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...

Is your boyfriend also applying for literature/philosophy? In either case, I would go about the process in reverse: rather than starting with a list of "big" cities and constructing your applications around that, I would draw up a list of the schools to which each of you are interested in applying, cross-check your lists for geographic overlap, and work from there. I say this because 1) many of the best schools for you (and/or your boyfriend) may be in cities other than New York or Boston, so I think you shouldn't arbitrarily narrow your focus to those places, and 2) I personally think departmental "fit" should be your first and foremost consideration, above other factors such as ranking and location. I mean, U.S. PhD programs are insanely competitive; you'll have a better chance applying to a program which genuinely excites you (and which is thus more likely to be excited by your work) than arbitrarily applying to a program just because it's in New York. I think it is possible to pursue the kind of work that interests you in either a philosophy or a comp lit program. For philosophy, I think you'll want to stick with the programs that have a heavy continental focus (as you may know, there tends to be--still--a big divide between continental and analytic programs). You can find lists of such programs all over the internet but off the top of my head I'd list Penn State, Stony Brook, Villanova, Emory, Northwestern, Loyola, Depaul, Duquesne, etc. And Chicago. Maybe Boston College too. Doubtless other people can add some more. In terms of comp lit, I'd say you have a good list here based on what people have already named. As to which one to choose (philosophy or literature) I think there are three primary questions: 1) in which discipline would you like to end up teaching?; 2) in which are you more likely to be accepted as a PhD candidate?; and 3) which degree will open up more doors? Only you can really answer the first question, but I have some things for you to think about in regards to the latter two: 1.) For better or worse, most of the strong continental philosophy programs don't have a lot of name recognition outside of continental circles. These schools do regularly hire from one-another (e.g. someone from Stony Brook going to Villanova) but it's very unlikely that a Stony Brook philosophy grad will get a job at, say, Princeton. In other words, a degree from a continental philosophy program will set you up to get a job at another continental philosophy program--which is great!--but also limiting. On the other hand, a degree from a *good* comp lit department may open up more doors... while closing others. As we all know (and endlessly discuss) the job market for humanities degrees is pretty terrible, but I get the sense that things are a little less appalling in philosophy than in literature. On the other hand, a comp lit degree may hold value in wider arenas. What I mean by this: a Duke Literature degree will mean something in narrow comp lit circles, but it will also hold value to a broader audience, purely by virtue of the "Duke" moniker. I.e., the Duke label really might get you a job at Princeton, where the Stony Brook would not. (I think it's also more likely to have real name-recognition on the foreign market--and, as I notice you're from Argentina, that might be a concern.) In other words, because a lot of the good comp lit programs (Berkeley, Duke, U Penn, etc) happen to be at Ivies or other prestigious universities, they may give you a bit more cultural clout. This will not be true of the Phil programs to which you'd be applying. (You do not want to apply to Duke Philosophy--e.g.--with your stated interests; trust me on this.) 2.) I think you also have to think how you will look to an admissions committee. This is complex. On the one hand, if your B.A. degree is in philosophy, that would seem to set you up quite naturally for philosophy programs. On the other hand, I think you have to look closely at your status as an international applicant. Baldly put, comparative literature programs have--by their very nature--a vested interest in attracting foreign applicants/native speakers of other languages, whereas philosophy programs do not (or not as much). I'm only familiar with the composition of a few continental philosophy cohorts but those I know tend to be virtually all American--whereas most Comp Lit programs are quite international. What I'm really saying is that, if you end up applying to comp lit, you should seriously think about marketing yourself as a Latin Americanist, because that will give you a serious edge. Like, I would say that I was interested in investigating philosophy and museum culture, but also throw in a line about wanting to investigate the way that museums have been part of the colonial project in Latin America and how you're interested in investigating the way that archives have been used to classify--and pacify--the native "other." And I would say this even if it's not really something that interests you. That might sound cynical, or it might just be strategic essentialism. But being a (presumably) native Spanish speaker working on continental philosophy and museum culture in the context of Latin America not only gives you an edge over your competitors, it also positions you as working on something at once trendy and unusual. (I mean, how many post-colonialists are deeply engaging with Kant? Well, aside from Spivak.) It sounds hot. 3.) Related to point two: while many French programs are dwindling--and German programs are dying--Spanish and Latin American studies departments are doing really well! I think a comp lit degree from a good university with a focus on aesthetics/philosophy/Latin America would virtually set you up to get a job teaching in a Spanish department, particularly because such programs tend to prioritize native speaker hires. If I were in your shoes, this is the route I would take: not to sell out your philosophical interests but to find a way to make them work/fit inside a degree field where you'd have a good chance of securing a TT position. Don't get me wrong: I hate making our intellectual interests conform to the job market (I'm a Marxist, for chrissake). But this is also the "actually existing" world that we live and love in, and in which we all have to find a job. I'd say it's really a question of translating your innate passions/interests into the existing structures, which can be a frustrating process but also a creative one. Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

Also, and re: apres coup's earlier comment, word on the street is that Butler is leaving (has left?) Berkeley for greener pastures. That said, she's not really working on your area(s) of interest so I don't think that should affect your decision.

Hi surlefil, I work primarily on Marxism and philosophical aesthetics (did my M.A. thesis on Adorno & Benjamin, am also very interested in Schiller, Schlegel, Bloch, Lukacs, etc etc) and I've done Lit degrees all the way through--B.A., M.A. and now PhD--so yes, it is certainly possible. That said, it very much depends on where you go, and also how you want to position yourself on the job market afterwards. (In other words, if you want to teach in a philosophy department than you should probably go for a Phil. PhD, if you want to teach philosophy from within a lit department, go with lit; I think there are pros and cons to each of these.) As other commenters have noted, "rhetoric and composition" programs are really not where you want to be going. (The focus in composition programs is on, well, composition.) Berkeley Rhetoric is the exception and I think you should definitely look into/apply there, but that's not a "rhetoric" program in the normal sense of the word. It's a very interdisciplinary department with a strong emphasis on critical theory and continental philosophy, which sounds like it would work quite well for you. Other programs with a similar focus: Duke Literature, Stanford's Modern Thought and Literature, Minnesota's Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society... these are all, not unrelatedly, programs to which I applied. I think those three (plus Berkeley) are really the most obvious fits, though I could probably come up with some others: U Penn, Cornell, and *maybe* Johns Hopkins. Basically, you want to be looking at Comp Lit programs that have an explicitly theoretical focus, as opposed to the more traditional comparatist programs that you'll find at Yale, Harvard, etc etc. In terms of specific people: it would be helpful to know more specifically what you're interested in working on. "Aesthetic philosophy" is still quite a broad category and, depending on focus, could point you different ways; if you can give us some more precision, I may be able to come up with some advice that's more specific.

Just declined U Penn (comp lit) and Minnesota (CSDS) in favor of Duke literature. Not sure if that will help anyone out at this point, but best of luck to those still waiting!

Have you considered applying to US comparative literature programs? As a native Chinese speaker, you could work on both English and Chinese literature, and your language skills would be a big plus. Also, comp lit programs tend to get less applicants than English departments, so the odds might seem a little less daunting. In terms of scores: I honestly don't think it matters very much. As many people here have commented, scores don't really get you in; you need to have decent scores to be considered (which you do) but beyond that the really important pieces are your statement of purpose, letters of recommendation and your writing sample--*especially* your writing sample. I think admission will be based less on the GRE or the prestige of your home institution than on a sense that you are a strong scholar and a good "fit" for the department, and that will come through in your writing sample more than anywhere else.

Posthuman/Animal Studies debate currently happening over on the if any of you philosophy types feel like jumping in. I'm pretty much all Frankfurt School critical theory and Hegelian Marxism so I don't (really) have a dog in the fight, but maybe some of you could add some nuance to the discussion.

At the risk of repeating myself: aesthetics can be (*is*) something more than dry, formal, irrelevant and a-political metrical scansion. If this is what people think "aesthetics" means than we're obviously failing to do/teach it properly. For an example of how people do excellent political/economic analysis while still taking the characteristics of art/aesthetics seriously, see: Fredric Jameson, Raymond Williams, Herbert Marcuse, Antonio Gramsci, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, György Lukács, and Ernst Bloch. To name a few. Sorry, I'm just really frustrated at the terms of this debate, and the (false) opposition between "caring about art" and "being politically engaged." I think it's total bollocks. I also think it's important to examine art's own internal categories and forms, for the same reason that a musicologist should look at rhythm, tonality, etc. That doesn't mean we look *only* at these things, and it doesn't mean "aesthetics" can be walled off from politics in some pure realm of the ether... no more than any other phenomenon can be taken in isolation. What it means is that we look at how art interacts with politics as art--or, again, that we take art seriously. Bertolt Brecht was obviously an incredibly politically engaged artist; he was also incredibly engaged with aesthetics, with the politics of form and the form of politics. Same thing with Walter Benjamin: look at his (wonderful) analysis of how the workings of commodification can be discerned in the most formal stylistic elements of Baudelaire, or for that matter at his analysis of the Trauerspiel. This is great stuff, with tremendous political resonance; it is also phenomenally good aesthetics. In short: art is a praxis, with its own immanent laws and lines of development. This matters.

Amen.

Art is absolutely a culturally and historically produced/mediated concept, and its self-definition shifts across time and space. (E.g. what "art" meant in the middle ages is different from what it means now; what it means to an Amazonian tribe is different from what it means in the MoMa.) I'm in no way trying to deny that (and think it would be absurd to try to do so). The question is: can things that are culturally and historically produced still possess truth value? In my (vaguely Hegelian) usage of the term "truth," I'd say yes. Money is a historically and culturally produced phenomenon that still possesses a kind of "truth," if we take that to mean established norms and communally-binding laws. Same thing for, say, democracy: it doesn't exist "out there," as some timeless and universal essence, but I still think we can form some common notion of what it means (to us). So I guess that's how I feel about art: yes, if we weren't human beings living in a certain part of a certain planet at a certain point in time, "art" and "beauty" would have different meanings. But I think that's true of everything. IMHO: "value-nihilism" is the (historically-produced) reification of the empirical scientific method as the sole source of truth claims; i.e., we can say that it is "true" that the earth revolves around the sun, but concepts like "good" and "evil"--whether in a political, ethical or religious context--no longer have truth-value, but are instead relegated to the realm of "belief." (This is of course a huge shift from the medieval/scholastic model--which, to be clear, is not one I am advocating!) My personal response would be two-fold: first, insofar as the scientific method is itself historically produced by and filtered through human consciousness, I think we need to be skeptical of scientific claims to a "truth" radically different (or more true) than any other. Second, that we should be equally skeptical of the idea that (e.g.) the "true" political good cannot be ascertained, but is a matter of personal preference. Among other things, I think that notion is wonderfully complicit with a latently capitalist ideology: relegating the political/social/environmental good to the realms of personal taste precludes any effective means to establish a course of action, leaving politics the secretarial role of supervising our individual pursuit of personal preference/taste. (Not to get too Marxist all up in here.) I took it as such! And responded in kind. On an unrelated note: will you be attending the prospective students' thing at Minnesota this coming week? I also got into CSDS, and would love to continue this chat in person.

I think that's been a common perception of many on these threads: either 1) we have the cannon/aesthetics without politics, or 2) we have politics and throw away aesthetics. Speaking for myself, I'm trying (perhaps selfishly) to eke out a space where both are tenable. So there's really two political sub-camps: pro- and anti-aesthetics. I think this has to do with different kinds of politics. Mine comes out of the (German) tradition of critical theory and Hegelian Marxism, the other out of the (French) tradition of structuralism and post-structuralism. I'd talk more about that divide, but that's another "culture war" entirely... Right. During my master's, I had to take a class that was taught in the art history department, and I was frankly shocked at the professors' uncritical usage of aesthetic categories. For example, we were talking about the "sublime" in Burke, and applying it as if it were some timeless, universally valid concept. When I pointed out that Burke constructs his sublime on unabashedly racist and sexist categories (e.g. men are sublime, women merely beautiful) they looked at me in total incomprehension. It was infuriating. Awesome! I'd love to talk about that more. Where will you end up?