rhetoricus aesalon

Absolutely. Melanie is quickly becoming one of the most sought-after DS scholars in the country, let alone in rhet/comp. As someone interested in DS as a subfield, you have a fair chance (I'd wager) of wanting to include some of her work on your exam reading list -- and if not, the material she assigns you will absolutely be. Plus, she is still in the junior stage of her career (which is pretty surprising given her publishing and presentation record), is approachable to grad students, and very possibly someone you'll consider having on your dis committee. In other words, you'll be taking a class and networking with someone who is actively and broadly recognized as an emerging leader in her discipline--and the course she is teaching is her discipline. Even if you had no interest in DS, I'd recommend the class.

thepriorwalter - Two things: (1) You might want to double-check this with your advisor, but in my program if you are not a comp/rhet student and take a comp/rhet class (no matter the focus), that counts toward your breadth requirement. (2) Is this class taught by Melanie Yergeau?

Based on your profile, I'm assuming you're an MA student thinking about taking/auditing an undergrad course in rhet/comp. In other words, you are not an undergrad -- is that right? If you're an undergrad, you have nothing to worry about. Choose a writing sample that is good work -- a clear argument supported by well-researched evidence that shows that you are familiar with doing scholarship in the fields of English studies. But if you are already a grad student, then you will want to work on crafting a clear alignment or pathway to rhet/comp in your PhD writing sample. Even if you end up with a revision of a lit-based paper, the expectation will be to see how the work you are doing is connected to scholarship in rhetoric and composition broadly defined. With that said, and you decide you need more exposure to rhet/comp to do this (which I'm not saying you do -- to me it sounds like you have more than you might give yourself credit for), I don't feel taking an undergrad class is necessarily the best route to get there. Does your program have an option for independent study? Do you have an adviser or professor who you are especially close with and trust to give you good and honest feedback? You might think about crafting a class around this very issue with this person -- articulating your work as rhet/comp scholarship -- and do readings that support the work you're already doing and create a strong writing sample as a final product. You will be held to a much higher standard than an undergrad class, and you will get much better results for what you want. But that's just my 2 cents!

The lines we draw between each other are problematic and counterproductive. Rhet/comp is a melting pot. The field has (incorrectly) been seen as only professionalization, preparation for administrative work, without theoretical or methodological rigor, lesser-than other English studies, solely interested in the training of a class of composition instructors. Rhet/comp is an and/in addition field, not a but/we do not field. This is difficult for some to wrap their head around, which is understandable: We operate in a system that defines a field by what it is not, and that is tricky for rhet/comp. In practice, all work is welcome that in some way relates back to the college writing or student experience--but even this has been heavily contested in the past decade. I've also had faculty in rhetoric teach courses in technology and culture, digital media production, global feminisms, methodology, materialisms, persuasion, and writing program pedagogy. I have also taught courses in disability studies and fiction. I have always been a rhet/comp person (at least since undergrad, that is).

Check it: http://www.macmillanhighered.com/Catalog/static/bsm/bb/history.html Also, would we call rhet/comp mainstream? I mean, we did get a Gawker article for the Sparkleponies. But I'm not sure I'd use the word mainstream. There's a relative sense of pride in the field being somewhat counter-culture, which carries over in my opinion from its resurgence and continued sense of re/defining since the mid- to late sixties.

It will not make or break your application. In fact, I'd wager (from an admissions standpoint) no one will care. It might be a nice way to network after you are admitted by talking about your experience once you are on campus visits or through email, but since your travel will have nothing to do with your interests, it will count for little to nothing in your application. Especially if you decide to apply straight to PhD programs.

Berkeley has a PhD in rhetoric, but the program isn't really recognized as one of the stronger ones in the field -- I'm guessing that students in that program don't actually do rhet/comp; I've heard they tend more toward gender and law studies, and all the faculty are lit/cultural studies people ... so, yeah. Also does anyone know if Stanford is replacing Lunsford? She's emerita now, so unless they have they've no rhet/comp people. Nancy Sommers is at Harvard ... but she's (wait for it) an adjunct lecturer. I never realized this until this moment when I looked it up. I was shocked.

Congratulations! And I have officially freaked myself out by calling that. If only being able to guess the program by the DGS's email had been on the lit subject test ...

I don't want to wrongly excite you, but Penn State at least seems to have a history for doing this exact thing when they are actually calling to say you've been accepted -- even down to the wording "to talk about our graduate program." In any case, this sounds like a very good thing. Congratulations and good luck! And please let us know what happens!

Absolutely! I am still getting over the roller-coaster of emotions from application season last year, so any info I can share I'm very happy to!

Just to give you a head's up, you will not know whether or not you have a fellowship by the time the department contacts you. If you know that you've been accepted, you have almost certainly been nominated for a university fellowship by the department, which will open up some funding to allow you to visit campus in March; Dr. Garcha will give you more info when he calls.

Seriously! And yet he is ALWAYS cheerful. It baffles my mind!

Congrats to everyone who has heard back from OSU! I'm looking forward to meeting you at the department's Open House in March! mightysparrow - In my experience the website can be really wacky. I've had all kinds of crazy stuff on my account, and I usually just ignore it. It's probably not the best solution to the issue, but I will echo that when I received my acceptance last year, it first came as an update to my application status, then a phone call from Dr. Garcha (our DGS) a week later. (And the call was very late -- around 8 pm PST, which meant he was calling at 11 pm from Ohio.)

Well, here's to hoping that oldmangandhi doesn't get those positions. Despite everything in/not in, right/wrong, biased/unbiased about this study--I completely agree that prestige matters. Clearly it does; we didn't need this study to prove that. And--I don't believe the study does prove that. If anything, given the huge margin of error lifealive drew our attention to, it shows a real need for use to be able to approach and interpret statistical data on our own because I have a real distaste for the carelessness and confusion that these authors have sewn into this research.

Actually, they don't. Two claims are made here: (1) overall job placement is relatively similar no matter the program's tier ranking, and (2) the top six programs tended to hire from other top six programs from 2008-2011. More than six programs in the world do research, so I'm at a loss for how this article proves "few graduates from programs ranked below 63 get jobs focused on academic research" when their own data shows that about 28% percent of those same 4th tier students land TT jobs at institutions that grant grad degrees. I understand why you would argue we need recent numbers for the first claim, but the second is bigger than the recession. If someone is going to claim that the "top six" programs hire predominately from other "top six" programs, you are going to need more than 3 years of data, and personally I don't see how the recession would have anything to do with this point. The recession certainly would be a point of major interest for placement rates, but I don't see it as having much to do with making claims for positions that are already assumed to be there. And plus, come on--how many TT job hires does that three-year period even represent--like 5 or 6 at most? And, just so you know, I'm not dismissing this study because it reveals a bias. I'm dismissing it because it is constructed in such a way as to misrepresent the data it presents in order to make us draw conclusions that are not present in that data. It's just bad research. And, I want to add that I'm not trying to pick a fight here. I completely agree with you--this whole piece is rather insulting, from the intro that represents English as needing economists to come save us by revealing how English departments incorrectly do their hiring (which seems to puzzle them because everyone in economics can so easily get a job!) to the repeated insinuation that the only positions that matter and are desirable by all graduate students are research-intensive positions at the top six universities.

Perhaps you're right, though I don't think a three-year period (in the worst of times, as you've noted) is a very reliable snapshot of how all of English higher ed goes about its hiring. I'm also very skeptical of how this statistician grouped schools together into tiers, which you can see for yourself in the original article. It isn't that far-fetched to assume that these "top six" programs (which we only get five of, by the way--and which don't include Princeton or Yale) just happened to have the best placement rates in a three-year period. Yes, it does appear apocalyptic that six schools represent 40% of all TT placement at grad-granting institutions between 2008-2011,* but I'm trying to suggest that we are getting a very intentional representation of a very complex issue--not least of which is a not-too-subtle elitist inclination by the authors to downplay the fact that this work shows overall placement rates are relatively the same at any tier. * Also, I'm not entirely sure if that's what the data is showing. I think that 40% refers to the percent of graduates in the tier who landed TT jobs in grad-granting institutions, not the percentage of all jobs at institutions with grad programs that went to those graduate students.

This study defines tiers that are too small and problematic to have any reliable conclusion for all of English studies. In fact, I think the statistics should be interpreted more as telling where five schools farm their faculty than anything else. And you wouldn't have to do a study like this to find that out--just visit the program websites. One example: at first I thought this article almost entirely ignored jobs in rhet/comp. Well, then I realized that of the "top six" programs on USNWR, only one has a comp program at all that I know of, and it is rarely (if ever) listed among the "top" programs in the field. In fact, I'd say "top programs" are situated more around the 45-75 mark, so of course we would all be getting jobs of "comparable" prestige when the first "prestigious" schools in rhet/comp appear in Tier 3. So, that supports the article's claim for--what--like a third of all jobs in English? Also, why is this article only looking at data from 2008-2011? Why aren't schools equally distributed into tiers? Why aren't all schools in each tier considered? Why don't these tiers match up with USNWR? The whole thing just smacks of English self-flagellation propaganda to me. I would take it with a huge grain of salt.

Preach! I am right there with you. Rhet/comp programs can be hard to rank in that sense because ... well, we don't rank them. Like Between Fields mentioned, looking at traditional rankings is almost completely useless. Plus, traditionally "prestigious" top-tier schools don't have rhet/comp programs because rhet/comp had its renaissance in large, public, land grant schools primarily in the Midwest and then the East. I'm probably telling you stuff you already know, but I feel like it's a general rule of thumb that the most "prestigious" (which I use to mean the oldest, most established, highest job placement rate) schools are going to be located in that area. They also tend to be the best funded programs. But that certainly doesn't mean there isn't great stuff happening outside this epicenter of activity in the Midwest. In fact, I'd say some of the most exciting work in rhet/comp is happening outside that area. I'm from the West originally, and I got my MA at Oregon State, and I highly, highly recommend the program. The cohort is small (because there isn't a PhD program there ... yet), and you get very close to faculty. Plus, all grad students are funded, most with a TAship. The pay sucks, but Oregon is freaking amazing and cost of living is pretty low. I'd move back there in a blink of an eye if I could. (And that's the end of my plug for the program. ) But in terms of what schools to add to your list--beyond the great ones you've listed and those that have been mentioned--that would depend on your specific interests within rhet/comp. My personal opinion is that funding matters first for the MA, not only because you aren't paying tuition, but (like Between Fields said) you will often also have access to funds for travel to conferences, receive training in teaching and the opportunity to teach different courses, etc. But if you have defined a research interest already, even if it's really general, we can probably provide more specific advice here--and your advisers could, too. Another thing you might consider is that there are some programs (usually at those older "prestigious" schools) where you apply directly to the PhD program and not the MA. This is the case with Ohio State, where I'm at now, (and I know of at least Penn State) where you are placed on a 5-year track to the PhD as an incoming grad student with a BA. I'm almost positive that Purdue has separate MA/PhD applications--though I am only familiar with the PhD program there since I was accepted to it last year. If you'd like more specific information on my experience or if I can answer questions about either of these programs, I'm happy to talk through PM, too.

From what you have listed, you sound like a very strong candidate for rhet/comp programs. Having undergrad experience in rhet/comp is still relatively uncommon, so to have an interest in it so early is going to work to your advantage. Going to conferences is excellent, too. You may consider checking out the Conference on College Composition and Communication (if you haven't already), as it is the largest conference in the field and it will give you an opportunity to see more of the research that is being done at different institutions around the country. If you want to take your work to the next level, I suggest you check out (and think about submitting some work to) undergraduate journals that publish in rhet/comp. Again, this is not something you need to do, but it will be something that you'll be thankful for when applying to PhD programs, and it is also great to get a sense of the publishing process early since that will be your life one day. Three that I know of that welcome work in rhet/comp are Queen City Writers, Sigma Tau Delta Review, and Young Scholars in Writing. I also notice that the programs you've listed are all top tier. I recommend adding to that list a couple more schools that are not quite so competitive. This might sound counter-intuitive, but the MA can really help you find a specialization within rhet/comp and make you more attractive to PhD programs later even if it isn't a top school. The most important thing is funding. It's great that you are prepared to pay for your MA, but if you are planning to go for the PhD, think about where you will be financially after 5-6 years of school after your undergrad is complete. Will you want to buy a house in your 20s or early 30s? Will you want to have a family? Will you want to travel overseas to reward yourself for being so awesome? Guard your savings like a dwarf guards their gold because there will be many, many things you will want to spend it on later. Your education (especially as a graduate student) should not be one, especially because programs ARE willing to fund good students like you.

When I first read this, I thought: That is SO awesome. That distracted me a bit because I then had to look into what that is and who is doing it. :-) I agree with BowTiesAreCool and will add that you might also consider who you will be working with at these institutions, which will inevitably then become an investigation of your "fit" into a program. Rhetoric of economics is not common, so I could see it a particular strength of your SOP to name why these institutions are the ideal places to study this.

Not at a school on your list, but was considering a few. Happy to answer any questions you have about the experience! Killer list, by the way. Do you mind if I ask you research interests?

I'll second that! I didn't email a single POI last year, and I had a great season. And please don't read this as a massage of my ego. There are just so many factors that may or may not help you in your applications--you need to do what you can with what you can. The process is as eyepod says: stressful enough already.

I would be surprised if your admittance really came down to that poor grade in undergraduate electrical engineering on your transcript. But how you are able to talk about that grade and experience? How you are able to represent that experience as one that has made you the scholar you rightly are now? That can make a HUGE difference. Like Proflorax said: Make it a strength, not a weakness.

Nice. I suppose this isn't to say that the two can't overlap, but I do see at least these two directions for posthumanism with very different goals. I'm not sure if transhumanism is a fear so much as an acceptance and even activism for the integration of machines into bodies/bodies into machines -- but still certainly tied to humanism and the primacy of human life. Posthumanism, as a relation to OOO, seeks to remove the "human" in analysis. Whether non-human animals, plants, non-living objects, what have you--the objective is to subvert the primacy of human life.

So, this isn't really going to be helpful to the post at hand per say, but I just felt like I had to add in -- has anyone else noticed that there are very different strands of posthumanism being discussed here, and perhaps at large as well? I can think of at least two -- one that might be better identified as transhumanism, and another that looks more like object-oriented ontology. Maybe it's just me.