bluecheese

<3 Melville so much. I like ramming my head into walls.

Sorry... Background: GRE: 720 V / 720 Q / 4.5 AW Undergrad GPA: 3.9 Graduate GPA: 4.0 1 conference presentation, creative writing publications

I hope that I'll get in somewhere. If I don't, I'll have to get some sort of job that pays a decent wage.

I have a strange desire to read Fifty Shades of Dorian Gray.

I think Jane Austen is better (whatever that means) and more enjoyable but I think graphic novels are more interesting, especially in the abstract.

In my head I inserted a C and subtracted "in the"? (and then I assumed we were talking about early 20th eastern european political revolt).

(Re: posting from 2012 thing, I guess) I'm not a strict "philosophy" applicant, although I am applying to interdisciplinary programs. List of Schools: NYU English Berkeley Rhetoric UC Santa Cruz History of Con OSU Comparative Studies UMN - CSCL Duke English SUNY Buffalo English University of Chicago English Ann Arbor English/Women's Studies MIT Comparative Media Studies Brown MCM U Penn English William & Mary American Studies Stanford MLT Syracuse English Rochester Visual and Cultural Studies Yale American Studies Iowa English Penn State English Albany English Loyola Chicago English WashU English Georgia Tech Digital Media Brown English Utah English Interests: Phenomenology, Deleuze and Affect Theory, Queer Theory, Object Oriented Ontology, and Queer Literature (with an emphasis on poetry and poetics).

I'm not a strict "philosophy" applicant, although I am applying to interdisciplinary programs. List of Schools: NYU English, Berkeley Rhetoric, UC Santa Cruz History of Con, OSU Comparative Studies, UMN - CSCL, Duke English, SUNY Buffalo English, University of Chicago English, Ann Arbor English/Women's Studies, WashU English, Brown MCM, U Penn English, Madison English, Stanford MLT, Syracuse English, Rochester Visual and Cultural Studies, Yale American Studies, Iowa English, Penn State English, Albany English, Loyola Chicago English, Rice English, Chicago Committee on Social Thought, Brown English, UC Boulder English Interests: Phenomenology, Deleuze and Affect Theory, Queer Theory, Object Oriented Ontology, and Queer Literature (with an emphasis on poetry and poetics).

Yep, it only takes one. Best of luck!

Yeah, it's too bad that it isn't an outright "yes." I've heard that these usually do usually mean "yes" almost implicitly, so long as you don't totally mess up the interview. So that is positive. It guess does mean that the waiting game continues for you. But, you have a near-yes weeks before most people will even begin to hear anything--that seems like a great sign. (jealous).

Northanger Abbey as a gothic parody is brilliant. I don't know, I find the properness and sentimentality of the novels to be like rubbing my face on a cheese grater, but I see why people study it. I definitely don't hate it.

I only applied to one American Studies department (Yale)... here is my entire list (I bend towards "English" as my primary focus, with interdisciplinary leanings that tend towards fields like gender studies and american studies. List of Schools: NYU English Berkeley Rhetoric UC Santa Cruz History of Con OSU Comparative Studies UMN - CSCL Duke English SUNY Buffalo English University of Chicago English Ann Arbor English/Women's Studies MIT Comparative Media Studies Brown MCM U Penn English William & Mary American Studies Stanford MLT Syracuse English Rochester Visual and Cultural Studies Yale American Studies Iowa English Penn State English Albany English Loyola Chicago English WashU English Georgia Tech Digital Media Brown English Utah English Yes, that is 25. Yes, I am broke. That said, I believe strongly in applying widely in order to get the best funding/opportunities. Each of these schools actually has faculty that I would be happy to work with. This is the list I created after cutting it down from a list of 33 schools that had a substantial number of faculty in the areas I'm studying. I guess some people will think this is cray. I don't. This is partially based on my experience applying to MFA programs. The school that I ultimately attended was one that I added on a whim (it is topped ranked, but I applied there sheerly based off of where it s located--it was four hours away from my parents, and three hours away from where I was living at the time). I received acceptances from other schools, but after looking into the faculty and opportunities of the university as a whole (after being accepted), I couldn't pass up the institution that I attended for my MFA. All of the above have multiple faculty working in areas that are of interest to me. I'll get picky after I see who is interested in working with me, and what financial packages they offer (also placement ratings, cost of living, ease for my partner to find a job, etc.).

List of Schools: NYU English Berkeley Rhetoric UC Santa Cruz History of Con OSU Comparative Studies UMN - CSCL Duke English SUNY Buffalo English University of Chicago English Ann Arbor English/Women's Studies MIT Comparative Media Studies Brown MCM U Penn English William & Mary American Studies Stanford MLT Syracuse English Rochester Visual and Cultural Studies Yale American Studies Iowa English Penn State English Albany English Loyola Chicago English WashU English Georgia Tech Digital Media Brown English Utah English Yes, that is 25. Yes, I am broke. That said, I believe strongly in applying widely in order to get the best funding/opportunities. Each of these schools actually has faculty that I would be happy to work with. This is the list I created after cutting it down from a list of 33 schools that had a substantial number of faculty in the areas I'm studying. I guess some people will think this is cray. I don't. This is partially based on my experience applying to MFA programs. The school that I ultimately attended was one that I added on a whim (it is topped ranked, but I applied there sheerly based off of where it s located--it was four hours away from my parents, and three hours away from where I was living at the time). I received acceptances from other schools, but after looking into the faculty and opportunities of the university as a whole (after being accepted), I couldn't pass up the institution that I attended for my MFA. All of the above have multiple faculty working in areas that are of interest to me. I'll get picky after I see who is interested in working with me, and what financial packages they offer (also placement ratings, cost of living, ease for my partner to find a job, etc.). I actually didn't apply to an strictly Women's/Gender Studies programs aside from the Ann Arbor joint degree. Sure, I want to do queer theory and history of sexuality based research, but I also have tentacles out in the areas of literature and creative writing. Trying to find programs that balanced those disciplines was my goal.... either with a substantial amount of faculty [some english departments practically have internal gender studies programs], interdisciplinary certificates, or key (famous) faculty. Anyway, thought I would chime in.

Woolf is great. That said, I do get where rems is coming from given that I dislike the way she gets traded sometimes (especially by semi-conservative prose writers in creative writing departments). Also: Mina Loy, Gertrude Stein, Lorine Niedecker (so good), Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (I haven't finished reading through the collected yet... but it is cray cray), etc.

Or, were you somehow "on top" while posting in a sex role preference sort of way?

This one time I saw Junot Diaz hit on a predator drone, it was cray.

I think it is actually a physically tortuous two month long performance art piece.

No, I wouldn't consider him to be a realist. He stands as a strange return to meta fictional modes, in a way (which I'm equally skeptical of--sorry for conflating the two). Sure, this aspect of such texts may have something to do with the literary journalism, but the contemporary stuff (especially in the realist vein) is written for that market and for those literary journalists. The fact that Jeffrey Eugenides, for example, wins a Pulitzer because (primarily) he is able to slip between genders in his characterization is extremely annoying and frustrating. The reputations of these writers is built almost solely upon such troublesome readings. The only "realist" novel I've read in a while that I felt was worth its weight in paper is Teju Cole's Open City (it's a brilliant book). Anyway, with getting back to DFW, his tendency toward conservative politics (he voted for Reagan), masturbatory masculinized intellectual posturing, and tendency to produce writing that comes to completely frustrating conclusions makes me dislike him immensely. One of my favorite poets called his writing "aimless virtuosity." I think that about captures it.

I wanted to drop this out of a window after reading like 3 pages of it: http://www.amazon.com/Cyclonopedia-Complicity-Anonymous-Materials-Anomaly/dp/0980544009/ref=pd_sim_b_95 (that said, it sounds super interesting... and might some useful thinking in it... but... ugh.)

I tend to get turned off by a lot of contemporary "realist" novels written in the "Balzacian mode" that trade on flawed, (often quite sexist) characters written by the next great (almost always already white) male novelist. Also, re-iterations of metafictional techniques in contemporary novels/literary nonfiction is almost unbearable. But then, I'm a weirdo who tends to throw in with Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Clarise Lispector, Samuel R. Delany, David Markson, Ben Marcus, Lydia Davis, Anne Carson, Lydia Yukanavitch, etc.

I'm working on it (writing the fit paragraph tonight).

Shit. I still have to finish this one. Not another crappy online system. I hate that so much at this point.

I still the the Junot Diaz criticism holds up.

I just read 150 pages of Heidegger (Being and TIme) for a reading group on Monday (I read 90 pages of it on Monday before 4pm, which was crazy). To be honest, I spent so much time with it back in the day, mostly it makes me feel at home. It is a warm, enclosed world. A kind of Nazi womb decorated with term ornaments. Wait, why do you hate Kenneth Goldsmith so much? He is just silly. He is kind of more comedic than anything. Did you meet him in person and he was unpleasant? I mean, in terms of conceptual writing he is no Vanessa Place... and really who cares that much about conceptual writing generally (it is kind of boring). But, I don't see any reason to hate in any more than most other contemporary poetry. If I was going to drop hate towards any body of contemporary poetry, it would be the neo-modernist drivel that is pushed by the prozac funded poetry foundation journal "poetry." Although they're going to have a new editor, so maybe things will change a bit.

Yeah, if you want someone to write a rec letter you should make an effort to meet with them once or twice over the semester you're taking a class with them. I mean, I think this is the minimum. Also, in those cases where I didn't add much detail... students didn't give me the appropriate documents requested for the letter (c.v., resume, statement of purpose, etc.) so it was hard to stretch their class performance out into a wider picture. I don't think it will hurt them that bad. Often students come from universities that are primarily oriented toward large lecture courses where close contact with professors is limited. In these cases it is hard for students to get that intimate of rec letters... even if they are outstanding students. Edit: I know that I have stellar recommendations. I'm actually pretty close with all of my recommenders, so I know that they're going to be good. The only problem being, two of them are from creative writers (the other is from a major scholar, and it is 3 pages long on interfolio and she kept emailing me questions while writing it). That said, I feel very skeptical of my writing sample.