Most Fridays at the Center for the Humanities, a hushed but happy gaggle of humanities graduate students congregates in the center’s conference room for a morning of focused writing. Fueled by a supply of coffee and bagels, they commit to three and a half hours of sustained writing and brainstorming of dissertation chapters, prospectuses, articles, reviews, term papers — or any assignment that requires a lot of intellectual concentration.
The promise of the Humanities Graduate Student Writing Commons — a quiet place, a peer group and an expectation of progress — has proven successful for the students who started participating late last fall.
“As a first-generation student, this weekly time for intentional, focused writing alongside other graduate students makes the work feel less overwhelming,” said Nayive Gaytan, a graduate student in Hispanic Studies in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. “Setting reasonable goals before each session and evaluating my progress has helped me to stay on track.” In the fall, she used the space to prepare for the written portion of her qualifying exams and worked on a final paper that she hopes to present at a conference this spring.
Former humanities center Graduate Student Fellow Laurel Taylor, a PhD candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, finds the writing commons’ communal aspect especially beneficial.
“Writing a dissertation often feels like such a lonely task, each of us hunched over our desks at home or in dreary basement offices, oblivious to what our peers are working on,” she said. “It’s been so nice to have a place to gather with other folks who are trying to push through this process as well, both for the sense of camaraderie and for the accountability of having a time and place blocked out exclusively for writing with others.
“I’m really grateful that the Center of Humanities has stepped in to offer this place, especially for those of us in small cohorts who have been struggling to find fellowship in the throes of our research.”
Sign-ups for the spring semester are open. All humanities and humanistic social sciences graduate writers at any stage are invited to join in. Up to six students can be accommodated each session. Meeting dates for the spring 2024 semester are February 2, 9, 16, 23; March 1, 8, 22; April 5, 12, 19, 26; and May 3, 10, 17.
