dr. t

"Union president Fred Hahn says teaching assistants get paid $15,000 a year — $8,000 below the poverty line — and they must pay tuition on top of that." ....Isn't the UofT grad stipend $15,000? Or is that what he's saying?

Does anyone have any thoughts about how to get (used) foreign-language books? I'm currently trying to get a copy of Ernst Kantorowicz's 1931 edition of Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite, but I've only been able to locate it on amazon.de, and they won't ship to the US or to my friend in GB.

Truer than you know.

Do Americanists have their own equivalent of Kzoo and Leeds? 3,000 nerds running around for a week?

A three ring circus in Atlanta? I'm doing Kalamazoo and Leeds already this year, so I think I'll keep my sanity.

It could, but in that case I'd be the only one to report a TAship! So weird!

I agree, but I also have a formal letter from the DGS awaiting my signature, so I'm confused.

It's weird, I have my acceptance letter for OSU in hand, but I haven't seen any others (with TA funding and not university fellow) on the results board. Maybe I'm super special?

It's really quite annoying. They're the last one on my list.

You have NYU though! I just keep remembering the story of a recent PhD from the English department here. He is smart enough and a dedicated enough worker that he finished a PhD in English on Anglo-Saxon in 5 years. I mean, damn. And, out of the five schools he applied to, he was only accepted to one: Harvard. Shit's random, yo.

This isn't entirely fair, as there's one big thing we can do with this information: choose a school. Once April 15th passes, it's best not to think about this for the next 5 to 8 years, as you rightly say, but before that date - and for anyone browsing this board looking to apply next year - the topic remains quite relevant. Yes, the job market may undergo a radical shift in the next decade, but then again it may not.

It's discomforting, right? Thanks for the replies, everyone!

I finally got my OSU offer letter this morning, and the contrast between it and the one I got for Brown is interesting. The Brown letter was very straightforward: Stipend total, summer award, health insurance, tuition waiver, research funds. The OSU letter stated my stipend as a monthly figure (so you have to multiply to get the total) and did not quantify anything else. In the hivemind's collective experience, which letter is more typical?

Man, Toronto is late.

Just FYI, some universities have blanket policies prohibiting professors from dating students who attend that university, full stop.

I have a friend who will be sitting on some of his papers for the next 15 to 20 years so they don't sink his tenure chances because of nationalist sentiment. What you describe certainly exists (in some fields more than others), but it's not really what we've been talking about.

Idem.

Or, you don't have a very good grasp on 20th century historiography. On which point I ask the question once again: Since when is social history not 'traditional' history?

There's no controversy, just a lot of people who don't think you know what you're on about.

... Funny title for a thread, then.

This may come as a surprise, but approximately 50% of historical persons were women. Also, please note that UoT is generally considered a conservative institution, particularly with respect to Church history. This may come as a surprise, but the vast majority of historical persons were not white. Also, I understand the adjectival modifier "all but" to mean "they totally exist, but if I acknowledge this, I don't have anything to be outraged about." Once again: since when is social history a new phenomenon? You are aware it has been a powerhouse since the 1920s, right? Since you've been accepted into a PhD program, this would be patently false.

I never said anything of the sort, which reinforces the idea that you've created your own reality where you are justified and the world is unfair. You have once again conflated existence with exclusivity.

As a thought exercise, I went through the schools I applied to: UCBerkely: 2 political/institutional historians Chicago: 1 intellectual, 1 social, 1 cultural historian Toronto: 1 intellectual/institutional, 1 political/institutional historian OSU: 1 intellectual/institutional historian Brown: 1 intellectual, 1 social historian Harvard: 1 economic/political, 1 social historian

I'm really not going to get into the debate about why academia doesn't run on a business model, but it doesn't, and that's a good thing. Do you have a serious example? Doubtful. It's not a zero sum game. And have you looked at the job market recently? Offensive foul: moving the goalposts; 15 yard penalty. Yeah, some programs are going to have a social focus. If you don't want to do social history, you should apply to other programs. Repeat offensive foul: moving the goalposts; second offense, 20 yard penalty. Many departments have one social historian and one intellectual/economic/cultural/whatever historian in a given field. "Social history" is a fantastically big tent. So yeah, that means it's pretty easy to do social history. This doesn't mean it's to the detriment of doing other work. Also, since when is social history a new methodology? Have you read any German or French (or English) scholarship from the 20th century? Oh, and I thought we weren't talking about methodology.

Actually, no, I can't resist. Seratim: Uh, only if they're paying tuition. Apparently you haven't read very broadly in medieval history after all. It might interest you to know that I study high medieval monasticism, with a particular interest in women. Not only do I not have any book about female monasticism in 14th century England on my shelf, I am not even aware that one exists. Yes, specificity is what historians do. Butterfield's Whig Interpretation of History is a pretty important book. You should read it. This doesn't preclude the mapping of more general trends, of course, as innumerable recent works demonstrate. I have a feeling this is more what you told yourself they said than what they actually said. This statement has no relation to reality.