Demystifying the Academic Cover Letter

This workshop is for graduate students currently applying for academic positions or planning to do so in the future. Those attending will discuss the cover letter with sociologist Victoria Reyes, author of Academic Outsider: Stories of Exclusion and Hope. Dr. Reyes will invite us to think about the institutional norms that shape the cover letter as a genre of writing and give insights on how to translate your scholarly identity into effective cover letter language. 

About the speaker

Victoria Reyes is associate professor in the Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She's author of the multiple award winning books: Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines (2019, Stanford University Press) and Academic Outsider: Stories of Exclusion and Hope (2022, Stanford Briefs). She's received fellowships and grants from the American Association of University Women, National Center for Institutional Diversity at University of Michigan, Minority Fellowship Program at American Sociological Association, National Science Foundation, Institute for Citizens & Scholars, and is a former Fulbright Scholar (Philippines). Her scholarly writings appear in outlets such as Theory and Society, Social Forces, and Ethnography, among others, while her public writing has appeared in LA Times, Washington Post, and Inside Higher Ed. She is also a VONA fellow and her poetry is published in Feminist Formations, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, and Dissident Voice. She is also co-editor of the Temple University Press book series "Theorizing from Within."