciplinary Studies (JETS), to help folks across the discipline prepare for the job market. We’re thrilled to continue the workshop series this summer with support from a 2026 CCCC Research Initiative Grant! Last year we were thrilled to have representation from around 30 graduate programs across the world, and some of our participants from last year have shared successful job placement stories with us.
We have had participants who are still in coursework and those starting their market runs as ABDs—we firmly believe that if you’re planning to pursue a career in academia, no time is too early to start preparing for the market. Starting early also helps us talk about the hidden curriculum of the academic job market and expectations of different kinds of faculty roles in humanities disciplines. Our workshop leaders have had a variety of job market experiences in recent years, hold positions at multiple institution types, and our priority is supporting folks in the discipline no matter what kind of role they’re searching for. While our primary personal expertise is in Technical Communication and Rhetoric & Writing Studies, our sessions are open to those broadly in the humanities; please share with your colleagues in other humanistic disciplines as well. We have had previous participants in Media Studies, Linguistics, TESOL, History, and Literature, for example.
Basically, we will offer five synchronous Zoom meetings this summer covering topics like finding and understanding job postings, writing cover letters and teaching/research statements tailored to the roles you’re looking for, and preparing for interviews. During each session we offer plenty of time for Q&A so that we can answer questions based on our own recent experiences on the job market. Our leaders also work asynchronously with attendees on job materials. If our meeting times don’t work for folks, everyone on our email list also gets access to captioned meeting recordings after the fact.
Interested attendees can fill out this form to get on our contact list for this summer: https://weber.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4V3yR1FLPtxPNvU.
Access to the registration form can also be found on our website, https://disseminar.org/jets/. There, you can also find public resources our team has started developing to assist folks in their job market preparation. Sessions begin on June 10th and continue through August, and Zoom links will be emailed to those who register. Again: this is a FREE Workshop series! If you’re a Faculty advisor, please share widely with those in your programs–we’re excited to provide some additional support for the students you work with.
Participants this year will also have the opportunity to be part of our study, supported by the CCCC Research Initiative Grant, to help us better understand the needs of discipline on the job market.
If you have any questions, they can be directed to Marisa Yerace at myerace.
Thank you for your time and any interested folks you can send our way.
Warmly,
The JETS Coordinating Team
Marisa Yerace, Weber State University
Kailyn Shartel Rogers (Hall), University of Tennessee-Martin
Allegra W. Smith, Georgia Tech
Nasiba Norova, Metropolitan State University, MN
Bradley Dilger, Purdue University