lintseed2008

Hi! Florida is my undergraduate alma mater, and I really adored it, but you may want to bear in mind the budget crunch that UF is experiencing. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is in the middle of digging itself out of debt, and now the state legislature is cutting funding due to the downward spiral of the economy. When I was a student, my professors were less than thrilled with the money crunch, and the English Dept. was hit particularly hard by the CLAS debt. It sounds as if you've gotten good funding -- which means that you must be an excellent candidate, as UF is tightening its purse strings -- but as you seem to be basing your decision on the prestige of the department, you may want to bear in mind that UF's English department's position in the rankings may be affected by the current budget squeeze. With that said -- UF has a great English dept, and there are a ton of professors working on SF. If you feel that your advisor and his colleagues would be good resources for your research, than you should try to get down to UF and see the dept for yourself. But it sounds as if you really hit it off with the Delaware people, and it sounds as if they're offering everything that you're looking for. So maybe your decision is already made? (Also, something to bear in mind: how are you with heat? Because in Newark tomorrow, it's going to be a high of 53 degrees. In Gainesville, 72 degrees...and that's fairly chilly for Gainesville. UF students wear flip-flops year-round. Some people don't do well with the heat and humidity.) (Also: lots of alligators on campus. But they're mostly small and slow-moving.)

Hi! If you're looking to assemble a reading list for Latin American history, I would HIGHLY recommend going to a university library and hunting down the volumes of The Cambridge History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell. It features contributions from many of the preeminent scholars in the field, AND it includes thoughtful and nuanced summaries of the past historiographical landscape. It does presuppose a certain basic familiarity with the field, but it makes a really good launching pad for acquainting yourself with the crucial texts and assembling helpful bibliographies. I cherish the volumes I own. (If you don't have access to a university library, the book-series has also been broken into parts and published in paperbacks for undergraduate courses, and these editions are easy to get through used-book sites.)