Roquentin

Yeah, I've done this too (shared a room with my supervisor at a conference). The only tricky thing was that I wanted to fine tune my paper a bit before giving it, and I didn't want him to know that I wasn't 100% ready to go. Other than that, it went fine - not a big deal at all.

Ok, that makes sense. Thank you! (I'd never heard of CGU before this thread, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the $32k/year fee. That's more than the tuition fees for my entire 6 year doctorate!)

(my apologies in advance for going a bit off topic) Canadian here. I have to ask. This $200k being tossed around - is this a realistic sum? When the thread first began, I assumed that this was a rhetorical figure. Would this actually be a reasonable assessment of the average cost of an unfunded PhD in English in the U.S. (recognizing of course that funding usually covers tuition, that different schools charge different fees, that few people, if any, I hope, will take on this much debt for their degree, and etc.)?

Too funny. Reminds me of this classic CHE thread: http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,32865.0.html

Does anyone know if the Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society is defunct? They've always had an annual conference in the fall (mid October, usually), but this year they didn't put out a cfp. Their website has been dead since last year. Very strange.

I'm mainly familiar with the larger external grants available to Canadian students (and I don't know if you're Canadian. If you were, you'd probably already know about these grants - our departments tend to push them pretty hard). Smaller international, short-term research grants are widely advertised (and highly competitive). Many (most? all?) are offered by field of study. So you might find a grant available to cover research in your particular field. Also, many research libraries offer grants for visiting scholars. If your work is the least bit archival, if specific libraries have collections that interest you, and (this is the big "if") if you're inclined to travel to conduct research, then you might apply for the funding that those libraries offer. I've seen lots of grants that simply have a "grad student" category for applicants (i.e. technically, you need not be a PhD student to apply). Good luck!

What kind of grants are you interested in, specifically? Would short-term research grants fit the bill, or are you looking for multi-year grants (i.e. external funding to support the completion of a degree)?

Which Renaissance? Carolingian?

Different programs have different residency requirements. In my department, for example, I believe that the minimum residency period is two years. I'd recommend that you look into the requirements set by the programs that interest you. Also consider that there are drawbacks involved in living away from one's home institution.

While I vaguely recall a few bits of decent, long-buried commentary/advice in this thread, overall it reads as a heated contest to have the last word without saying anything new. It’s just a really fantastic snapshot of grad student/academic futility. Kudos, all!

To reiterate with an example, I’ll be presenting a paper this summer in London at the International Conference of Historical Geographers. It’s in July, and CFPs for it started to come out about a year prior to that. I submitted an abstract to the organizers of a panel in late August. They accepted my paper and, in turn, proposed their panel, which was itself accepted in late November. That kind of timeline isn’t out of the ordinary (e.g. MLA 2016 CFPs have already been circulating for a few months), so I’d suggest that your best bet for the time being would be to consider conferences that will take place next fall or winter. Smaller, earlier local talks might be an option too, but, in general, things like that wind down in the spring and pick up again in the fall. It’s the fabled summertime lull!

Ha, great gif! I enjoyed the first season of Broad City when it was shiny and new, but this last season . . . skewed a bit young and safe for my tastes. Reminds me too much of Workaholics. Too hammy, too little substance. Not funny. Not memorable. Girls can be even more insufferable and pretentious, but I always thought it had more potential. But this last season . . . there's not much growth there either.

Is anyone else interested in HBO's Girls? I'm just finishing the most recent season. Hannah's grad school sojourn was far too brief, I thought. Overall, I haven't cared much for the season and might not stick around for the next one. The show's become a bit too Broad City-ish for me, if that makes sense.

Do your own homework.

One approach is to start with the top ranked journal and then work your way down the list (note: can be very time consuming). Different journals will have different specifications about what they require beyond your paper itself. If by cover note you mean your initial correspondence with the journal's editor, then I'd recommend keeping things short and simple. It's usually enough to say "Please find attached an article submission, (title), for (journal title). Thank you for your consideration." If the journal asks for other stuff (abstract, keywords, bio, etc.), I'll send that in another attachment.

Personal drive trumps all, but supervision is another factor to consider, especially when the dissertation comes into play. Too rigorous or too relaxed = problems.

English PhD abd here. I expect that things will come to make more sense as you prepare for and attend your first couple conferences. Yes, there are tons of conferences to choose from, and, no, it’s not terribly difficult to write convincing proposals. But the workload, stress, and expense of these things can be quite high. There are benefits too, certainly, but over time you might find that the cons outweigh the pros. Most of my colleagues attend one or two every year; there are always better things to focus on, like, in your case, applications. Combining conferences with family holidays sounds like a nice plan, though. Enjoy!

I notice that your profile says that you will be applying to PhD programs in Fall 2015. Not to pry, but I’ve never heard of anyone applying for academic work so early in the game (potentially without even a master’s degree in hand). Perhaps that limited your prospects? When do most folks plan to hit the market? Am I right in thinking that somewhere shortly (~6 months) before the diss. defense is typical?

I spend more time on my dissertation than anything else, so although I love teaching - love it - I've voted for research. My dissertation is a degree requirement. Teaching is not.

Oh Ira Glass. What a wonderful backlash that tiny little throwaway comment drew. No, Shakespeare doesn’t suck (duh). I sometimes think, though, that the ubiquity of his plays is responsible in part for the obscurity of other early modern plays (i.e. ones that people haven’t seen and read a billion times before). The same could be said of his sonnets. Nevertheless, the Shakespeare industry keeps rolling along. This obviously benefits early modern scholarship in various ways, but there are drawbacks as well. I’ll humbly suggest that, with respect to both Shakespeare scholarship and the entertainment value of his work, there exists a point of diminishing returns. Perhaps the demands placed on that corpus are too great. Changing subjects, natural philosophy is a huge umbrella. As a place to start, I’d recommend the early modern science volume of The Cambridge History of Science (2006). It really is no more than a place to start, but it offers a nice, broad overview. Its authors tend not to spend much time with the English, but there are any number of other books that do. On English science, you might enjoy The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution, by Deborah Harkness (2007). It’s essentially a series of case studies, so there are gaps, but it’s very approachable and the general premise is quite good.

Early modernist here. Kind of. My dissertation fits the bill, but many of my pubs and other projects do not. When I get a chance to wear my early modernist hat, I study certain areas of natural philosophy through the lens of textual scholarship. I don’t really do much with early modern fiction, at least not at the moment (aside from teaching it). Will I be chastised for saying that I don’t give a damn about Shakespeare?

I’m still not sure about this “hesitancy.” I just don’t see it. Maybe I’ve marked too many undergraduate “compare and contrast” essays – the bread and butter of introductory courses – over the past few years to be impartial… But clarity in your SOP is more important than long-winded explanations here. Your SOP will be reviewed by faculty with decades of experience studying and teaching plays alongside other kinds of literature. Indicating to these folks that you have a solid grasp of the discipline and that you have something significant to contribute is really all that matters. Best of luck!

At the risk of taking things off course, I’ll just say that I don’t trust the validity of the dichotomy you’re attempting to establish. I’m sure there is potential in researching pedagogical approaches to drama in literary studies, but I don’t think that defining these approaches, from the outset, in pejorative terms is especially productive or accurate. Perhaps your perspective of the discipline is biased due to your theatre background? Undergraduates who major in English are certainly required to engage with a range of literary forms, including drama, and while some courses will focus exclusively on specific forms (courses on Victorian novels or Modernist poetry, say, or Renaissance drama, for that matter), this does not constitute a “sectioning off” of drama any more than it does novels or poetry. Introductory survey courses, for example, which are ideally intended to convey the foundations of English studies to novices, necessarily cover a range of periods, genres, and forms. The basic goal of an English BA is directly related to this inclusivity; the degree supports the development of a wide-ranging appreciation of literature. So I’m a bit puzzled by your approach to the discipline, and I don’t have any specific programs to recommend because I’d expect any professor to be accustomed to teaching a range of literary forms. Any English department should be able to accommodate a graduate student focused on drama. I suppose that my general advice, then, would be to simply seek out supervisors who likewise focus mainly on drama.

Well, submitting your paper to a top Milton journal will ensure that your work is read and critiqued by reviewers who (surprise surprise!) know their Milton. I’d expect this approach to leave you with more focused feedback than you might receive if you submit to a journal with a broader purview (e.g. JMEMS, SCJ, Renaissance Studies, etc.). JMEMS, for example, sends submissions to both a generalist and an expert reviewer. That’s how they make sure that their journal appeals to a wide audience. So if you’re interested in receiving specific, Milton-related commentary, you might want to cut the generalist out of the equation and go for one of the Milton journals. This might more effectively guide any revisions you choose to make to your paper in the long run (i.e. in preparation for any subsequent submissions). That said, the review process takes a long time (six months or more from submission to response is not uncommon). I wouldn’t worry too much about second or third submissions yet. I would also keep a lookout for any journals preparing a special issue on a topic related to your paper (early modern sexuality, say). Just my two cents! Good luck!

Quick question. From this, it sounds like you are planning to submit your paper to both journals at the same time. That's not the case, is it?