Choice of Specialization

[hopefullyyours]

Hello all! I'm a rising senior studying English and I am pretty desperate for advice, specifically regarding choosing an area of interest. 

Everyone in my year seems to know exactly what they're doing and I'm starting to panic. I'm not questioning my overall goals; I know that I want to eventually get my PhD and become a professor at some point. I'm just having a hard time nailing down one area to study. My studies so far have been pretty general and, having switched majors, I feel like I've been playing catch-up for the past two years and haven't had time to specialize. I've managed to narrow the possibilities down to either Victorian or Renaissance literature, but I haven't done a huge amount of work in either of those areas. Should I take a year off to make up my mind? I love studying literature and I know I want to keep doing it, and a year away from academia just sounds frustrating to me. At the same time, I don't know if it's even possible for me to get my applications together this late in the game. 

I've spoken to several faculty members, and I have some advising me to wait a few years, one thrilled that I'm considering grad school at all, and one actually offering to help me with my application materials as soon as I return from study abroad in a month. As I said, I'm thoroughly confused and starting to panic, so any advice you can offer would be highly appreciated!

Edited July 3, 2017 by hopefullyyours

[cowgirlsdontcry]

It's not unusual to think about different kinds of literature. Even as an entering PhD student, I have different areas that I like, although I know what I want my specialty area to be. Are you looking at the entire field of renaissance or just one country? Would you start at Dante or wait for Petrarch and Machiavelli? Just curious there. I wouldn't think an undergrad would have a huge handle on exactly where they would position themselves. Liking both areas could lead you to applying to the University of Alabama's Hudson Strode Renaissance Program. UA also has a diversified literature program, which would allow you to pursue a sub-area such a Victorian literature. I am an entering PhD Lit student there this fall. You must have a master's to apply to UA's various PhD programs, but their various masters' programs encompass the same areas as their PhDs.

I decided to get a master's before applying to PhD programs. It helped me mature in both writing and knowing where I wanted my specialty area to be. The path to a PhD in English is about the same length whether you do an all-in-one program or get a stand-alone MA and then PhD. Most English programs will transfer in some of your classes so that there are fewer classes to take in the PhD. I have hopes of being able to complete the PhD in four years, which will mean six years total.

Don't panic! You have another year before you graduate. However, you would need to apply in the fall to various programs, whatever way you wish to go.

[jrockford27]

At the end of my junior year I was sure I'd be an early modernist, I now study cold-war era film.  This was a transformation that began around the fall of my senior year (and was in some ways, thankfully, dictated by the faculty who were open to me and willing to work with me [let's just say the early modernists in my undergrad dept. were... inaccessible]).

A lot can happen your senior year!  I would also point out, as many often do, that you're unlikely to write your dissertation on precisely what you say you plan to work on in your applications.  Thus, while the decisions you make now are important, don't get the idea that you're setting anything in stone.  You will, however, want to produce a writing sample in the wheelhouse of what you plan to talk about in your personal statements.  However, even your writing sample isn't a contract.

My personal statement said something along the lines of, "In my senior thesis I researched [x], I wish to use the knowledge accumulated during this process to begin a new project examining [y]."  

Indeed, my first couple of seminar papers danced around [y], but my dissertation is definitely on [z], which wasn't even on my radar when I was looking at [x].  if you were a fully finished and developed scholar you wouldn't need to go to grad school!  What matters isn't that you can show existing mastery or specialization, what matters is that you can show the potential to develop an interesting and fruitful project.

[cowgirlsdontcry]

17 minutes ago, jrockford27 said:

At the end of my junior year I was sure I'd be an early modernist, I now study cold-war era film.  

Indeed, my first couple of seminar papers danced around [y], but my dissertation is definitely on [z], which wasn't even on my radar when I was looking at [x].  if you were a fully finished and developed scholar you wouldn't need to go to grad school!  What matters isn't that you can show existing mastery or specialization, what matters is that you can show the potential to develop an interesting and fruitful project.

Quick question about your interests. By early modernist, are you talking about early modernism or early modern novels (i.e. Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year)? I took a film class as an undergrad in horror genre and we watched the rage movie 28 Days Later. That same semester, I was taking research and the professor's specialization was the long 18th C. As a result, we read Defoe's JPY. In the film class, I ended up doing a comparison of that early 18th C novel with 28 Days Later--same plot, for my final paper.

I really like how you word the idea that grad students need to "show the potential to develop further." My MA thesis was on 3 texts of Cormac McCarthy and I believe I can expand that nicely into a dissertation that encompasses all of his books and screenplays. I knew I wanted to be an Americanist, but not exactly what time frame. I went into high gear as I entered my MA program, looking at various topics I might pursue for my thesis. I thought for a while I might end up an early Americanist, but then discovered McCarthy and here I am in contemporary American lit, although I do belong to SEA. I haven't given up my early American interests because McCarthy is known for his use of other authors' works ("books are made from books"). I also have a deep interest in Southern lit (where McCarthy treads also).

[hopefullyyours]

23 hours ago, cowgirlsdontcry said:

It's not unusual to think about different kinds of literature. Even as an entering PhD student, I have different areas that I like, although I know what I want my specialty area to be. Are you looking at the entire field of renaissance or just one country? Would you start at Dante or wait for Petrarch and Machiavelli? Just curious there. I wouldn't think an undergrad would have a huge handle on exactly where they would position themselves. Liking both areas could lead you to applying to the University of Alabama's Hudson Strode Renaissance Program. UA also has a diversified literature program, which would allow you to pursue a sub-area such a Victorian literature. I am an entering PhD Lit student there this fall. You must have a master's to apply to UA's various PhD programs, but their various masters' programs encompass the same areas as their PhDs.

I decided to get a master's before applying to PhD programs. It helped me mature in both writing and knowing where I wanted my specialty area to be. The path to a PhD in English is about the same length whether you do an all-in-one program or get a stand-alone MA and then PhD. Most English programs will transfer in some of your classes so that there are fewer classes to take in the PhD. I have hopes of being able to complete the PhD in four years, which will mean six years total.

Don't panic! You have another year before you graduate. However, you would need to apply in the fall to various programs, whatever way you wish to go.

Thanks for the reply! To answer your question, I'm most interested in the English Renaissance. It's funny that you should mention the Strode program, as one of my favorite professors got his MA there and loved it. I'll definitely look into it more!

[hopefullyyours]

7 hours ago, jrockford27 said:

Indeed, my first couple of seminar papers danced around [y], but my dissertation is definitely on [z], which wasn't even on my radar when I was looking at [x].  if you were a fully finished and developed scholar you wouldn't need to go to grad school! 

This is such a relief to hear-I think a lot of my anxiety comes from the fact that I've been expecting myself to have fully developed interests and work when when I've barely been studying English for two years. Thank you!

[biyutefulphlower]

14 hours ago, hopefullyyours said:

This is such a relief to hear-I think a lot of my anxiety comes from the fact that I've been expecting myself to have fully developed interests and work when when I've barely been studying English for two years. Thank you!

Just to help ease your fears a bit more - my undergraduate concentration was Pre-1800s & African-American Literature (strange combination, but I made it work somehow), and I've completely pivoted to Comic Studies at this point.  Change happens and that's perfectly OK~

[jrockford27]

23 hours ago, cowgirlsdontcry said:

Quick question about your interests. By early modernist, are you talking about early modernism or early modern novels (i.e. Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year)? I took a film class as an undergrad in horror genre and we watched the rage movie 28 Days Later. That same semester, I was taking research and the professor's specialization was the long 18th C. As a result, we read Defoe's JPY. In the film class, I ended up doing a comparison of that early 18th C novel with 28 Days Later--same plot, for my final paper.

 

I mean early modern literature.  I was really interested in (what I saw as)  proto-feminist and proto-Marxian texts in early modern Europe.  I was really interested in, for example, Arcangela Tarabotti's "Paternal Tyranny".  It was all pretty half-baked.  I sought out early modernist faculty at my school to help me get something more fully baked and I couldn't manage to pin anyone down.  At the same time I was writing papers about film for very convincing, somewhat less prestigious instructors who were showing me that all kinds of interesting things could be done in that realm.  My experience was somewhat similar to yours in that all of my diverse interests seemed to be swirling around a single center of gravity.  I remember a particularly zany paper that put Paradise Lost into dialogue with Rocky Horror via Frankenstein. I found myself writing about film in my literature classes and getting very positive feedback from my professors, and it really turned out that this was what I was interested in all along.

In my mind (and I still don't know whether this was accurate) I needed to limit where I applied only to English departments with strong film sections, because I assumed that a pure film studies program wouldn't take me.   Even then I'm very thankful that one of my top English program choices was willing to take a risk on a student with very little formal film studies background, and it meant I had some catching up to do.  But I think that really drives home what I said about showing potential to create an interesting project, rather than demonstrating mastery.

This is why I tell my students, especially those that think they might want to go to grad school, that the best papers are the ones where you at some point think to yourself, "this is nuts, can I get away with this?", because I think those are the papers that show an interesting flexibility of mind that allows you to really do novel and interesting work.

Edited July 5, 2017 by jrockford27

[cowgirlsdontcry]

What you have said about finding your way is so important--more important to me is to be somewhere that I can really grow into the scholar I want to be, rather than simply one who can get a tenured position. This is more about me and what I want to pursue as a scholar. Although I'm now firmly entrenched in contemporary American literature, I feel both the connection and the draw of the early works, because that is where we find the beginnings of what was to become both the country and its literature. They are completely intertwined and McCarthy recognizes that and uses it. I also have that interest in Southern lit, which meant I was going to end up in a Southern university, so I could pursue that to some degree. My final foray into other interests includes late 19th C, very early 20th C (prior to the rise of modernism) Brit lit. I adore Conrad, Lawrence, Foerster, as well as Yeats, even though he was Irish. There are also those authors who pursued the rise in the horror genre towards the fin de siècle. Love Richard Marsh's The Beetle. But that's what's so interesting about our field, we don't have to give up our little loves.

I think that your idea of an English department that has a strong film section was probably best for you, as from what I can see, you like combining film with printed text and a pure film study degree would have eliminated the textual portion. Studying the comparison of how film and text get a particular scene across is fascinating to me, although I only took a few film classes. I was RA to a film professor in the English department as part of my MA assistantship, and the research she had me do was quite interesting. Finding our niche in the field is somewhat helter skelter. It's important to look at everything and take a wide variety of classes in order to find that place.

[Dr. Old Bill]

1 hour ago, jrockford27 said:

I mean early modern literature.  I was really interested in (what I saw as)  proto-feminist and proto-Marxian texts in early modern Europe.  I was really interested in, for example, Arcangela Tarabotti's "Paternal Tyranny".  It was all pretty half-baked.  I sought out early modernist faculty at my school to help me get something more fully baked and I couldn't manage to pin anyone down.

Off-topic to this thread, but I loved Paternal Tyranny! I took a fantastic undergraduate course at William and Mary titled The Lives of Women in Renaissance Italy, and it featured Tarabotti, Franco, Strozzi etc. The professor was an adjunct, and she moved on after that semester, but let me know if you are still at all interested in further developing that topic, and I'll see if I can track down her information!

[jrockford27]

23 hours ago, Old Bill said:

Off-topic to this thread, but I loved Paternal Tyranny! I took a fantastic undergraduate course at William and Mary titled The Lives of Women in Renaissance Italy, and it featured Tarabotti, Franco, Strozzi etc. The professor was an adjunct, and she moved on after that semester, but let me know if you are still at all interested in further developing that topic, and I'll see if I can track down her information!

Aha! I first learned of her in a course I took called 'Galileo and the Foundations of Modern Science', which was actually a history course and involved quite a lot of literature (Galileo was quite the prose stylist!)  It sounds like you must also have read Edward Muir's "The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance", which I think was among the top 10 most interesting books I read in undergrad.  The following semester I took a course in the history dept. called "Daily Life in Early Modern Europe" where I wrote a final paper about Tarabotti, Mary Astel, and some other primary source stuff.    I was really on my way!  It was the main interest of my junior year.

And what is really funny, back to this topic, is how it is all about a million miles from where I'm at now in terms of my research, so I probably shouldn't be starting any new conversations with faculty!  Though this thread has me wanting to revisit those books some.

Edited July 6, 2017 by jrockford27

[hopefullyyours]

Hi everyone, I just wanted to thank everybody once again for your advice and give you an update. I eventually applied to the Hudson Strode program at UA. I was accepted into the MA program and I'm thrilled to say I'll be moving down to Tuscaloosa this fall. Now I just have to find an apartment!