Thursday, August 19, 2010

In which "I" get thanked in a book acknowledgments

Apparently, Gregory Colón Semenza thinks I had something to do with the success of Graduate Study for the 21st Century (I think I have mentioned it more than once on the blog). And by "I," I mean Dr. Virago. Go look at the Amazon page for the newly revised second edition and click on "Look Inside This Book." Then look at the acknowledgments to the second edition. Yup, there it is: Dr. Virago.

Too funny! Even funnier to me is the fact that my colleague Victoria will be taking over our 'intro to graduate studies' class this semester with my syllabus -- which includes Semenza's book -- and so the new crop of our MA students might read that acknowledgments section with no idea that "Dr. Virago" is me. Hilarious!

You know, it's things like this that sometimes make me want to 'claim' Dr. Virago here on the blog -- I'm already out elsewhere (including in print) -- but I still think I'd prefer for my own web identity and Dr. Virago's to be distinct.

Anyway, I still highly recommend Semenza's book for anyone in a humanities graduate program or thinking about applying to one, and I'm psyched there's an updated second edition. And most of my students have found it very, very helpful, and they're M.A. students, not the Ph.D. students it's really aimed at. (By which I mean to say, it's useful for M.A .students *as well as* Ph.D. students.)

And thanks for reading, Prof. Semenza!

4 comments:

Flavia said...

Rock on, Dr. V!

I haven't yet finished reading Colon Semenza's book (one of my summer projects. . .), but I agree about what a great resource it is--and have recommended it to some of our MA students who are interested in going on for a PhD. I should think about using with/recommending it to other MA students. It seemed to me that the advice on seminar paper-writing was especially good.

undine said...

What a well-earned compliment, Dr. V!

Sapience said...

I had noticed the acknowledgment with a bit of puzzlement when I got my copy, wondering if it referred to you, but then I forgot about it!

And yes, his book is absolutely essential for anyone in grad school in the humanities. It's kept me from slipping into imposter-syndrome related depression on more than one occasion by giving me really tangible things to do. (It helps that Semenza is one of my advisors, and he's not nearly as much of a stern taskmaster as he sometimes seems in the book!)

Dr. Virago said...

Sapience -- The blog is cited in the revised first chapter, too (in the notes), which I didn't realize until I e-mailed Greg and introduced myself after writing this post (which is why I can now call him Greg!). So yeah, it's me he's referring to!