boomah

I did the same thing with my SOPs (they were about 1,200 words). I did ask the graduate adminstrator at each of my schools if that would be okay, and they all said yes. But your concern is making me also anxious now (since the admin doesn't sit on the admissions committee and I'm not sure if the committee would agree).  I really hope it's not counted against us! 

I was actually thinking the same:
last year Berkeley admitted on January 31/February 1, Chicago on February 2, and Princeton on January 31. If they stick to the same schedule, we might be seeing results this week.
Of course, they're not consistent: in the previous cycle, for example, Princeton admitted around February 9. So it's unclear if they'll actually release this week... but there's hope! Good luck to all!

In hindsight, you're probably right--it does seem to be a troll based on the style of the two acceptances. (One further indication: "Deparment Of Political Science").
Ahh all this waiting is making me jittery and overly gullible   I think it's probably best practice that we don't check the results board until February, when the normal acceptances are out. No need feeding the trolls. Good luck everyone!

In hindsight, you're probably right--it does seem to be a troll based on the style of the two acceptances. (One further indication: "Deparment Of Political Science").
Ahh all this waiting is making me jittery and overly gullible   I think it's probably best practice that we don't check the results board until February, when the normal acceptances are out. No need feeding the trolls. Good luck everyone!

This is good advice but I'd just add the qualifier that the length and content of your email will depend on your circumstances--I was looking to work on a pretty specific project that departed from my previous work, and in the emails I sent I included two relatively short paragraphs explaining what I wanted to do. I am really glad I did that because professors were able to give me very specific tips on where to apply, how to tailor my application to their schools etc. One professor sent me a really long and helpful email that was super enthusiastic, and when I got into that school and she was going to be my potential advisor, she knew my interests very well and was able to give me more advice about the benefits/disadvantages of the various school's I'd gotten into. I didn't end up going to that school, but it was the beginning of a relationship. That's maybe a best case scenario, but I honestly don't think you should be thinking in terms of long/short alone--it's about being clear and to the point, and sometimes that requires a paragraph explanation of what you want to do and why you're emailing that person, specifically. 

NB: if you message me I'm happy to send you more details re the emails I sent. It was the most useful thing I did when I was applying. 

The only thing that will annoy a professor is wasting their time. Be short, sweet, to the point: you're interested in applying to X school, you work on Y project (keep your description of your project to 1 sentence), you thought they might be a good fit for your research, you were wondering if they were taking students to advise next year? 
That said, I absolutely would not read too much into the tenor of these early exchanges — they're not crystal balls. 
Just because a prof doesn't reply to you or doesn't reply to you quickly doesn't mean they're a bad professor to work with. Maybe they just got behind on your email when you wrote in. Maybe they figured they wouldn't spend too much time having a long email exchange with someone who may or may not even apply to the program. Maybe you're asking them questions that they don't know the answer to; professors are great about talking about your research and their research but administrative questions about the program or the application process are always better served for the grad director or the department office.
Similarly,  someone who is brusque to you in an email may turn out to be a great advisor, in person. I know professors who don't even bother to use capital letters in emails, but they're great scholars who will read 10,000 drafts of your dissertation chapter. And just because someone's gushy and nice doesn't necessarily mean they're a great advisor. They might be so gushy that they'll never actually straight out tell you when you're not on the right track, which might actually be worse. 
The point is, however, that these are all things you can't know until you apply and get in, when people are going to be a lot more forthcoming and a lot more revealing of their true colors. The only reason to not apply to a school based on an email exchange with a professor is if they tell you "I'm not taking students this year, so your application will be rejected if you put one in," or "I don't work on the same thing that you do, so if you came to this school, you wouldn't be working with me," and then you decide there's no one else at the school to work with. 

I would like to clarify some more about the potential benefits.  Even if you just communicate with POIs back and forth via email, rather than meeting face-to-face, you still get a better sense of them and they of you than merely submitting an application without any idea of their personality.  If a POI doesn't respond to your email, then you may find that s/he has an abrasive and brusque personality as a mentor.  It's far better to find out during the application cycle than when you're in a program, in which case you don't have to apply there.  Once you're in a program, it's a give and take affair for at least four years.  As far as popular programs with tons of applicants, do you think POIs will remember and signal you out as that annoying aspirant when there are dozens of others contacting them as well?  As you stated, "professors receive a ton of email and thus all the prospective students' might come across as pesky," so you'll be a faceless annoyance along with all the other faceless annoyances.  You can still apply to those programs, but you may want to place other programs higher with professors who are communicative and friendlier.  Just my .02 cents.    

Good places to start on the modern U.S. side:
Castigliola, Frank and Michael J. Hogan, eds. America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1941 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Hogan, Michael J. and Thomas G. Paterson, eds. Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2004. (the 3rd ed. of this is being released I think this month, so I would hold out for that one)
and for funsies, a classic everyone studying U.S. foreign relations should read:
Williams, William Appleman. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy 50th anniversary ed. W.W. Norton and Co., 2009.

A great place to start is The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law. Other than that, if you have access to it, consider the journal of the history of international law.
 

Said, Abu-Lughod, and Massad aren't historians, and none of them claim to be so. Despite your discomfort with them, they've all contributed to their fields in incredibly important ways, especially Said and Abu-Lughod. Abu-Lughod barely even works on Palestine in her professional work; you might be thinking of her colleague Nadia Abu El-Haj (another respected anthropologist). 
Khalidi is indeed a historian, and quite a widely admired one at that (he's currently Chair of Columbia's History department). His work--due to the subject area--is obviously politicized, but he has contributed important research on the history of Palestinian nationalism, and on pre-1948 history of the region more generally. 
And finally, Benny Morris is hardly "objective" (not that such a position exists). 

stillalivetui - they are not serious in the sense that they are not as committed to objective analysis as most Historians are.
 
ashiepoo72 - you are correct in saying that a scholar can be both interdisciplinary and also objective. I completely agree and I believe that the famous Bernard Lewis is a great example of that (he now works in an interdisciplinary department). However, it is much harder to be both interdisciplinary and objective and when you stick to traditional academic approaches it is much easier to be objective.

To the last couple of posters:
 
You all need to chill out. I have said nothing new on this thread and was merely regurgitating what some others have said here and been attacked for saying. You say you support the "opening" and "liberalizing" of out-dated History but sure seem intolerant of those with different ideas.
 
When I say that a lot of pseudo-academic nonsense is getting taken seriously as scholarship what I am referring to is how a bunch of neo-extremists try to use the History discipline to further their political goals and do not use rigorous academic standards when doing so. For instance, I study the Modern Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Jewish-Muslim relations. In this area, we have radical leftists like Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Joseph Massad who attempt to distort history to attack the West and promote Palestinian political aspirations. At the same time, we have radical fascists like Daniel Pipes and Bat Ye'or who attempt to demonize the Islamic world to excuse the crimes of the West. It is the more traditional scholars - like Norman Stillman and Benny Moris -  who come to these debates with more objective and moderated views that actually contribute to our knowledge on these subjects.
 
To those who want to study "cultural studies" and embrace "post-modernism" as "sociologists" and "interdisciplinary scholars" - that's fine - you do that. However, History is supposed to be a serious academic discipline where research is supposed to be based on actual facts and objectivity and not "feelings" and "emotions." If you want to "study" in such a manner, there are many other disciplines out there for you. If you actually want to do research, then History is for you.

To the OP - yes, History is being diluted with radical post-modernist interdisciplinary nonsense. It truly is awful.
 
This does not mean I hate new ways of thinking and new approaches to things, but at a certain point History is not really History anymore... :/

Said, Abu-Lughod, and Massad aren't historians, and none of them claim to be so. Despite your discomfort with them, they've all contributed to their fields in incredibly important ways, especially Said and Abu-Lughod. Abu-Lughod barely even works on Palestine in her professional work; you might be thinking of her colleague Nadia Abu El-Haj (another respected anthropologist). 
Khalidi is indeed a historian, and quite a widely admired one at that (he's currently Chair of Columbia's History department). His work--due to the subject area--is obviously politicized, but he has contributed important research on the history of Palestinian nationalism, and on pre-1948 history of the region more generally. 
And finally, Benny Morris is hardly "objective" (not that such a position exists). 

I think there's this expectation that you need to be brilliant to get into grad school. So if you don't feel brilliant, and you see all these other kids who know so much more, you naturally feel like an imposter. But I think your point is really important, that we're there to learn anyway.
 
Gah! I hate it when that happens to me. But I guess you're right, I need to focus on my interests and become an expert on them (while of course keeping my eyes open to new interests).
 
So true. Like you said, I think we're all capable of producing serious scholarly work. Any gaps in knowledge are easily filled, so there's really nothing much to worry about : )

I think there's this expectation that you need to be brilliant to get into grad school. So if you don't feel brilliant, and you see all these other kids who know so much more, you naturally feel like an imposter. But I think your point is really important, that we're there to learn anyway.
 
Gah! I hate it when that happens to me. But I guess you're right, I need to focus on my interests and become an expert on them (while of course keeping my eyes open to new interests).
 
So true. Like you said, I think we're all capable of producing serious scholarly work. Any gaps in knowledge are easily filled, so there's really nothing much to worry about : )

Sure thing! I really think it came down to just changing the way of thought of grad school as a whole. I think lots of people tend to forget that grad school isn't about showcasing brilliance but about learning; I sometimes forget this myself and catch myself wanting to say the smartest thing in a seminar. But to attempt to be the best also shuts me down from opening myself and learning from what I don't know. So now, every time I don't know or understand a concept, I ask rather than hide, then I decide if it's an idea that I can incorporate in my own work. If yes, I explore it further. If no, I move on. 
 
Back to that first semester as an MA student: I was taking one class that I hated; it was all about prose poetry and experimental prose, and other students found ways to discuss a page with maybe five words on it for HOURS. And when doing so, they would mention all sorts of critics and theorists I had never heard of. Instead of focusing on learning from my classmates, I just felt bad about how little I already knew. Which is silly! The whole point of grad school is to become an expert in a niche of the field; no one is expected to be a scholar in every period, theory, and genre. But I didn't know that at the time, so I just felt bad about myself.
 
What ultimately saved me was focusing on what I do know. I was also taking a feminist literary criticism course, and that's my jam. I was really rocking in that seminar. So, when I had to start planning my final seminar paper for the prose poetry class, I took what I had learned from my fem lit crit class and applied it to a text we read in the prose poetry class. I am, after all, a feminist scholar and activist, so I was able to feel and write like an expert, even though working with a prose/poetry novel was foreign to me. Knowing my strengths helped me feel good about what I did know and apply my knowledge to a somewhat new area.
 
It's a tricky balance: you want to open yourself to new concepts and frameworks, but you also go to grad school to study what you like. If I had only written through a feminist lens, I may have missed disability studies my second semester, which is now hugely influential in my work. So, know your strengths and interests, but also be open to learning new things. That should help you focus on your own work rather than how you are doing compared to others, and thus, help you produce some great work in the process. 

I'm going to do list form because I'm feeling lazy.

DO THE DARN READING. This is seriously the most simple concept about getting a literature degree but darn if it's not the hardest part too. It piles up so sparknotes/audiobooks/movie versions get real tempting. Also, a good deal of the material, in my program at least, was only discussed for maybe one week and then was never tested or anything. It gets really tempting not to read stuff that isn't tested but you never know when a text is going to come up in another project/class.

Find a niche. Everyone has one. The sooner you know it, the sooner you can start focusing as many of your papers around it as possible. I don't think I have written one paper in the last 2 years that wasn't gender theory. And once you've done that,

Talk to your professors about your writing. They know what kind of writing is taken seriously in academia. This one is hard for me because I don't want to hear any criticism about my writing but honestly I need it. And that's why I'm getting my MA: to better my academic writing.

Submit for publication/conferences. You never know who is going to find your research interesting.

Try not to work as much. I'm paying for my schooling myself and last year I was working 2 jobs at 55+ hours a week. I was working 7 days a week and had shifts anywhere from 7 am to 3:30 am. I missed out on a lot of talks, readings, and mixers because of work. I also had hardly any time to do reading. Don't do that.

ETA: About waiting until last minute to write: sometimes it's necessary. Last year there were 2 instances where I had to write two 18-page term papers from scratch and only had about 12 hours to do each one. I don't recommend it, but I pulled As out of both. Make sure you give yourself enough time to proofread and try to start researching for term papers at around midterms. Sometimes literature can take a while to get to you, especially if you have to use any kind of interlibrary lending programs. And if you do, download the literature on to a flash drive. The text expires after a certain date and you won't be able to access it unless you have it downloaded.

Also, learning how to do an effective review of literature for your papers will save you a lot of time, especially if your thesis for the paper has little secondary sources to directly back up your claims. From what I know, that's how it should be anyway; the majority of your evidence should come from the primary text.

I'm going to be a voice of slight dissent on this. Yes, do the reading, but learn HOW to read effectively. This does not mean you read every single line of every single article or novel. Get a god enough sense of the material to discuss it. Time management helps in this regard, but so does reading introductions, conclusions, and topic sentences to get a general gist before delving deeper into an article. Faculty honestly do not assume you've read every single thing they assign every week, particularly those who assign hundreds upon hundreds each week. It's an admirable goal to shoot for, but it's not always possible.

Go. To. Office. Hours. Faculty much prefer talking with you than undergrads who almost never come.

Be kind. I'm sorry if you end up in a program that practices book hiding. Courtesy to faculty, admin staff, and your fellow students will go a long way, both during and after your program.

Understand how your department operates, including its politics, but DO NOT get sucked into it. You're there for 2-5/6/7 years. It's not your job to fix things, no matter how tempting. But do know that Professor X and Professor Y will never sit on your committee together and cooperate; this will save you a lot of grief.

If you need something, ask for it. You're a pre-1800 scholar and nothing is being offered in the next year? Ask your DGS. Find some way to get what you need in order for your program to work for you.

So much good advice here! I'm pretty much going to repeat everything that's being said. I have an MA in literature and am now working on a PhD in rhetoric and composition, so my advice can apply to pretty much any English studies grad student. 
 
mikers86 is on point. Read smartly. When you have 500-1,000 pages of reading in a week, plus grading and writing and applying to conferences and oh yeah a personal life, it is physically impossible to read all the pages. This may be more applicable to PhD programs, but I have had multiple professors tell me to prioritize my own research over coursework. So, how does one read smartly? Like boomah already knows, you want to come prepared with some ideas or even questions about the readings. If you are reading a pile of articles, read enough of each one so that you can synthesize and make a connection between all of them (if I'm desperate, I read the intro, really skim the body, and read the conclusion). That being said, once I am reading an assigned novel or article that I know will be helpful for my comps or dissertation (or for the OP, an MA thesis), I zero in. I read it thoroughly, make notes, and highlight that baby. If I know I will use the reading again, having done a deep reading early on will save time when I sit down to cite or memorize or summarize it later on.
 
Okay, now onto my own advice. As always, I don't expect what worked for me to work for everyone, so feel free to pick and choose what you resonates or doesn't! 
 
1. Ask questions. And no, I don't mean those kinds of questions you get during the Q & A at a conference, wherein the question is really a statement about how smart the asker really is. No, I mean ask questions if you're confused. My first semester as a PhD student, a professor had mentioned something about affect, and another grad student piggy backed onto her comment. I was nervous to admit that I didn't really know precisely what "affect" meant in a rhetoric/literature context, but I asked. When the professor turned to the other students to explain it to me, they ALL admitted (even the one who was previously talking about it) that they didn't really understand affect either. It was this great moment when I realized that if I don't understand something, chances are, others don't as well. So, now I ask for clarification whenever I need it: rather than looking ignorant, I feel like I come off as engaged and confident. 
 
2. Forget competition with others. Compete with yourself. When I started my MA program, I immediately was plagued with impostor syndrome. Everyone in the program knew more than me! And looking back, that's probably true; I don't think my undergrad adequately prepared me for graduate studies. I almost dropped out because I just didn't think I'd ever be as smart as everyone else. But after the semester ended, I had a couple professors tell me that I wrote the best seminar paper in the class. So the next semester, I wanted to do even better. And I did. My second semester, I didn't really register how I was doing compared to the other students: I started to see if I could be a better scholar than I was last semester. This simple yet radical change empowered me to enter a PhD program years later, knowing that no matter where I'm at in the pack, I will find a way to better myself throughout the program. 
 
3. Advocate for yourself. You have a right to be happy, satisfied, and safe in your program. If something isn't working out, speak up! I read so many threads of the Officially Grads forum of miserable grad students asking for permission to advocate for themselves. I'm giving everyone that permission now. 
 
4. Make connections. The difference between a great seminar paper and a publishable article is that the former demonstrates an understanding of the course material and the latter breaks into the larger conversation within the field. Make connections among what you're reading in one course with the others. See if you can find connections among your Shakespeare, Classical Rhetoric, and Feminist Theory courses. The ability to see the larger conversation within your field will enable you to write kick ass papers that not only get the "A" but also the coveted "let's talk about submitting this to X, Y, or Z journal" comment from your prof.  
 
5. Make connections. Obviously, with professors. Go to department events, office hours, or book readings by the professors. But also make connections with your classmates! Fostering a sense of community can be especially challenging in an MA program, versus a PhD program, but it's worth it: you will simply be a happier grad student! But having a community of support can also be priceless when you are too sick to go to class and need notes, or need a second pair of eyes on your seminar paper before turning it in, or discover that your classmate has been hoarding the one copy of that library book you so desperately need. And later on, you don't know where your fellow MA graduates will be! I helped an MA classmate get a job where I was teaching, and other MA students helped me when I was applying to PhD programs. It's a community of support that can extend beyond the two years of the program.
 
6. Have an end game in mind. This is MA specific, but since an MA in English is not a terminal degree, I've noticed that some students who don't have an end game in mind just kinda flounder throughout the program. However, those who had, even a vague plan, succeeded. PhD student? Grant writer? Teacher? Editor? Whatever your endgame is will hugely direct the kind of research and extracurricular activities you pursue. If you really have no idea what you want to do post-MA, that's fine too: then, I suggest dedicating yourself to trying a little bit of everything so you can figure out what makes you happiest and most fulfilled. That's what I did! I tutored in the writing center, presented at conferences, chaired the graduate literature association, volunteered with youth, organized group outings to education funding protests. By doing a little bit of everything, I had a pretty diverse CV. After my MA, I was hired as a supervisor at a children's museum (thanks to my volunteer work), which I quit pretty quickly once I was hired as an adjunct instructor (thanks to my tutoring and TA experience), which I then quit three years later to start a PhD program (thanks to my coursework and conference presentations). 
 
I hope this is helpful! Good luck to all who are starting their programs soon! 

Jhefflol has some great advice there. Just a few thoughts to add...
 
First, you've identified four areas for improvement, and indeed, those are four areas you need to improve. As Jhefflol says, writing papers the night before can be done (some people work best with an imminent deadline), but results may vary. This leads into the one big thing that simply isn't stressed enough in undergrad: TIME MANAGEMENT. Right from the first day of classes (and preferably before), you should be assembling your syllabi / reading lists and forming a plan for the semester. As an undergrad, I've always taken all of my syllabi and created a master spreadsheet with deadlines for all papers and readings for each of my clases by date. It takes a couple of hours or so to assemble the spreadsheet, and things change throughout the semester, but having everyting on one or two sheets of paper (virtual or otherwise) is extremely helpful.
 
I'm a particularly slow reader, I think. Close-reading something like Coriolanus or a book of Paradise Lost can take me the bulk of a day. Yet I've never not done the reading, no matter how many courses I'm enrolled in or daunting the material is. This is because I'm constantly looking at what needs to be done weeks in advance, and forming a plan of attack. It doesn't take as much time to form such a plan as you might expect. It's just a case of being aware of what's on the horizon and not having the little "oh s***t!" moments when you realize that some big reading is due the next day.
 
And one final general comment. Be mature, and be an adult about things. This, too, seems to be an underrated -- yet essential -- element of students entering grad school. In undergrad, professors generally expect that there are some frathouse shenanigans going on, with many students having the freedom to fool around and straddle the boundaries between responsibility and irresponsibility. But when you're a graduate student, there's not a lot of leeway for that sort of behavior. You're expected to be professional, and ultimately a scholar-in-training, if not a scholar in fact.
 
This advice might not be specific to the field of literature, but it is no less important for that.

Anyone going to Dartmouth this fall?