greenmt

Fall 2017 applicants with an interest in the eighteenth century might find useful this announcement, which appeared in a list-serve that I'm subscribed to (see below). For the record, you can search or subscribe to the list-serve (and other 18th C resources) here on this web site. This is not my main scholarly field, but I'll take this opportunity to plug the University of Maryland's very good faculty with specialization in the eighteenth century - Tita Chico is an excellent teacher and scholar, and if I were in 18th C I would want her as an advisor. I don't check in here often, but I found grad cafe a very useful resource when I was applying, and I'm happy to answer questions (gholmes at umd dot edu). I'm also happy to talk about 19th C American, my little corner of the world. Dear List,I write to announce that now that the University of New Hampshire will be hosting the ASECS journal Eighteenth-Century Studies, the English department will be seeking to recruit Ph.D. students in the field of the long eighteenth-century, broadly conceived to include British, Irish, Early American, Transatlantic, and other Anglophone literary and cultural studies. Enrollment of such students at UNH may lead to opportunities to participate in our UNH 18th-Century Interdisciplinary Seminar as well as in the activities of the journal. UNH is proud to have several leading faculty in the period in the departments of English, History, Art History, Philosophy, and Modern Languages who participate in the seminar and work with graduate students from English and other departments.The deadline for applications is January 15, and information on applying can be found here: http://cola.unh.edu/english/graduate-programsWe would be grateful if you could circulate this announcement to interested students, and please do not hesitate to have them contact me with questions.Sincerely,Dr. Sean Moore|Associate Professor of English|University of New Hampshire|Hamilton Smith Hall|Durham, NH 03824|

Wow, you went deep to find that. Yes, I wouldn't trust them for anything except general info, which is what it sounded like the original poster was seeking, and I didn't even consider looking at them when I was applying. The only research-based resource I found when I was looking was the National Academies' 2010 report, which has its flaws and is a few years old now. I found it useful because I was able to sort by lots of factors, and thereby narrow down to a limited set of programs that fit my criteria.

There are list-serves focused on particular periods and such, that might be associated with a particular discipline. There's H-Net, which swings widely but includes a lot of English Lit CFPs.

Not long ago, I discovered, by accident, that the US News & World Report rankings have fairly detailed breakdowns by specialty. This should show the listings for American Lit. after 1865, if that helps.

I'm going to shut up in a minute, partly because I have two papers to write, but my hope is that humanities departments will start to be able to simply own up to their place in the economy of the university, and that universities will be able to own up to their place in the larger economy. On my campus, the proportion of English faculty who serve as Deans and other high level administrators is higher than the proportion of English faculty in relation to faculty overall. (For example, both the Dean of Graduate Studies and the Dean of Undergraduate Studies came from English.) That to me is one answer to the Provost, President, and the Trustees and legislators they see themselves reporting to, when the question arises, "Why do you need to keep this faculty line tenure-track?" And universities, especially big, public research universities, need to do a better job of talking about what they bring, as businesses, to their communities. I don't mean that it's their only value to the communities. But they employ lots of people, and many of those jobs pay better than comparable jobs in the surrounding community. They bring people to the area, some of whom stay and do stuff that also supports the economy. Tenure is another way of saying to a faculty member, "It's a safe bet for you to buy a house here," and that builds stability in communities. Universities have institutional imperatives to diversify, and that makes neighborhoods more diverse. There's stuff to do on campus, and so people come from near and far, and spend money. These things aren't the reason for the university, but they're a beneficial result of the everyday work of a functioning university. When legislatures slash budgets, or cut tenure, there are practical implications for the communities they represent, and they and their constituencies have a right to know about that. When I see stories like this, one of my responses is, "Madison is fucked." Since Wisconsin seems to be a test case for radical-right initiatives, in recent years, it's reasonable to expect that the outcomes there will help determine the shape of battles that will be fought in center-right state legislatures over the next few years. We should probably be prepared....

Me, too. Thanks for the link, ProfLorax. The following is not directed to you, particularly, but more generally to the group here. From what I can see, the subcommittee is more about theory than practice. Which is fine, of course. But I wonder whether theorizing the job market is not another way of avoiding looking at the bigger picture. For me, that's this: universities are businesses, and the intellectual work we do is supported by some combination of undergraduate tuition, taxes, and donated dollars. I like doing that work, presumably you all like doing that work, and we'd all like to see things change so that more people can do that work with job security and a decent salary. Someone has to pay for that. It won't happen if the people responsible for distributing tuition, taxes, and donations see humanities enrollments going down and the (well-funded) other side is arguing, as they have, with increasing success, for at least 20 years, that the problem is ivory-tower deconstructionists who can't or won't even speak plain English, and can't teach undergraduates to write a cover letter and resume. Acknowledging that, and figuring out what practical steps to take in response, does not inherently imply submission to the dominant neoliberal narrative - no more, in any event, than signing on as an employee or quasi-employee of the university does. If we think what we're doing matters, outside our narrow subfields, isn't it a good thing to be able to articulate that in plain language, even to an audience that doesn't particularly think they believe in what we're doing? For example, my advisor told me a story the other day about a bunch of faculty going to Annapolis a few years ago, when funding for the nascent LGBT studies program was threatened for the usual reasons, and testifying in front of the legislature about why the program should matter to them and their constituents. The funding reappeared. The same outcome might not happen everywhere, or all the time, but one reason the right has won more often than not during my lifetime is that they show up and talk about why what they believe matters to other people, in language other people can understand. (If your response is, "Yes, but they lie," I'm with you, and I say showing up gives you the chance to point out the lies.) I actually think there are hopeful indicators: for example, in a recent faculty meeting, the chair said that undergraduate majors in English on my campus are diversifying, and at a faster rate than the college overall. This is good in itself, of course. It is also a useful bit of information to include in a proposal to XYZ Foundation or a presentation to the state legislature. We do no one, least of all these undergraduates, a favor by refusing to quantify this information for bean-counters, if that's what it takes to get the funding to support them. Anyway, for what it's worth, my experience both over the last year and earlier, in my MA program, has been that faculty, especially those moving toward tenure or who've recently gotten tenure, tend to be refreshingly practical about balancing the how-to-get-a-job part with the how-to-maintain-scholarly-integrity part. Overall, the faculty at my institution seem a bit baffled by the challenges they face, but I see them attempting to take practical steps (like speaking with English departments at other public research Us about their responses to threatened budget cuts), which at least means they're trying to look the problems in the face.

I have a suggestion. Let me preface it by saying that I don't come on here very often, but I've *been* coming on here for three years now, so I've seen three application seasons play out. In general, it seems to me that people are very supportive and civil *until* this kind of discussion comes up. I tend to think we (certainly graduate students and prospective graduate students, but I include faculty, and administrators, too) have more in common than we have differences. If you think I'm wrong, or naive, feel free to ignore the rest of this. My life experience, in and out of academia, has led me to this conclusion, and I'm not really interested in arguing the point. I will say that my general hunch about this has been confirmed by sitting in meetings with faculty and administrators from time to time over the last year: from what I see, they're scared, too, for different but related reasons. In general, my sense is that this set of problems can only be solved if people all up and down the hierarchy start to work together: administrators, faculty, and graduate students. The legislators in Annapolis (or your state capital), and certainly in DC, aren't really hearing our voices now, and they don't have any particular reason to worry about the plight of English Departments, unless we give them one. My experience has been that more voices together get heard more easily than lots of individual voices in solitude. I'm not talking about protest, which is useful, but typically as a last resort, if there's no other way to be heard. We're already inside the tent, at least part way, and my hope is that we can have conversations. I've found that busy administrators are more apt to listen if you come with a solution, and if you can convince them that they can be part of that solution, and especially if the solution makes their job easier, in the bargain. So my suggestion is: if folks here are going to MLA in Philly, in January, what about meeting, either in some sort of formal MLA sanctioned way, or off to the side, over coffee or drinks, to see whether we can identify some common solutions to our common set of problems? I'm interested in thinking about cross-campus and cross-disciplinary solutions to as many as possible of the problems that have been identified here and elsewhere. Can our programs do something different to help prepare us for the job market as it is? Can we help them to enroll more undergrad English / language majors, so they can make the case to their higher-ups for hiring more faculty? Should the programs, or MLA, have some kind of mentoring program, in which people who've gotten jobs informally work with late-stage PhD students, and late-stage grad students work with new students? Can we help them to convince the Mellon Foundation or the NEH to support this with a big, fat grant? These are off the top of my head. I think better when I'm thinking alongside other people who care about the same things. If you're interested in thinking together about these things at MLA in January in Philadelphia, let me know.

Since we're tooting our horn - and why not? - another graduating MA was accepted to several top library schools, and is choosing to stay here, because UMD has pretty fine rare book / archive resources, and is strong in digital humanities. Also, to go way off topic: I've seen the women's basketball team handily win against tough opponents, twice in the last couple of weeks. Go Terp Women!

@DJS, I stayed at the Best Western on Rt. 1, aka Baltimore Ave. It's walkable to campus, though I wouldn't necessarily recommend the walk at night. But if I'm reading right, that you live in New York City, you might be fine - it's something like Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn or upper Broadway. Apartment buildings, groceries, gas-stations, restaurants, and liquor-stores... there are buses, but there's not a stop directly in front of the hotel.... I would avoid the Quality Inn, which is close but I'm told is a bit shady. I may have said this above, but I live in Greenbelt, which is both affordable and pleasant, and mostly use a shuttle bus that runs hourly to the U (though not on weekends or during breaks). I could give more info about that via PM if you are interested. In general, while I was looking, I found the options both expensive and sort of unpalatable. The best rental options I saw were something like in-law apartments in Hyattsville, specifically a section called Riverdale. The spaces I saw were finished basements, with separate entrances, kitchens, utilities included, and use of the yard. You might ask how the department supports students MA students, both in the program, and in their transition to whatever is next. My guess is that they do a lot. I never see faculty make distinctions between MA and PhD students in classes, but I don't know how things are with choosing and meeting with advisors, and so on. I happened to run into a couple of graduating MA students yesterday, and asked them what's next. It turns out that one is likely going to Princeton, the other to Cornell. So MA graduates do move on to top-level PhD programs.

I went to one, during the most recent admissions season, as a waitlister, and without stayover funding (it was drivable), and found that a place I was sure I would like was not for me, after all. It was well worth it. A PhD is a big, multiyear commitment. There are parts that are hard to see from a distance.

I'm in my first year in UMD's PhD English program, and I'd also be happy to answer questions directly. I didn't speak up before b/c I felt that Proflorax and Wyatt's Terps pretty much covered what I would say. But having negotiated the stipend and moved here quite recently, I have two specific thoughts in response to AudreLorde's question. First, if they've offered you a spot, it means they want you to enroll. When I was admitted, it was off a waitlist, and so I didn't feel in a great position to negotiate. When I hesitated, Ralph came back, unprompted, with a slightly sweeter offer that made it feel possible to move and live here. That was instructive, and, every step of the way since, I've had the sense that the people in the department want students to stick around and be supported. They're all facing competing priorities - you do have to speak up if you need something - and there is a Big U bureacracy to deal with, but I have felt, so far, that faculty (and the department staff) were willing to go a little ways out on a limb to help me advocate for what I need. Second, if I were accepted today, I would apply for graduate housing tomorrow (or as soon as it opens up). It's by far the best deal I came across the the area, but there are very few spaces available compared with graduate admissions overall. I think two, maybe three, people in my cohort got apartments there. They seem satisfied if not thrilled with the accommodations. (I could connect you with them.) It's also right across the street from campus: easy access. It's managed not by the U., but by a for-profit company called Southern Management, that also owns buildings across the area. They have a reasonably good reputation, from what I saw, compared to other property-management companies. I considered renting, and found the options so wanting that I bought a house in the Greenbelt cooperatives. I love it here: affordable, community minded, basically a hidden gem. They also have a little known rental building with one bedrooms and efficiencies that, again, are no-frills but affordable. http://parkway.ghi.coop/ There's a bunch of other apartment buildings here in "old" Greenbelt and the more strip-mallish part of town where the larger apartment complexes sit. There's a very reliable shuttle that passes about a block from my house, passing through parts of "old" and "new" Greenbelt, but it only runs once an hour, and not on weekends or during breaks, so depending on circumstances, it may not be ideal. If you want more info., don't hesitate to ask.

I entered with the intention of returning to nonprofit-land, where I've been for most of my working life, to maybe narrow to a different level of specialization. Already I can feel the pull of academia, because the rewards of landing a tenure-track gig are so great. I guess I'm hoping for a meaningful gig in arts / culture / humanities, that would allow me to incorporate some of the research / writing / presenting that makes academia exciting. And I do think, btw, that there's plenty of room in the Humanities, including Lit., for a generous, philanthropic, or plain old leveling-the-playing-field way of being. I see it among friends, colleagues, and mentors.

This article in Inside Higher Education discusses a new book out soon from Harvard University Press on the subject of how (elite... but aren't they sorta all?) PhD admissions committees work. It's not clear whether any of the profiled departments are literature departments, but at least some are in the humanities, and I remember this topic coming up fairly regularly when I was a more consistent checker-in here. Unsurprising surprises: GRE scores seem to get more consideration than programs like to let on, internal department politics play a role, and participants support diversity in the abstract while prizing people with backgrounds and career goals like their own. That summary sounds more cynical than I meant it to. I have to say I find it refreshing to see people owning up to some of this stuff, and I look forward to reading the book. Change starts with the recognition of an unsatisfactory situation. The surprising thing to me was glimpsing how much the process is driven by fear. Real attention to genuine diversity - race, gender, age, cultural and educational background - has made many other fields more robust. Corporate America, for all its many faults, recognized that a long time ago now. Academics have everything to gain, and very little to lose, by broadening the scope of voices being heard. For example, one way to recruit more undergraduate English majors is to have more English professors who share some life experience or cultural background with the (infinitely more diverse than when I was 18) undergraduate population. [steps off soapbox]

I was thinking that the other day, too, when I randomly checked in, after a couple/few weeks away, and found nothing to reply to. Maybe applicants are finally listening to the hype and applying in smaller numbers? In any case, best of luck to everyone applying this fall!

If anyone reading this is in a similar situation in New York City, I would put in a similar plug for the city colleges. They're affordable, and many of the faculty are accomplished scholars and co-teach at the Graduate Center. You have access to all of the resources of all of the city colleges - libraries, courses - and I think the Grad Center still credits the courses you take within the system for the MA, toward the PhD, if you ultimately decide to apply there. I didn't do this, because I had a job and took just one or two courses per semester, but some MA students adjunct within the system to help pay the bills. I did get a reasonably generous fellowship, within the department, and thus got to know a lot of the faculty, as well as a better understanding of how the sausages get made in academia. At Hunter, anyway, there was a healthy mix of people studying to be English teachers, MFA in writing people, and folks who wanted to go on (and did) to PhD programs, so a variety of perspectives. After 10 years out, when I went back to faculty to ask for recommendations, they all remembered me. I'm where I am now because my MA thesis advisor took the time to talk through with me a list of schools I should apply to. I don't have direct experience with the other city colleges, but I would highly recommend Hunter.

The people in my cohort have a wide variety of backgrounds. If you can make a compelling case for why you should be in grad school - especially, I think, if you have a clear idea what you want to study, and can make a connection between what you've done and what you want to do - and if you have decent GRE scores and enthusiastic recommendations, you probably have as good a chance as anyone of getting in. I'm much older than others in my cohort, and older than some of the assistant professors, and I got my MA from Hunter College, so I'm proof that it can be done.

I'd second WT there. DC is one of three or four really important centers for nonprofit sector work: associations, think tanks, foundations. Just saying that, like academia, each of these sectors have their own internal cultures, networks of communication, and expectations around what constitutes relevant experience. Lots of PhDs in the nonprofit sector, for example, but from what I've seen they tend to make their way there through a subject interest and not so much just because they have a higher-level degree than the other applicant.

I'm a 1st year PhD student in the program, entered with an MA, interested in alt-ac, having spent much time in nonprofit-land. I'd be happy to answer questions via PM, too. I want to echo what others have said. The department seems unusually collegial - the students are great. The boundaries between disciplines and between degree tracks (MA, MFA, PhD, and even related subjects like women's studies) seem fruitfully porous... at least, I have interacted with people across these tracks already, in my first semester. I've found the faculty to be supportive in a way that suggests genuine interest in what their students are up to. This has been true, in my experience, even for the senior, well-established, faculty. I've noticed that they seem to have good relations among themselves, too. I've felt welcomed and supported by the department, the faculty, and fellow students. Following national trends, the dept. seems to be accepting fewer students, but the new PhD cohort is quite diverse, by area of interest, race, gender, and national origin. A couple of local people, the rest (including me) moved from elsewhere. Current students (including some on this thread!) provided helpful context when I was trying to figure out a complicated move, as did the department. I would re-emphasize, and maybe expand a bit on, what ProfLorax said about alt-ac. The faculty are sympathetic about the current state of the job market (though, as I've said elsewhere, that seems to move cyclically, and could be different in five to seven years), and supportive (including in some tangible ways, such as the grantwriting workshop) for those interested in alt-ac. Having said that, they are all academics and therefore not necessarily well versed or well connected in the nonprofit or government (or other non-academic) circles. The default funding package is structured to support research and teaching, and the courses, too, are structured so as to emphasize theory / research / teaching. It's *possible* to forge an alt-ac career path, but UMD doesn't have (nor to my knowledge, any other PhD in Lit program) internal structures that tangibly support students wanting to follow those paths. In fact, I was told (and not just by faculty at UMD) that it would be wise to de-emphasize my interest in alt-ac in my application materials. In short, I was told that the depts. see themselves as investing time and money in people who have a reasonable shot at contributing to the field of literary studies, so emphasizing that is one's best shot at catching the eye of the admissions committee. (This may vary from school to school, of course. I wound up talking about my professional interests, but I tried to draw a through-line between what I was already doing, what I proposed doing in PhD land, and what I hope to do, highlighting how it would benefit Lit / the Humanities.) I suspect that English depts. will eventually develop strategies to deal with the frightening reality of the job market - maybe (hint, hint) by hiring more faculty with outside-the-academy experience - but we're not there yet.

All of this is true. Admissions committees won't necessarily be impressed by your previous accomplishments in another field, any more than a law school admissions committee would be impressed that you wrote a dissertation on representations of the law in Emily Dickinson's writing - the subject of a recent book. Similar skills, different field, each with its own norms and frameworks of understanding and secret handshakes. Another way of saying that is: we read differently given different contexts. That said, I took a class, toward my MA, with a former attorney who went back to school, got a PhD and then a tenure-track teaching job. She taught 17th C British poetry, and her insights into the always-shifting legal landscape were eye-opening. I am in favor of second-career PhDs, and not just because I am one. I think it broadens the field and introduces new ways of thinking. Also, it takes hard work to build a career in (X), and those work habits / skills *do* apply to the work of scholarship. Adcomms won't want to know that you find lawyering boring, or really want to self-direct your work life. You might want to talk with some academics, if you know any. As ExponentialDecay points out, tenure is not all that different than making partner, in the sense that there are established criteria but the process is subjective and personal. As an associate lawyer is, to an extent, dependent on the goodwill of partners and clients, an untenured professor is dependent on the goodwill of tenured peers and students. My guess is that, in the end, lawyers have with more options to self-direct, in part because there are more places for them to land, but the money is part of it, too. I have lawyers in the family, and most, not all, are tied to their firms in the way academics are tied to their institutions. Others, who work in corporate law, have more time on their hands. All make more money than I ever will, and those who are retired are truly free to pursue their interests, and do. Anyway, admissions committees want to know what goals you have in mind, so they can assess whether they have the faculty and the resources to help you get there, and whether you have something they see as valuable in terms of *their* field. ProfLorax's colleague provides a good example here: draw a connection between what you've been doing and what you would like to study. Like a nurse who, through her prior professional work, developed an interest in representations of disability, you might have interests - specific interests, e.g., legal culture in Middle English literature, or law and lawyers in the fiction of the American antebellum south - that make use of your legal knowledge but that will contribute something new to understanding literature. GPA: I failed out of my first undergrad college, and my second didn't use grades at all. It's a part of the overall application package. High grades elsewhere, and a high GPA score, won't necessarily mean automatic acceptance, but they won't hurt, particularly if you can show that you've remained engaged with English Lit and can show a clear path between what you've done and what you want to do.

Emily Dickinson International Society is having its triennial international conference in Paris (!) next June. There's a "critical institute" for grad students - hint, funding is available from EDIS: Graduate students and early career scholars are invited to apply to the “Dickinson Critical Institute” at the Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) Conference in Paris on June 23rd, 2016. Participants will present and discuss project descriptions (for articles, dissertations, or books) in small seminars led by established Dickinson scholars. Following these group meetings, participants will gather for a discussion of grant and award opportunities, publishing, and other professional development topics. Participation in the Institute does not preclude proposing a paper for panel presentation at the EDIS Conference, which will be held from June 24-26, 2016. (Paper proposals for the Conference should be submitted separately to the conference committee. See: http://www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org/node/464).If you are interested in applying to the Institute, please submit a 500-word description of your current project to Eliza Richards (ecr@email.unc.edu) and Alexandra Socarides (socaridesa@missouri.edu) by December 15, 2015. Abstracts should provide an overview that articulates the goals and stakes of the project, an outline, and an estimated schedule for completion. The EDIS will be offering travel funds to a limited number of participants. If you would like to apply for travel funds, please supply a document that provides the following information: - name, email, institution and position (if applicable)- itemized approximate budget for travel to the Paris conference- other sources of travel funding you will apply for

A med school dean (and students) make a good case for the value of the humanities (and the danger of too narrow/professional a focus), in this story about a med school program designed to recruit English majors.

Y'all see this very recent, concise report on higher ed humanities disciplines? Why are the humanities suffering? Given the funding comparisons in the charts on pp. 17-18, the better question might be, why is it still alive? See also p. 13 for data about where humanities BAs end up working. Note the vast differences in profession between those who go on to pursue advanced degrees and those who don't. As usual, I haven't been able to go through the entire humanitiesindicators.org site, but it looks like there's a bunch of useful info there in easily digestible (and therefore communicable) form. This is a big part of what I've been looking for... ways to describe what's happening, and why it matters, that laypeople - whose tax dollars provide most of the funding for higher ed - can get behind.

Thank you. I knew about this org, but I think it is mostly meant to serve the state humanities councils, and their event is mostly meant to ensure continued funding by Congress for the state councils, so they can keep supporting state and local events and activities. But this and some conversation on a thread under English Lit, about an initiative by the MLA is making me wonder whether the big humanities funders like Mellon (or even the NEH itself) are turning to the problem of the job market and the perceived value of the humanities outside the academy. And this might be a good model for the kind of org that I'm suggesting, though as a representative of orgs that are significantly funded by direct federal appropriation, they likely have a different dance to dance.

Lucinda Williams, getting better as she ages, like the best of them.

The "resources" section of that site has a great deal of recent - very recent, as in this spring - data and related related material about placement. I haven't had time to look at everything, but among other things are some charts showing the results of a study the MLA has done that tracks actual employment outcomes for modern language PhDs over a roughly 20 year period. To my eyes, it shows that things are not so dire as the public discourse ("Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!") would lead one to believe. Though of course it would be better if everyone who wants a tenure-track job could find one, and everyone ought to keep fighting toward that.