“I happily came to UNLV because it best united the diverse set of elements I was looking for in a graduate program. I knew that I wanted to study Renaissance literature, and as an undergraduate I had admired the scholarship I found in the Ben Jonson Journal and several of Richard Harp’s articles. This drew me to look more closely at the program at UNLV, and I was pleased to find that, while it would satisfy my desire for close study of Renaissance literature, it would also allow me to follow some of my broader interests that fall outside of that period. UNLV’s balance between breadth and specialization was a real attraction, and I profit from that balanced program of study to this day, as I regularly teach courses on subjects that range from Homer to Shakespeare to Twain.

UNLV awarded me some substantial, generous fellowships, including the Rogers Fellowship and the Lynn M. Bennett Fellowship, which were entirely necessary for my pursuit of graduate studies, and which beat every competing offer that I received from other graduate programs. I was also drawn to UNLV because I would get to teach classes, and not just work as a grading or discussion-leading assistant to professors. It was important for me to see how I actually liked teaching, and UNLV let me do that, not only with composition classes, but with courses in World Literature and Shakespeare too.

Indeed, I think that I was fortunate enough to have a job in hand immediately upon graduating from UNLV not only because of my publications and scholarship, but because of the breadth of my teaching experience, my dossier of teaching evaluations, and the excellent support and mentorship that I received from the faculty. Truly, I am filled with gratitude as I recall the care, attention, and friendship that was so readily extended to me by the English faculty at UNLV.”

“I am currently an assistant professor and the graduate studies librarian at Texas A&M University. While I had my Masters in Library and Information Science upon entering the program, it is my Ph.D. in English from UNLV that gave me an extra edge in obtaining my current position. I learned how to do the types of long term research projects during my dissertation period that I now engage in on a regular basis. Because the English Department allowed me flexibility in how I conducted my research, I was able to work on interdisciplinary research in literature, law, and philosophy that gave me the skills to pick up new specialties, such as copyright and fair use consulting for graduate students, in the ever-changing world of information. Additionally, my studies for my Ph.D. minor in Composition and Rhetoric have lead to new research intersections with Information Literacy. I have published two articles upon the relationship between these areas. During my time at UNLV, I held a fellowship in Lied Library, which helped me make the transition from English to libraries. The freedom, flexibility, and supportive faculty I found at UNLV played key roles in how I got to my current position.”

"As a master’s and, later, as a doctoral student in the English Literature Graduate Program at UNLV, I knew I was involved in something wonderfully rich in opportunities. For instance, to start with, I had the privilege of studying with distinguished and accomplished professors who had degrees from a heady group of prestigious American and English institutions of higher education. Each of these individuals was passionate about their work and generous almost to a fault with sharing their knowledge, expertise, and guidance. Throughout my graduate studies at UNLV, I always felt that the faculty cared about me as an individual and as a scholar. Beyond that, in my experience, all of the English Department’s professors were, simply put, outstanding teachers.

I would add that, from my very first semester as a master’s student, I had the opportunity to teach undergraduates freshman composition. (In addition to on-the-job training, this involved formal instruction through a semester-long course on teaching composition offered by the department.) As I progressed into doctoral study, I was given the opportunity to teach sections of world literature, Shakespeare, and history of the English language. I really think that these real-world opportunities to teach helped me in a tangible way to secure a job immediately after taking my Ph.D. in May 2014.

Furthermore, there was always significant funding available for graduate student travel to attend professional conferences as well as for conducting research. These monies enabled me, from the first year of my master’s program and onward, the opportunity to attend the annual meetings of the Shakespeare Association of America, which occurred all over the United States and Canada, and to venture as far afield as England, Czechoslovakia, and Western Australia to present on my work in real-world academic situations that, I am convinced, proved invaluable to my growth as a scholar.

If there is one word I had to pick in order to describe my graduate education in the English Literature program at UNLV, it would be opportunity. Being a part of the English Literature Graduate Program at UNLV provided me with a host of opportunities, including the opportunity to study and work with a group of dynamic and nurturing faculty mentors; the opportunity to learn the ins-and-outs of teaching undergraduates—something that, for many of us, is (or will be) an integral part of our lives after graduate school; the opportunity to take on administrative duties (alas, also a big part of our professional lives after graduate school, especially when it comes to service); the opportunity to conduct original research and to compose original work based on that research; and the opportunity to fashion myself into the kind of scholar I wanted to be upon completing my M.A. and Ph.D. degrees.

Currently, I am tenure-track Assistant Professor of English at Concord University in Athens, West Virginia, where, as a full faculty member, I teach Freshman Composition and World Literature, as well as special topics courses on Shakespeare and Film, Tennessee Williams, and Harry Potter. My first monograph, which was based on both my UNLV master’s thesis and my subsequent doctoral dissertation, Queering the Shakespeare Film: Gender Trouble, Gay Spectatorship and Male Homoeroticism, was published by Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare in 2017. If you would like to talk to me further about my experiences as a graduate student in the English Department at UNLV, please email me at: agpatricia@concord.edu."

“I came to UNLV in the fall of 2003, a year removed from receiving my MFA. I’d spent a year selling suits in Iowa and not knowing where to go in my life or my writing. A PhD program in English and Creative Writing sounded like an ideal way to re-immerse myself in academia and English classes, which I had always enjoyed, and to return to a place that would push me forward in my creative work. And the uniqueness of the city promised me at least some interesting new experiences. What Las Vegas and the Black Mountain Institute ended up giving me was something more complex and enriching. The program deepened my education in literature, cultivated my teaching skills, and offered me the invaluable support of mentors to whom I remain close to this day. It also offered me the space to grow on my own, to confront and move past failure, and to become a more mature writer and more mature human being. The city itself gifted me with life-long friends, a wealth of fruitful experiences, and ultimately the setting of my first novel, the writing of which also helped me understand my seven years in Las Vegas. In the end, the PhD at UNLV became a crucial factor in my getting my current position at the University of Chicago, not only because of the degree itself, but because my mentors and supporters at UNLV had contributed so much to the writer and person I had become.”

Vu Tran’s first novel, Dragonfish, was a New York Times Notable Book. His short fiction has appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, the Best American Mystery Stories, A Best of Fence, and other publications. He is the winner a Whiting Writers’ Award and has received fellowships from Bread Loaf, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and the MacDowell Colony. Born in Vietnam and raised in Oklahoma, Vu received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his PhD from the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he was a Glenn Schaeffer Fellow. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Practice in English and Creative Writing at the University of Chicago, where he directs the fiction program and is at work on a second novel.