Alexander Grammatikos
Email: agrammatikos@langara.ca
I am currently a sessional instructor at Langara College in Vancouver, B.C, where I teach
English and Communications courses. I initially chose Carleton University because I wanted
to work with Professor Paul Keen. Carleton University’s PhD program prepared me for my
career post degree by emphasizing the importance of professionalization. As a PhD
student, I was given ample opportunities to teach and grade and was encouraged to publish
in academic journals. The relationships I developed with professors and other PhD students
in the department were the highlight of my graduate school experience.
I continue to produce scholarly work and engage with the academic community. I have
attended two conferences in the past year and my book British Romantic Literature and the
Emerging Modern Greek Nation is forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan in 2018.
David Mastey
Email: david.mastey@sta.uwi.edu
I am a lecturer in African literatures at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad
and Tobago. I was very lucky to get a tenure-track position in my field during my first year on
the job market. I am confident that my positive experiences in the Production of Literature
program were instrumental to my success in this regard.
I enrolled in the PhD program in 2007 after studying for a Master’s degree in the department.
Now that I am responsible for supervising my own graduate students, and having spoken to
colleagues from many other institutions around North America and the UK, I am fully
appreciative of my time at Carleton. Of course, the department offers many excellent courses,
public talks and seminars from visiting scholars, smart and gracious faculty members, and so on.
But for me the true value of the program can be found in its particular focus and structure.
The program’s emphasis on literary production and circulation revealed a range of possibilities
for literary studies that I had not considered before, which now serve as a foundation for my
research. The two main professionalization courses—ENGL 6000 and 6002—encouraged me to
view myself as a scholar, not just a student. The doctoral research project gave me the
opportunity to publish early in my career. The department gave me the chance to teach as well,
which helped distinguish my job application from those of hundreds of other early-career
scholars who did not enjoy the same range of benefits in their PhD programs. After I finished the
PhD program faculty members helped me to intensively prepare for interviews, including for the
position I now hold at UWI. This is my dream job and I probably would not have it were it not
for the English PhD program at Carleton.
Kimberley Sigouin
Email: KimberleySigouin@cunet.carleton.ca
Kim Sigouin completed her PhD in English Language and Literature at Carleton University in 2017. Her dissertation investigates the relationship between experimental writing, bodies, and ecology in the work of modernist women writers such as Gertrude Stein, H.D., and Virginia Woolf. Her dissertation builds upon but fundamentally reconceptualises a standard account of feminist modernisms’ return to the body in light of the recent turn in both modernist scholarship and feminist studies towards ecocritical models of reading. Her latest work can be found in Affective Materialities: Reorienting the Body in Modernist Literature.