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marquisbey

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Everything posted by marquisbey

  1. I do apologize. Please excuse my ignorance of the site's terms and conditions.
  2. Hello all: I am in the process of putting together a proposal for an edited book comprised of scholarly narratives from established scholars and young, burgeoning scholars in the intersecting fields of language, race, and gender. The subtitle of this proposed text, tentatively, is "Youngins and Old Heads Talk Language, Race, and Gender." I imagine the collection will incoporate a kind of intergenerational exchange of ideas, ideologies, etc. on the topics, the value of the text being the dialogic, cross-generational exchange consolidated into one book. I am looking, then, for a co-editor to engage in this process with me. I am looking for a committed grad student or recent grad who exhibits erudition in their scholarship (preferably with at least one publication on one of the subjects at hand), stick-to-it-ness, time maintenance dexterity, energy, and passion. This project will require a great deal of time and scholarship, both of which I am indeed willing to put in, and I would like a co-editor who will be just as passionate and committed. As co-editing a text requires at least a small vestige of commonality, my academic profile is as follows: I am in Cornell University's English Ph.D. program focusing broadly on the topics of African American Studies and Gender Studies. My particular areas of concentration include philosophy of race and the co-constitutivity of race, gender, and sexuality, and my work covers the topics of racial and gendered scripts, the historical trajectory of Black feminist thought and articulations of Black male feminist thought, and African American atheism. By the end of the year I will have published two journal articles and four book chapters, all of which is outlined in my CV which I can and will send once I hear back from interested scholars, as well as a more thorough proposal of the project. I truly hope you all are enjoying your programs and are engaging in rewarding work. If you are interested, or know someone who may be interested, please leave me a message on here or send an email to mb2444[at]cornell.edu Be well and live thoughtfully, Marquis
  3. Hey all: I will be attending Cornell University in the fall for their English (African American Lit.) Ph.D. program as well as their graduate minor in Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. (I also plan to take numerous cross-listed courses in Africana Studies.) I wish to be a prolific writer, publisher, scholar, and seek other scholars in my fields who wish the same thing. I am in search of a community, a cohort of devoted intellectuals who are passionate about articulating and discussing ideas, are strong writers, and have unique insights into African American history and culture and its intersections. Although it may be a lofty goal, I wish to publish an edited work, a collection of essays on a topic pertaining to African American Studies. Thus, I seek passionate scholars with which to commune and work to potentially be included in this aspiration. If you are interested in establishing a community, engaging in intense dialogue about theoretical, literary, and historical topics surronding African American history and culture, please PM me or shoot me an email at bey2492@gmail.com. Thank you and I hope you all got into insitutions that you are happy with! Best, Marquis
  4. Hey all! I've applied to African American Literature and African American Studies Ph.D. programs and so far have been accepted to Penn State (Af. Am. lit and Af. Am. studies dual degree program), U of Maryland (Af. Am. lit), and Cornell's programs (Af. Am. lit). I must say that I am incredibly passionate and serious about our field and insert discoruse regarding African American history and culture into the fabric of our academic and general society. I am also very interested in scholars like us—new, passionate, excited, and intelligent—having our voice—our new voices—heard in the cacophony of established, top-notch scholarship. That being said, I would like to start a community. I would love to gather a cohort of scholars of African Americn literature/studies,history/philosophy/whatever with whom I can engage ideas and build relationships. My areas of interest are the evolution of black self-perception, that is, rather than the prevailing discourse of the imposed identities onto black folk (sambos, mammies, intellectually inferior, lascivious, etc) I would like to uncover how black folk saw themselves throughout history; U.S. mythologies; philosophy of race and racism; antebellum slavery; critical race theory; and also feminism, gender, and sexuality studies as it pertains to black culture and in general (I'm a big Judith Butler, Catherine Malabou, bell hooks, and Patricia Hill Collins fan). Are there any of you who are incredibly dedicated to really engaging with me in this journey we are all about to embark on? Anyone who loves to dialogue about intellectual topics? I also plan to begin publishing very early in grad school. I would love to publish an edited book with the contributions of young, new scholars in the field of African American studies/literature and will be looking for erudite writers for that. Please PM me on here or shoot me an email at bey2492@gmail.com if you would like to start this community of young, up and coming scholars.
  5. Hi all! I've been accepted to three of my eight schools already, rejected by two, and awaiting three more responses. My primary field is African American Literature/Studies and I also have a strong interest in women, gender, and sexuality studies. I'm looking to start a grad student/scholar community—a cohort of dedicated individuals who enjoy discussions and philosophical debates and intellectual conversations, etc. I would love to establish a close-knit group of people who can talk about literature and theory, bounce ideas off of each other, and maybe establish the beginnings of valuable connections in academia. If this sounds appealing to you—really appealing—please either send me a PM on here or add me on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/marquis.bey.7) letting me know you're responding to this post. The journey is beginning and I'm incredibly excited about it. I would just like some companions to talk to and connect with along the way. Thanks all!
  6. I currently attend Lebanon Valley College. You?
  7. SO I've recently finished submitting grad school apps to African American literature/studies programs and now i'm not sure what to do. Is there anything I can be doing in this liminal period to aid my impending grad school career? any advice would be appreciated Check out my blog if you get a chance too. Support can go a long way. http://reademandteachmarquisbey.wordpress.com/about/
  8. Thank you for your insight. I really appreciate it! Very helpful.
  9. I will be presenting two papers at an African American studies conference in February and on the registration sheet they offer (for a $65 fee) submissions for a monograph to be published on a CD. 1. What exactly is a monograph? 2. Is it worth the money, knowing that I am a senior undergrad applying to English Ph.D. programs and American studies Ph.D. programs at top tier institutions?
  10. I will be presenting two papers at an African American studies conference in February and on the registration sheet they offer (for a $65 fee) submissions for a monograph to be published on a CD. 1. What exactly is a monograph? 2. Is it worth the money, knowing that I am a senior undergrad applying to English Ph.D. programs and American studies Ph.D. programs at top tier institutions?
  11. Wow, I totally copied the wrong prompt for each response. Sorry about that!
  12. A nation should require all of its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college. Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position. The argument above seems plausible at first glance: since complaints and loss of revenues coincide with the increased time to national news and less time for weather and local news, it would seem that the two are related. However, thinking that this coterminal event indicates causation of the latter due to the former would be a hasty conclusion. There is much that needs to be elucidated in order to assess the validity of the proposal and more evidence is necessary. To begin with, the statement "most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news" is vague and needs to be clarified. Were there more complaints than a year ago, before the change in time slot devotion? If the number of complaints has not proliferated over the past year then it would seem that to increase the amount of covergae of local news and weather would have very little benefit. More information on this is needed. In addition to the number of complaints, it would help if readers were presented with information on the nature of the complaints. For example, if the complaints were regarding the way the local news and weather was covered (perhaps the meterologists' predictions were consistently wrong; perhaps the way the weather was presented was nebulous; perhaps the local news coverage was biased and racially prejudiced, showing a disproportionate number of black men being handcuffed, implying that whites didn't commit crimes) then "restor[ing] the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level" would actually be detrimental. More evidence is needed regarding the type of complaints coming in during the local news and weather coverage in order to accurately and precisely assess ways to attract more viewers. Moreover, there is no information on why businesses canceled their advertising contracts. It is extremely hasty to conclude that, because the late-night news program increased the amount of time devoted to national news and decreased the time spent on weather and local news, it is the reason why businesses canceled their contracts. A plethora of reasons could account for the businesses withdrawing from their contracts, including: individual business budget cuts, notification of their ads' ineffectiveness on the particular network, an advertising deal with a larger network that has more viewers, etc. So to conclude that the late-night network's time devotion caused the businesses to cancel their contracts is to wrongly assume that correlation equaled causation. In conclusion, because of these missing pieces of evidence—were there more complaints than usual, what type of complaints were received, why exactly did the businesses cancel their contracts—it is difficult to say that restoring the time devoted to weather and local news would attract more viewers and eschew any further advertizing revenue losses. More evidence and information must be provided in order to determine an appropriate, more effective course of action. "Over the past year, our late night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weath and local news. During this time period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late night news program have just canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level." Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument. The question of school curricula is not a new one and has been permeated the minds of educators for decades. Students' educational needs are indeed important and play consequential roles not only in a student's educational career but also in their profession and in life in general. It would be beneficial for all students of a nation to study the same national curriculum because a common curriculum will make evaluation much easier and standardized tests would be more efficacious. The incorporation of a standard national curriculum would certainly make student evaluation much easier because if all students are learning the same material, individual student shortcomings and places of concern would be easier to discern and address. If a nation were to adopt this strategy of a national curriculum, it would eliminate the proclivity to judge student success on an uneven level of schooling. For example, nations where students are in different educational institutions will be compared with one another and evaluated on their intelligence and preparedness for higher education and the workforce. However, these students are assessed on unequal playing fields. Students in U.S. urban schools generally have less funding, less qualified teachers, less quality textbooks, and so on, which causes them to appear less prepared and less intelligent when juxtaposed to students in, say, suburban towns that are funded more generously. This works to the detriment of poorer communities and benefits the wealthy. Installing a national curriculum would combat many of the inequities that an unequal system of education causes. In addition to easier evaulation, standardized tests would be much more effective and accurate in their determination of secondary and higher education preparedness. The name itself—standardized test—indicates that a standard, i.e. a national curriculum, will be used to assess all students within a nation, regardless of their education institution. If the PSSA tests for Pennsylvania high schools or the SAT tests for college are standardized, why aren't the school curriculums standardized as well? It is known that standardized tests like the PSSA or the SAT work to the benefit of wealthier school districts because the material present on the test marks the education of richer, higher quality schooling materials—materials that are often not granted to those in poorer districts. Therefore, having a national curriculum would mean that standardized tests would simply have to test for the information the curriculum was intended to teach, giving students a more equitable and fair chance at showing their intelligence irrespective of thier economic status. Consequently, some may say that a national curriculum would overlook the individual needs of students; individual students need to be taught differently than others because they may lack the mental adroitness of their peers. But this claim is unfounded. A national curriculum would actually make it easier to indicate which students are lagging behind in the expected knowledge and allow for teachers to prescribe these students extra help. If curriculums would to be more capricious from school to school, it would be more difficult to know if student A from inner city school is at the same intellectual level as student B from suburban school, because the former's curriculum may be "watered down" and therefore easier than the latter's curriculum, making it much more difficult to determine and compare the intellectal positions between the two students. Overall, a national curriculum would be to students' benefit because it would make individual student evaluation easier and standardized tests would have greater accuracy. If there is a standard curriculum all students can be evaluated on a level playing field and standardized tests would be much more effective due to each student being taught the same material.
  13. A nation should require all of its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college. Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position. The argument above seems plausible at first glance: since complaints and loss of revenues coincide with the increased time to national news and less time for weather and local news, it would seem that the two are related. However, thinking that this coterminal event indicates causation of the latter due to the former would be a hasty conclusion. There is much that needs to be elucidated in order to assess the validity of the proposal and more evidence is necessary. To begin with, the statement "most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news" is vague and needs to be clarified. Were there more complaints than a year ago, before the change in time slot devotion? If the number of complaints has not proliferated over the past year then it would seem that to increase the amount of covergae of local news and weather would have very little benefit. More information on this is needed. In addition to the number of complaints, it would help if readers were presented with information on the nature of the complaints. For example, if the complaints were regarding the way the local news and weather was covered (perhaps the meterologists' predictions were consistently wrong; perhaps the way the weather was presented was nebulous; perhaps the local news coverage was biased and racially prejudiced, showing a disproportionate number of black men being handcuffed, implying that whites didn't commit crimes) then "restor[ing] the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level" would actually be detrimental. More evidence is needed regarding the type of complaints coming in during the local news and weather coverage in order to accurately and precisely assess ways to attract more viewers. Moreover, there is no information on why businesses canceled their advertising contracts. It is extremely hasty to conclude that, because the late-night news program increased the amount of time devoted to national news and decreased the time spent on weather and local news, it is the reason why businesses canceled their contracts. A plethora of reasons could account for the businesses withdrawing from their contracts, including: individual business budget cuts, notification of their ads' ineffectiveness on the particular network, an advertising deal with a larger network that has more viewers, etc. So to conclude that the late-night network's time devotion caused the businesses to cancel their contracts is to wrongly assume that correlation equaled causation. In conclusion, because of these missing pieces of evidence—were there more complaints than usual, what type of complaints were received, why exactly did the businesses cancel their contracts—it is difficult to say that restoring the time devoted to weather and local news would attract more viewers and eschew any further advertizing revenue losses. More evidence and information must be provided in order to determine an appropriate, more effective course of action. "Over the past year, our late night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weath and local news. During this time period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late night news program have just canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level." Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument. The question of school curricula is not a new one and has been permeated the minds of educators for decades. Students' educational needs are indeed important and play consequential roles not only in a student's educational career but also in their profession and in life in general. It would be beneficial for all students of a nation to study the same national curriculum because a common curriculum will make evaluation much easier and standardized tests would be more efficacious. The incorporation of a standard national curriculum would certainly make student evaluation much easier because if all students are learning the same material, individual student shortcomings and places of concern would be easier to discern and address. If a nation were to adopt this strategy of a national curriculum, it would eliminate the proclivity to judge student success on an uneven level of schooling. For example, nations where students are in different educational institutions will be compared with one another and evaluated on their intelligence and preparedness for higher education and the workforce. However, these students are assessed on unequal playing fields. Students in U.S. urban schools generally have less funding, less qualified teachers, less quality textbooks, and so on, which causes them to appear less prepared and less intelligent when juxtaposed to students in, say, suburban towns that are funded more generously. This works to the detriment of poorer communities and benefits the wealthy. Installing a national curriculum would combat many of the inequities that an unequal system of education causes. In addition to easier evaulation, standardized tests would be much more effective and accurate in their determination of secondary and higher education preparedness. The name itself—standardized test—indicates that a standard, i.e. a national curriculum, will be used to assess all students within a nation, regardless of their education institution. If the PSSA tests for Pennsylvania high schools or the SAT tests for college are standardized, why aren't the school curriculums standardized as well? It is known that standardized tests like the PSSA or the SAT work to the benefit of wealthier school districts because the material present on the test marks the education of richer, higher quality schooling materials—materials that are often not granted to those in poorer districts. Therefore, having a national curriculum would mean that standardized tests would simply have to test for the information the curriculum was intended to teach, giving students a more equitable and fair chance at showing their intelligence irrespective of thier economic status. Consequently, some may say that a national curriculum would overlook the individual needs of students; individual students need to be taught differently than others because they may lack the mental adroitness of their peers. But this claim is unfounded. A national curriculum would actually make it easier to indicate which students are lagging behind in the expected knowledge and allow for teachers to prescribe these students extra help. If curriculums would to be more capricious from school to school, it would be more difficult to know if student A from inner city school is at the same intellectual level as student B from suburban school, because the former's curriculum may be "watered down" and therefore easier than the latter's curriculum, making it much more difficult to determine and compare the intellectal positions between the two students. Overall, a national curriculum would be to students' benefit because it would make individual student evaluation easier and standardized tests would have greater accuracy. If there is a standard curriculum all students can be evaluated on a level playing field and standardized tests would be much more effective due to each student being taught the same material.
  14. As I'm sure many of you like having intellectual and substantive discussions with people—"big talk" as opposed to "small talk"—I was wondering if any of you lit people would want to start a sort of discussion group. Of course it couldn't be incredibly large, but if anyone is interested trading fb accounts/phone number/emails/etc. to maybe have somewhat regular discussions about interesting topics of our choosing (literary theory, close readings of books, history, any kind of specialty area like gender or race [my specialty areas], etc.) please reply and we'll see if we can make this happen. If you are anything like me (and I think some of you are) the more you learn the more unfit for society you become (more on that later), so let me know if you're interested by replying to this thread or shooting me a PM. Have a great summer!
  15. Exactly. Of course, there are very few tenure track jobs out there, but there are some and they go to the best people in the field (usually, unless you're a part of the "good ol boys club" or have "connections"). So making sure you are doing the absolute best you can do significantly increases your chances of landing the tenure track job, doing your research and preparing well increases your chances, writing an amazing dissertation and presenting papers at conferences increases those chances. All of these things help land that job and are less dependent upon luck than your sheer will to put in the work. But then again, even those who put in that work don't land the tenure track jobs; however, although some excellent scholars don't get the tenure tracks, even less mediocre scholars get them.
  16. I think you're doing all the right things. I am only in undergrad, but I've talked with numerous people in academia about the CV and graduate school, as well as read many books on the subject. An unofficial expert one might say lol. I would say educational and then professional; academic careers usually don't care much about the chronological format as business and professional careers do. Also, regarding what to write about your M.A. degree, my simple piece of advice would be this: include EVERYTHING!! The more, the better. Any relevant information you can include (research papers, presentations, conferences attended, organizations you belong to that are relevant to your field, research done on your own like going to, say, a museum of Japanese history, etc.) should be included. The point is to show graduate schools that you are committed to your field, not only know about your field but more importantly are willing to learn MORE about your field, and that you are capable of high level, independent research. They are not necessarily looking for a graduate student but a potential colleague. If you'd like, we could swap CVs, writing samples, SoPs, etc. I would love to see what you have so far, and perhaps we can garner some new insight into both our fields (I'm applying to top tier schools like you are, but I'm looking for African American literature programs and Gender studies certificate opportunities in conjunction with that as well). Message me if you want to swap stuff. Hope this helps!
  17. If there's anyone out there who is already a graduate student in a pretty good program, or anyone who feels capable of readying my sample for top tier Ph.D. literature programs, please help me out It would be tremendously appreciated.
  18. Is there someone out there that could evaluate my SoP and my CV? I am applying to top tier English Ph.D. programs this fall. Or if you know anyone already in a top tier grad school or has served on an adcomm it'd be great if they could take a look at it. Thanks in advance!
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