Supervision Satirized

Abstract

This article seeks to further dialogue between the disciplines of English literature and Higher Education by offering a different approach to examining the practice of graduate supervision — a comparison of three fictional narratives: two recently published novels and one ongoing online comic strip. It considers what these narratives reveal about the ways in which supervision is represented in cultural practices at this time. What kind of self or individual subject characterizes the research student and supervisor in these representations, and what kind of relationship between supervisor and student is portrayed? Examining representations of supervision offers a mirror, however distorted, of a pedagogical practice, enabling both students and supervisors to reflect on their roles in the supervisory relationship.

Troubling talk: assembling the PhD candidate

“…Each looks at the other and sees themselves, differently ' (2005, 154). Kelly (2009) takes up Green's ideas and explores Gregory's (2007) proposition that figures from literature 'haunt' real classrooms and prefigure our own perceptions. Kelly finds different types of 'supervisory ghosts' in the literature she examines and points out that in none of the texts is there a true 'meeting of minds' between supervisor and student and that the PhD as an object is ambiguous Á or even unfinishable.…”

Representing “U”: Popular Culture, Media, and Higher Education

“…Similar to some portrayals of bad teaching, Kelly (2009) illuminates the distant, "masterlike" role held by these professors over their graduate students through an analysis of Cham's (1997-) comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper as well as novels such as Byatt's The Biographer's Tale. Interestingly, though professors are often portrayed as distant from students either in class or through supervisory relationships, narrative arcs sometimes show professors learning from others perhaps more so than they help others learn in films from 1930 until 1958 (Reynolds, 2007;Schwartz, 1960).…”

“…In general, romantic relationships provide a mainstay for plot choices in novels, movies, and TV shows (Byers, 2005;Conklin, 2008;Lyons, 1962;Umphlett, 1984;. Cartoons and comic strips provide a more pointed gaze on student life satirically skewering students' interaction with professors, advisors, parents, their engagement in college, and college preparedness (e.g., Kelly, 2009;http://www.alternateuniversity.com). Pertinently, Mackey (2003) claims that the prominence of fictional students' frustration with academics reduces the voices of students who find joy in this work as exemplified by some of the students in the TV show Felicity (1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002).…”

“…Cham's comics portray graduate students as anonymous, tongue-tied supplicants who labor over nonacademic menial work to get their advisor's approval while simultaneously collapsing under the pressure of graduate work indicated through chronic procrastination (Kelly, 2009). Perhaps, similarly to professors, discipline affects the portrayal of graduate students, as unlike Cham's science field graduate students, Bosco (2007) describes those from the humanities in academic novels as affected, earnest, and superior rejecting course offerings not considered exotic enough for their developed tastes.…”

The metaphors we study by: the doctorate as a journey and/or as work

“…So, as well as using the 'journey' as a convenient metaphor for the doctoral experience, with all that might imply, we -as research students, supervisors, researchers, writers -are also encouraging doctoral students to think of their research experience in terms of 'storying'. In this context, it is interesting to note that Kelly (2009) has gone so far as to consider fictional narratives of student/supervisor relationships to see what they have to offer for practice and research. More broadly, the idea of 'storying' the research experience is further embeddedparticularly in the arts, humanities and social sciences -in methodological developments for reflexive awareness in the construction of knowledge.…”