Graduate Mentoring Program Articles

Narratives From the Field: The ASLE Mentoring Program at Work

From: ASLE News Fall 2004

Last year I put out a call for narratives from mentors and mentees describing their experiences in the ASLE Mentoring Program. Now is the time to share some of these stories. In this newsletter, Henrik Otterberg and Mike Branch’s reflections offer an inspired example of the kind of exchange the Mentoring Program was designed to promote. Do be in touch if you would like to be added to the list of available mentors, or if you are interested in the opportunities of working with a faculty mentor.

Mark C. Long, Coordinator, ASLE Mentoring Program
Department of English
Keene State College
229 Main Street
Keene, NH 03434-1402
Phone: 603-358-2695
Email: mlong [at] keene dot [edu]

As a doctoral student of Literature with a keen interest in the pastoral tradition and landscape description of pre-modern writers in the late 1990s, I attended a joint Nordic-Baltic symposium on literature and nature in Tampere, north of Helsinki, featuring a talk by one of the American founders of ASLE, Michael P. Branch. During the course of the Tampere symposium, Mike and I came to discuss Thoreau, on whom both he and I had done work in the near past. I inquired if he would be interested in reading some of my texts for comments and criticism, and he generously offered me his mentorship. Since then, Mike has been an invaluable support to me—as a friend, colleague, critic and editor.

He has directed me toward ecocritical literature of relevance to my studies; he has introduced me to reviewing for American journals; and he has given valuable advice on conference papers and assisted my application to the recent ASLE biennial conference, held in Boston in 2003.  Mike has been instrumental in aiding me in my PhD work and future publication plans, offering wise writing strategies and stressing a proper focus on the immediate issues at hand. At a time when academies and faculties frequently fight over narrowly anthropocentric theoretical trends, young ecocritics may feel marginalized. In my experience, the ASLE mentorship program—to rephrase the traditional dichotomy—offers the green-leaning student an ideal nature-nurture relationship.

—Henrik Otterberg,
Department of Literature, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

The main purpose of the ASLE mentoring program is and should be to nurture the work of graduate student scholars in our field—particularly those working within institutional settings that provide them little support or encouragement. However, the mentoring experience can also be very valuable for faculty scholars. Having mentored several students through the ASLE program, my own experience suggests that there is often as much in it for the mentor as for the student—that, indeed, it is not unusual for the student to become a kind of mentor to the faculty adviser. I have worked with students in environmental history and environmental ethics, thus freshening my own contact with these cognate fields, and often compelling me to rethink the disciplinary relationship among ecocritics and scholars of other (green) stripes.

At the moment I have the privilege of mentoring Henrik Otterberg, a gifted student completing a doctoral degree in his native Sweden who maintains strong interests in American environmental literature. The idea, of course, is that I help advise Henrik’s work in this area and, when possible, create professional opportunities for him. In practice, however, my association with Henrik has made me more aware of how environmental literary studies are practiced abroad and has also provided me a valuable understanding of how the American ecocritical enterprise is perceived by our colleagues around the world. In helping Henrik I have been helped by him, and I have found our correspondence (concerning matters ecocritical and otherwise) informative and refreshing.

The faculty end of the mentoring program works extremely well for faculty scholars who teach at institutions without graduate programs, and who therefore miss the opportunity to work with advanced graduate students. It works especially well for those who wish to advise in any area in which they actively research but do not have the opportunity to teach. Even for those of us who mentor graduate students as part of our daily work there is a special pleasure in working with students beyond the borders of the home institution—or, indeed, beyond the borders of the discipline or the nation. Mentoring is our opportunity to create the vital interdisciplinary, international, and intergenerational bonds that strengthen our community and our work.

—Michael P. Branch,
Department of English, University of Nevada Reno