Seeking a Job on Social Media

This resource is titled Job Seeking on Social Media: Using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to Find Your Dream Job by Noe Spies. This book looks into all of the ways that should set up your social media page allow interviewers and jobs  to see the best version of you. This could come in the form of how you post, how you set up your page’s structure, and so on. This coaching allows for people to be able to feel confident in what they post, and not fear of how their presence on social media looks to potential jobs. I think that this is very important for English majors because it allows them to know the dos and don’ts of social media when you are using it for a job or career position. With social media being such a large part of the world today, especially in terms of how you get a job, this serves as a vital tool to all English majors. For example, one sections of this article, titled “Be Visible, Active, and Involved,” seeks to inform people of how to keep their accounts active and appropriate for potential bosses. (Spies, p.1) This art of the book is very important, because it allows readers to understand how you should post on your social media that is appropriate for the work place. This book leads to help introduce people into the different aspects that they must look at when applying for a job, and how their social media should reflect the best parts of themselves. This book’s main takeaway is the very invaluable information that it offers an English major. It allows for them to grasp the different ways that their social media can influence the people that they will be sending their applications too. It offers other tips, such as the one about networking. In the book, it states, “Once you have crated your small network, you have to maintain it! Talk to people and offer your opinion where relevant.” (Spies, p. 2) This part of the book teaches you how to manage your circle of friends, and ensure that you know how to spread the amount of people that you know. In closing, this book allows for many different types of tips and information, tips that will be very important to students who are up and coming on graduation.

Works Cited

50minutes.com. Job Seeking on Social Media: Using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to Find      Your Dream Job. 50 Minutes, 2015. Web.

Harvard College Writing Center

Harvard College Writing Center is a website that can be a useful tool for any person who is looking to improve writing skills and find information to help fine-tune skills they already possess. The website has free access for the public, however, it’s specifically geared towards students that are at least on the high school level, but can be helpful for many students. Their website is composed of various links that allow students to pick topics that can be useful to their academic ventures. It could also be useful for educators to give to their students to help them form proper habits when they are writing. 

The skills that the website deals with a range from how to close read to how to write a comparative essay. The website’s topics cover material that every student will use in various subjects throughout their academic careers. For example, if a student needs information about outlining, they would find the tab labeled outlining and click on it. From there they would be directed to a page with an informational article about how to make a proper outline. In this specific example, the article’s sections include a definition, first steps in the process, generalizing information, and how to put it all together. Another useful section included in the example is what a standard outline will look like. Students would struggle with outlining can find helpful information on how to structure theirs.  

Overall Harvard College Writing Center has set up a wonderful website that can be utilized to teach and guide students to strengthen their writing abilities. It can be the most useful to English students of all backgrounds as well as educators. 

Poetry

Poetry Foundation is the website for the Poetry Magazine. The magazine publishing company is located in Chicago, Illinois run by the deputy director of administration,  Krystal Languell. The website makes it easier and faster to find more poems and information about a specific poetry related topic. It allows someone to get more information about Renaissance playwrights and authors as well as authors from other eras like Edgar Allan Poe, D.H. Lawrence, and Layli Long Soldier. Poetry Foundation includes poems, articles, and poets from different cultures and time periods. The websites even makes it easy for someone to find collections of a specific topic. Some of their collections include Poetry and Feminism, Native American Poetry, and Poems of Jewish Faith and Culture. 

The variety of poems include some for all ages. There’s a section where someone can find poems specifically for kids as well as teenagers. The website includes a section for audio poems. People can listen to some poems instead of reading them.  A part of the website is dedicated to learning. They have this section split up into different sections. There’s a section for children, teenagers, adults, educators, and even a glossary of poetry terms. The glossary has definitions of every poetry term which they have organized in alphabetical order. Some of the terms they have are abecedarian, Kenning, and Tanka. 

There’s even a place where someone can get information on how to submit their own work, so they can be featured in the magazine. In order to submit poems, it has to be original work. The website mentions they prefer the poems to be written in English or at least translated to English. They no longer accept paper submissions since July 2013. On this page, they list the steps that a person would need to follow to send their submission.

Works Cited

Languell Krystal. Poetry Foundation. Web Access 10/11/2019. https://www.poetryfoundation.org

Writing Tutorial Services

Writing Tutorial Services is a resource provided by the University of Indiana in Bloomington. Overseen by John Paul Kanwit, director of the Campus Writing Program at IUB, the Writing Tutorial Service offers academic help to students both on and off campus. Located at the Wells Library Info Commons at the University, the WTS provides both graduate and undergraduate tutors to students, however, they do not accept walk-ins, every student must schedule an appointment through the Service’s website. While in person help is only available to those registered at the university, the WTS also provides a variety of infographics and writing guides that are free for the general public to use. Subjects include advice on writing thesis statements, personal statements and academic letter, and writing book reviews. For example, in the guide “How To Write A Thesis Statement”, a step by step process is laid out to guide readers through the process of writing a thesis statement with and without a predetermined topic, listing examples of weak versus strong statements such as “World hunger has many causes and effects” in contrast to “Hunger persists in Glandelinia because jobs are scarce and farming in the infertile soil is rarely profitable” (Writing Tutorial Service). Additionally, the website provides information on common grammatical errors and ways to avoid plagiarism. The site is fairly easy to navigate with links to tutorials being displayed on their main page.

Works Cited

“How To Write A Thesis Statement.” Writing Guides: Writing Tutorial Service, 2011, wts.indiana.edu/writing-guides/pdf/how-to-write-a-thesis-statement.pdf.“

Writing Guides.” Writing Tutorial Services, wts.indiana.edu/writing-guides/index.html

Online Books Page

The Online Books Page is  a website with an accumulation of over 3 million free books, put together by researcher and digital library planner John Mark Ockerbloom at the University of Pennsylvania. Ockerbloom first created the OBP in 1993 while he was attending Carnegie Mellon before moving to the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. Partnering with organizations such as Project Gutenberg, HathiTrust, and the University of Florida in Baldwin’s Digital Collection of Historic Children’s Literature, the Online Books Page works to provide a large variety of books at no charge to the public. Examples of the books provided include a cookbook entitled The A & P Cook and Recipes Book by Edna Neil, published sometime in the beginning of the 20th century and the Daemonologie, a book about black magic and demons written by King James I in 1597. While it is possible to find any number of historical books, it is difficult to find modern resources due to their submission process. Before a book can be added to the OBP, it must meet a certain set of criteria. Submitted books must be “legitimately available at no charge, must contain the European alphabet, and must be a well formatted text in a standard format”( Online Books Page). Although it partners with multiple organizations,the OBP does not receive any external funding for any of its resources, technical services are provided through its residency at the University of Pennsylvania.

Works Cited

“The Online Books Page.” Edited by John Ockerbloom, The Online Books Page, 1999, onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/.

ImageTexT

Image TexT is an open access online journal for comic studies recognized in the MLA International Bibliography in 2005, and last updated in 2016. Image TexT’s scope is the scholarship of comic books, comic strips, and cartoons to better popularize analysis of the medium. The format of the journal’s contents are scholarly reviews and articles. Started in 2004 by the late Donald Ault and published by the University of Florida, specifically the English department. The editing board is headed by Editor Anatasia Ulanowicz and Associate Editor Terry Harpold, both in the University of Florida. Ulanowicz is an associate professor teaching children’s literature, trauma theory, and the Bible as literature and in 2015 was awarded the Children’s Literature Association Book Award. Terry Harpold is an Associate Professor of English, Film and Media Studies and is one of the co-editors of Collectionner l’Extraordinaire, sonder l’Ailleurs. Essais sur Jules Verne en l’honneur de Jean-Michel Margot and Science, Literature and Imagination—Jules Verne and the Adventure of Knowledge. He also publishes essays within other Journals too. Other editors come from a variety of Universities from UCLA, Singapore, Wales Aberystwyth, Central St. Martin’s college just to name a few.

            The content’s topics range from historical or cultural significance across the world, to concepts showcased in American Super-Hero Comics, such as Watchmen, and Japanese Manga, along the lines of Akira, even any media that has a visual and literary overlap. They used to publish an issue of their journal twice a year, as the MLA Bibliography has said. One during the spring and another during the winter. However, in 2006 on their third volume they bumped up the number to 3, and some volumes include 4 issues without a statement to which season they are released.

            The submissions must be in MLA format with a 10,000 word maximum, nothing listed for a minimum, and a 40 to 80 word bio. There are 25 article submissions a year, but they only publish 12 articles opposed to how the journal submits and publishes 13 reviews. Statistically, articles have a 48% chance of being published while reviews have a theoretical 100% chance of publication. Theoretical because more than likely they would turn down a review of low quality. Any images used in submissions are required to be clean and as high quality as possible. All submissions are peer reviewed and read by two editors with a blind submission policy and are returned to the author if rejected. The time between submission and possible publication are anywhere from 6 to 12 months.

Despite being around since 2004 there has already been a noticeable evolution of the journal. One evolution is the aforementioned increase in issues per volume. Another evolution is on the software side. Each article has images and with the first issues the images were tiny and off to the side. They would require the reader to click on them and the image would open in a separate window. However, they solved this by issue 2 and just placed the images within the article themselves to be viewed without clicking on them. Each issue also features a new background with their logo in the foreground. Originally it was just black and white comic panels n the background, but have since move to colored panels and other pieces of art as the background. Beyond that there is not much evolution. Comparing the oldest, middle, and newest issues (volume 1 Issue 1, volume 6 Issue 2, and volume 11 Issue 1) the journal follows the same Intro, Article, Review, then Colophon order. Sometimes they start with direct transcripts of the staff’s visit to conventions and panels.

 Six articles are summarized to show the variety, the detail, and the benefit to comics scholarship. Each one was chosen from previously mentioned issues, and then an issue between each.

First is “Compromised Divisions: Thresholds in Comic Books and Video Games”by Laurie N. Taylor. This article is from Volume 1 Issue 1 and covers a comparison between comics and video games. Specifically, it goes over the reader/player’s pacing in relation to spacial awareness. Such as the sequences going from panel to panel on the page or going in different order of sequences in video games. Though for video games the article only focuses on survival horror. It should also be noted that the article was published before the release of Resident Evil 4, which transformed the structure of the survival horror genre in 2005. The effects of which are still felt today in video games.

From Volume 3, Issue 2 is “Panelling Parallax: The Fearful Symmetry of William Blake and Alan Moore” by Roger Whitson. This is from a special issue about William Blake, an English poet and painter during the 18th and 19th Century. This specific article connects William Blake and Alan Moore, who wrote the canonical comic book Watchmen. Both men seem to follow the same trend of how both were rebels and critics of the field, but because of that, grew popular and respected. The point is further illustrated in their similar stylistic choices between Blake’s “The Tyger” and Watchmen.

“Imagining a Multiplicity of Visual Rhetorical Traditions: Comics Lessons from Rhetoric Histories” by Franny Howes is from Volume 5, Issue 3. Here, the author seeks to illustrate how the rhetorical indigenous histories  relate to the development of comics. To break that down, it is how stories were told visually and how they impacted comics now.

The article by Andrew J. Friedenthal “Monitoring the Past: DC Comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Narrativization of Comic Book History” from Volume 6, Issue 2 is about the continuity shift within DC Comics after the Crisis on Infinite Earths event. Specifically, how it impacted the way super hero comics after would be able to excite fans as well as straighten-out the decades of history and stories that came before.

“Don’t Pray for Paris: Drawing in Post-Charlie Hebdo Graphic Novels” by Bart Beaty is from Volume 9, Issue 2. This article discusses the Charlie Hebdo shooting  that was part of the 2015 France attacks. Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical weekly magazine. This article discusses the aftermath of the event with the outcry of support, its increase in sales, as well as the irony of its censorship in some places.

“Graphic Narratives as Non-Fiction in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Era”by Dirk Vanderbeke. This one comes from volume 11, issue 1.This one covers, as the title suggests, the history of comics placed into the context of historical visual medias. It was done to show a natural evolution into what we would consider comics. Vandereke expands the traditional history of comics into the inclusion of literary mediums converted into a visual format. Such examples listed were the Canticum canticorum Block book, Rodolphe Töpffer’s narratives in the 19th century, and Underground Comix in the 1960’s. All of which show their importance in creating the visual and literary combination.

In conclusion the range of content and the organization of the journal does well to highlight why this is such a useful journal in comics scholarships. Being 15 years old as of this profile, it is easy to see why this is such a respected journal. It even has an entry in the MLA Directory of Periodicals to further validate itself.

Works Cited

Beaty, Bart. “Don’t Pray for Paris: Drawing in Post-Charlie Hebdo Graphic Novels.” ImageTexT Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, University of Florida, 2017, http://imagetext.english.ufl.edu/archives/v9_2/beaty/.

Bird, Matthew. “How Resident Evil 4 Changed Horror Gaming.” Den of Geek, 16 Oct. 2017, https://www.denofgeek.com/us/games/resident-evil/259499/how-resident-evil-4-changed-horror-gaming.

Friedenthal, Andrew J. “Monitoring the Past: DC Comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Narrativization of Comic Book History.” ImageTexT Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, University of Florida, 2012, http://imagetext.english.ufl.edu/archives/v6_2/friedenthal/.

Howes, Franny. “Imagining a Multiplicity of Visual Rhetorical Traditions: Comics Lessons from Rhetoric Histories.” ImageTexT Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, University of Florida, 2010, http://imagetext.english.ufl.edu/archives/v5_3/howes/.

Taylor, Laurie. “Compromised Divisions: Thresholds in Comic Books and Video Games.” ImageTexT Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, University of Florida, 2004, http://imagetext.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v1_1/taylor/.

Vanderbeke, Dirk. “Graphic Narratives as Non-Fiction in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Era.” ImageTexT Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, University of Florida, 2019, http://imagetext.english.ufl.edu/archives/v11_1/vanderbeke/.

Web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.tntech.edu. (2019). ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. [online] Available at: http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.tntech.edu/ehost/flatdetail?vid=7&sid=34b63da1-115d-4936-836a-a844bb72023e%40sdc-v-sessmgr03 [Accessed 28 Oct. 2019].

Whitson, Roger. “Panelling Parallax: The Fearful Symmetry of William Blake and Alan Moore.” ImageTexT Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, University of Florida, 2007, http://imagetext.english.ufl.edu/archives/v3_2/whitson/.

The Comics Grid

The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship is an open access online journal from Cambridge University and published by the Open Library of Humanities. It was started in 2009, and the editorial board is comprised of a group from the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and France. The journal is headed by Kathleen Dunley, Ernesto Priego, and Peter Wilkins with each head from the University of Advancing Technology, United States; University of London, United Kingdom; and Douglas College, Canada respectively. Submissions are put through an open review system for outside peer reviewers, and when someone submits an article, Comics Grid wants and encourages two-way communication between the author and peer reviewer.

             While the main content covers American comics, it also has topics from art to Japanese manga. Such examples of this variety are the articles “The Citi Exhibition Manga マンガ (British Museum, 2019)” and ” The Relationship Between Personalities and Faces of Manga Characters”. Some examples of traditional comics are “Never Judge a Book by its Comics. A Review of Considering Watchmen: Poetics, Property, Politics” and “Marvel and DC Characters Inspired by Arachnids”.  There is also more variety content format. There are interviews, commentaries, editorials, and reviews, in addition to the standard articles in this journal. An example of each of these in the respective order are “Comics Activism: An Interview with Comics Artist and Activist Kate Evans”, “Genre and Discourse (and Zombies), an Introduction in Pictures”, “Brilliant Corners: Approaches to Jazz and Comics” , and “Raising the Superhero Wardrobe: A Review of The Superhero Costume – Identity and Disguise in Fact and Fiction“.

There is a problem with the journal’s organization that can confuse many who try to use this resource. Often articles are published with different dates, even if published in regularly released issues. Then articles can be reorganized into “Special Collections” which seem to act closer to genres even though they categorize all articles by keywords. All of these separate organizational methods are redundant when one can find any article on the site without needing to go through the issues themselves. When one searches through the journal they can quickly be caught in a loop when trying to narrow down these results.

Despite the redundant organizational issues, The Comics Grid is a useful scholarly journal for more than just American comics. Comic books and graphic novels are still the core of their subject matter.

Works Cited

“The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship.” Edited by Kathleen Dunley et al., The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship, Open Library of Humanities, 2009, https://www.comicsgrid.com/.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a not-for-profit, ad free, public access IEP founded in 1995. This site incurs over a million visitors per month, and 20 million page views per year; employing around 30 editors and approximately 300 authors, each professors with doctoral degrees from English speaking countries around the world. The current general editors are, James Fieser of the University of Tennessee at Martin and Bradley Dowden From California State University at Sacramento.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy contains scholarly peer-reviewed information on key topics and philosophers in all areas of academic philosophy; from Sigmund Freud, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Plato to an article I read on Daoist philosophy, detailing the history of Daoism and its practices. The articles are written to be understood by advanced undergraduate students seeking information regarding the philosophical subject matters discussed. Submissions to the site go through a rigorous review process identical to that of printed philosophy. Articles submitted first go through an area editor who evaluates the articles initial quality. The works then are read by at least two referees per article. If the works pass this revision process, then a recommendation is sent to the author who then publishes the articles onto the site.

The site is accessible via the IEP: https://www.iep.utm.edu/. Once you have established a connection to this website, the information is accessible alphabetically, displayed horizontally across the top of the page, or by key-word search, located in the middle of the home page. After you have chosen your method of research and either typed key words or selected a letter of the alphabet, the names of the articles searched are presented alphabetically from top to bottom. Upon selecting an article, the research is all brought onto one page and you are given a table of contents to navigate the information presented. This information may contain anything from a bibliography to contemporary interpretations. Overall, the website is organized in a comprehensible manner, avoiding visual clutter for the user’s convenience.

Works Cited

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://www.iep.utm.edu/m/.

Grammarly

Grammarly is an online website that was founded in 2009 by Max Lytvyn, Alex Shevchenko, and Dmetro Lider. While the website itself was founded in 2009, the Web Editor was not launched until 2010. Grammarly has over two hundred team members and over twenty million daily users and can be accessed by everyone, for free, on Google, or just about any other search engine. The website offers three different accounts. The first account is their free account which helps improve and strengthen everyday writing.  With the Premium account, they offer more advanced grammar checks, an advanced plagiarism detector, and enhanced vocabulary suggestions. The Premium account has a few different prices based on how you pay with their cheapest plan being the annual pay; it is $11.66 per month and is billed as one payment of $139.95. The last account they offer is their Business account which allows a business to buy the account and allow their workers to use Grammarly in order to make their writing more engaging and clear. 

With a free account, they offer assistance with a multitude of websites including Gmail, Facebook, and other very popular sites. It will go through what has been typed in order to find mistakes or ways to improve the writing. If it finds a mistake or an improvement, it will underline the word or phrase and all the writer has to do is hover over the underlined portion with the mouse, and it will allow the writer to fix their mistake. In the account settings, they offer a tab to customize each user’s account by offering a personal dictionary, which allows a user to add words that they do not want to be flagged as a misspelling. They also offer to check writing in American, British, Canadian, or Austalian rules. 

On a Macbook laptop, when visiting their website, they offer users the option to download Grammarly to Safari. If the user chooses to do so, they offer assistance on anywhere a user writes on the Web.  This website would be useful to anyone that has to write. Students in college and high school could use this website to proofread their work before turning in an assignment. Anyone with a career that involves writing could use this website to make sure their writing is correct. This website was not intended for one specific audience but, instead, built for a wide audience in order to help everyone improve their writing.

Works Cited 

Grammarly. Grammarly Inc, 2019.https://www.grammarly.com/?q=brand&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=brand_f1&utm_content=76996511046&utm_term=grammarly&matchtype=e&placement=&network=g&gclid=CjwKCAjwxt_tBRAXEiwAENY8hSwUm-J_0Wd2_rrvdpRUh0TzSxJbbp3M06wolkAh1x1OLYMFeVvn_hoCBIIQAvD_BwE. Accessed 29 Oct 2019.

The Paris Review

Theparisreview.org is a website affiliated with the quarterly literary magazine The Paris Review. The magazine was founded in Paris by Harold Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton in 1953, but the website didn’t make its debut until 1995. Nadja Spiegelman is the current online editor, though content on the site taken from the magazine would have originally been under its own editor, Emily Nemens. The site, geared towards enticing the reader to purchase a subscription to the magazine, offers limited access to the archived content on the website. Despite this, an abundance of free content can be accessed by anyone.

The homepage of theparisreview.org contains a mix of both free content and previews of content behind a paywall, though a section titled “The Daily” consists of daily articles that are available for free. The Daily began on June 1st 2010 with a letter from the editor stating the purpose of the daily posts were to keep readers engaged in-between issues of The Paris Review. All posts on The Daily since its inception are accessible and cover vastly different topics, from an article praising Peanuts cartoons to a recounting of an attempt to recreate Italian dishes mentioned in the novel The Leopard.

The site also features submitted fiction, poetry, interviews, and art/photography. While access to all of these requires a subscription, one work is featured daily in each category and can be freely viewed. Podcasts featuring interviews with writers and readings of their works are available, though the podcast is still somewhat new with only two available seasons. A video section links to the organization’s YouTube channel, which offers a few dozen relatively short videos. The majority of these videos feature authors discussing their first publication.

Works Cited

The Paris Review, https://www.theparisreview.org/. 2019.