Academic Sample No. 1:
November 2, 2014
Dr. John Smith
Chair, English Search Committee
Box 100
Hiring Now College
Sometown, CA 12345
Dear Dr. Smith:
I am writing to apply for the position as assistant professor of English with an emphasis in rhetoric and composition
that you advertised in the October MLA Job Information List. I am a graduate student at Prestigious University
working on a dissertation under the direction of Professor Prominent Figure. Currently revising the third of five
chapters, I expect to complete all work for the Ph.D. by May of 2015. I believe that my teaching and tutoring
experience combined with my course work and research background in rhetoric and composition theory make me a
strong candidate for the position outlined in your notice.
As my curriculum vitae shows, I have had excellent opportunities to teach a variety of writing courses during my
graduate studies, including developmental writing, first-year writing for both native speakers and second language
students, advanced writing, and business writing. I have also worked as a teaching mentor for new graduate students,
a position that involved instruction in methods of composition teaching, development of course materials, and
evaluation of new graduate instructors. Among the most satisfying experiences for me as a teacher has been
instructing students on an individual basis as a tutor in our university Writing Lab. Even as a classroom instructor, I
find that I always look forward to the individual conferences that I hold with my students several times during the
semester because I believe this kind of one-on-one interaction to be essential to their development as writers.
My work in the composition classroom has provided me with the inspiration as well as a kind of laboratory for my
dissertation research. My project, The I Has It: Applications of Recent Models of Subjectivity in Composition Theory,
examines the shift since the 1960s from expressive models of writing toward now-dominant postmodern
conceptions of decentered subjectivity and self-construction through writing. I argue that these more recent
theoretical models, while promising, cannot have the liberating effects that are claimed for them without a
concomitant reconception of writing pedagogy and the dynamics of the writing classroom. I relate critical readings
of theoretical texts to my own pedagogical experiments as a writing teacher, using narratives of classroom successes
and failures as the bases for critical reflection on postmodern composition theory. After developing my dissertation
into a book manuscript, I plan to continue my work in current composition theory through a critical examination of
the rhetoric of technological advancement in the computer-mediated writing classroom.
My interest in the computer classroom has grown out of recent experience teaching composition in that environment.
In these courses my students have used computers for writing and turning in notes and essays, communicating with
one another and with me, conducting library catalogue research and web research, and creating websites. I have
encouraged my students to think and write critically about their experiences with technology, both in my class and
elsewhere, even as we have used technology to facilitate our work in the course. Syllabi and other materials for my
writing courses can be viewed at my website: http://locationofmyportfolio.com. In all of my writing courses I
encourage students to become critical readers, thinkers, and writers; my goal is always not only to promote their
intellectual engagement with cultural texts of all kinds but also to help them become more discerning readers of and
forceful writers about the world around them.
I have included my curriculum vitae and would be happy to send you additional materials such as a dossier of letters
of reference, writing samples, teaching evaluations, and past and proposed course syllabi. I will be available to meet
with you for an interview at either the MLA or the CCCC convention, or elsewhere at your convenience. I can be
reached at my home phone number before December 19; between then and the start of the MLA convention, you
can reach me at (123) 456-7890. I thank you for your consideration and look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely
First Lastname
Academic Sample No. 2 (Including Fellowship Posting):
Ithaca College Pre-Doctoral Diversity Fellowships 2014-15
The School of Humanities and Sciences at Ithaca College announces Pre-Doctoral Diversity Fellowships for 201415. The fellowships support promising scholars who are committed to diversity in the academy in order to better
prepare them for tenure track appointments within liberal arts or comprehensive colleges/universities.
Applications are welcome in the following areas: Communication Studies, History, Sociology, Theater Arts, Writing,
Modern Languages and Literatures and the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity. The School of
Humanities and Sciences houses additional interdisciplinary minors that may be of interest to candidates: African
Diaspora Studies, Latina/o Studies, Jewish Studies, Latin American Studies, Asian American Studies, Muslim
Cultures, Native American Studies and Women’s Studies. Fellows who successfully obtain the Ph.D. and show an
exemplary record of teaching and scholarship and engagement in academic service throughout their fellowship, may
be considered as candidates for tenure-eligible appointments anticipated to begin in the fall of 2015.
Fellowships are for the academic year (August 16, 2014 to May 31, 2015) and are non-renewable. The fellow will
receive a $30,000 stipend, $3,000 in travel/professional development support, office space, health benefits and
access to Ithaca College and Cornell University libraries. The fellow will teach one course in the fall semester and
one course in the spring semester and be invited to speak about her/his dissertation research in relevant classes and
at special events at Ithaca College.
Successful candidates will show evidence of superior academic achievement, a high degree of promise for continued
achievement as scholars and teachers and a capacity to respond in pedagogically productive ways to the learning
needs of students from diverse backgrounds. Candidates should demonstrate sustained personal engagement with
communities that are underrepresented in the academy and an ability to bring this asset to learning, teaching and
scholarship at the college and university level. Using the diversity of human experience as an educational resource
in teaching and scholarship is expected.
Qualifications: Enrollment in an accredited program leading to a Ph.D. degree at a U.S. educational institution,
evidence of superior academic achievement and commitment to a career in teaching at the college or university level
is required. Candidates must also be authorized to work in the United States. Prior to August 16, 2014, the fellow
must be advanced to candidacy at his or her home institution with an approved dissertation proposal. Preference will
be given to those candidates in the last year of dissertation writing.
Interested individuals should apply online at apply.icjobs.org and attach requested documents. Questions about the
online application should be directed to the Office of Human Resources at (607) 274-8000. Screening of
applications will begin immediately. To ensure full consideration, complete applications should be received by
December 15, 2013.
Dear Fellowship Committee Members,
I would like to apply for the Ithaca College Diversity Fellowship for 2015-16. I am currently PhD candidate at
Claremont Graduate University, a member of the Claremont Colleges Consortium, located in southern California.
The southern California environment is a blessing for more than just the temperate weather conditions and beautiful
scenery. Our region is a wonderfully diverse one, and being both a student and a teacher here offers opportunities to
work with a wide variety of students and faculty.
In my teaching at Another University, I have been able to work with a great many first generation college students,
some of whom are only able to attend because of wide-reaching family and community efforts to fund their studies.
With these students, the teaching role always expands to help the students navigate the unfamiliar terrain of the
higher education institution, and I find that I spend a great deal of time helping my students make connections with
the available support organizations within the university, which is a particularly rewarding aspect of my teaching
responsibilities. In Spring 2015, I will be teaching a writing course that introduces students to the culture and
processes of scholarly research and writing, which will offer a different set of diversity challenges and rewards.
Most of the students in the upcoming course will be international students who are endeavoring to understand a new
set of academic paradigms for writing and scholarship, struggling to express complex and creative ideas in a
language that is not their most comfortable one, in an environment that is new to them and full of sometimes bizarre
social customs. In addition, there will be a variety of students for whom English is their first language but who have
a great deal of anxiety about writing graduate level research papers. I am looking forward to having these students in
a classroom environment, which extends the interdisciplinary work that I have been doing for four years as a
member of our graduate Writing Center staff.
I am fortunate to have first hand experience of many of the anxieties that students face, since I am a returning adult
student myself. After a very enjoyable career in software development, I returned to school to pursue my first
loves—teaching and literature. Stepping into a classroom as an adult student, even as one who had a great deal of
business and public speaking experience, was very stressful, and I’ve been able to help my own returning adult
students manage their anxieties much more effectively as a result of my own background. I often work to provide
opportunities for students to contribute to class discussion with their own life and work experiences, which benefits
both them and their traditional age counterparts a great deal. Seeing these returning students synthesize their work
backgrounds and their classroom challenges and emerge as more confident students as a result is very rewarding.
Of course, in the contemporary classroom, diversity is frequently not so readily apparent as with students of
different ethnicities or age groupings. I strive also to provide an inclusive and supportive environment for students’
gender identification, sexuality, and disabilities, both visible and invisible. I am careful not to assume that the quiet
student sitting in the back row is lazy or inattentive, but instead to realize that that student, and others in the room,
might be anxious about having something such as their sexual orientations or learning disabilities emerge in the
context of classroom conversation. By creating a safe environment for all students, I am able to facilitate fascinating
discussions about the influence of language in shaping perceptions and interactions. Many students often have not
considered the importance of simple language features such as pronouns, and they are surprised by how significant
they can be for their classmates.
In teaching literature, I want students to learn how language and texts function, how texts are both artworks and
sculptors of their historical and cultural contexts, and how these texts are used by and affect readers today. These are
broad issues, and I believe they are important ones for making the study of literature relevant and useful to college
students who are studying a variety of disciplines. Thus, challenging the assumption that Early Modern literature,
written as it often was by “a bunch of dead white guys,” is irrelevant, outdated, and has nothing new to offer in the
21st century is one of the great joys of my scholarship, and it drove the design of both the sample syllabi that I have
included with my application. If interpreting texts and putting them to work can introduce students to the ways in
which authors and readers collaborate in the construction of knowledge and meaning, then students have the
potential to see themselves in the same light. Thus they can become more critical and self-aware participants in a
variety of different disciplines and intellectual communities. I want students to be able to ask, indeed even driven to
ask: How is a text employed, performed, or consumed in this literature classroom? What is its purpose now? In the
classroom, and in society, how do we influence what a text does by how we read it and what uses we put it
towards? And how are these uses different now from what they were at other points in time?
In the first course, a survey of Early Modern literature, my focus is on genre, so that students can come to appreciate
the great variety of forms that public and private writing took in the period and the influence that those forms have
had on modern communication. In a very important sense, contemporary students’ historical distance from the
religious and political debates of the seventeenth century is precisely what allows them to think critically about how
these issues influenced and were influenced by the texts we read. By asking my students to think about how these
texts were “performed” historically—what their function was, what their effects on audiences and authors were—
students can gain the ability to read any text with a critical eye because they are more conscious of the fact that the
text is performing. Students can come to understand that moments such as occur in Necromantes, when a traveller is
beaten for appearing foreign, or in Arabia Sitiens, where the playwright displays a fascination with Islamic culture,
are as prevalent in the Early Modern period as they are in 21 st century society. “Dead white guys” might describe the
authors, but their concerns were as abundantly diverse as those of any period since. I’ve chosen texts that I believe
will allow us to explore the three topical themes listed in the course description and examine them in the context of
an overarching concern about the function of language and writing in society. In the second course, a seminar
devoted to John Donne and targeted toward advanced or upper division students, the focus is on scholarly
collaboration. By sharing ideas and academic tasks, I hope to increase interest among the students and promote peerfocused critical thinking. While Donne’s works may offer only a single voice, by being actively involved in a
diverse group of collaborative learners I believe that students can become more engaged with and take more
responsibility for their own learning. I have deliberately crafted noncompetitive collaborative work, and it is my
hope that working together in a seminar such as this will help to prepare students both for graduate studies and
careers in which skilled and effective teamwork is extremely valuable.
My interest in the intersections between literature and pedagogy also drives my research interests in textual criticism,
the construction of editions in the humanist tradition. In the Early Modern era, by studying grammar, rhetoric,
history, poetry, and moral philosophy, humanists sought to create citizens who would be able to speak and write
with eloquence and clarity and be well prepared to engage in the civic life of their communities. Early Modern
editions are the foundation of humanist scholarship and modern textual criticism is a continuation of this endeavor.
Scholars attempt to understand a text more fully by comparing its various textual witnesses, bringing to bear their
knowledge from other sources, and engaging with the textual criticism of previous editors. Ultimately they produce
an edition that contains within it the author’s own ideas in conversation with those of other scholars including the
editor and information that relates to and illuminates the text’s literary moment. A well-crafted edition in the
humanist tradition captures scholarly conversation as it participates in it, functioning as a well-rounded “textual
citizen,” expounding both the author’s and the editor’s ideas and offering many other voices for readers to consider.
This is the goal of my dissertation project.
The project is a critical edition of plays by William Percy, third son of the eighth Earl of Northumberland and
younger brother of the ninth earl, the “Wizard Earl.” The plays range from 1601 through 1632, an enormously
stimulating period of time, and offer insight into the struggles of a prominent northern Catholic aristocratic family as
its first Protestant generation navigates through the end of the Tudor era and enters the Jacobean. The plays explore
many themes of interest to the Wizard Earl—the occult, alchemy, astrology, and religion—which suggests that the
two brothers were close, and William was likely a member of Henry’s circle that included King James and members
of the Privy Council. The plays exist in only three manuscript witnesses, and of the six, two have never been
published or circulated in any form. Those two plays are the entry point for my dissertation project. I have included
one of them, Necromantes, in my survey course syllabus. I am excited to share with my students a play that few
have ever read and certainly no class has yet studied. In doing so I hope to show them that a great many exciting
texts remain unexplored, even from a period of literature already four centuries old.
My scholarship has taught me that the unity underlying the diversity of ideas and individuals across time and
cultures is grounded in capacities for curiosity, courage in thought and expression, and connection with others. As
an educator, cultivating these capacities in my students has become a passion and a guiding principle. I hope very
much that I will have the opportunity to teach at Ithaca and share my scholarship with the learning community there.
Sincerely,
Academic Sample No. 3:
Dear Faculty Search Committee:
I would like to apply for the Assistant Professor of Ethnic and Women’s Studies position at California State
Polytechnic University, Pomona’s Ethnic and Women’s Studies Department. I am a doctoral candidate in the
Cultural Studies department at Claremont Graduate University. I am currently finishing my dissertation and
anticipate graduating in the spring of 2014.
The trajectory I chose for my PhD in Cultural Studies uniquely qualifies me to teach Chicano/Latino Studies. While
completing my coursework, I was exposed to a broad spectrum of disciplinary and theoretical frameworks including
Critical Race Theory, Feminist Theories, Queer Studies, and Cultural Studies. These courses were interdisciplinary
in focus and included classes such as Race, Gender, and Popular Culture, Transnational Feminisms, Transnational
Media Theory, and Feminist Methods. Each of these courses positioned the body as a site of representation,
providing me with a foundation to understand the construction of racially and ethnically marginalized groups. My
training helped me develop my ability to speak to the multiple disciplinary perspectives that sculpt corporeal
representation, the historical and contemporary issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and ability. My
doctoral studies have taught me the importance of maintaining the disciplinary principles of each field while also
acknowledging the importance of their interconnections.
For the past two years as an adjunct faculty member in the Ethnic and Women’s Studies department here at Cal Poly
Pomona, I have taught courses that exemplify both my dedication to teaching issues of race and ethnicity as well as
my disciplinary competency in these areas. In teaching Ethnicity, Race, and Sexuality (EWS 452) I challenge
students to re-examine the frameworks of race, ethnicity, and sexuality that they have long considered fixed and
natural. In doing so I can facilitate students’ examination of the ideologies that construct systems of oppression and
encourage them to change those destructive frameworks. By teaching students about the voices of those in the
borderlands, I can help students find their own voices.
Because race and ethnicity are central to my own pedagogy and scholarship, I integrate Critical Race Theory in the
other courses I teach. Whether in Women, Health, and Social Justice (EWS 441) or Diverse Gender and Sexual
Identities (EWS 407), I am committed to demonstrating how the hybridity of our bodies and identities cannot be
ignored, and in doing so encouraging my students to exercise their knowledge as change agents in their own
communities.
My teaching philosophy embraces a collaborative, student-centered approach. I strongly believe that students thrive
in classrooms that foster a safe learning environment, and as a result, I strive to create a space that honors a diverse
range of opinions and experiences. As an instructor I work hard to promote a class culture that foregrounds
inclusivity and intellectual inquiry. Aligned with my interactive pedagogical practices, one strategy I find helpful is
having the class arranged in a circle during discussions. Not only does this encourage peer learning but it also
facilitates conversation by removing me as the center of the power hierarchy and encouraging the students to see
themselves as equal participants in the scholarly conversation. I extend the scholarly conversation through varied
types of assignments in each class, whether they are traditional, thesis-driven essays, blog posts, or leading group
discussions. These assignments demonstrate my awareness of students’ individuality and unique learning styles. My
use of educational technology within the classroom creates a vibrant classroom experience. In addition to using
Blackboard and blog interfaces, I also make use of print advertisements, commercials, and television shows to depict
how culture produces and reinforces ideologies. I use these forms of popular culture as tools for unpacking and
further interrogating complex theories. My exemplary student and faculty evaluations are reflective of the success of
my pedagogical framework.
A critical and ongoing part of my teaching philosophy is the importance of student mentoring and advising. My
training in Cultural Studies strengthens my awareness and understanding of marginalization and networks of
oppression, as do my own experiences as a student. During my undergraduate work I struggled to navigate school,
my personal life, and work. A faculty member who advised me taught me the importance of conversation, of
creating a welcoming, supportive environment. In my everyday practice I am committed to cultivating that
environment both within my office hour appointments and my classrooms.
In addition to my experiences as adjunct faculty, I also have experience engaging with the Cal Poly Pomona
community. I was invited by Cal Poly’s student group Queers for Social Justice to lead a workshop about the need to
include queer-identified individuals with disabilities within queer movements. As an instructor, my classes conclude
with a unique, student designed campus project. These actions are interactive and serve to share the knowledge we
have gained in the classroom with our campus. In spring 2012, for example, in conjunction with the Pride Center,
my students invited individuals to answer questions about how they viewed the constructions of race, ethnicity, and
sexuality on a large, A-frame board. The actions seek to intervene in the ritual of the everyday through politicultural engagement, however subtle it may be. These experiences demonstrate my dedication to working with
diverse student populations; moreover they indicate my desire to create dialogue between the Ethnic and Women’s
Studies department and the Cal Poly student body at large about topics that are critical to both.
While teaching, I have maintained my dedication to contributing to scholarly discourse. I have presented at
numerous Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, and Disability Studies conferences and have been a discussant and
moderator. The peer-reviewed articles and essays I have published demonstrate my dedication to extending
scholarly conversations. My most significant body of work to date, my dissertation, expands and problematizes the
narrow focus of body politics by arguing that disability performance art serves as a tool to promote the disability
justice movement. I argue that it is through self-crafted performances that queer, disabled people of color are able to
call out and face down the oppressive stereotypes associated with their identities.
Ultimately, my scholarship and teaching experiences lead me to share my willingness to enter into difficult
conversations with my academic community and to teach my students that the underlying diversity of ideas and
identities across time and cultures yields courage in thought. I hope very much that I will have the opportunity to
join Cal Poly Pomona as an Assistant Professor so that I can continue to share my scholarship with our diverse
student community.
Sincerely,