K-SAA Mentorship Program

“I created the K-SAA's Mentoring Project in 2005. As the incoming Book Review Editor, I began to attend the Board meetings and become better acquainted with the Directors. A few of them belonged to a group I'd noticed before: first-rate scholars without graduate students to inherit (and, in turn, expand, nuance, or update) their expertise. I remembered, too, my own struggles as a unmentored assistant professor, struggles which resemble those reported to me by several colleagues. The idea came: Why not put these two groups together? It seemed important to stipulate that the proteges have PhD in hand, in order to avoid conflict with their dissertation directors. It also seemed important to limit the commitment to one year, to prevent mentor burnout. I brought the idea to the Board as a three-year pilot project. The Board approved it enthusiastically. I organized the first year's cohort of mentors and protégées. I had to set aside the hands-on responsibility for the Mentoring Project when I became the K-SJ's Editor the next year. Gina Luria Walker organized the next year's cohort. Arnold A. Markley succeeded her, and he was succeeded in turn by Steve Behrendt. When I last checked, about two years ago, the Mentoring Project had served about 70 junior scholars.”

—Prof. Jeanne Moskal, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Through this program, senior scholars can offer to be mentors for a protégé on the specific scholarly or professional topic(s) of their choosing (e.g., Mary Shelley, teaching generalist courses in a small institution, etc.). Junior scholars can request a mentor by describing their own scholarly interests and professional concerns. Mentors and protégés commit to one year of conversation (vocal, written, and/or electronic). By volunteering, mentors commit themselves to being interlocutors only. It is not a condition of participating in this program that mentors act as professional advocates for their protégés (for example, by writing letters of recommendation for cases of tenure or promotion or for grant proposals), though of course they may do so if they wish.

Prospective Mentors. We welcome offers to serve as mentors from Romanticists at the Associate Professor level or higher. Although volunteers need not be members of the K-SAA, we welcome them to join the Association. You can volunteer by sending us a short email providing your contact information and affiliation, as well as the authors or topics of interest to you. We hope that the Mentoring Project will appeal particularly to those who are retired faculty or who are teaching at non-PhD-granting institutions and who might enjoy an opportunity to pass on advice, expertise, and street-wisdom to younger members of the profession.

Prospective Protégés. Any junior Romanticist working on authors and topics that fall under the umbrella of the K-SAA, and who has completed the PhD but has not yet earned tenure, is invited to request a mentor. Membership in the K-SAA is not a requirement for applicants, but anyone accepting a mentor must join the Association. Your request should consist of a C.V. and a one- or two-sentence description of what you are looking for in a mentor. We particularly encourage junior scholars to apply who find themselves at smaller institutions where they may not have access to other scholars in their field or discipline.

Timetable. Mentoring matches are made in the early fall of each year, so please submit your offers and requests by September 30. (If you find you do have outstanding needs during the academic year, however, feel free to write and we will attempt to find someone to work with you at that time). If we do not have a sufficient number of mentors for the applicants, preference will be granted to protégés with the longest memberships in the K-SAA.

We are committed to bringing more junior and senior scholars into mutual conversation and to offering concrete support to the rising generation of scholars.

Contact. Please contact Stephen Behrendt (sbehrendt1 [at] unl [dot] edu) to apply to be a protégé, to volunteer to be a Mentor, or to ask questions about this program.