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Everything posted by Romanista
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M.F.A. applying to PhD Rhet/Comp
Romanista replied to JAMIESEE's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I would check out Tim Mayers' work. He's the big name for bridging the fields of creative writing and comp rhet. -
CUNY for rhet/comp?
Romanista replied to snickus's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I know of people that went there and got TT jobs but I would not recommend CUNY. No other school in NYC even offers a rhetoric and composition graduate degree (the closest would be Stony Brook on Long Island), so the consortium thing does not help you as much as it would in literature. The other problem with CUNY is that I think they give out first year fellowships to some exceptional candidates but beyond that they don't fund you. They give you a tuition waiver and you have to make a living through adjuncting at other schools, which is extremely time consuming since commuting in NYC takes forever, especially if you cross boroughs. And obviously, even if you did get a fellowship, it probably would not be in your best interest to not teach for the first year of your PhD. Nobody should underestimate the fact that most US universities are not research intensive, so the search committees of such schools will want those that have as much teaching experience as they can get in their PhD programs. -
The previous responses are excellent but I would add that the more your research is tied to pedagogy the higher the chance of getting better odds of finding a job than you would have in literature, if only because literary studies doesn't really focus on pedagogy. So even though the field is far bigger than just teaching writing, if you focus on that part of it you will likely be a more attractive TT applicant.
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I don't doubt this, but law is still a more secure path than academia for me, because with the former you can always solo. It's difficult to do as a newly minted JD and there's the threat of malpractice but plenty of people do it despite the bad job market. There are far more solo practitioners than there are independent scholars. Both fields have the same problem of transitioning away from that specific type of labor if they can't make a living because prospective employers see you as a failed lawyer or professor and not as someone with an interesting set of skills to apply to whatever.
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This is sad and irresponsible. If RC professors across the country recruit people to the field because of the slightly better job market at a fast enough rate, and if more PhD programs in RC start up, the job market advantage will shrink. RC as a field should not sell itself as "kind of like literature, but with jobs". The two fields are different enough in terms of research for that to not make sense. As others have said, you should choose the field with the most interesting research according to you. But one advantage of choosing RC is that you can still read literature and literary criticism on your own time. Running a writing center or a writing program usually requires degrees in RC, and those experiences can't be encapsulated in just reading about them. If you're into collaborative research, then RC is probably the better choice, likewise if you like the idea of doing research projects that include IRBs.
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Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I haven't actually seen a professor defend unprofessional behavior in that way, I'm just saying that I could see a professor doing that for two reasons. First, the academic job market is difficult, so prospective tenure track applicants have to put up with things they don't like because there are so few TT offers in comparison to PhD holders. Second, the line between what a graduate student should accept and what a graduate student should complain about is thin. It's ambiguous, sort of like how graduate students aren't employees even though they do labor for the department. But as an example of what I said in my previous post about how some professors are avoided because of their lack of interest in service work, our department had an assistant professor leave last spring. I don't know why she left exactly, because I never took any of her classes. She had a reputation for being an excellent, responsive mentor who was also a strong researcher and an interesting teacher. Word got around that she was more helpful than the other professors and so a lot of students wanted her to serve on their committees. In her five years at my program, she was either a committee member or the chair of 26 masters theses and 2 doctoral dissertations. I can't speculate about why she left, but when you have a system where professors can get away with doing the bare minimum about service work, particularly when they are tenured, what happens is that work is passed onto others that care more about service work. If anything, this isolated example shows that academia should continue to reward service work, and I'm glad that you've seen this happen in a way that isn't minimal. -
Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I agree with this but my experience has been that it just doesn't work this way. As long as the system is in place in which a university grants tenure in exchange for excellent research and a token level of professionalism in teaching and mentoring, there will always be professors that shirk their mentoring and service responsibilities. And if they get tenure despite this, they actually get rewarded in a way. Once they get a reputation for not being helpful about LORs and stuff like that, graduate students spread the word and PhD applicants just avoid these faculty. And if a professor spends a year not writing a single LOR (regardless of whether they were asked or not), will they get in trouble? I doubt it. If they have tenure, they may not be the most popular person in the office, but that doesn't detract from their research because research in the humanities is usually an individual process. The system may not aim to protect unprofessional faculty who are good researchers, but it does precisely that. Also, these shirking faculty can always reason away their unprofessionalism by saying something like, this is what the real world is like, if you want to be an academic you will have to deal with being micromanaged by your department chair and the administration. Being unfair to graduate students, these professors might argue, prepares them for for tenure track life. -
Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I want to clarify that I'm not suggesting that BlackRosePHD was lazy like I was. I'm just saying that if her unprofessional LOR writers have research to do, then that will always take priority, and I'm not convinced that the department would chastise faculty for putting research in front of service, even if it harms a graduate student's professional development. -
Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I had a similar situation last cycle, where a letter writer took about two weeks to respond to my emails, and because of this I missed the December deadlines for some programs I was interested in. The truth is, I could have planned everything earlier but I didn't. I depended on prompt responses, which was kind of unreasonable, and I paid for that by not applying to certain programs. I'm not saying I don't have sympathy for BlackRosePHD's situation, but what you're saying about how faculty don't appreciate ignoring student emails, this is unprofessional to me, but I don't think that it's necessarily looked down upon. Faculty, at least those that teach graduate students, are assessed based on research, not helping mentor graduate students. Ideally faculty should do both, but if they can't, if they are too busy, well then research always takes priority. I'm not saying this is the best way but this is the way it actually happens. Let's just say for the sake of argument that the professors BlackRosePHD asked for LORs are each of them working on an upcoming deadline for a journal article in a prestigious publication. The correct way to deal with that situation would be to get the articles submitted, and then deal with the LORs, if there's time left. If there's no time to do both, it is unacceptable to put writing LORs over research. Because the graduate student could have always asked for a LOR at an earlier time, but the journal submission deadline is firm. Part of the problem with the unprofessional argument is that it depends on BlackRosePHD complaining to someone about how her LOR writers weren't helpful. She's a graduate student and TA, which means she has less clout than other people in the department. But the complaint shows that there's a problem. I didn't complain about how one of my letter writers wasn't particularly helpful. If a graduate student doesn't complain about unprofessional LOR writers, does the department have a problem? Probably not, because I assume that faculty spend more time discussing and dwelling on research instead of service. Writing LORs is not completely formulaic, but it's certainly more formulaic than composing essays about one's scholarly interests. -
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I'm really against tailoring your research needs to the market. Partly because, as has been mentioned before, the market is fickle. But also because I believe that you can't specialize in a subject without a pressing interest in it that goes beyond economics. You have to love your subject matter even if few people outside of academia care about it, otherwise you simply will not finish your dissertation, or get your article published, or make the connections needed to succeed in academia. Maybe there are exceptions to this, but I believe that you can only devote yourself fully to one area because you're consistently interested in it, and not because you hope to find a job in that field afterwards. It's like being a fan of multiple teams in the same sport...you will never be a diehard fan of multiple teams, so it's best to concentrate on one at the expense of the others, so that you are a knowledgeable fan of that one team who can watch other games as a neutral without forgetting where your allegiance lies. When I switched to this field, I had to convince myself that I wasn't doing it because the jobs situation is better, and I tell myself that that is still true. I'm in comp rhet because the research can (sometimes) be rooted in praxis more so than theory, at least as compared to literature. Comprhet at least attempts to answer the "who cares about this research besides other people in the same tiny subfield as me?" question. Often it's a stretch to think that whatever you publish will later be used in the pedagogy of your reader, but it's nice to believe that it could happen. I'm not saying that the job market is to be ignored. Rather, PhD students should focus on selling themselves as non-academic labor after they graduate, assuming that they don't get that TT job in their field of choice. I think it's better to have a firm scholarly identity that may go against the labor market (more like probably it will considering how bad it is), but also to be ready to take the general skills relevant to any humanities PhD and apply them in the non-academic world.
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Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I do have experience with MFAs as my MA institution probably has as many MFAs as MAs in the English department, and we have MFAs in creative nonfiction, poetry and fiction. I've taken classes with MFA students and Creative Writing faculty. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about how creative writing differs as a field from literature or comp rhet. I just think that creative writing is kind of split into the MFA world and the NYC world, as Chad Harbach explained in his book, and that helps to separate these disciplines, but you may see it a different way. I've been pretty repetitive about my opinions on this subject, but most of what I've written here isn't fact, just my own views. -
Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I never said it was sound. It's extremely risky. It's a terrible idea. The opportunity costs are enormous. Most people will never get a TT job. I'm active enough on this forum to know all that. I'm just saying that we are privileged enough to follow our dreams by going into those scholarly fields, and the only real way into a full-time job in those scholarly fields requires graduate degrees. If I was really hypocritical, I would be spouting off some nonsense about English is different from Comp Rhet because the latter's job market is better. I'm not doing that. English and Comp Rhet, regardless of the terrible job markets for both fields, require graduate degrees if a person wants to work full time in either field as a researcher and or teacher. -
Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I have a choice, I'm choosing the career that I want. I'm just saying that there is only one route to my career, which is graduate school. But if my family was broke, or if I had a family to raise, or if I had terrible health problems or whatever other problem, there's no way I could do this. I'm not in that situation. I realize that I'm privileged. If we restrict creative writing to just MFA holders, we are in effect shutting out non-privileged voices. -
Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I should have added a qualifier to that last sentence. Most of the time yes, the MFA isn't a requirement for creative publication. Nevertheless, I do think some publishers are biased toward accepting writers with an MFA, because it seems to suggest to them that the writer is serious and legitimate, whereas the non-degreed writer is just some dilettante. I'm afraid of this scenario: the creative writer who chooses for whatever reason to not ally herself with the academy (besides holding a BA, let's say) but who still struggles to get published in the venues of her choice. And not for lack of talent, or perseverance, but because she isn't part of the MFA club. That may not be a common occurrence now, but we have successful writers who have published extensively and still feel the need to go back to school to get an MFA in order to keep their writing lives going. We are headed in a direction in which you will be passed over if you don't have an MFA when it comes to publishing creative writing. And if you think this is primarily true for literary fiction but not for genre fiction, I would agree, but there have been some genre fiction MFA programs that have sprouted up in recent years. Given how profitable MFA programs are, it's likely that there will be more in the future. The MFA as a requirement for writing creatively may not be a reality until 50 years from now, but I'm still going to worry about it because I think it's snobbish and unfair because not everyone is in a position to go to graduate school and either go into debt, or live in poverty for 2-3 years in order to get a degree. -
Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Surely you aren't suggesting that proportionally speaking, comp rhet programs tend to fund less than MFAs. What exactly does it prove that one masters program in comp rhet doesn't fully fund its students? I don't think it proves anything, even though Carnegie Mellon has an excellent program. I mean, Columbia's literature MA is unfunded, but it is also an excellent program, so what is your point exactly, other than that Carnegie Mellon is a little greedy? Also, I don't think that any program that does not fully fund students would allow them to teach. As a student, you don't pay to teach, you get paid to teach (though not very much). I'm fully aware of the hypocrisy. Every funded graduate student (particularly in the humanities) contributes to this problem, where we short charge undergraduates by "teaching" them, whereas forty years ago, TT faculty with a PhD would do the same job. The way I justify this is by reminding myself that the job that I want can only come from my getting a masters and or PhD in my discipline. That is not true for creative writers who make a living off their published works, or those who teach in order to make a living off their published works, or those who have a day job in order to make a living off their published works. A graduate degree may help them but they can get by without it. No one will hire me for a tenure track job just because I have a passion for rhetoric. I have to show that passion by means of getting a graduate degree. That's why I said that academia is elitist, in that experience is tied to educational degrees attained. This is not as true for creative writers, though unfortunately it is becoming increasingly true. That's why I think that creative writers are even more complicit in the problem you rightfully pointed out. Literary criticism and rhetoric do not have the equivalent of the NYC publishing world that you have in creative writing. If we want to make it with the kind of writing we do, we need institutional affiliation. Even independent scholars usually have graduate degrees and training that they use in their work. So yes, my choice of career is selfish and it allows academia to continue its exploitative practices. But if I really want to do this, it's my only option. A creative writer can always opt out, and I find it sad that those that do are now looked askance at. -
Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Elitist is probably not the right word, but I mean elitist in two senses. First, academics tend to prioritize experiences within the field to the extent that experiences outside the field count very little in comparison. For example, every once in a while someone posts a message on this forum about their chances of getting into a PhD program in English, saying something like "I've worked as a lawyer/non profit manager/accountant etc. and I've done volunteer work abroad in developing countries but I've only taken a handful of English courses as a undergraduate" and the response from others is usually something like, "that's an interesting background but admissions committees really only care about your coursework in English, or at least, they care about your coursework in English first and foremost and then maybe they will consider your interesting background to separate you from other potential students." This makes sense, since prior coursework in English is really the best thing that can prepare you for graduate coursework in English. I've never been on the academic job market but my guess is that academic experience is positioned the same way. Even if you have an interesting backstory as a job candidate, the search committee generally will only care about research in academic contexts, your (college) teaching record, and your departmental service work (at your PhD program or whatever school you've worked at before). So I mean elitist in that one type of experience (scholarly) counts far more than another type. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. Second, on a related note, the academic job market is elitist. If I get a PhD in English (or any established academic field) and I apply for a tenure-track position at a university and I don't get hired, in fact, I don't even get an interview, I can still rest easy knowing that someone "qualified" got the job instead of me. In other words, the university I applied to didn't hire some literary scholar savant who holds only a BA, or an adjunct with just an MA who has been teaching for years, or some literature enthusiast who has published scholarly essays despite not having ever went to college. I know that the university hired someone with a PhD (or maybe an ABD) because that is the recognized level of scholarly experience that the position requires. So when I apply to a TT job, I'm not competing with the general public, or with people who love my subject. I'm competing with people who hold the same educational experience as me, and who may or may not love my subject as much as I do. Maybe elitism isn't the right word for that idea. This is not necessarily true in creative writing though, either in terms of getting your manuscript published or in terms of getting a tenure-track job. I think this is a good thing because everyone in graduate school is privileged in some sense. There are lots of people who can't go to graduate school because they don't have the time or money or because they have to take care of their family or whatever. But they can still write, and they still do write. And I feel like we're getting to the point now where a manuscript written by someone who doesn't hold an MFA is not considered a serious work, because more and more writers have MFAs, such that not having an MFA is weird, since your local university is bound to offer an MFA program. Likewise, job seekers for a creative writing teaching position (at any institution but particularly in higher ed.) are also not considered serious candidates if they don't have an MFA. This is true even if they may have extensive commercial writing experience, or if they've published genre fiction. The MFA is not an absolute requisite for any kind of publication or teaching position, but if more people get MFAs, I think we could get to that point that creative writing too becomes elitist. If I'm misusing that word, I mean that I think that creative writing could end up resembling the academic job market. Because not everyone can get an MFA, one effect of the shift toward professionalizing creative writing is the shutting out of some creative voices, and I find that troubling since you can write without an MFA (many do). -
Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I'm not surprised that you downvoted my post. I know I'm in the minority on MFA programs, particularly in an graduate school forum. But I find it telling that you didn't even bother to engage with my argument against MFA programs and instead all you offer is some circa 2016 meme. Are you implying that I think a lot about how degree creep in creative writing is a bad thing? Yes I do. I think about it very often, probably too often for my health. -
Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I can definitely see the hypocrisy of creative writing faculty advocating for the working approach to writing, as opposed to the "get an MFA" approach, and I've witnessed that in my own program (though I'm not an MFA student). You are right that independent scholars and inbetweeners exist, but how many of those are out there in comparison to people who have a day job and write creatively on the side? The latter group is surely much larger. Creative writers have the potential to reach a mass audience, the proverbial average American reader who just wants a good story, and yet they still resort to couching their work in academic terms. And for what reason other than their own personal comfort? Is it to make themselves feel important? What is their motivation? Creative writers can have a dynamic and diverse readership of people who can enjoy their work without having a college education. They can reach millions theoretically. The typical academic can't do that, because they are working within a specialized discourse community that academics from other fields (let alone the average person) probably can't fully understand because of their lack of training in that subject. And yet these MFA people eschew this potential to reach a wide audience and I don't understand why they throw away that potential power. Is reaching a wide audience selling out? I just can't believe why someone would throw away that potential, to actually touch people's lives, to have people read their work not because they are expected to as professionals, but because they want to, because they would rather do that than watch HBO. The MFA has made creative writing elitist. Academia must be elitist but I don't think that creative writing must be elitist, because it hasn't up until the widespread adoption of MFA cash cow programs. Creative writing is not an academic discipline. It has been co-opted into one because it makes universities a ton of money. And if you advocate getting a graduate degree in creative writing, you are part of the problem. I say that creative writing is non-academic with a lot of respect. I don't think parenthood, or friendship, or a good home cooked meal are scholarly disciplines, but I think all of these things are extremely important. I think they are all more important than any abstract academic field. But the way to practice them is to actually live outside of the protective bubble of academia, which is not an ivy tower but is nevertheless sheltered from the real world. And readers generally want to hear about the real world more than they do about academia when it comes to creative writing because let's face it...being a professor is not very cinematic or exciting to someone with no experience in a given field. That explains why we have so many cop, lawyer and physician TV shows and movies but so few of either about scholars. Perhaps we have a different opinion on creative writing. I do both creative and academic writing, but I see the former as entertainment. I don't think novelists or poets or playwrights or essayists are anything more than entertainers. I say this with the utmost respect, because I think that creative writing is really more important than any academic discipline in that it expresses the human experience far better given its primal nature, given that anyone can do it (but comparatively few can do it well). I think we need entertainers more than we need scholars. But the distinction between literary artists and writers who entertain is not just semantics, it is foregrounded by the elitism that the MFA machine has spread in the last fifty years or so. This is all to say nothing about the other concerns I have about MFA programs, like the relationship between creative writing professors and students being different than that of working writers and editors, to the lack of useful feedback in workshops (given how criticism about the work is automatically criticism of the writer now since everyone is a hater), to the religious adherence to the more workshoppable short story (even though the non-MFA public doesn't want to read short stories), to the solipsistic trend toward creative nonfiction, which seems to advocate for twenty five year old writers who went straight from high school to undergrad to an MFA program publishing their diary entries under the guise of an essay, even if they are not famous and in fact lead boring lives (to all outward appearances). -
Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Good luck to you, but that's not exactly what I meant. I meant that plenty of writers (whose works probably aren't on MFA syllabi) make a living as copywriters/editors, technical writers, grant writers, etc. during the day and write creatively at night. A graduate degree in writing may help you land those jobs, but it is certainly possible to get hired without one. -
Fall 2017 Applicants
Romanista replied to Dr. Old Bill's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I don't understand why some people want to be creative writers and think that the next step is to get an MFA or PhD in the same subject. You don't need those credentials. The writers that you inevitably must study in order to write very often do not even have MFAs or PhDs in creative writing because those are somewhat new degrees. Creative writers should embrace this, because you can still write without having to go through the stresses (and poverty) of graduate school. If your plan is to teach creative writing at the college level then perhaps an MFA or PhD could be worth it, but there are actually tenured faculty who teach creative writing with just a BA. Those people are famous writers but still, that should give you an indication of the value of those degrees and how difficult the job market is. Inevitably some won't like this post but I have to vent. MFAs are really just cash cows for the corporate university. It is true that the university will always profit of off you studying there, even if you are fully funded. But at least in literature or comp rhet or sociology or computer science or whatever, you are dealing with the type of work and research that can only be done on campus, with access to expert faculty and up to date facilities. Creative writing is a lot more spontaneous and it just bothers me that everyone has this kneejerk gotta go to grad school mentality toward creative writing. For the most part, all this does is allow universities to make more money and then give it to administrators instead of adjuncts. People will pay you to write. It won't be creative writing, but it will probably lead to a much better life than taking a chance on the academic job market and only ending up with adjunct work to show for it. It's almost an illusion to think that you can make a living as a creative writer, and slightly less of an illusion to think you can do so as a tenured professor of creative writing. Besides, you won't even be able to write full-time if you are a professor. A creative writer would be much better served by finding a job that supports him or her so that they can write in their freetime. It won't be easy, but writing rarely is. Go to graduate school in the humanities if the kind of research and or job requires that you do so. I just don't think that creative writing fits that maxim. -
I went to C's during the second semester of my MA. At the time I knew very little about the field but I had enough teaching experience to follow the conversations that I overheard. That experience helped me choose comp rhet as a field. I went to C's this year as well but those are the only conferences that I've been to. Attending the first time certainly helped me prepare for quasi presenting the next time (I did the Research Network Forum where I workshopped my in progress thesis with PhD students and professors). Just being there and being exposed to the different ways that scholars expand the scope of the field is valuable and inspirational. If you can afford it, I think it's worth going even if you don't present anything. But the affordability can be an issue for many, especially since universities (not necessarily departments) can be really stingy about funding. I noticed a lot of absentee presenters at this year's conference. Presumably some of them didn't go because they didn't have the funds.
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MA Program Rankings
Romanista replied to A blighted one's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I guess it depends on what you consider fully funded. If you mean an MA program that fully pays your tuition and offers a livable stipend (such that you won't have to take out loans), then yes there are few of those. If you mean an MA program that at least fully covers your tuition, then there are plenty of options.