rhetoricus aesalon

I just want to be clear that while I have had a lot of emotional support, this program is not anywhere near being a graduate school utopia. While I love it here and I love my people here, there is some BULLSHIT--but it's also probably no worse than any other department. Not only that, but Austin is kind of a shitty city to be a minority in already, so it's been one of those semesters that is just fraught with social tension.
 
So, when I say ahistorical I'm talking about the guy1 who wants to talk about war without talking about imperialism, the girl who wants to write about the postbellum South without talking about race, and the people who think that the aesthetic is more important than the political and believe that there is actually a such thing as inherent literary value (which is a point that I disagree with, but can at least understand). Even though these conversations are classroom-specific and probably seem unrelated to police brutality, they are also places where the "good liberal" facade that most academics wear tends to slip and people's biases become visible. To me, those moments are dangerous. The virulent racists are at least the enemy you know, but what happens when these people become professors and administrators? They theoretically understand that we are not in a post-racial society, yet simultaneously feel perfectly comfortable repeatedly using the n-word in class because their desire for an unmediated interaction with the text is more important than my and other black people's trauma?2 I find it deeply disturbing and I'm not sure what to do about it.
 
1These are actual people in my program, by the way
2 Yup, that happened too.

We all get to decide what kind of scholar we want to be. Are you going to be the kind of scholar that centers activism and justice in their research and teaching? Are you going to be the kind of scholar separates the two worlds? Are you going to be the kind of scholar who doesn't pay attention? Of course, our answers to these questions are informed by our standpoint. As a white grad student, I can slip in and out of my racial justice hat as needed. I get to choose when I want to be a racial justice activist and when I don't. That's privilege. Still, I try to center activism in my work. In my SoP, I discussed how feminist activism informed my research and teaching interests, so the programs that accepted me knew what they were getting. I have one Twitter account for both professional, personal, and political reasons, and though this wasn't my motivation for doing so, I feel like I've grown closer to the people in my field who have similar interests and motivations.
 
I'm not trying to present myself as a model for how to be an activist and a scholar. I actually failed pretty hard this semester. I feel irresponsible for not addressing in class the two big social issues affecting my students these days: police brutality and campus sexual assault. Everyday, I wanted to say something, wanted to let my students know that I stand in solidarity with them, but I didn't know how. I know that at least one of my students is a survivor of sexual assault. How do I responsibly raise the issue knowing full well that one or two students will say something dismissive of survivors? Same with Ferguson. How do I facilitate an open dialogue that centers the voices of students of color without silencing white students? Activist spaces have taught me that people of color should be at the center of conversations about racism, just as women should be at the center of conversations about sexism. But employing that model in a classroom? I don't even know. I decided to say nothing instead, and I feel like that was the wrong choice. 
 
Thanks for bringing this up, MM. 
 
Here are what some others are saying:
 
Why We Can't Breathe Easy (GradHacker)
After Ferguson, Some Black Academics Wonder: Does Pursuing a PhD Matter?

This is for an MA, right? Honestly, any of those programs will be fine, as long as they fit what you want to do. I'm biased against programs situated inside English departments, like UO, which at least until last year required a LitCrit class for Comp/Rhet. I'm in a tech-heavy program, though, so that's where my bias shows. I think, at least at the MA, it's far more important that you do good work than where you are doing it.
 
For what it's worth, Purdue has the best "name" value on that list. Heck, I can think of three or four programs that probably don't exist without Patricia Sullivan.

Hey folks,
 
Because I was a bit curious, and had a bit of time on my hands, I went through and cross-referenced the USNews Top 40 Graduate English rankings with the 2014 Ph.D. applicant acceptance dates found through Grad Cafe's Results Search. It appears that some institutions sent out most of their acceptances on one day, while others opted for "rolling" acceptances and spread them out across a week or more.
 
Please note that this list is very approximate, as it is based on third-party information, and only on last year's figures. And I don't personally endorse the USNews rankings, but it seems to be the simplest go-to guide for the top schools. People can feel free to add more schools as they wish!
 
That said, the following list gives you some idea when acceptance decisions could be made this year. Waitlists and rejections are a different matter altogether.
 
Berkeley – Late January to Early February Harvard – Mid-February Stanford – Late January to Mid-February Columbia – Mid- to Late February Princeton – Late February UPenn – Mid- to Late February Yale – Mid-February Cornell – Mid-February U. of Chicago – Early March Duke – Late January UCLA – Early February U. of Virginia – Early to Mid-February Johns Hopkins – Mid-February UMich-(Ann Arbor) – Mid-February Brown – Mid-February UNC-Chapel Hill – Mid-February Rutgers (NB) – Mid- to Late February U. of Texas-Austin – Mid-February U. of W – Madison – Late January NYU – Late February Northwestern – Early February CUNY – Mid-February Indiana-Bloomington – Early to Late February Urbana-Champaign – Mid- to Late February Emory – Early to Mid-February Ohio State – Late January to Early February Penn State – Varied widely UC-Davis – Early February UC-Santa Barbara – Mid-February Vanderbilt – Late January to Early February U. of Iowa – Early March UMD-College Park – Early to Mid-February U. of Washington – Early to Mid-March WUStL – Mid-February Rice – Early February U. of Minnesota (Twin Cities) – Early February USC – Late January to Early February Carnegie Mellon – Mid-February UC-San Diego – Early February UC-Santa Cruz – Mid-February Notre Dame – Late February U. of Pittsburgh – Early to Mid-February  
 
Mid-February is (unsurprisingly) the most dominant acceptance period, though Vanderbilt, OSU, Stanford and a few others seem to be early accepters. The Penn State figures are rather baffling, and a cursory glance at the Results Search page shows that there was really no consistency in 2014, and some rejectees weren't even notified.
 
Hopefully some of you will find this helpful!

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.

I'm going to point out another advantage of smaller, regional conferences in your field - you get more opportunities to "shine" and talk to people one-on-one. It's good to give people as many opportunities to see you as possible because, when you go on the market, you never know who will be on the search committee.
 
As an added bonus, local, regional conferences are usually more affordable and less time-consuming. If you can swing it, it's worth it.

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'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'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. 

to get that cheese
 

As someone who's now on the other side of this process (meaning I've been hired into academia), I would urge you to get this situation fixed. A B- on a graduate transcript is a red flag (and depending on who's reading the application, a possible KOD); an F could very well stop a committee in its tracks. It's not an issue of "balancing out" the F with high an otherwise fine GPA or high GRE scores or good "fit." Committees do scrutinize transcripts, and a failing grade says a few things (which might not be entirely fair):
 
1. You didn't finish the class. In other words, you took an incomplete that turned into an F--probably because you didn't turn in a final paper. No one wants to admit a candidate who has problems finishing things. Attrition is a major issue in a lot of English grad programs. It hurts the program's statistical profile and sucks away funding (programs don't like to invest money in people who never finish). And yes, having an "I" on a transcript is equally discouraging because of the same issues.
 
2. You had a major problem with the professor. Maybe it was the professor's fault, or maybe it was yours. In any case, whose fault it was probably doesn't matter. It just says you might not get along well with people, and you've opened yourself up to this kind of speculation. Speculation will always follow an F, and it might not be speculation that works in your favor.
 
3. You don't have the initiative to follow through and fix things. Perhaps the F happened for a good reason--you had a family tragedy or a health problem. Still, if this F happened more than a semester ago, then most people would expect you to have fixed it by now.
 
An F in grad school is a big deal. It's not like one loner F in undergrad, where maybe you were having a bad semester or fumbling through organic chemistry before dropping your pre-med major. You are expected to get mostly A's in a grad program. Grad professors know this and most give very good grades. Grad school is your job and you should be treating it seriously.
 
I'm not saying that you'll never get into grad school or that this is the end of the road. No one can really tell you this. Adcoms are quirky entities; some might not care and some might care a lot. You don't have to be a perfect person to get into grad school, but getting into grad school these days is indeed really difficult, and no one here can tell you whether you're "top 20" material or "top 40" (how do people here know these things?--I would have no idea). The only useful advice I can give is to talk to your advisor and talk to your DGS. Talk to as many trusted professors as you possibly can. Perhaps one of your recommenders can address the problem in a letter.

Hello, Most Beautiful Forum Members:
 
I thought I would start a positive-like topic to keep us happy during our time of stress.
 
Why did you all study English? (And by all means: brag a little. This is also about why you deserve to study English.)
 
Back in eighth grade I was kicked out of Honors English. Nothing could make me do my homework. Why do homework when I could play Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts games without end?
 
Throughout high school, I played video games with strong narrative arcs and wrote stories like video games starring my friends. During my junior and senior years, I was allowed back into Honors English, but I still would not do my homework. At one point during junior year, my teacher left a message on my parents' answering machine because I was failing the class.
 
Strangely, throughout high school, I was really into foreign languages. I took French and German all four years, yet the passion for language I felt there only tied back to English at the very end of my high school career. My AP English Composition teacher (the same lady who was failing me junior year) suddenly presented English in a new way that made it more than it had ever been before. In my earlier classes, it seemed, success in English depended upon a student's ability to do worksheets. If you were in regular English you had one sheet for homework. If you were in Honors, you had three. Work ethic: that was what English really was. Yet at the very end of my high school career, English became something else. All those silly hormones I had been building up, all the angst I felt at being the typical outcast (as well as being the only gay "out" at a reasonably-sized high school), found expression at last in the writing exercises we had to do. English went from being my least favorite to my favorite subject. (A point of pride: I was the first student to get a 5 on the AP exam that my teacher ever had, which was a shock to her since I had been, essentially, such a horrible student.)
 
And suddenly, the interests I thought had nothing to do with each other--video games and foreign languages--seemed to have everything to do with each other.
 
If someone had told my sixteen-year-old self he would want to be an English professor one day, he would've roundhouse-kicked that person in the face. Yet as soon as I took my first literature course at university, and especially after I read Toni Morrison's Beloved as part of that course, I became ecstatic about that decision, and ever since then, I have only become more attached to this field with every work I read.

Meeeeeeeeee! Did you submit a proposal to Computers and Writing? Or do you plan to since the deadline was extended?

I did, but I'll likely be skipping this year since we are hosting HASTAC here the same week and I'm hoping to present for that too. I put in for RNF at CCCCs, and am hoping to get to Tampa.

There are many reasons to attend conferences. I've presented at small, frankly shitty, conferences because friends from my alma mater would also be presenting there; it was a super fun mini-reunion. I have presented at regional conferences to practice my presenting skills. I have presented at unknown but very applicable to my interests conferences to brainstorm ideas with other nerds who care deeply about my interests. I've applied to and been accepted at conferences that are taking place in cities I want to visit. I've presented at conferences because they are nearby and easy to get to. I've presented at major national conferences because they've given me an opportunity to network with the experts in my field and add a sexy spot to my CV. I've presented at smaller national conferences that speak to my interests and provide a community of scholarly support and a well-regarded line on my CV.
 
tl;dr version: there are a ton of legit reasons to present at a conference, and the appropriateness of the conference will depend on your reason! 

I worked for four years before returning for a PhD, and that experience was a strength in my applications. Because I'd done professional work in my field, I had ideas backed by experience, which led to plenty to discuss in my statement of purpose. Take some time off, but make sure you're doing something with that time. Try to earn money by doing work that will also grow your CV.

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. 

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. 

Graham Harman, Bruno Latour, and Ian Bogost are worth a look.  My dept at Oregon State seems to offer a course on posthumanism (or related subjects such as object-oriented ontology, animal studies, thing theory, science studies, etc.) nearly every term, and it seems like the ideas associated with these movements are really taking off.

My icon was illustrated by the great Theodor Seuss Geisel. Critics claim that this figure represents the relationship between empathy and advocacy.
 
Also, he is known to speak for the trees. 

So many in California this year! There might not be that many on the list, but the ones posted look excellent. Do you know if it's typical for many of them (and by that I mean more than half) to be in technical & professional comm? 

After many many many bribes.
 
Truthfully, just this morning! I feel fancy. 

Since when did this happen, proflorax? 

Since when did this happen, proflorax?