Writers at Work Speaker Series – Spring 2024

Greetings, Writers! Professor Tenaya Darlington has invited three professional writers to speak in her graduate Writers at Work class this spring, and you are welcome to attend. Two of the three writers are alums.

See the details below.

Writers at Work Speaker Series

Learn About Writing Careers on Wednesday Evenings, Online

For a link, please email Professor Tenaya Darlington (tdarling@sju.edu)

English Career Day – November 2

The English Career Day schedule for Nov. 2nd, 2023 is below with zoom links. Conversations will be about 1/2 hour followed by questions and answers. You can sign into the zoom from your classrooms.
The event is open to students across the university who may sign in via Handshake and individual zoom links. The sessions will also be recorded and posted to the Career Center website.

9:30 – Carly Calhoun, Wish Manager, Make-a-Wish Foundation
Faculty Moderator: Shenid Bhyroo
Career Center Support: Lisa Hansinger
 
11:00 – Krista Rossi, Account Executive, Breaking Data
Faculty Moderator: April Lindner
Career Center Support: Scott Rappaport
 
12:30 – Lindsay Hueston, Editorial Specialist, National Alliance to End Homelessness
Faculty Moderator: Ann Green
Career Center Support: Kailey Ryan
 
2:00 – Katherine Gygro, Senior Product Manager, Arc XP at The Washington Post
Faculty Moderator: Jeffrey Brown
Career Center Support: Scott Rappaport / Aissatou Ndiaye
 
3:30 – George Fenton, Marketing & Communications Specialist, WHYY
Faculty Moderator: Tom Brennan
Career Center Support: Erin Obetz
 
5:00 – Debonair Oates Primus, Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Oak View Group
Faculty Moderator: Vanessa Kraus
Career Center Support: Trish Shafer

Spring 2024 Course Offerings

We have a great lineup for spring 2024!

ENG 641: Rhetorics of Silence and Listening
Online Mondays 6:30 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. Melissa Goldthwaite
CRN: 11813 – Area II

In Rhetorics of Silence and Listening, we will examine—through reading, writing, discussion, listening, and contemplative practices—the complex rhetorical relationships among silence, speech, and writing. We will focus on the multiple ways people both deliver and receive silence in intentional (and sometimes unintentional) ways and consider the rhetorical and even bodily effects of these silences. We will consider a range of practices involving silence and listening: the potentially destructive practices of silencing oneself or others, the potentially empowering effects of choosing to be silent for a particular purpose, and the calming and potentially healing effects of contemplative silences (including the ways in which such silences can help individuals listen more carefully to themselves, to others, and even to texts). We will seek to understand the potential of rhetorical listening across differences for communication, critical thinking, action, and compassion.


 ENG 620: Special Topics in Literature & Culture (The Essay, In Hard Times)
Online Tuesdays 6:30 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. Jenny Spinner
CRN: 11811 – Area I

 

 

In this course, we will explore personal essays written about the COVID-19 pandemic and protests against racial injustice that erupted around the U.S. in 2020. While our focus will primarily be American essayists, we will also examine writings by authors outside the U.S., including the work of Murong Xuecun. Additionally, we will dive into the past to read personal essays written during other global health crises, including the bubonic plague epidemic in the 1500s, the 1918 flu pandemic, and the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s. As we will discover, one of the challenges faced by essayists writing in public hard times is how to position their personal experiences amid a public calamity. Writers of color face additional challenges as they navigate the complexities, and pressures, of representational narratives. We will tackle these challenges in our own writing, producing personal writing about (and in) hard times. Course material will include The Best American Essays 2021, Zadie Smith’s Intimations, Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped, and a variety of other essays and podcasts. Assignments will include weekly discussion posts on readings, in-class creative responses to prompts, a historical reference entry and accompanying SlideShare presentation, a personal essay, and a collaborative class interview project on the Class of 2024, the graduating college seniors who missed their high school graduation and spent the first (and sometimes second) years of their college experiences enduring significant covid protocols.


 ENG 681: Writers at Work
Online Wednesdays 6:30 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.
Instructor: Professor Tenaya Darlington
CRN: 11814 – Area III

 

 

This course is designed to set your professional life as a writer in motion. Over the course of 15 weeks, you’ll meet a series of working writers from around Philadelphia who will visit our class. During these visits, you’ll have the opportunity to network with professional writers and learn about possible career paths, from public relations to publishing. Each writer’s visit will tie into a different writing assignment so that you can begin building a portfolio of professional work (likely assignments will include: a press release, a review, a book proposal, an edited manuscript, plus a professional resume and bio.) At the end, you’ll develop an online portfolio that you can use as a calling card.


 ENG 560: Rhetoric Then & Now
Online Thursdays 6:30 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. Cristina Hanganu-Bresch
CRN: 10592 – Core Class

 

Consideration of the history of rhetoric, from the Sophists to the present day, with particular concern both for the ethical considerations involved in persuasive uses of language and for the stylistic choices in developing written work.