On Friday, June 18, the students went on their final campus trip. This trip was to Brown University, where they went on a tour of the campus, including the John Carter Brown Library, the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center, the Third World Center, and the English Department, and finally visited the John Hay Library.

This week, the students have been working hard on their papers and presentations while taking a GRE Preparation workshop with Kaplan.

Yesterday Dr. Gregory Colón-Semenza from the University of Connecticut came to speak to the students in the morning. In the afternoon was our graduate recruitment fair, where directors of graduate studies from a number of different institutes came to speak individually with the students. In attendance were:

Dr. Chris Okonkwo from the University of Missouri
Dr. Bret Benjamin and Dr. Pat Chu from the SUNY University at Albany
Dr. Tim Bewes and Dr. Rolland Murray from Brown University
Dr. Ed Larkin from the University of Delaware
Dr. Dovev Levine-Leung from the University of New Hampshire
Dr. Elda Maria Roman from Stanford University
Dr. Nicole Aljoe from Northeastern University
Dr. Badia Ahad from Loyola University Chicago
Dr. Erin Mackie from Syracuse University
and Dr. Darryl Dickson-Carr from Southern Methodist University

This morning, the students presented their research in a final symposium. Tomorrow, everyone will be heading home for some much needed rest. Thanks to everyone involved for making this a fantastic year!

SILCS Director Paula Krebs, Mecca Sullivan of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Beth McCoy of the State University of New York Geneseo, and Dr. Lena Hill of the University of Iowa attended the Seventh Annual Yale Bouchet Conference on Diversity in Graduate Education this weekend, where they presented their panel, “Direct Intervention: A Summer Diversity Institute in the Humanities”.

And finally, we would like to welcome our SILCS class of 2010, who will be joining us this June. Congratulations to all of those who were accepted. We are looking forward to seeing you soon!

On June 8th, Dr. Sujata Iyengar from the University of Georgia came to talk about her work in English Renaissance Literature. She was followed on Tuesday by Dr. Betty Neal Crutcher from Wheaton College, who talked with the students about their goals for the future.

On Thursday, June 11th, Drs. Lena and Michael Hill from the University of Iowa came to talk to the students about their individual graduate school experiences and their experience of searching for a job together. They accompanied the students on Friday to Yale University to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where Lena showed the students the materials she had worked with as a graduate student there.

That following Monday, June 15th, Dr. Valerie Lee from The Ohio State University spoke about why she became an English professor. On Wednesday, the students went into Boston to watch an exhilarating performance of The Color Purple. They next day, they listened to Dr. Patricia Chu from the SUNY University at Albany.

Friday was a trip to Boston College and Harvard University, and the weekend was spent working on their papers. This week has been GRE prep classes with Kaplan, as well as preparing for their final symposium on Saturday.

Everyone will be heading back home on Sunday, but there are still more events to come: this Friday, a number of graduate programs will be coming to our graduate recruitment fair, and last year’s SILCS graduates will be coming back for a reunion. We’re excited to see everyone again!

Monday was the start of classes. Dr. Robyn Warhol-Down joined SILCS once again as an instructor. The students read Barthes, Foucault, Benjamin, and Fish, and began to do research for their final project. Dr. Herman Beavers from the University of Pennsylvania spoke to the students Monday night about the idea of risk and how it relates to African American Studies. On Wednesday, the students heard Dr. Lisa Lebduska from Wheaton College speak about rhetoric and composition, and on Thursday Dr. Dagmawi Woubshet from Cornell University spoke about his work in comparative literature.

The Brown University English Department and John Carter Brown Library welcomed the students for a visit on Friday. The day was unfortunately rainy, but the rain cleared on Saturday in time for a relaxing trip out on Narragansett Bay with Save the Bay.

There are many more events scheduled for this month so keep watching this space for more updates!

Brown University
The University of California at Irvine
Dartmouth College
Indiana University
The University of Michigan
Northwestern University
The Ohio State University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
The University of California, Los Angeles
The University of Pennsylvania
The University of Texas
Washington University in St. Louis

And there are more acceptances arriving every day! Congratulations, everyone.

Update:
Here are a few more schools to add to the list:
Columbia University in the City of New York
Cornell University
Rice University
Tufts University
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
University of Vermont

The last week started with a fun weekend. On Friday everyone went to the bowling alley, where we discovered a few students were secretly bowling pros. On Saturday evening, a bus took the students into Providence to see Waterfire. Waterfire is an event that happens in Providence every week or two in the summer, where braziers are lit down the middle of the river and music plays while gondolas take people through the water.

Sunday morning everyone headed out to Providence again, this time to the Save the Bay Center right on Narragansett Bay. A small boat took everyone on a tour of the bay and a visit to the salt marshes of Prudence Island.

Though there were no classes during the last week of the Institute, there were lecturers every day. Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Dr. Herman Beavers, Dr. Deyonne Bryant, Dr. Shawn Christian, Dr. Dennis Foster and Dr. April Langley all spoke to the students throughout the week. President Ronald Crutcher and Dr. Betty Crutcher also had a meeting with the students on Monday morning and hosted a dinner at their house Monday night.

On Friday, representatives from Boston College, Boston University, Brown University, Tufts University, Southern Methodist University, University of Missouri Columbia, and the University of Delaware arrived on campus for a graduate school fair. Students had individual interviews with the Directors of Graduate Studies from each university.

Saturday, the students had their symposium, where they presented their papers as if they were on a panel at a conference. This was the culmination of all of their work at the Institute and was an astounding success. Afterwards everyone met for a formal dinner on their final night together at the Institute, where they were presented with certificates marking their accomplishment.

By now everyone is back home, recovering from their action-packed month. Next year will bring with it a group of new students, and hopefully this year’s students will be able to come back and visit. Keep an eye on this space in the fall for more program profiles and the launch of our official SILCS podcast, where we will showcase some of the lecturers who spoke in June.

Amidst their classes, the students also took three more trips to visit nearby colleges and universities. On Wednesday the 11th, the students took a trip to Harvard University. On Friday the 13th was Bridgewater State College, and on Tuesday the 17th was Brandeis University. These three campuses, along with the previous visits to Yale University and Brown University, showcased the types of campuses and graduate programs that the students could expect to attend and at which they could eventually teach.

The series of lectures continued with Dr. Darryl Dickson-Carr of Southern Methodist University. Dr. Dickson-Carr is a member of the SILCS Steering Committee and spoke to the students about his career and getting a Ph.D. in English. Dr. Dagmawi Woubshet of Cornell University spoke about doing comparative work and his travel around the world. This was followed by Dr. Dolan Hubbard, another SILCS Steering Committee member, who spoke about the College Language Association and the Modern Language Association. Yesterday, Thomas Sayers Ellis, who teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence College, talked about creative writing and read a few of his own poems, including The Obama Hour, which was recently showcased in The Root.

There has been some leisure time in the past week as well. On the 19th, SILCS attending a showing of The Taming of the Shrew at the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket. The production was a fun and energetic interpretation of the play, set in 1960s Italy. Over the weekend, some students visited Boston. Tonight there will be bowling, and tomorrow there will be a trip to see the Providence Waterfire, before we enter the final week of the Summer Institute.

After several days of rain, the temperature shot up to the mid nineties, which made the day in Providence a very warm one. The students toured the John Carter Brown Library and then met with Dr. Rolland Murray before having some time to explore Providence on their own.

On Sunday there was an optional trip to McCoy Stadium to see the Pawtucket Red Sox play against the Buffalo Bisons. The day was even hotter than the day before, with temperatures just under three digits, and many of the students opted to stay home with their homework instead. For those who did go, however, it was a fun day at the ball park, even though the home team lost.

Monday and Tuesday both featured afternoon lectures. Dr. Emily Bernard from the University of Vermont discussed her essay Teaching the N-Word and spoke about hate speech and the power in self-naming. Dr. Shalene Vasquez from Dartmouth College talked about her own career and graduate school experience.

This morning the students headed out to Harvard University to meet with the English department and visit the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Later this week will be a trip to the theater, a visit to Bridgewater State College and, weather permitting, a day at the beach.