poliscar

I can't speak directly from experience here, but I'd imagine that most things outside of direct monetary funding would be more difficult, since they'd likely be more out of the control of the department. You might be looking at broader graduate school decisions for housing, etc. Teaching might be something you could negotiate, but sometimes that is also tied to a source external to the department, like a "writing centre" or something. I have heard of people negotiating for some smaller, but significant perks, like extra language/conference/research funds, etc. That said, those probably aren't things to be concerned about unless all of your offers are pretty similar financially.

I'd have to disagree. I negotiated a higher offer from a fully-funded program (in relation to an offer from another) and it was treated as a totally normal part of the procedure. I was also told by the DGS of the second program to email him if any programs offered me more money. Obviously you don't want to be too aggressive or pushy, but I think it's difficult to come across that way when a lot of programs expect a sort of miniature "bidding war" for students. I'd also say that there are clear upper-limits to funding; while a lot of programs will ask you to forward your highest offer to them, not many will match a stipend like Stanford's. TLDR: ASK FOR MORE MONEY

Congrats to the Berkeley acceptances! Looking forward to meeting y'all at visit week Feel free to message me if you have any questions about the program.

Also, if you have any intention of working with Shannon Jackson at Berkeley, know that she recently gave a job talk at Yale.

As a current Berkeley grad student (not in Rhetoric, thankfully), don't do it unless you get a Mellon or something. Funding and teaching are distributed very unevenly in the department—some admitted students have to teach from their first semester onward—and research funding for graduate students was recently cut entirely.

One upside to German is the easy availability of money. The DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) has a very ready supply of funding for students learning and/or doing research in Germany. Obviously there are comparable opportunities in Italy, but with nowhere near the same level of funding, and with a lot more competition.

I don't think that the objective "youth" of scholars was really central to the question. None of the people I mentioned are close to retirement, whereas the OP specifically mentioned that the scholars they were looking at are. The question—as far as I understand it—is about potential supervisors, and the scholars I mentioned are either mid-career (in terms of supervision at least), or just seeing through some of their first doctoral candidates. Re. the personal attack on one of the people mentioned—sure, it's very possible. That being said, it's probably best to keep that sort of commentary to private messages.

Before anything else, you'll be very, very hard pressed to find a PhD program in Art History (the humanities in general) that allows you to defer admission. It's just not something that happens; programs will tell you to apply again the next year. In terms of appropriate programs, I'd definitely look at Berkeley (Darcy Grimaldo-Grigsby, Lisa Trever), Harvard (Tom Cummins), UCLA (Charlene Villaseñor Black, Stella Nair), Yale (Mary Miller, Carol Armstrong), and potentially Northwestern (Jesús Escobar, Stephen Eisenman, Hollis Clayson). I think there are a lot of cases where she won't necessarily find a perfect advisor, who works in 19th century Latin American art, but instead has to focus on finding places where she could put together a great committee. So in that case I'd be on the lookout for schools with Latin American early modernists, pre-Columbianists, and scholars in 19th century American/European art.

I believe that Wood's courses in German have been cross-listed with the IFA, so I imagine it would be fairly easy to work with him. Also since he has coauthored a fair amount of work with Nagel (including Anachronic Renaissance!), I wouldn't be surprised if they end up co-chairing dissertations together. In that case you would still be working through the IFA, so I wouldn't worry too much about the interdisciplinarity of things (though I understand the apprehension). Probably worth emailing one of them to check, but I don't see why it wouldn't work out.

It would be worth looking into Alexander Nagel at NYU/IFA. Christopher Wood is also at NYU, albeit in the German department.

Chicago interviewed around January 27th-28th last year I think, so their turnaround is pretty quick!

I believe Yanaka was referring to the number of languages required! Re. Cornell being a top program in Comparative Literature—uh, yeah, it definitely is, just look at the faculty. Jonathan Culler, Bruno Bosteels, Naoki Sakai, Cathy Caruth, etc... It's definitely top-notch, especially for certain theoretical strands.

I honestly don't buy the 700 applications statistic from Columbia. For comparison, Stanford mentions that they get 300+ applications and admit 9, and Harvard lists a similar ratio of 300-350 applicants & 10-15 students admitted. The same goes for Brown, with stats of approximately 300 applications/18 admitted. Really, even if living in New York is a significant draw, I don't see how that would lead to a difference of 350-400 applicants, especially since the programs in question are all of comparative quality and reputation. Part of me wonders whether Columbia is including MA applicants to inflate the overall number, but I can't say what the motives behind that could be. Something about their statistics seems pretty off though, regardless of motive.

A lot of programs will have you declare a sub-speciality or second area for your qualifying exams. I don't think there's really a huge split at all between the two periods you mention. I mean, so many Victorianists end up writing about Henry James. Also to add, you could easily situate your work as Atlantic/hemispheric/oceanic (whatever is floating around at the time) and dip into 20th century American lit from a British base.

I think Chicago interviewed last year because the previous cohort was much larger than expected. It will be interesting to see if they interview again this year, or if they change things up again.