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poliscar

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Everything posted by poliscar

  1. Achille Mbembe's On the Postcolony is the best book in the area. Other than that, as a somewhat brief list: Fanon — everything, anything Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism C.L.R. James' The Black Jacobins Spivak — I think there's a collection/reader of essays now, but "Can the Subaltern Speak?" is the most common starting point. Bhabha, The Location of Culture the Subaltern Studies group (Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Ranajit Guha, etc) — Provincializing Europe and The Nation and Its Fragments are probably the most commonly read books Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Decolonizing the Mind Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic + Against Race Balibar & Wallerstein's Race, Class, and Nation Denise Ferreira da Silva, Toward a Global Idea of Race Bill Ashcroft's anthology, The Empire Writes Back Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study If you google there are also a few lists available, like http://www.english.ucla.edu/part-i-reading-lists/146-postcolonial-studies-department-reading-list and https://english.unm.edu/resources/documents/post-colonial.pdf. Lurking syllabi is also helpful.
  2. Not to sound rude, but if you're going into a doctoral program you should probably have a good idea already of what you want to/need to read. I'm sure you applied with a series of interests that is more specific than American lit; try following them for reading specific to your research interests. You could also check different departments for General and Qualifying exam lists. I know that Northwestern, Columbia, and Stanford post them online. Additionally, some are available through the Berkeley English graduate site. That being said, I do think that if you don't have any idea as to what you might need or want to read come September, you're going to have trouble. Graduate sites post all sorts of course syllabi and reading lists—they fact that you haven't found them yet suggests that you didn't research programs properly.
  3. Judith Butler is teaching at Berkeley again this coming fall semester, so who knows if she'll be teaching at Columbia anytime soon.
  4. Ah this frustrates me so much. If it's coming from the institution as a whole I would worried about going to Princeton in general.
  5. I would go to Harvard. Princeton has been really spotty recently in terms of hires/tenure outside of modern/contemporary art. They are hiring a new Early Modern scholar this year, but there have been a number of failed searches in the past in similar fields. Moreover if http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/Art_History_2011-2012 is to be believed, the last faculty member to receive tenure in a pre-modern/early modern field was Patricia Fortini Brown in 1989. If Christopher Heuer was denied tenure, it merely reflects an ongoing pattern, and in my opinion, clear departmental disfunction. Heuer is a really fantastic scholar, and would have been tenured in almost any other department. The department also lost Nino Zchomelidse to Johns Hopkins this year. I don't know if she was denied tenure, or if she chose to leave the department for another reason, but I think that in either case her departure should raise warning flags. Realistically, unless you are very interested in a specific advisor at Princeton, I would avoid the department. Their track record with pre-modern/early modern junior faculty is not reassuring, and doesn't bode well for those who want to work in those areas. Harvard has excellent faculty, excellent resources, and doesn't betray any signs of the turbulence present at Princeton.
  6. Someone make an MAPH forum and we can be done with all of this bullshit. It's ironic that you're complaining about "tired evangelization" Papelpicado, because there's been a non-stop MAPH circle-jerk on these forums for months now. It's obnoxious, and more often than not, quite tone-deaf. As a side-note, it floors me that the following sentence was written by a graduate student; I would have been embarrassed to have written it in high school. I'd also like to say that "Now I scoff at me" is grammatically incorrect. What you are trying to say is "Now I scoff at myself." Perhaps your atrocious writing played a part in your rejections from PhD programs...
  7. I'd wait it out for a bit if you still care about Berkeley, but realistically, Cornell is probably a much safer choice. From what I've heard the average time-to-degree at Berkeley has ballooned over the past few years or so, and with funding less than stable that could be problematic. Besides, if you think that Cornell is the one, it probably is. I wouldn't take any of your other acceptances over it unless you managed to visit and have some sort of life-changing experience at one of them
  8. It just means they're not identifying the specific school. Think of it as a mark of prestige, similar to people listing "Ivy" instead of an institution.
  9. It depends on the program, but generally I would consider it the ability to pass a reading exam (not necessarily difficult). Chicago is a bit of a different story, since they only ask for one language, but almost all other top programs ask for two (or fluency in one at Berkeley). In that case they're more likely to accept someone with the ability to complete at least one of those exams ASAP, rather than having to study two languages. It also depends on your field. If you're applying as a Medievalist or Early Modernist you're damn well going to have to develop a working knowledge of Latin at some point, plus at least another language. Americanists are probably the safest, but even then, with the so-called "Transnational Turn" the field is becoming more and more linguistically diverse.
  10. I'm surprised that no one has mentioned languages yet. Applying for PhD programs without reading knowledge of at least one foreign language puts you at a huge disadvantage.
  11. Idealism is wonderful and all, but even if you are lucky enough to score a tenure-track job after you complete your degree, you're still looking at shouldering that debt for a long time. Look at http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/English_Lit_Salaries_2012-13 to see what academia entails; in most cases, you're looking at $40-50,000 a year. Education is wonderful, but investing over $100,000 to spend 7-8 years of your life working towards a degree that will only potentially net you one of these jobs is a pretty tenuous financial decision. At the risk of sounding like an asshole, you say that you didn't understand what grad school was, but at the moment I don't think you really realize what comes after grad school. What are you planning on doing in the case that you don't get a tenure track job? For example: https://chronicle.com/article/Should-Working-Class-People/131283/ . I have to say that you and Swagato, as much as you both have benefited from the MAPH program, should probably stop talking for a bit. The level of insistence is quite aggressive, and is coming off as rude. I'm very glad that you have both had excellent experiences, but that is no excuse for the continuous advertisement of the MAPH program. No one is denying that it is an excellent program, with ample opportunities for its graduates, but for some it is simply not financially feasible. At a point where even Princeton graduates are having trouble acquiring tenture track positions, going into a job search with $100,000 in debt is really not something most people want to consider.
  12. First of all, I think that Art History is much better than Philosophy—Philosophy departments can still quite often be very tied in to the old boys-club model of academia. The 70s, like you mention, was a critical period for feminist Art History, but it was also a very conflicted period. There was a lot of resistance to social and theoretical histories of art, much of which were feminist. A lot of that was due to resistance from old formalist and connoisseurship based scholars. That's not to say that formalism/connoisseurship = sexism, but there was a lot of questioning of the validity of feminist approaches (and Marxist, psychoanalytic, structuralist, etc) as worthwhile grounds for research. Other than that, I would say you should definitely try to contact female students in your departments of interest.
  13. Greek is your best bet if you have no experience with the language, especially since you intend to focus on Greek art. Keep in mind that you're looking at Ancient Greek, as opposed to Modern Greek.
  14. Languages. Languages. Languages. Languages. Languages. Languages. Languages. Languages. If you want to work with ancient art (and you'll have to narrow it down—you're not going to be able to work on Greek, Roman, AND Egyptian art) you'll need to be highly competent in multiple languages. At this point in time, you're looking at a PhD if you're serious about working in the area. All significant collections of ancient art are held by large institutions, and these institutions hire curators with doctorates. For Greek or Roman art, you're going to have to prove reading knowledge of Greek, Latin, and German, as well as the likely addition of either French or Italian. If you choose to work with Egyptian art, you're looking at even more extensive language study. Chicago and Johns Hopkin's PhD programs in Egyptology requires students to study modern languages as well as the historically specific Egyptian scripts. Chicago even suggests that students "acquire a reading knowledge of French and German before beginning the study of Egyptian." Of course, internships are great, but the fields you are interested in are deeply embedded in philological work. Moreover, a great portion of scholarship—both current and otherwise—is produced in languages other than English. Unless you're already fluent in the necessary languages (which is possible, I have no idea) I would look into language study. An internship really won't help you if you're trying to enter one of the necessary programs with 1-2 languages.
  15. I don't think that there's a fixed answer here, since it really depends on circumstance. I think that both positions, a.e. an M.A. puts you in better stead, or that top programs prefer students fresh out of a BA, are mainly based on hearsay. What I will say is that a thesis-based MA isn't useful because of the end-product, since you're going to have to cut it down to a chapter if you intend to use it as a writing sample. What is helpful is the process; writing a thesis in an MA program (and, to a lesser extent, in a BA program) helps you better understand your own intellectual goals, as well as how they are positioned within current debates. That being said, you don't have to write a thesis to have clear intellectual goals, or an understanding of the field. A lot of MA programs will have a proseminar to help you develop that knowledge. Alongside that, most MA programs will also do more in the way of facilitating/supporting applications to PhD programs, unlike BA programs, where a continuation of studies into a doctorate generally isn't considered to be a norm. With all of that said, I think it really comes down to the individual. If you think that you have a clear enough understanding of your own academic interests, and that you can field a strong application, then apply to PhD programs. If you're not sure about that, think about an MA. Moreover, if you look at coursework based masters programs and they don't seem as though they'd help you develop your own interests, it's probably better to look at thesis based programs. Also, as always, think about money. In some cases a thesis based MA will cost you more money, or extend beyond the time that a course based program would. Moreover, MA programs are often quite expensive, and are generally seen as cash grabs. That isn't to say that they won't help you progress to a good PhD program, but that you most likely won't be eligible for funding. In the case that the MA program in question isn't terminal, you may also find yourself competing with PhD students for attention (also hearsay, but it's worth contacting current MA students at the programs in question). Based on this, it's best to research MA programs beforehand, so as to prevent yourself from going deeply into debt (never worth it), or from finding yourself in a program in which you're not taken seriously or given attention.
  16. As far as I know a program won't let you defer acceptance to a PhD program, especially not to accept an offer from an MA program. That's more or less like telling them that they're a second choice.
  17. Hi, You probably won't find what you're looking for here—most of are looking at academia, as opposed to creative writing. You'd be better off posting in the Creative Writing forum here http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/80-literary/ . Cheers
  18. "What a novel about Pavlovian boners can tell us about alternative social conditions." Leave it a thesis about Pynchon to sound the most ridiculous; so much love for Pynchon...
  19. This isn't true. Unless you're applying to a Comp Lit. program that specifically asks for spoken fluency graduate programs will not care about your ability to converse in a language. Not to say that one should falsify language capabilities, but in almost every case here we're talking about reading proficiency. Schools will test your language abilities through a written translation exam, and not through any sort of spoken trial.
  20. Should I throw Intellectual/Cultural History in there to satisfy you? Glad you created an account to post that.
  21. Out of curiosity then, is the North American Art Since 1945 search the replacement search for Darby English, or is that an additional search? They're not trying to hire a tenured replacement outside of an open search are they?
  22. And the primary/secondary source division, for what it's worth, is a fairly recent distinction that comes out of the Rankean tradition. Not to discount the separation entirely, but know that it comes from an empiricist tradition, and that there's space to move within it now.
  23. This becomes sort of murky because of your topic. If you're tracing a genealogy of the influence of Bronze Age writing on concepts of civilization/writing, then I would say it is entirely fair to use sources from a range of periods as primary texts. Say, for example, you find a Medieval source on writing—I would absolutely count that as a primary source. Also anything else from the period, be it vase painting or other textual sources, is fair game as a primary source. Really though, I think that the division between primary/secondary texts isn't always that helpful. I have had cases where I have used sources as both primary and as secondary sources. For example, you could read a 19th century text that addresses Bronze Age writing as a secondary source (for its use of older documents), as well as a primary source (for new historiographic conclusions / as a representation of 19th century conceptions of writing). In the end, it really comes down to how you intend to read or contextualize the source.
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