Bennett

I can't tell you too much about the UVA specifically but I did a research Master's (literature) at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and am now pursuing a Phd in Literature at Duke. Other people from my program have gone on to Phds at Columbia (Latin American and Comp Lit), Johns Hopkins (German), and Berkeley Rhetoric. Admittedly, we were (IMHO) a particularly stellar year of the program, but the point is that people from Dutch master's programs do go on to do PhD work in the States, and at good places. Beyond that, the Netherlands is awesome and, if you can swing it financially (I relied on tuition scholarships), you will have an absolutely amazing time there. Also, is Mieke Bal still teaching at the UVA? She is definitely a figure who's well known in literature and art history circles in the States. As is Rosi Braidotti over at Utrecht, if you have an interest in Deleuze and/or feminist studies. Most of the Dutch programs have an agreement that allows you to take classes at the other major schools, so I'd also ask about that and would recommend looking at courses and faculty in other places (Utrecht, Leiden). A lot of this depends on your specific interests though, so it might help for you to describe your academic interests with more specificity. For example, if you're interested in colonial/post-colonial lit, learning Dutch can actually give you a leg up, because there's a lot of stuff in Dutch on the East Indies which has never been translated, and very few scholars who work on it. Beyond that the American academia has its own myopias and it can be interesting to see what the current debates are in the European academy, especially if you entertain any interest in eventually teaching outside of North America.

Finish the MA.

Hey all, I'm a first-year in Duke Lit. The interview period is a hellish process so I thought I'd break it down for y'all's convenience: 1. They'll do 20 Skype interviews. I think all of those should have happened by now, unless yesterday's were cancelled due to snow. 2. Of those 20, they will invite a subset--typically 8--down here for a campus visit. (If last year's any indication, this will be on ridiculously short notice. I think this year they're planning for Valentine's day weekend.) You'll get a chance to check out the program and they'll also do in-person interviews, which in my experience are much less awful than the Skype version. 3. Of those 8, they will extend offers to 6. Like I said, it's an awful process, with much more hoops than any of the other schools where I was admitted. That said, I chose Duke and am very happy here. Other things to note: 1. If you get invited down here, you're basically in. They'll extend offers to 6/8 but we typically lose at least one or two of those to other programs. So don't stress out too much about the campus visit. 2. If you *don't* get invited down here, there's still a chance. Last year we ended up accepting one person who was not invited for a campus visit. That said, that offer didn't come through until early April because they have to wait to hear what the first folks do. If you're one of those 12, you should definitely explore other options, but don't rule out the possibility of a last-minute offer. 3. If you feel like you bombed the Skype interview, that's probably a good sign. I was convinced I'd given the absolute worst interview in the history of humankind, and I was still asked to come down here, and then offered a spot. Feel free to PM if you have other questions, and good luck in all your applications!

670 is a good score! Keep in mind that you're competing only against other potential English/Literature candidates (who else would take the test?) as opposed to in the regular GRE where you're up against a broader pool. So you're essentially in the 87th percentile of those English majors considering graduate study—a good place to be!

Hi BunnyWantsAPhD. It might be helpful to have some idea of your research interests in order to advise you on these various schools/programs.

Minnesota's Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society/Comp Lit program is a really phenomenal, interdisciplinary and theory-centered programs, in many ways analogous to Berkeley Rhetoric or Duke Lit, but certainly less competitive. If you're looking for some "safer schools" I would definitely recommend them.

I'm in Duke Lit. I actually thing the above comment largely holds—literature tends to be more theory-focused, English more concretely tied to periodization. Funding is actually not that different. Feel free to PM if you want more details.

I think you have a good list going here, and I second the recommendations for Berkeley Rhetoric and Duke Lit. I'll also put in a plug for Minnesota's Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society program; while not as highly ranked as the other two, they're doing some really innovate and interdisciplinary work, and sound like a good fit for your interests. (Frankly, the rankings don't reflect the actuality: I think Minnesota's doing some of the very best work out there.) All three of those programs have fairly minimal language requirements, and I imagine you'd be able to pass them with your current language skills and/or with a very minimal amount of work. Basically, when it comes to Comp Lit, there are really two kinds of programs: those that do a traditional comparatist approach (with heavy emphasis on languages), and those which are more theoretical and a great deal harder to pin down—sort of the intersection of continental philosophy, cultural studies and aesthetic theory. It sounds like you should steer away from the first type and towards the latter sort, which is also what I did when applying to comp lit programs.

Repentwalpurgis: Comp lit jobs are indeed few and far between, but comp lit programs can be a very good option. In effect, comp lit departments have recognized that the job market is shifting back to narrowly-defined national literatures, and have responded by requiring their students to prepare a narrower teaching focus in a national literature or in a related, coherent field (i.e. gender studies, film studies, etc). Indeed, a lot of comp lit programs have *higher* placement records than their national literature equivalents; for example U Penn's comp lit program has placed more people in (good!) German programs than has their actual German department. In other words, it's very possible to come out of a comp lit program as a highly marketable candidate for a particular national literature; applying to comp lit will allow you to defer that decision for a little bit and also to bring in an interdisciplinary element while maintaining a coherent focus. So, despite your interdiction, I'd recommend that you look into comp lit! (Another option is to look into schools like Columbia, where you apply into a nat'l literature but indicate a "comparative" track; at UPenn e.g. it is the opposite: you apply to the Comp. Lit program and then choose a national "specialization." Two ways of getting at the same thing.)

Hey I work on Marxism and aesthetics and I'm just starting my first year at Duke (Literature, not English); I think this would be a really good program for your interests and should probably be closer to the top of your list. I also second the recommendation for Minnesota's Comp Lit/Cultural studies department, which is one of the few programs out there doing cutting-edge work with an explicitly Marxian focus. Feel free to PM me if you want more details.

Where exactly did you do your B.A.? Sounds just like Marlboro, where I did mine.

I speak (fluent) French and (decent) Dutch, but will need German for the research topics I'm interested in working on... Have been taking a community college course this semester, and plan to continue on during my PhD program this coming Fall--then hopefully spend some of next summer in Germany itself. My hope is that I'll be able to pursue research in the original by the time I'm in my second year, but German is hard. And Hegel (e.g.) is hard even in English!

I second everyone here. I think the PhD-vs-MFA decision is mostly about what you want to end up teaching: if you want to teach creative writing then the MFA's the right choice; if you want to teach (medieval) literature than I'd go for the PhD. (In general creative writing PhDs prepare you for creative writing teaching positions, not academic ones.) That said, there's nothing to prevent you from pursuing an MFA and then a PhD--plenty of my friends have done so--except, of course, for time. The only exception, as others have noted, is Cornell. Their joint degree is unique in combining a creative-writing MFA with a standard academic dissertation and PhD in English literature. I don't know whether their graduates end up teaching creative writing or academic analysis (you should check) but it's certainly an option worth looking into. That said, you have to be accepted separately by both programs--and they take only a handful of joint applicants--so it's extremely competitive. If you go the MFA route, my only advice is to go where the money is. I agree with an earlier poster that you don't need an MFA in order to get published, and would add that plenty of MFA graduates don't get published anyway. When the odds are that long, the last thing you want to do is go into debt for your degree.

To add a few pragmatic notes to this discussion: 1. Have you considered ADD? I have a friend who struggled endlessly with his B.A. thesis--felt unfocused and unable to concentrate, unhappy with the results--and then he got on Ritalin and banged out the whole thing in a month. 2. Beyond the biochemical (and cue discussions on the mind/body problematic) I think that many intelligent people struggle a lot with intellectual production. Yes, you're a senior, but in addition to this being your last year you're also being asked to produce a project--your thesis--which will in some way be the definitive résumé of your years in academia and a statement of your thinking and your work. That can be horrible. There is a gap between what you want to achieve and what you're actually capable of achieving. (Creative writers struggle with this--their grand vision of a novel reduced to a few scraps of paper--but academics do as well.) To some extent, that limitation is inherent to the form: one can simply never write as much or as exhaustively as one would want, the scope's inevitably reduced, etc. Also, for ambitious intellectual types--and I sincerely hope you are one--there's a gap between what you want to "know"--and to be able to talk about authoritatively--and the actual amount of knowledge you've been able to absorb in a mere four years. Should this last thing be a source of concern? It depends. On one hand, the struggle will never go away: the formal limitations are, as I said, inherent, and there will *always* be more things you wish you'd read, or re-read, or had understood more fully. In that sense, anxiety about production and perfection and intellectual competence is a lifelong problem. On the other hand, you really *will* have read more things 5+ years from now than is currently the case, you *will* be a more competent scholar, etc. If this kind of anxiety is the source of your problem, the question is not how to get rid of it but how to work with it productively. I think it helps to view papers and thesis projects not as some ultimate summation of your work and thought, but rather as explorative and speculative and even tentative projects--a reflection of where you are right now, thinking through things in process, rather than as a final end-point. In other words, the secret to academia seems to me to be an acceptance of imperfection. Edit: For what it's worth: that same friend, before he got on Ritalin, was incapable of starting on a chapter and kept continually re-writing the first page. He was struggling to express his thoughts and felt like he would never be able to get them out. So I sent him an e-mail and asked what his chapter was about. The result? He e-mailed me back with a flawless explanation that ran to 10 pages. The question being: was his problem ADD or just the crippling effect of the blank page, which he escaped when writing to me, informally, in an e-mail? F*ck if I know. (That gets at mind/body and mind/brain dynamics, which isn't my field.) Tentatively, I'd guess both. Also, while this whole "I have a friend" thing smells suspicious, I really am speaking about someone else... though I've also struggled with all these things.

Off-hand the only person I can think of who's written on Musil and isn't in a German department is Jean-Michel Rabaté over at U Penn. (And he'd definitely working on comparative modernism in a very broad sense... and is great.) Otherwise, there's plenty of German scholars who you'd have access to from within a comp lit department; I mean, there's nothing saying you can't enroll in comp lit and then work closely with people in the various national literature departments, and for that matter a lot of comp lit programs (like Penn's) are just amalgams of the various national literatures...