m-ttl

Given that anime is a medium of film, yes. Manga, however, would more accurately belong to Visual Rhetoric or Art History. But we're not being serious, obviously.

Despite the fact that I 100% believe this is a rather hilarious troll, I've sat in an Art History course specifically on Japanese Anime/Manga and Pop culture starting from the Ukiyo-e period to the 21st century. I can't believe this got earnest responses. I mean really this is charming, but SERIOUS (TONGUE-IN-CHEEK) ANSWER FOR OBVIOUS TROLL: I'm actually doing a project on early Manga as we speak so I can positively say that yes, this is an actual field of study within Art History, Visual Culture Studies, Film Studies, and English/Visual Rhetoric. There are a few journals that would have relevant work that you could find scholars from. I'm absolutely hoping by Critical Race studies in Dragon Ball you mean critically analyzing the impact of Journey to the West (a Chinese tale) on a Japanese work. With all due respect, I don't really think this (Yu-Gi-Oh!) is the place you should attempt to apply Queer Theory to Japanese art works. There is no Otaku Rights Movement What is more interesting than "should anime characters be considered people" is the social stigma against those who do nutty things like marry characters and/or the visual theory behind why White Westerners often believe Japanese anime characters are White and not Japanese. Digimon Fanfic has nothing to do with the Obama administration but the adaption of Obama into kawaii aesthetics has been interesting. Romaji? Really? ハハハ。。。馬鹿外人です。

I bought my recommenders small potted succulent plants for their desks. They came in beautifully colored ceramic pots and it was only $20 for three of them in a set. Cheap, beautiful, and easy to care for. Etsy has them among listings here or here. Marimos in aquatic terrariums can also be beautiful and relatively well priced. Turns out keeping plants or greenery on your desk can up your productivity and relieve stress. I considered baking cookies (I make excellent cookies) but don't know as much about everyone's diets.

Congrats!!!!!!

Many "Art schools" in America do not also have Art History programs. I say many because for example, my comp. University puts art historians in the Art/Design college, but this is not the same as a Fine Arts School. For example the PAFA (Penn Academy of the Fine Arts) is a BFA/MFA program which wouldn't confer an MA in Art History. But SAIC (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) does have an MA in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism. An Art Institute would also be an institution of higher education and would (as far as I know) sponsor a student visa. I don't think it would be impossible, but you would obviously need to be an excellent student with a high GPA, experience, and work on conference presentations/publications or other such CV boosters. It could be helpful to have gallery or museum experience, yes. And yes, there are some places which would let you combine Arts Administration and Art History (SAIC again, for example) in a double MA. Arts Admin would be great for your business background.

No. Your degree will never leave you -- I say this knowing how hard my mother struggled after putting my father's career first all of my childhood and then having no degree or recent work experience when they divorced after 17 years (when I was 15). Marriages can break up, people can separate, etc. But once a degree is earned, you'll almost never have it taken from you. That's substantially more guaranteed and more permanent. Not only that if you think this is a once in a lifetime chance, it is -- you shouldn't deny yourself the ability to: leave, support yourself, or be happy/do what you love outside an SO. If your relationship is meant to be, you'll work it out. If not, you have something much more likely to stick with you.

You guys already have classes and schedules and book lists?? I'm jealous! I'm going to be able to enroll in classes around the week of the 20th, and have a phone call about which ones I'll be taking soon, but I'm also moving across the country, and can't imagine buying more books I'd have to move with me first. I have, however, found dictionaries I can use for my secondary language for my language exams. Regular dictionaries are easy enough to obtain, but finding a dictionary specifically defining art/culture terms is a tad bit harder, unfortunately.

It sounds like a great deal. Definitely go for it.

Friendly advice from the art historian: there are tons of great books out there that can give you a little extra boost on the "reading pictures" critically. Ways of Seeing by John Berger is a really short effective read for that (it's also a documentary you can find on youtube), but I've also browsed "How to Read World History in Art" and I think that could also be helpful. It's more of a laymen's book and I found it at barnes & noble's, but it was interesting from what I recall. Captions are very important, and incredibly helpful as sources of further information/citations. The best captions explain not only what you're looking at, but where it is found/came from/other non-immediate context. I also suggest that you should definitely read the index or appendix of your books, as well as the bibliographies. I'm still in my UG final semester but have had about 5 seminars with graduate students and I'm always amazed when they complain the databases don't give them everything and research is hard -- but then never back track on the bibliographies of their monographs! If I'm just doing my own research or trying to find something "specific" I look for keywords in the index/appendix, and mark the pages they show up on with post-its, similar to reading chapters based on "reasons why the book was assigned". If I own the book I also highlight and annotate key phrases/points in chapters or paragraphs. That's especially helpful for when I need to recall a citation for something or I'm bringing the article/monograph in for seminar discussion.

I had a DGS contact me to say I'd been accepted and gave me a package offer. When I told them a little while later I was turning it down, they gave me a rejection letter! I'd already said no, but I didn't expect that one! And then I've gotten the email/snail mail combo rejection (Emory). Had an email attachment rejection and then the next day I got a letter in my mail with the SAME two line "No thanks" letter in hard copy. What a waste of paper, honestly.

I committed basically when they called me. My department also felt really right in terms of what I wanted and I'm thrilled to be going.

There are a few art historians who cling to the notion of a unfunded MA - and it has been successful for a select group of people who go to brand name unfunded MAs/"cash cows" for amazing PhD programs. That said, while some people have decided their debt is worth it to them, and have gotten into PhD programs, it's simply an incredibly risky bet.You have no way of guaranteeing that A.) you'll get into a PhD at the end or B.) you'll even want to get a PhD at the end. I had two factors I considered in declining even considering such programs: 1.) I have about $42,000 in debt from undergrad already and 2.) I have a low-income background with no additional support coming in. If you have absolutely no other debts, it might maybe, have a small chance of benefitting you. But might maybe are not odds I liked. I applied to funded MAs and PhDs. I wouldn't take an unfunded offer, and I can't really recommend you do it. Not to mention $70k in living expenses is downright obscene, unless I'm misunderstanding something. I recommend you go for funded MAs in art history, which is the field you're interested in anyways. Think Williams, Tulane, UT Austin, etc. When someone in material sciences and physics says: "I wouldn't take the debt even though I could make it all back" that to me says you definitely won't make it back right away in art history. It's just not a particularly practical debt decision.

CASI? Playing academic politics (assuring faculty, etc) isn't the same thing as having the faculty who can support you in your given areas of interest. That said, I think fit was the most important thing to me. My biggest mistake was listening to an assistant professor I didn't know well who suggested extra schools not on the basis of fit. I had a list of strong fitting schools that was about 4 schools long, and got talked into applying to way more that I don't think were "perfect fits". At the end of the day, the programs I thought were best fit were programs I got into. I based it off of places where I could find one or more POIs who did research in the same areas I was interested in. Looking back at the SOP I used for the school I'm enrolling in I addressed fit based on a few things: My time period of focus My geographical focus(es) (I have transcultural considerations to make) The specific things I study within that time/geographical period My methodological goals/philosophies sub-focuses/minor subject area Additional faculty who I thought would support my research beyond a single POI/advisor (e.g. the rest of my department-based committee) departmental support in my career goals (which in my case is not academia/becoming a professor) I laid out very explicitly what I was interested in, what I wanted to do, who I hoped to work with/learn under, etc. I don't see this as being a clone stamp of the professors I'm choosing to work with - I don't do 100% of any one thing they do, but I also don't see how or why I would be considered troublesome unless I didn't actually fit with the department's scholars in terms of what I want to study. ETA: obviously I'm an art historian, but believe there are plenty of similarities in what we consider when talking about specialties/fit.

I had a similar issue. Got the formal mail letter about two weeks after the PDF offer (a week or so after the phone call offer) and I only got the online change of status today!! It was annoying but I think overall if you're in contact with the department you should be fine.

Personally I would go with Georgetown since it has a concentration in the exact thing you want to do. Seems to me like that would be the biggest pull in choosing any graduate program if finances are of no concern.

I have a classmate who applied but she hasn't said anything about it yet.

It's a combination of things, for me: I really really love research and my field, I'm getting paid for it, and my intended career path usually requires it in the area of specialty I want to enter into. Being a scholar with practical experience is a huge boost to my career. I'm an Art Historian on a curatorial track, so it's research I love + work I love. Since a PhD is often required for curatorial jobs nowadays, and I'm getting paid for mine, I do not feel I am taking a big risk that is uncalculated. Honestly, the connections I will gain this way and the abilities I will have will make me a competitive applicant and I can always switch fields later.

....you're completely ignoring the fact that I gave a laundry list of other potential opportunities for learning about their subject of interest and getting experience. I'm in Art History and Museum studies. My entire life right now is about working for non-profits, so I'm not unaware of doing things not simply for monetary gain. But if you're talking about the average BA student, of course a solid career development class would be beneficial. I attribute some of my own success to the fact that I was able to confer with family who are in business and had MBAs and could explain to me how to best interview, present myself, give advice on writing cover letters, resumes, CVs, etc and so on. It's no different from going to a non-professional academic and getting advice on research, graduate school, etc. Both are incredibly helpful. It's silly to say "there's no long term benefits" because there absolutely are. It's like telling me there's no long-term benefits to writing an excellent statement of purpose. Of course there is - it can make or break your graduate application in the same way a cover letter can make or break your spot in the hiring process. I have been hired for jobs because of these skills in presenting what I have learned to others. Teaching someone about their subject and teaching them about how to get a job or career are not mutually exclusive. There's no reason why this wouldn't extend to graduate school, and also no reason why it should be demanded of every teaching academic. But if your advisor has no interest in your career after you have a degree in hand, how helpful are they really?

Then the problem is not in the education, the instruction, or the preparation, but in the jobs market and economy itself. Which, duh, we're in an economic depression. It's absolutely beneficial to teach people how to get jobs and obtain experience (and I was talking about a very specific individual, but there's no reason Career development cannot be a required course?), that doesn't fix the economy, obviously. You're talking about different problems. One is students believe they are unprepared to know how to obtain jobs and get hired post-grad. The other is the economy sucks and there aren't that many jobs available to obtain (even if you did learn how and have experience). The third is: there are more PhDs than jobs in Academia -- meaning we should fix how we approach funneling our PhDs into careers that go beyond academe.

Haha. I've always wondered how U of Phoenix fares in graduate income wise. I've long suspected the MBA I know who graduated from there making six figures is likely an outlier. I also think that that the answer to the problem here is not to deplete the education or classes given to students - humanities or otherwise, but to perhaps alter the general education requirements to include any of the following: experiential learning internships fieldwork Professional Development: Career exploration, resume-building, CV writing, business writing 101 (some combination thereof) Co-op terms a la Northeastern: "Students who participate in co-op alternate semesters of academic study with six-month terms of full-time employment in positions related to their academic or career interests. Students have the option of completing up to two co-ops over a four-year plan, or up to three co-ops over five years. While on co-op, students gain up to 18 months of professional or research experience related to their academic interests with any of more than 2,500 employers across the United States and in 80 countries around the world." Research/Lab initiatives Service-learning If you go through college believing a piece of paper is going to get you a job guaranteed, you are wrong. This is plain and simple. However, there is absolutely no need to create more corporate-like universities. This may surprise some people, but the answer to a failing non-profit is not to make it a for-profit institution, or try and make it act like one. There can be success in the model itself if you do it right. So what is the problem here? 1.) Student goes to college, gets degree, has no experience. Student does not get hired. Student blames school or teachers. Professors cannot make you get experience. Universities may alter their requirements to ensure opportunities to get experience, or to teach basic professional skills, but the actual work and effort of getting experience relies on the student. Who is at fault here? Both parties have likely made errors: The school: should raise awareness of the campus career center and potentially require students to learn basic professional skills and have some sort of "practical" application aspect to their major. The student: For failing to go to the career center, for not gaining practical experience, for not asking professors how that experience is obtained or bothering to find out what can be done with their major, for not checking out a book running along the lines of: "What can you do with a major in English?" which at $.01 used on Amazon, you honestly would have no excuse ($.41 for Sociology). (Similarly: You majored in What?, Smart Moves for Liberal Arts Grads, I'm an English Major, Now what?, Careers in Sociology, Great Jobs in Sociology, or just about any career guide in any library or bookstore commonly found next to the business section), for not simply googling "careers in ____ major" or for going straight to the National Sources available (Their booklet is also a dollar, you could easily only spend about $5 with shipping for a booklet and a book from amazon), for simply going four years without asking a single damn soul "how do you get a job? how can I get a job? what are my options after I graduate?" 2.) People believe these failings are based on the subject being studied or any one faculty member (I've sat through two different career prep presentations put on by multiple professors, been to multiple career fairs some of which were catered only to humanities students, and was required to do two internships for my not so elite public school, not to mention one of my intro courses is entirely comprised of speakers in my field discussing how to get jobs and how they got there) and not the student, or the presentation of the subject. 2.) the problem with the PhD in general is that there needs to be an acceptance of non-academic uses of the degree.

It's not the questioning of whether or not humanities has a downside that bothers us, it's the idea that when "Does a PhD have a downside?" comes up, STEM specialists LEAP to say: "Yes, if you're in the humanities, they're useless." C'mon. It's throwing one group under the bus rather forcefully and that is what is so annoying. I think you'll find the majority of us understand the stakes, and people being surprised is an outlier. Not only that but let's be fair -- there are plenty of things you can do outside of academia with a humanities PhD -- they're just not always structured options like STEM has. (I have no intentions to be a professor, and am fine with that). But honestly, looking at my own options, it's fairly easy to say: Wow, five years of funded education! No debt, and training for a job I want! If that doesn't work out, guess I'll have to do something else. Five years of funding means I'm going to be paying off quite a bit of my loans while they're still in deferral. So it's a gamble, but the risks I take are "I don't get hired in my field" which would be tripled if I didn't have a PhD to begin with. What's frustrating is not discussing the risks, but discussing them as if we're the only ones experiencing or suffering a problem, or taking risks. The thread is about PhDs in general not "Take a shot at every humanities degree you can, everyone else is doing great." What's frustrating is things like the President singling out my degree, and people on this thread telling me my degree is useless and I'm somehow jealous of other people because I do something "meaningless" and not valuable when these are true: In 2010, 6.9% of Art History majors and 10.6% of manufacturing workers were unemployed. Median earnings were about the same. [x] The average salary of an art history major is $50,000 yr http:// bit.ly/kwueXS Just based on that, a median BA salary for an Art Historian is higher than those in English, Anthropology, Theology, Philosophy, and Linguistics and 91% of us in the workforce are employed. For contrast: the lowest tier of engineers are the Biological engineers who have a median of $55,000. Our median is equal to advertising and PR, communications, Communication Technologies. It's also higher than molecular biology, and physiology, botany, ecology, general agriculture and animal sciences, equal to zoology and biology. The humanities offer some surprises — and from my point of view, pleasant ones. US History majors do quite well: $57,000. General history, art history and criticism majors do almost as well at $50,000. Majors in “intercultural and international studies” do worse at $44,000; even Latin majors do better than that. There is no reason I can think of where, when a discussion about the value of a PhD begins, only the humanities are criticized and my major gets called out as useless or unemployable. Are there fundamental problems with the academia pipeline and the PhD process? Yes. Are they limited only to humanities? No.

Personally, being a current museum studies major (BA, though): I would go for the cheaper option, given the average income of museum workers is generally not that high. San Francisco has amazing museums (and I absolutely loved it when I visited), and while GW is a top program with more museums than you can shake a stick at, you really only need A.) one museum per internship you do and B.) your degree. In other words, while there's more available in DC, I don't think you'd lose too much in SF. I know someone in SF's program and she said it's great (especially in Education areas). That said, SF is expensive to live in as well, so I would work out some rough cost of living expenses. Still, in our field, minimizing your debt is really important, and San Francisco has a wealth of excellent museums and arts programs, and a very vibrant community. If you network well (ie, make your connections, keep in touch, meet people who know other museum folks), the "name brand" matters a little bit less. I would wholeheartedly take the SFSU option if I thought that was more financially feasible. DC is a great museums city, and everyone knows it, but there are other excellent options within the US. I have a friend who went to UF for museum studies and really, her getting hired depended more on her networking than anything else. It did take some time, and she did work other jobs, but that's just the field. Still, I think you would still benefit quite a bit from SF.

I've heard HYPS (to include Stanford) but an Ivy is only the eight schools in the conference, and nothing else. If you say Ivy, it is understood to mean a real Ivy League school. It's called the Ivy League because it is a league, of eight schools - Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Pennsylvania. Anything else is simply an elite school because it's not part of the Ivy league. It would be downright nonsensical to term Cambridge or Oxford as an "ivy league" because 1.) the Ivy League is 8 American schools and 2.) both were founded prior to the Ivies. Dartmouth is not virtually unknown. It is a well established, highly elite and respected member of the Ivy league. By virtue of being an Ivy, it's well known. But the Ivies don't change in Graduate school, and that's why you'll see people discuss the Ivies and the Top Ten in their field, as well as elite schools/top tier in general. I would wager to say that all eight of the Ivies *are* an excellent undergraduate education -- certainly they're not playing Tier 1 across the board in sports. However, the Ivies don't necessarily overlap with the best research for graduates in every field. But calling a good school like MIT an Ivy doesn't make it part of the Ivy league.