poliscar

There's not enough information here for anyone to say anything helpful. You've just listed your stats and a number of programs. I guess to elaborate more, you need to be able to persuade a committee that their department/program is the right place for you. You can't just throw statistics at them and expect to be rewarded—that's not how the process works. The schools you've listed are all stellar, but a lot of them are also very, very different from one another, so it's difficult to know what you want. Do you have a rough field of interest, in terms of geography/language/chronology/methodology? Have you identified potential supervisors at each program? It all is very vague at the moment.

No, and no. Committees care about the case you make for your proposed research, not the number of languages you know. Now if you're some sort of Comparative Medievalist, and you can make an argument for knowing 7 languages, go for it. However, it's not going to elevate you above someone proposing an equally compelling project involving 2-3 languages. The same goes for any sort of negative impact. If you submit a ridiculous SoP that tries to link all 7 languages in a nebulous fashion, you're going to get rejections—not because of the number of languages, per se, but because of a lack of coherence. Likewise, you could propose a very compelling and coherent area of research involving 2-3 of those 7 languages, and have far more success. This wouldn't really have anything to do with the other 4-5 languages. Rather, it would be a result of the argument you made for the relationships between the 2-3 languages you chose to focus on. Honestly, to be blunt and succinct, no one cares how many languages you know if you're not doing something interesting with them. Focus on the "interesting."

Julia Bryan-Wilson, Hannah Feldman, Huey Copeland, Darby English, Matthew Jesse Jackson, Christine Mehring, Sebastian Zeidler, Alexander Alberro, Noam Elcott, Brandon Joseph, Claire Bishop, George Baker, Pamela Lee, Miwon Kwon... I could on forever, almost. Are you reading work in your field?

I think this is slightly misleading—at least in the context of English Literature. When it comes to jobs, the trend seems to be to hire Canadian citizens with American degrees. So it's really not particularly easy to separate applicants into "Canadian applicants" and "American applicants." If you were to complete a Canadian degree, but never acquire citizenship or permanent residency, you would gain very little advantage from that degree in the context of Canadian jobs. What I've seen repeatedly in the past so many years is that Canadians are completing BAs, and often MAs, at Canadian institutions, and then going on to complete PhDs at top-tier American schools. You'll often then see them get hired for a lot of the top Canadian jobs—sometimes at their undergrad institution—because they have the double-whammy of citizenship + Harvard/Berkeley/Princeton, etc. I can also think of a few scholars (some recent hires) who completed all of their education in the US, but ended up with top-tier Canadian jobs because they had citizenship. These candidates are sort of "invisible" Canadians, because if you were to go by their educational background you'd likely identify them as American. There is a legal context here, in that Canadian schools—the vast majority of which are public institutions—are required to give preference to Canadian citizens, unless there is significant disparity between Canadian/non-Canadian candidates. So yes, you do see cases where Americans are awarded Canadian jobs over Canadian citizens, but it's not always as simple as it looks on the surface. Along these lines, as more Canadians end up at American schools for their doctoral studies, I imagine we'll see fewer American citizens hired for Canadian academic positions, at least at the Assistant Professor level. The legal context is also why the nature of the field in question, even if it's geographic, doesn't have as much weight as you'd imagine. And also, though an American seems like they'd be a better fit for a position in American Studies, there's really very little difference between a Canadian trained as an Americanist in an American program, and an American from that same program. The American isn't more qualified in the field because of their nationality—that's absurd. The same goes for East Asian studies, and besides, I have numerous Asian Canadian friends who are immigrants from Asian countries. They're fluent in the relevant languages, and identify as Canadian and Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Filipino. I mean, you did mention the multicultural nature of Canada, so I don't know why it's hard to imagine Canadians who are from East Asia and also deeply qualified in their field.

They specify "evidence of first-class (A) work in English," not an A average. So no, you don't need to have an A average, in English courses or otherwise. What they're looking for when they mention the minimum English course requirement is just broad disciplinary coverage. Basically, to translate it into something that makes a bit more sense, they're saying "if you don't have a Bachelors in English you need to have completed this many courses in English for us to consider your application." As a Canadian, I'll say that this is typical of our MA programs. Most American PhD programs are far less concerned about the disciplinary backgrounds of applicants, so long as they seem capable of completing the program. That's why you see movement from History to English, or from Anthropology to History—even from the Sciences to the Humanities. In contrast, Canadian MA programs typically have significant course requirements (or even degree requirements) in the field in question. I've seen cases in which they expect about half of your degree (60/120 credit) to have been in the area of the MA program. So long as you have the required number of credits in English, I wouldn't worry. They're not going to reject you based on your first year grades. That's not to say that it's not a competitive program—it is—but that they're going to look at your SoP and references to make decisions, once they've confirmed that you are capable of the aforementioned "first-class work." One other thing to keep in mind is that Canadian schools have to accept a certain number of Canadian applicants, so Toronto may end up being more competitive for you than it would be for domestic students. That being said, everything I've said still stands.

No, because you will specify your interests in your SoP. Now if you try to argue that you're going to research in 5 languages, and you comes across as disorganized or confused, it will backfire. However I don't think there is anything innately disadvantageous about having more than the expected number of languages. Moreover, I don't think programs expect you to have a background in the literature of all your languages. Once again, you will demonstrate a certain level of knowledge and familiarity in your SoP (and writing sample), but they aren't making assumptions beyond that. You will complete coursework in your selected languages/literatures, and read fairly deeply for a field/qualifying exam—they're not expecting you to come in fully trained.

Honestly I don't think the Princeton book is bad, but as Wyatt's says it's not really fantastic when it comes to test strategy. Where I found it helpful was as a guide to test content. While the format of the exam has significantly changed, the material you're being tested on hasn't really. So the Princeton guide does give a fairly decent road map of the texts that are likely to appear. Likewise, it is a good entry point when it comes to studying; naturally you should be supplementing with the Norton Anthologies, but diving directly into them without some sort of filter or plan is not a good use of time. There are texts and authors that you likely can't or won't read before the test (the Restoration comedies, the Victorian critics, Sidney, etc...) but that the Princeton guide summarizes fairly nicely through character names, plot points, and central arguments. One area where the Princeton book is terrible, and I mean abysmally, shamefully bad, is in the context of theory. They have this bizarre subdivision of theoretical/critical approaches into "Psychological," "Linguistic," and "Marxist," which can be deeply misleading if you're not familiar with theory. I honestly don't really know what else to say about the section; it's just so laughably bad and dated. You're better off reading something like Jonathan Culler's Very Short Introduction, hell, even reading the first chapter of Jameson's Political Unconscious would give you a more wholistic and accurate overview of "theory." Finally, the recent emphasis on longer passages can be frustrating, and arguably does call for strategies of speed-reading & skimming. That being said, I'm not sure that the older format, with shorter passages, called for that different of a strategy. Regardless of passage length, it has never been a matter of close-reading. Moreover, when it comes to identification of keywords, characteristics of style, and poetic meter, the larger passages can prove advantageous. Objectively speaking, the longer the passage, the greater the likelihood of a significant clue appearing. It's sort of like those puzzles where you're asked to identify the whole of an image based on a comparatively small section of it. The larger the section given, the more contextual detail to work with. So without sounding too cryptic, I think it helps to think of the passages somewhat like images—you can oscillate between the part and the whole without necessarily combing every detail. Once you find something significant, i.e. "Newgate Prison" --> Dickens, you've potentially unlocked 3-4 out of 5 questions. A three sentence excerpt can make that more difficult than a three paragraph excerpt...

Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about having your writing sample and SoP so tightly laminated together. I was explicitly told by a POI that it's more important to submit your "best work" than worrying about it being "on topic" in relation to your proposed research interests. Which is not to say that you shouldn't make the connections you're suggesting, but that I don't think you have to angst too much about differences between Sonnets and non-Sonnets scholars. Have faith that the people reading your application—many of whom won't be Early Modernists at all—will be able to follow your argument. Likewise, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a little bit of speculation in your SoP. Cloudofunknowing's suggestions are really good, IMO, and I think most committees will be more interested in applicants who propose the sorts of "translation" Cloud is suggesting. It's totally ok if you don't know exactly what will happen when you transfer your methodology from X object to Y, and frankly, emphasizing a certain openness there shows that you're not operating in some sort of closed box. What does happen with Coriolanus in such a case—what are your guiding research questions there, and the problems you're running into? If you strategically foreground some of those uncertainties or processes I think you can show that you're still thinking through your approach, rather than having some sort of dogmatic set of rules.

Not a Classics person, but Princeton would definitely be a place to look at. Brooke Holmes is affiliated with Comp Lit, and does super interesting work.

The JHU application date is the 15th of December, not the 5th.

It seems sort of strange, honestly. Why aren't you naming the faculty members who supervised the recent thesis you mention? Obviously there are numerous reasons to apply to a school, including those you mention, but faculty are essentially the central factor. They are the people who will be reviewing your application, and making final decisions. Moreover, some schools pair applicants off with POIs during the process, so they might not have the same ease "locating" you as they would with those who had listed faculty members. The other thing that comes up for me is that listing collections and lecture series, without listing POIs, might come off as a bit instrumentalizing? Sort of like the department/faculty being a means to an end, but without particular significance for you otherwise. In that case you might risk coming off as a bit arrogant... Sorry, just to flesh this out more, I don't think your intentions are bad at all of course. Nor do I think you're arrogant, etc. Just seems worthwhile to mention faculty members (and a few points about their work) as a strategic move. I think you can do that without seeming insincere, and besides, there is a little bit of subtle flattery involved here. You don't want to seem supplicant, but likewise, you don't want to seem indifferent either?

I mean, it's difficult to get a job no matter what, so I don't think there are any easy answers. I generally am wary about "interdisciplinary" programs (and programs in cultural studies) but the caveat there is that things dramatically even out when you're talking about the very best schools. Berkeley Rhetoric, Stanford MTL, Brown MCM, Duke Lit and NYU Media Studies & Performance Studies all do very well in terms of placement, including in English departments. At the end of the day, the work you do in the department will be what matters. I don't mean that as some sort of platitude about quality ('there will always be jobs for good people," etc) but in terms of the literal direction/field of your work. If your dissertation ends up being about something totally unrelated to English, then no, you won't get a job in an English department. But you can strategically design your research to maximize the number of possible employment opportunities. If you have a chapter on film, one on a novelist, one on an artist (etc, all very vague) you can pitch yourself to various fields.

Why mid-tier? And really, I wouldn't consider Duke, or even Davis, as mid-tier. My first thought was Princeton, which has some absolutely stellar people across various departments. I mean, Anne Cheng, Peter Brooks, Brigid Doherty, etc...

I think it's also important to pay specific attention to the placement records of students who have worked with potential POIs, as well as placement by field/subfield. A department may consistently place Medievalists in TT positions, but rarely have success in Africanist or Modern European searches. You'll notice as you look closely that there are some scholars whose students are hired on a very reliable basis, and others whose students rarely get jobs. While this is often tied to prestige, it's not always the case that superstar scholars have the best placement rates, so be careful. Practically speaking, I've found that you can get a rough idea of the placement rates of specific advisors/chairs by going through Proquest, and then googling the names of the various dissertation authors.

I think the best bet is to just email them and ask upfront—see if they can answer questions about refunds, etc. It wouldn't surprise me if they ended up forwarding applications to other programs, i.e. German, History, Art History, English... Potentially also email POIs, and ask if they are open to working with incoming graduate students. You may receive answers that are more direct about the potential futures of faculty & the program.

Frankly, I think that there's actually an expanding market when it comes to Media Studies, particularly the theoretical side of things. I'm thinking specifically of departments like NYU's Media Studies program at Steinhardt, or Brown's Modern Culture and Media. There's a current critical conjunction in and around German Media Studies/Archaeology (Siegert, Kittler, etc), contemporary French theory (Stiegler, Laruelle, Malabou), New Materialisms (etc) and other strains of thought. It'd would be worth your while to look at programs that place more emphasis on this sort of work, because you would be able to maintain your interests in Critical Theory & Gender and Sexuality. Maybe look at people like Wendy Chun at Brown, or Susan Murray at NYU? Northwestern could be another place of interest, as could Berkeley...

I'd throw in Lee Konstantinou at University of Maryland.

This. I think early conference experiences are a lot more valuable than undergraduate publication. Aside from more abstract professional aspects, they are also a lot more likely to be recognizable to a committee. No one is going to recognize the South Carolina State Journal of Undergraduate Woolf Studies (etc), but undergraduate panels at ACLA, grad conferences at significant universities, sub-MLA conferences will all be noticed, and are well within the reach of good undergrad students.

Whose scholarship do you admire? What sort of approach do you take? I don't think you'll get very far looking for 20th Century Americanists—the field is just too broad. You should be narrowing it down yourself based on the work you see yourself doing.

Doesn't UCL? As far as I remember they have 4-5 people working on 19th century American & European art, including painting. Tamar Garb comes to mind specifically. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/art-history/prospective-students/hoa-ma/prospective-students/special-subjects/ Take a look at the options offered by Garb, Eaton, and by Fend & Taws. They're not explicitly related to painting, but they could be interesting.

I agree with echo449, but with the caveat that you should still have some idea of the methodological approaches of the scholars in departments you're considering. You don't want to end up in a place where potential advisors are entirely hostile to your psychoanalytic/Marxist/phenomenological, etc approach.

Oh come on. There are a number of material facts at hand here. 1) As Governor, Scott Walker has made significant cuts to the state budget, particularly in relation to public education. Because of this, funding has also been cut from the U Wisconsin system, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. It's no secret that Walker holds public education in contempt, and it's unlikely that this will change. These cuts are part of a more general wave of privatization, in which education is seen as a profit vehicle, rather than as a public asset. 2) The U Wisconsin Madison Board of Regents, in response to state policy, is making significant changes to how tenure works at the university. These changes make it so that tenured faculty members can be fired for budgetary reasons, or due to the nebulous reason of "educational considerations." Basically, tenure becomes merely symbolic. If the Chancellor and Regents want to reallocate funding from one program to another, they're able to do so by detenuring faculty, and moving the related funds to another program. This completely undermines the role played by tenure, and you can bet—because the motivations here are completely ideological—that those stripped of tenure aren't going to be the business/engineering/econ professors. They are going to be the professors whose work isn't sufficiently "profitable" or "justifiable." 3) Because of the above reasons, the UW-Madison faculty reached a vote of non-confidence in the Board of Regents and the University President. Reaching back to my first point, their vote reflects a lack of faith in the Regents' and President's commitment to the public good. The budget cuts and changes to tenure are pretty clear indications that the governance of the university is more or less on board with Walker's agenda—i.e. the privatization of public assets. As far as I'm concerned, the faculty acted by rejecting that agenda. 4) The university is bleeding faculty. I can think of faculty—some of them big names—who have fled to Minnesota, UT Austin, Princeton, and Cornell. Walker signed the state budget in July 2015, so this has happened within just over a year. Some tenured faculty with reputations may have been able to get out quickly by bargaining with other institutions, but I imagine as things progress, we'll see other faculty leave as well, through public job searches, etc. To be blunt, this is the beginning, not the end. As I said earlier in the thread, you can bet that there are still faculty members looking for other opportunities, and I don't see why Art Historians would be the exception. What is the upside to staying at a university where you can be arbitrarily stripped of tenure? Here's the deal: it's possible that a student at U-Wisconsin Madison would be able to confirm all of the worst. It's equally possible that current students will be relatively untouched, and that the weight of these changes will fall primarily on future students. The point is that it's absurd to rely on the experiences of current students to make a decision, assuming you're event getting the full story from them. This principal applies to grad school applications, and to future academic endeavours, like job searches. If you can't make your own judgement calls based on the available information, you're going to end up in a bad spot. It's pretty clear that UW-M is not a very healthy institution at the moment, and I think it's fair to state that in public. I also think it's fair for potential students to be able to make decisions based on information like this before they find themselves experiencing the dysfunction from within. To suggest that only enrolled students can make knowledgeable judgement calls is a pretty bizarre statement, IMO. PS I was taught to read secondary sources critically, and to be equally critical of primary sources. Not sure what sort of research you're conducting, but it seems sort of off-base.

Usually, though sometimes it depends on the timespan. However, it's far from ideal to have a mentor/advisor who is no longer present, both physically and in terms of institutional commitment. In some cases students have to work with new advisors (a former advisor might remain on the committee, but no longer as the primary advisor) which can understandably throw the process off. There's also the fact that you're losing a departmental ally; you might not have someone to push for you in terms of additional funding, teaching positions, etc. It's just generally not a position you want to be in. There are other issues too, specifically in terms of academic environment. As prominent faculty leave, events like conferences, colloquia, and guest lectures will become less common (and less stimulating). You'll see the quality of the academic conversation on campus decline, because a lot of the faculty who had influence will no longer be there to bring other prominent scholars to campus. I also imagine there are scholars who are much less likely to participate in events at UW-Madison, because they're aware of the political climate. Eventually, the academic culture on campus will sorta die off, and it will take decades to build up again.

To chime in—there are scholars working right now whose work could be seen as having structuralist aspects. People like Caroline Levine, Alex Woloch, Sandra Macpherson, even Franco Moretti, all seem to have their own moments of structuralism. I've also noticed what seems to be a renewed interest in Propp and Greimas, which I find intriguing. In this vein, echo449 is completely right about the necessity of engaging with contemporary work. Even though there's a lot of divergent work falling under the umbrella term of New Formalism, you might find some of it to resonate with your interests in structuralism. Likewise, if your thesis is on Medieval lit, Julie Orlemanski at UChicago is doing really stellar stuff that you might want to look at. Specifically, her article "Scales of Reading" in Exemplaria is really wonderful, and covers a lot of ground in terms of glossing different approaches.

I feel like there should be some sort of warning on every English department website, that says "you can't specialize in Theory." You need some sort of historical & geographical specialization; that's how you professionalize. When you prepare for your qualifying exams, they will be rooted in a specific area, even if you choose subfields in Feminist Theory or Marxism, etc. All programs, regardless of theoretical intensity or involvement, will have students ground their work in a concrete area/archive. "Theory" is not a concentration—it's a massive body of work, with an incredible range of approaches. Saying you want to specialize in it is akin to saying you want to specialize in Literature. Moreover, it won't get you a job; departments very rarely conduct job searches for "theorists." That doesn't mean they don't hire or employ them, but that the scholars in question were almost always hired as Romanticists, or Modernists, or 20th Century Americanists (etc). My advice would be to find an area you want to work in, write your thesis on something relevant to it, and then apply with the intent of focusing on said area. You might end up with something like "American Modernism, Psychoanalysis, Marxism, and Affect" as a rough outline of your interests. However, I can't stress enough that Theory is not, not, not, not enough.