Learning the language of craft: a publishing workshop for graduate students

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article outlines a workshop orienting sociology graduate students to overcoming challenges in publishing. Although graduate students are increasingly told to publish, little guidance exists on how to best prepare them for this venture; mentorship scholarship typically assumes the professor–student relationship is the best or most appropriate site of knowledge transmission about publishing. Our workshop is a collective learning experience that can be led either by experienced graduate students or faculty, aimed at developing craft knowledge (techne) about the publishing process. Participants in our workshops reported (1) that they were a site of affect normalization, helping them to understand they were not alone in fearing anonymous peer review and receiving harsh critiques of their work from peer reviews; and (2) appreciated concrete case studies of navigating the peer review process. We encourage other departments to use or modify this workshop to normalize the publishing process for graduate students.