wreckofthehope

There are super cheap buses between NY and Boston, and you can travel overnight (if you don't mind being a bit tired when you arrive). Amtrak is more expensive; even the Northeast Regional is about $80, but you can get a student advantage card which gives you a discount. But...travelling the NE corridor is literally the most productive place I have found to do work, so...it might not be too bad!

Hey! Two really good places for Cultural Studies in Europe, that offer very, very good funding (you're a full fledged employee of the university), are The University of Amsterdam, and the University of Copenhagen. In the UK, Goldsmiths and Birkbeck are good (though Birkbeck's London Consortium no longer exists, and that really was the best place in the UK for Cultural Studies) - but funding is scarce. The U.S. has more options, e.g. UC Davis, Minnesota and a wealth of pop-culture oriented humanities programs (if that is where your interests lie).

A Cambridge MPhil is just the same as an MA elsewhere, it's just called that because of the practice of awarding MAs to Cambridge BAs a certain length of time after matriculation, without any further work. There is the same issue at Oxford, which is why their English MAs are called MSts.

I'm presenting in the British Popular Culture area. Can't wait; soooo many interesting/fun looking panels!

There are a few exceptionally strong geography programs left in the US: UCLA and Kentucky, to name a couple of the best, but almost all top private schools closed their departments a long time ago, like you said. (Hilariously, the QS world rankings had a geography ranking a few years back that was topped by a bunch of US schools that don't have geography departments...just goes to show what a crock of shit rankings are!). Not being from the US (and being a geographically inclined lit student) , I was a little taken aback by the two geography posts above!

I reckon American Modernists have the most sex, but that it's probably faintly unfulfilling.

Good luck! If you'll be looking for jobs in the UK, one thing to do might be to scour departments for their new lecturer hires in your field and see if either Leeds or Manchester are educating a large portion of those hires. Just cos, if one of them is, then that would be a big plus in their favour. I know in my subfield, in the last five years or so, two unis (Sussex and Birkbeck) completely dominated hiring so even though another uni might be a marginally better fit, one of those two departments would probably be the safest bet for getting a job.

Americanists Unite! I do post-45 stuff: cultural history, fiction, film. I'm mid-degree now, I guess (final qualifying exam this semester), yikes.

Outside of maybe four or five universities (Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, St Andrews and maybe Edinburgh), UK schools are almost all unknown by name in the US. There are exceptions within highly specialized areas (York for Medieval Studies, Essex for Government) but the majority of academics wouldn't know where, say, Durham stood against Kent in the general university pecking order, and will probably not know anything much at all about either. So, I'm not sure you should worry all that much about it. In any case, within the UK, rankings, as such, matter very little at the PhD level and for jobs afterwards, most PhD students are drawn by funding and supervisors to a particular university which for a particular topic could mean that Kent, say, is a far better place to be than Oxford, for example. The US job market is, of course, very rank-sensitive but, like I said, considering the pool of universities you are choosing from I don't think the perceived ranking is going to matter much because of the general lack of awareness of UK institutions over here. I'm from the UK, Durham is the most highly ranked for undergrads (seen as just below Oxbridge), but it's almost unknown in the US. Manchester is likely the highest ranked internationally because it's massive and research heavy. I'd hazard a guess that Leeds or Kent are better for the OPs subject, since they both tend to be places where less traditional academic disciples flourish.

If I could upvote this by a million, I would.

Well, I'm English and I do American Studies/Cultural Studies type stuff, so I don't know about being a savant as much as being marginally aware of the 17 schools that do my subject in my homeland

No problem! They do have an MA in American Studies and Film Studies that might work for you (and I know they also have AHRC funding for MA students, somewhat unusually, and you may also be eligible for that - the rules on giving it to international students seem to be up to the university that holds the awards).

I'm not certain...it's my impression that the funding is through Am St, but I could be wrong as I don't know the Film dep't too well (and there's a fair amount of crossover faculty-wise).

Kamisha: take a look at UEA American Studies, they have funding explicitly for US students (one of the only places I know of that does this) and they have both the top film and media department in the UK and one of the top Am St dep'ts.

I'm in a TOTALLY different field, but I did my BA there, so feel free to PM me if you have questions about the uni or colleges or the English Faculty, or anything really. I wouldn't be intimidated - if you're good enough for a US PhD program, or good enough to apply to one, then you are a serious candidate with a good chance of being accepted. It sounds like Ox would be a good fit academically, so go for it. The MPhil is usually a research degree at Oxford... if you were planning to stay at Ox for the DPhil then doing the MPhil would be worth it (because your MPhil work is the start of your DPhil work); otherwise, the normal MSt should be fine. Most UK Master's are one year. Disability provisions for UK students are quite good, but they come mostly from the government, not the university (or, at least, from the government through the university) and so I suspect you would not be eligible. All that said, if this would be a second Master's (am I reading your post correctly?), I'd personally be very wary - what would it add to what you've already got to offer?