qeta
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Posts posted by qeta
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I have a Samsonite Xenon laptop backpack for the days when I have to carry lots of books and papers (mostly teaching days). On other days, I carry a Solo Urban Universal Tablet Sling, which is quite nice-looking and small enough for carrying a small moleskine notebook, some pens, headphones, chargers, and my 11-inch MacAir.
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I agree with lewin that it doesn't matter when you submit the paper and also that you should work your way down a chain of suitable journals, with the highest ranked first. I wouldn't be so sure that it wouldn't be accepted for publication - you might need to revise it quite a bit, but it seems like you have a good shot.
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My undergrad thesis turned out to be 87 pages (I could go as high as 120, IIRC) and the hardest part was connecting the two very distinct chapters in a meaningful way. As it happened, I ended up with one publishable chapter of around 35 pages; I'm happy to leave behind the rest. My MA thesis, at 60 pages, seems like a better deal to me and should provide me with a more tightly written sample.
To answer the original question, being in my MA program has been a step in the right direction. I have been able to leverage the "brand name" into some cool opportunities, to network more, and to professionalize. I have also been torn about which discipline (out of three possible) I should be part of and my time in the MA program really clarified that. -
Food fight
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Ring finger
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Yes! He was also great when I emailed him about applying to UCLA. Unfortunately my language skills weren't up to scratch for a PhD so it was suggested by Prof Marotti (also great and helpful) that I apply for an MA (funded) instead.
I haven't had a chance to read it yet but listened to his lecture on that chapter and have read his other work on Urdu travelogues etc. Thanks
How did you come across his work?I have read some of his books about Indian sufism and recently met him at a conference. His talk, based on the new book, was engrossing; he was also very generous in brainstorming sources for my MA project and telling me to contact specific scholars, etc.. I'm not surprised to hear that he was enthusiastic about your application. :-)
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I would love to! Seen photos and read up about it (my close friend also comes from Nagoya) but don't think I'll have time this trip sadly.
Hawaii looks like a perfect fit for you. Congrats again.
I am looking at the relationship between Islam and Japan. My MA thesis looked at the institutionalization of Islam in Japan. There is a lot of scope and I will be working with someone who really knows this area well (Cemil Aydin), so cannot wait. Just need to get my Japanese down ASAP.
You probably already know this, but Nile Green's (UCLA) new book is partly about the role of South Asian Muslims in institutionalizing Islam in Japan. It's called Terrains of Exchange: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/terrains-of-exchange-9780190222536?cc=us&lang=en&/
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Hi Gabe,
Thank you so much for your replies! I can feel a bit less anxious now. -
Qeta,
Where will your papers be published? Are they co-authored?
Admissions committees will look very favorably on two legit publications at your career stage. At the end of the day publications are THE currency in academic research, and if you have already produced some (and presumably have the ability to produce more) you'll have a leg up on your competition.
Best of luck!
Gabe
Hi Gabe,
Thank you for your reply! None of the papers are co-authored. The humanities/history publication (on Latin America) was recently accepted by a middle-tier journal that seems to publish articles from newly minted PhDs and new professors, mostly from Britain, Canada, and Australia.
I've also been told that I should publish my undergraduate honours thesis on South Asia in a history/area studies journal, which I will get ready for submission this summer. Most crucially, I hope to submit a section of my political science Master's thesis (on Southeast and South Asia) to a journal in a year as well, especially since it's a timely topic that people seem to find interesting. I worry about seeming unfocused with my divergent choices of topics, regions, and methodologies, and wonder if the publications will end up hurting rather than helping.
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Hello Gabe! I might be a Foucault kid myself, so my question is how do sociology departments view publications in other fields? I will definitely have a humanities/history publication and possibly a social science publication by the time I am applying to sociology PhD programs. Do publications in anything but top-tier journals have any impact whatsoever?
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This morning, some dude drove his car into out house, because he was trying to run my roommate and roommate's girl over.
I hope all of you are alright.
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They are not internships per se, but jobs at NORC at UChicago may be of interest to you: http://www.norc.org/WorkingAtNORC/Pages/default.aspx.
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This isn't the easiest combo for Hyde Park. I think airbnb would be your best bet since close hotel options are slim. You should be able to find a nice apartment close to campus for under $100/night on airbnb.
I have stayed at the McCormick Theological Seminary near the campus and quite liked it. Utilitarian, but clean and close to the campus and relatively affordable at 60/night. They don't let everyone stay there, but I think they usually make allowances for UChicago visitors. http://mccormick.edu/content/guest-housing-facilities.
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Is it always sort of dark/cloudy in Ithaca during fall and winter? Cornell seemed amazing in terms of research resources and support from faculty and cohort, but I don't know if I can handle the gloominess. Montreal is way colder but sunnier - that's been very important to me for the past year. Sorry if it comes across as a strange/superficial sort of question.
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Based on your disinterest in methods, theories, historiography, etc., I don't think you should be in academia. Academic programs train students for a very specific job and that job involves productively engaging with previous schools of thought and literature and different methodologies and their attendant ontologies/epistemologies. It sounds like you would be happier at a professional program of some kind, or a 9-to-5 office job. And I'd also tone down the rhetoric about Third World "shit holes" if you want to do NGO work.
- mseph and angellily0330
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i like the dramatically sad ones the best
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- I'm not crying - I'm just cutting onions for a lasagna ... for one!
Haha, I am pretty sure the FoC quote was me last year!
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I have met Professor Naisargi Dave at University of Toronto a couple of times. She is friendly and her work is extremely interesting. I study at McGill (poli. sci.) with a couple of American PhD students: they received the standard funding package and were given a waiver on the international student tuition; I'm not so sure if they also received a waiver on the international fees.
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Revenue stream
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I adopted my rescue beagle during my last year of undergrad last year. He wasn't house-trained, but thankfully since I lived on campus I would come home every four hours and check on the doggie. He moved with me when I started my MA in September 2014 and has actually mellowed into a great apartment dog. I don't leave him alone for more than 7 hours and 2-3 days a week I don't go to the campus at all. I've found it pretty easy to balance my time even with classes, teaching, and some other university commitments. I just had to be super-careful about scheduling my time. Honestly, my dog made the transition to grad school and a new city so much easier. I always have a super-loving and -affectionate being to come home to - it's a seriously amazing privilege.
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It's very possible that the students may not give you honest answers, but I urge you to contact them and, if you can, talk to students who have graduated. I and one of cohorts in my MA program are currently working with an extremely unhelpful supervisor. The only solace we've had is Facebooking/emailing his previous students and figuring out that he is never going to be more helpful than this. A PhD is a long-term commitment and difficult work, you have a right to know what you're getting into.
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But I'll give you an example of a 'black-listed' subject. I approached a few prominent professors with a project that questioned the validity of the Arab Agricultural Revolution. They were quite interested in it but told me that it would probably not be approved because it might offend Muslims and because it focused too heavily on irrigation and other agricultural developments and ignored social issues. I can also tell you that there is no appetite for a study on internment during the World War unless it approaches it from the social-justice perspective...Even though there are few studies on the military side of internment, many on the social side, if your project isn't social it aint happnin.
I fail to see how you refuting the validity of the Arab Agricultural Revolution would offend Muslims or why any professor would say that. In fact, a cursory search on JStor on the topic brings up a refutation of Watson's thesis by Michael Decker written in 2009. Most of the sources he cites on farming machines, techniques, and systems were written after the mid-1980s.
ETA: I am also going to stop responding because I can no longer take anything you say seriously.
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Who cares about methodologies? What is this fascination with approaches? as a medievalist I used 'postmodernist' approaches long before I learned about them. The problem is not that 'old fashioned' methodologies have been disregarded but that entire subjects have been essentially black-listed. If you are not studying society or culture you might as well pound salt!
Academics in history, sociology, and political science (the three fields I have been involved in) all care deeply about methodology. Methodology lends rigour to the way researchers answer questions and increases the internal and external validity of the research. Methodology is also about field standardization - other researchers may not be able to verify all the empirical details of a certain work, but they can certainly evaluate its methodology. I almost had a heart attack reading "who cares about methodologies?" because the answer to me seems very obvious: every academic.
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There's certainly room for the "old school," as long as that old school methodology is contributing to the larger historical project. If military historians are merely seeking to uncover strategy on the battlefield or determine the number of casualties in a given conflict or describe the military greatness of a specific general, I'm not sure that's going to recapture significant space in the academy. At least, in a narrow sense. That type of military history seems to struggle to take the story a step higher and engage with theoretical concepts and questions, and that's really where historians should live. Studying war and military conflict through a historical lens is imperative, but only insofar as it moves us toward understanding something about the larger historical moment -- and if it can do the latter, there's always room at the inn for that type of history.
I hope you all will forgive my intrusion here, as I only have an undergraduate degree in history and study political science at the grad level. jpb's comments here strike me as a very accurate description of the current historiographical project. One of the books I read as an undergrad was Odd Arne Westad's Decisive Encounters about the Chinese Civil War. It is an old-school military history in some ways and at least 4-5 chapters are devoted to analyzing the tactical moves of the CCP and the KMT armies on the battlefields, as well as the KMT's diplomatic maneuverings. But in the rest of the chapters, Westad also pays attention to the social and political restructuring of the countryside by the CCP cadres - the changes in their interactions with the peasants, the middle farmers, the landlords, and the women over the course of the civil war. It is precisely because Westad approaches the CCP's victory through these different lenses that he is later able to write his last chapter on the post-civil-war transformation of Chinese society and politics in such a decisive way. Focusing on the military tactics and battles alone would not enable this comprehensive picture and would not do much to clarify why the CCP's victory in the Chinese Civil War was so very pivotal.
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Iron deficiency
Ethnography
in Sociology Forum
Posted
My suggestions would be NYU and Berkeley.