About The Wide Net

Truman State University is fortunate to have graduate and undergraduate students who are talented at identifying issues and at creating fora in which colleagues can gather and examine questions, perspectives, creative work, concepts, developments. While many venues help faculty, Ph.D. candidates and undergraduate students present their research
interests and creative work, few exist specifically for Master’s students in the Humanities and their work. With its first issue on ”Occupying Spaces”, The Wide Net opens a commons area to these students. Matthew Arnold argued that criticism stems from curiosity. The Department of English and Linguistics is pleased that young scholars and
creative writers in our own Master’s program have created The Wide Net – a place that highlights curiosity, criticism, research and writing at the Master’s level. We are excited that graduate students have composed this forum and we proudly invite you, students in Master’s programs, to engage in the conversations you find and create here.

Cole Woodcox, D.Phil.
Chair, Department of English and Linguistics

One of the greatest obstacles to young scholars’ ability to enter the profession is the disconnect between the increasing necessity of a resumé already-embellished with publications and the paucity of venues for publishing apprenticeship scholarship. This catch-22 is well-recognised: apprentice scholars need publications in order to attract prospective employers, yet without having already entered the profession, many find that publishing remains a closed shop populated by experienced scholars. The Wide Net seeks to address this gap by providing a much-needed, rigorously peer-edited publication venue for Masters-level scholarship to find an audience. The graduate student editorial board further seeks to gain mastery of the trade at the other side of scholarship: the workings of publishing itself. The theme of the maiden issue, “Occupying Spaces-Reclaiming Cultural Spaces for Liberatory Causes,” is particularly salient in the current, uncertain climate of scholarship in the field: as a theme for the 2011/12 MLA Convention, the necessity to reassert the cultural value of literary studies in a dwindling economy and a hostile political context is clear. The graduate student scholars who conceived and brought forth The Wide Net have admirably entered the conversation and hope to provide similar apprentice scholars with the opportunity to claim their own cultural space in the profession.

The inaugural board has shown remarkable forethought and initiative in proposing this venture, and as Director of Graduate Studies in English at Truman State University, I look forward to advising this exciting new project.

C. Marie Harker, Ph.D.
Director of Graduate Studies, English
Truman State University