The UMass Amherst English Graduate Organization recently hosted the 2024 Methods Symposium, on Saturday, November 9.
The Symposium offered a space for graduate students to reflect on method and methodology: how they are employed in research, how they are informed by discipline, and how they transform and are transformed by politics.
The event featured concurrent faculty-led workshops on different themes followed by a public roundtable discussion. Sanjay Krishnan (Boston University) led the De/postcolonial Studies workshop, Nick Caverly (UMass Amherst) led the Critical Geographies workshop, and María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo (New York University) led the Migration & Mobility Studies workshop.
Workshops were limited to select graduate students who had proposed projects earlier in the semester. Participants ranged from first-year students to PhD candidates, and represented the English department’s graduate programs in literature, composition and rhetoric, and creative writing.
The Roundtable Discussion was open to the public and provided a space for the invited scholars to showcase their perspectives on methods and to engage in conversation with each other and the audience. The roundtable was followed by a reception in the Old Chapel.
The Methods Symposium was co-chaired by English PhD students Manasvini Rajan and Janell Tryon with support from organizers Adrianne Ackroyd, Sarah Ahmad, Olivia Barry, Alejandro Beas-Murrillo, Jon Hoel, Meenakshi Nair, and Raihan Rahman.
Ideas from the Methods Symposium will continue in the spring semester in the form of a graduate-led workshop co-chaired by Meenakshi Nair and Raihan Rahman.
The Methods Symposium was sponsored by the Department Of English, the Graduate School, the College Of Humanities and Fine Arts, the College Of Social And Behavioral Sciences, the Institute of Social Sciences Research, the Commonwealth Honors College, and the Graduate Student Senate.