Guiding your
way in academia
About MJ
Mary Jane (MJ) Curry, PhD, is an expert in academic writing and publishing. With decades of experience working in multiple academic capacities (staff, graduate assistant, research fellow, and tenured faculty member at the University of Rochester), she’s highly knowledgeable about academia more broadly. (MJ’s faculty webpage.)
MJ’s research over 25 years has investigated access to, and experiences with, academic literacy practices for writers spanning immigrant students in a community college to mature students at an open-access university to writing for publication in English by multilingual scholars and engineering graduate students (MJ’s ORCID page). She’s founding director of the Writing Support Services for the Warner Graduate School of Education & Human Development, University of Rochester and co-editor of the book series Studies in Knowledge Production and Participation at Multilingual Matters.
For a free 30-minute consultation, email MJ at curryacademicconsulting@gmail.com
or fill out the Contact form.
Additional Links
An A to W of Academic Literacy:
Key Concepts and Practices
for Graduate Students
University of Michigan Press, 2021
Official Webpage
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An A to W of Academic Literacy is designed for graduate students of all language backgrounds and at any level of study. It is created as a comprehensive reference for graduate students. As a glossary of terms, it can also be used as a supplemental textbook for graduate workshops and seminars and by writing consultants and instructors across the disciplines.
The guide includes 65 common academic literacy terms and explores how they relate to genres, writing conventions, and language use. Each entry briefly defines the term, identifies variations and tensions about its use across disciplines, provides examples, and includes reflection questions. An appendix lists further readings for each entry.
Unique to this volume are comments featuring the experiences of the graduate students who wrote the entries, comments that bring each entry to life and build a bridge to graduate student readers.
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Selected Books
A Scholar’s Guide to
Getting Published in English:
Critical Choices and Practical Strategies
Multilingual Matters, 2013
Official Webpage
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In many locations around the globe, scholars are coming under increasing pressure to publish in English in addition to other languages. However research has shown that proficiency in English is not always the key to success in English-medium publishing. This guide aims to help scholars explore the larger social practices, politics, networks and resources involved in academic publishing and to encourage scholars to consider how they wish to take part in these practices–as well as to engage in current debates about them. Based on 10 years of research in academic writing and publishing practices, this guide will be invaluable both to individuals looking for information and support in publishing, and to those working to support others' publishing activities.
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Teaching Academic Writing:
A Toolkit for Higher Education
Routledge, 2003
Official Webpage
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Student academic writing is at the heart of teaching and learning in higher education. Students are assessed largely by what they write, and need to learn both general academic conventions as well as disciplinary writing requirements in order to be successful in higher education.
Teaching Academic Writing is a 'toolkit' designed to help higher education lecturers and tutors teach writing to their students. Containing a range of diverse teaching strategies, the book offers both practical activities to help students develop their writing abilities and guidelines to help lecturers and tutors think in more depth about the assessment tasks they set and the feedback they give to students. The authors explore a wide variety of text types, from essays and reflective diaries to research projects and laboratory reports. The book draws on recent research in the fields of academic literacy, second language learning, and linguistics. It is grounded in recent developments such as the increasing diversity of the student body, the use of the Internet, electronic tuition, and issues related to distance learning in an era of increasing globalisation.
Written by experienced teachers of writing, language, and linguistics, Teaching Academic Writing will be of interest to anyone involved in teaching academic writing in higher education.
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