Drol Noryb
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Posts posted by Drol Noryb
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For the broad overview, I found "How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies" by Robert Dale Parker really helpful. Also the Norton Anthology of criticism. The trick to getting both of these cheaply is to buy the first edition (which are both almost the same thing).
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Study your Shakespeare. There wasn't much Milton.
Funny how random the subject test can be. As I recall Shakespeare didn't even show up in mine (but Milton seemed to be a favorite for close-reading/grammar questions because his syntax can be weird). The Romantics seemed to show up more than any other group.
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I had the same situation: non-prestigious SLAC for my MA, and I compensated by choosing a very specific cross-section of interests and applying to programs that were strong in one or both of those fields. I definitely do not have a huge number of options, but one of the schools I got into is the #1 school in the country for ecocriticism, so I cannot complain about that.
Though I applied straight from a BA, it looks like we had the same strategy and similar results. And if I had ordered my list according to schools that I honestly felt I fit most easily, it would have been the three I got into. I bet my SOP reflected that in ways I might not have even been thinking about.
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I'm pretty happy with where I ended up, but I did have to compensate for coming from a non-prestigious, small liberal arts college (though I did well there). There's been some talk here as to how general or focused the SOP should be. I think in my situation it was helpful to pitch a really specific research project, because it gave me a chance in the SOP to show engagement with the field without looking heavy-handed or capriciously throwing out names.
Also, for what it's worth, I only sent the GRE Subject Test (which was all right—north of 600 but not stellar) to one school and got in there. I don't know whether it would have made a difference to send it out more widely, but it might have.
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I made it official: I'm going to CUNY Graduate Center.
- ProfLorax, TripWillis, HHEoS and 2 others
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Which isn't to say I wont call something I think is great "great." I love your Prousts, your Chaucers and even (with some degree of diiculty) your Miltons. However, I'm skeptical as to whether any culturally relevant work can be done on analyzing the aesthetics of these works in themselves. At least, relevant outside of the subcultures and disciplines related specifically to their study. Of course, maybe, for some, continuing to keep English "alive" means reaffirming the things that make the discipline insular and inaccessible to all but the most devoted nerds (that is, we, the posters here, and our ilk), but I don't think so. If we're doing this for the sake of keeping our field pure, or just doing it because we think these subjects are fun and awesome, fine. If we're doing this because we actually want to achieve an effect outside of the field, then we need to look at how texts function outside of the field!
Totally. Also, there are times when socio-historical contexts of canonical works are glossed over because of a narrow aesthetic focus or an appeal to "universality." (Ulysses, I'm looking at you.) But I'm with Bennett: it is a false opposition to have to choose between aesthetics and politics, and the two are linked.
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Bennett: I think we're pretty much in agreement (and draw from a lot of the same influences, too!).
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60k per semester + room and board.
I heard they throw in a puppy.
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This sort of attitude is so pernicious. Making value judgments isn't a bad thing; for example, if we agree on anything, it's that close reading is good, whereas its opposite-- careless, absent-minded reading-- is bad. We can make judgments about literary value as well without it being totally arbitrary or merely a function of our race, class, ideology, etc. Surely Shakespeare is more worth reading in a literary context than, say, the menu board at Taco Bell?
I definitely would not say that we can't make aesthetic judgments ie. "Paradise Lost is a major aesthetic achievement." I just think the question isn't very interesting. I'd much rather ask, "How does Paradise Lost function as a piece of culture?"--for good or ill. Aesthetics are a part of that for sure, but it's not for the purpose of declaring some superior "canon" of work. Even so, if I make the aesthetic judgment that reality TV is trash (which I do), I think there still could be enormous value to a critical study of reality TV (as there could be for the pop culture of any era). Do canonical works suffer if we consider these things? I don't really think so...
And if we're talking about teaching literature, pushing the canon is often a vestige of the imperial origin of the English canon which I mentioned in an earlier post. Whether we're talking about imperial India or teaching lit today, I don't think the purpose of English education is to make students more "cultured," but to build a critical literacy for use with many different kinds of texts.
/end profession.
If Paradise Lost can't be deemed superior to anything else other than in the context of empire and ideological control, we've lost the plot.
But aesthetic decisions are often tied to political and ideological realities, including empire. Something like Culture and Imperialism by Said makes this point while still explicitly not dismissing the aesthetic value of the texts he analyzes. I certainly wouldn't call this second-rate social science.
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I'm an aesthetic traditionalist: there is such a thing as good and bad literature; there are shitty works by dead white European males and shitty works by women, minorities, LGBT, and so on. Obviously, we'll never make a perfect, rigid canon, but that doesn't mean we can't devise a more fluid body of great works. We should be teaching "the best that has been thought and said," not analyzing reality TV. Sure, there might be minimal value in using different theoretical lens on reality TV, but that comes from the theoretical lenses themselves; when we're teaching great literature, there is value in the theoretical lenses you apply as well as in the works themselves.
I definitely respect this position, because I'm definitely not saying that works thought to be inside the canon shouldn't be read. I am saying, though, that when someone says the "traditional canon," I don't know quite what they mean, because canons have always been evolving and serving specific political moments. But I don't think the canon is only a question of representation, but also of accuracy. If one of the purposes of literary study is to examine how culture is produced and circulated globally (at least I think it is), then I think national canons are at best misleading in how they suggests isolated national traditions that clash with each other (rather than highlighting their interconnectedness).
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I'm going to explain my vote, because I could have conceivably answered in a few different ways, and it depends on which "canon" we're talking about. I think the emerging "world literature" canon is totally problematic in how it promises a "world" audience but ends up reinforcing a Western perspective of history. For me, the idea of a canon is ahistorical, though I find the histories of how canons are constructed really interesting.
This is why I ended up answering #4: if we're talking about an English canon, I find it really significant that the development of a canon and the education thereof was in origin a management tool for colonizing India.
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Are you kidding me? Bryn Mawr has no English graduate program. The USNWR Rankings really ARE bullshit.
I think the reasoning was that they are so cutting edge that they don't even EXIST yet.
- asleepawake and lisajay
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It just seems that for (apparently) a rhet/comp person, that the rhetoric of his posts is what's entirely lacking.
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asleepawake, grad students in the program like me, some even love me. They told me so. I've asked why. They told me it's because I'm honest.
This person's name wasn't by chance "anotheranotheremoryenglishphd"?
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I doubt it! I bought a used copy of Indian Killer wherein the first 100 or so pages were filled with comments like "What the fuck is this bitch up to!?" and "OH HELL NO HE DID NOT!" Sadly, this brilliant annotator didn't seem to finish the novel.
I love awkward margin notes. I remember a copy of Walden from high school that had the insightful note "light=opposite of dark."
- lisajay and asleepawake
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I have that book on loan from the library. I'll let you know what I think when (if?) I read it.
When you get around to it, definitely let me know your thoughts.
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I know I'm entering a minefield here, but I want to hear more about this. What's wrong with Bauerlein?
Not much, except I did try to read his Dumbest Generation a few years ago and was wholly unimpressed.
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So, waiting-for-NYU folks, I was also offered the the NYU MA this morning.
I'll be turning it down for sure. For what it's worth, I got into an unfunded MA at NYU last year and actually considered going, but the debt was too daunting and visiting showed too plainly that there is a lack of institutional support for NYU's MA students.
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So, what I hear you saying is that you are from the future, and this comp/rhet professor who is also an ASL translator for Obama is actually me in six years. Cool. Very cool.
(No, seriously. That professor is living the dream! The Dream, I tell you!)
That's basically the gist of it.
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I have already contacted the DGS's at a few of the schools to ask if I could study American Sign Language as my second language. Given my interest in disability studies, it seems like the best fit! So far, the schools have been supportive. I imagine you'll just need DGS approval once you're in, and if you can show that it relates to your interest, you'll most likely have faculty support in many programs.
A comp/rhet professor whom I knew as an undergrad went this route with lots of success (and actually ended up signing for a Pres. Obama visit).
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There's also a summer language prgogram at Middlebury, which is supposed to be pretty intensive and immersive: http://www.middlebury.edu/ls
Wow, that looks great and possibly more intensive than when I actually went to Lisbon (where English was so widely spoken that it was actually hard for someone obviously American like me to strike up a conversation in Portuguese).
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Has anyone worked on languages outside of the normally-approved French, German, Italian, Spanish, etc.? For instance, something like a less common Romance language (ie. Portuguese) or a non-western language. I'm not aware of anywhere offering reading-intensive classes of the sort. I'd be interested to hear how anyone working on languages outside of the "norm" did it.
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In the same position! I've been debating whether I should go ahead and call... I'll be in NY in a few days to visit CUNY, and if anything funky is going on with NYU, I'd rather know before/while I'm there.
I have a feeling that the MA conjecture might be accurate, though, or that our rejections might be hanging in the balance--Duke's process took several days, for example.
For what it's worth, I'm in the same situation with NYU. Last year, I applied for an MA program there and heard back at around this time, so their hesitation could very well be because of MA consideration.
I'm going to the CUNY open house too. I would definitely like for NYU to be settled by then.
CUNY - Rhetoric and Composition
in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
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I'm not 100% certain, but I believe that the answer is yes, they require the subject test.