“We don’t want our students to restrict their job searches because of the various and accumulating expenses involved. We would like them to cast a broad net, and explore as many options as they can,” said John Bugg, director of graduate studies.

Two years ago, Fordham’s English department joined a handful of other doctoral programs in the country that offer students a six-year funding package. The new job search fund is designed to supplement this package, and is part of a broader effort to address some of the financial burdens that students face.

“Last year we received the highest number of applications to our Ph.D. program in over a decade,” Bugg said, adding that “there is a growing awareness that we’re doing as much as we can to improve the experiences of our students and to help them thrive professionally.”

For more information about the English Ph.D. program, visit the program webpage.

John Bugg, Ph.D., assistant professor and director of placement and professional development in the department of English, is the recipient of a NEH Faculty Fellowship for research on “Five Long Winters: The Trials of British Romanticism.”

During the tenure of the fellowship, Bugg said he plans to “complete the research and writing of his study of the relationship between British literary culture and political repression in the decade after the French Revolution.”

Edward Cahill, Ph.D., assistant professor of English and acting director of the American Studies program, was awarded a NEH Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Cahill will work on his project, “Colonial Rising: Narratives of Upward Mobility in British America,” which argues that “cultures of social and economic self-transformation in 17th- and 18th-century anglophone colonial America were defined not by coherent visions of an ‘American Dream’ but rather by diverse expressions of aspiration, ambivalence, and hostility.

“By exploring stories and discourses of wealth acquisition and class mobility in colonial New England, the mid-Atlantic, the South, and the West Indies, I seek to shed historical light on the early representational forms of ambition, adventure, risk, movement, and change—values that, in the 21st century more than ever, shape and reflect our culture’s ideological assumptions and social practices,” Cahill said.

To read about what other Fordham faculty members have been up to, check out the “People” section of Inside Fordham on the Fordham website. This section, which contains faculty awards, honors and more, is updated in every new issue of Inside Fordham.