Vincenzo Salvatore

Nowadays non-Spanish languages are a little bit underepresented (here as in universities). Ok, first thing you have to consider is that online biographies are not exhaustive at all, lol. Last year David offered an undergraduate course called "Indochina and the Power of Loss", you can find here the synopsis: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/cg/cg_detail.aspx?content=1920FRENCH350001&termArray=f_13_1960,w_13_1920,f_12_1910,w_12_1870,f_11_1860 As I told you, they are longing for good students with innovative projects (trust me, I am in the Graduate Committee of the RLL department ), so they would love your request of informations. Basically, write him the same thing you wrote here. Or even better, you can write a mail to Peggy McCracken, she is the Director of Graduate Studies and a professor of French: she will solve every doubt you have. You can also tell her you spoke with me, for what it is worth... but, really, just write them.

UMich has 45.000 students. You get pretty much every type on the planet. There are proably more non-WASP than everywhere else in the Midwest (and my guess is that there are more non-WASP than WASP, period). As an European white male, I can say I was pretty surprised by the social and ethnic variety of the university. And obviously this diversity is even higher among graduate students.

Why are you looking for an MA? Are you not sure about pursuing a PhD-track right after your BA? All MA in Italian are going to disappear because they are pretty much useless, and only PhD will remain. If you want to go for Italian on its own, I mean if you already know that you want to teach Italian, you should consider a strong PhD program in Italian right now: University of Michigan, Ohio State, UCLA, Berkeley, all the Ivies, Stanford, Chicago, Duke, Chaper Hill... All them are keen to accept students right from their BA (well, some more than other at least). In any case I suggest you to apply to a place which offers at least both MA and PhD, because the program would be way stronger. Obviously, if that university has Department of Italian (like the Ivies) it is even better. CompLit is a completely different matter: here you could consider an MA to improve your skills, maybe learning a third language and then apply to a top school. But consider that it will be really difficult for a non native speaker to get a job in Italian studies, so you will be probably be a teacher of English or CompLit with interests in Italian literature and something else. About your selections, you have to consider that most of those universities you named do not offer funded MA (or they do not fund it anymore, because of budget cut). It is absolutely meaningless to pursue an MA in humanities without funding. Above all, it depends also on what your interests are. Do you have an idea about what would you like to study? Which period or field? The choice is connected also e mainly to the place where you can pursue your interests with a good professor.

Ann Arbor has a great program in French Studies where you could pursue your French/Asian interest with Prof. David Caron. They do not require GRE anymore, offer full funding to every accepted student and are really pushing their search for interdisciplinary and innovative projects. I strongly suggest you to contact him.

Received. Unluckily, I was not admitted, but perhaps it is better, because next year I will be able to try for the funded application within the Graduate School.

Thank you, and do not be sorry. It is actually a relief, because I have already decides where to go and it was my top choice.

What about Notre Dame Literature?

And I really thank you for it!

Quoting from Wikipedia.de, "Komparatistik: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komparatistik#Institute_f.C3.BCr_Komparatistik_in_Deutschland This is the website of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft: http://www.dgavl.de/DGAVL_Portrait.htm And this article commented Spivak's and Eagleton's provocations from a German point of view: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/comparative_critical_studies/v003/3.1lubrich.html Quoting from Note 45:

Mmm interesting. Why you say so? I mean, I really want to know it (I am Italian, so I am not so familiar with "minor" American cities like Minneapolis).

I got admitted into a UMN Program too (Comp Lit though). Well, surely UMN is not Caltech or Berkeley, nevertheless it is always in the top 50 (especially in Engineer-related fields) and since 2001 it is in Greenes' list of Public Ivy just like Berkeley. Whereas IMHO Caltech is a unique case (being private and so small and elitist), Berkeley is more comparable with UMN. I think UMN is an excellent state university, obviously less competitive and bigger than Berkeley, with a complete different human and social environment. What concerns me it is more its financial status (ie the possibility to support graduate students with scholarship instead of only TA), but I think it is also a matter of departments. Surely Engineer has not the same problems of Comp Lit ahahahaha.

As I said in the other topic, I received the admission notification from University of Minnesota (Program in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society). So I assume that the Program in Comparative Literatures made the offers too.

Comp Lit: Notre Dame, WashU and Minnesota. Then Italian Studies. Michigan and Duke (both already accepted me). I am waiting only for Notre Dame response, but the deadline was today, so I suppose they will need at least a couple of weeks to get it over with all the applications.

I have just applied too. I will start my PhD in September, so I think that SCT would be a perfect preparation for it. Does anybody know how much time takes the review process? When they usually contact you if you are in?