cloudofunknowing

And then there are all the medieval influences on Shakespeare....... (Chaucer!)

Based upon what I saw on here - & my own rejection, which came via post, & was then viewable online (but without any email notifications) - Harvard notified in mid to late March last year. Acceptances, I believe, were sent via email.

Though I do like getting my sass on as self-indulgently as many of us likely do, it might helpful to take a commercial break away from the ad hominem direction of a sitcom of a thread this conversation is quickly becoming. Any kind of community, virtual or otherwise, means that the possibility for miscommunication exists. To ask for more clarification regarding a question posed to us that's ultimately answerable - because fit, well, is a rather mysterious kind of alchemy that might better be known as a crapshoot anyway - does not necessarily mean that your words are being read carelessly. But it also doesn't mean that your words represented your ideas and aims in as clear a way as they might. Had I responded to your initial questions the way others did, I would likely have asked for more clarification based on what was given. I would also have likely asked self-examination-styled questions because, as others have pointed out, your interests (several of which I share, for what it's worth) certainly could jive in a variety of disciplinary settings. But that's partly where questions for further clarification came from, right? Your interests could just as readily be housed within a Religion/Religious Studies department that incorporates the study of literature within its matrix (like U of Chicago and Harvard, which you mentioned; you'd particularly like Amy Hollywood's work, I think, because of its engagement with critical theory and the philosophical tradition where they brush up against mysticism in Christianity). Cultural studies, as a rubric within which many different kinds of engagement are possible with literary texts, is what your interests bring immediately to mind for me. Since Cultural Studies flourishes in areas other than in English - which, as has also been pointed out, generally (but by no means always) situates such an inquiry along generic, historical, and/or geographical lines - this is another reason that others probably asked for more clarification from you before proferring opinions. (Which, let's be honest, is all anyone in this type of forum can give.) The bottom line is that, save for the occasional n'er do well troll, when someone responds to a post on here, they are usually doing it to be of help (one can only hope, right?). Sure, some people might split more hairs than are necessary, but even that is typically grounded in a desire to be helpful. Was the word "vague" intended in a pejorative or snarky way? Perhaps. But the defensiveness of your response suggests that you did indeed interpret it in that way and responded in the manner you perceived someone to be responding to you. The moral of the commercial, I guess, would be to decide whether or not you really want to engage in this type of dialogue in a virtual setting where all anyone has to go on are the words being used (and all of the ways those can be misfire). Because if you decide that you do want to engage, that requires a willingness to risk being misunderstood as well as a willingness to keep the conversation going. Serving rhetorical potshots - or returning them - usually has the opposite effect. (As it does in academia, I might add.) To close: Duke's Literature PhD program (not to be confused with its English program) and Notre Dame's PhD program in Literature (also different from its program in English) might also be of interest to you. Now, back to the (hopefully different) broadcast --

There's also a rhetorical difference between a statement like "I argue" or "I would argue" or, even, "I would suggest" versus "I think" or "I feel." As someone who works in/around affect, "I feel" or "I think" never appear in my writing - unless they're in quotation marks. I'm not at all averse to "I" in an essay - as has been mentioned, arguments aren't disembodied things even when the subjectivity creating them never directly announces itself; &, after all, the lack of that self-reflexivity & awareness is partly what got certain approaches into, shall we say, awkward waters - but I do veer on the side of circumspection re: if & when it is used. I reserve it for the cruxes of arguments and/or when engaging with scholarship or readings I am critiquing.

Hey, wetheplants, check your pm! As for med/ren drama things: at least one early modern drama person here at UT emphasizes performance & stage history. I know a Ren PhD student who is doing things very similar to your interests here in the English dept at UT. Cheers!

I second that, proflorax - she is dynamite! I only know her scholarship, but she & my undergrad mentor are good friends. One reason Maryland might not be on the radar for some has to do with a focus (by no means a bad one)on Medieval Studies. Also, as she is a Middle English scholar & a couple of people are wanting to do Anglo-Saxon (I don't know if there's an AS person there), that likely contributes, too. Still, Maryland has a wonderful PhD program in English. & one not to be discounted.

I'm someone who did an MFA in Poetry and then jumped onto the PhD track. There's some crossover, granted, since I'm pursuing my PhD in an English department, but my field/concentration (medieval/early modern English lit) is quite different. Though I can't speak to other universities or specific departments, I'm by no means an anomaly in mine, though my doctoral work is perhaps the farthest afield of those who entered with an MFA in my department. (Also, I know several PhD students in other departments at my university who have creative writing MFA's.) People have already spoken about the dismal reality of the job market. If you want to see the stats for creative writing positions - including adjunct and visiting positions, not just tenure-track - I recommend going to the AWP website. (Forewarning: it's not good.) Generally, the saying goes that to have a snowball's chance with CW teaching positions, you need to have the following (not necessarily in this order, but definitely both): extensive publication history in a specific genre and teaching experience, whether that means experience teaching composition and/or workshops. While "publication history" can and might mean publishing in the higher-end literary journals whether print or online (print is still often deemed as being "better" than online, though not by everyone), the "extensive" part in reality means having a book published. Position postings will often specify whether they require someone to have a book published in order to be considered; also, if they don't specify that one must have a book, keep in mind that there will be many applicants applying who do have (at least) one book published. The final caveat about teaching creative writing at the college-level, especially if we're talking about teaching in an MFA program as opposed to undergraduate teaching, is that it's increasingly becoming common to require or, at least, strongly prefer someone with a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. Having a PhD in Lit/CW is by no means a guarantee of a job, however, because since CW is often thought of as a studio field, one's creative work (and the success of one's work) is often viewed as being the most important part of someone's candidacy. I, for one, elected to pursue a PhD in a separate - but disciplinarily adjacent - field in the interest of marketability. Ie, "I can teach British literature from Beowulf through Milton, cultural studies and queer studies pre- and postmodern; I'm also a poet, have published hither and thither, and have experience teaching poetry workshops in community and academic settings." Who knows if it'll pay off in the end, but the ideal gig would be a teaching position where I am able to do both things as opposed to only one. I'm sorry that I can't speak to what the Art History field is like in terms of job prospects. And while I'd caution you from looking at creative writing in academia with anything but a realist's spectacles, I'd equally caution you not to foreclose the possibility of doing one and then doing the other. There are many MFA's in creative writing that encourage interdiscplinary work between different kinds of media - I'm specifically thinking of the one at Chicago's Art Institute, for example - that allow and encourage for a great deal of cross-pollination between the verbal and the visual. That kinda thing might be right up your alley and would, I think, "make sense" to Art History adcomms were you to pursue an MFA and then go on to pursue a PhD.

The field is adjacent, though, Jhefflol - &, especially if the methodology / theoretical lens you use is also of a piece with what you do with early modern things, I don't think it'd be far off the mark.. Given that we, medievalists & early modernists a both, are going to be expected to be able to teach from Beowulf through Shakespeare (if not to Milton) in surveys, showing the ability to think critically about that wouldn't be bad, necessarily. It might depend on program, though.

Poliscar's mention of Holsinger's book is really good, too, because his archaeological investigation of those theorists - and how the Middle Ages, or medieval writers, or tropes associated with them (Lacan's use of courtly love; or Zizek's), were used & *integral* to the formulations we now call "theory" - traces how, despite the centrality of the Middle Ages for those theorists, that fact has been elided, or underplayed, when their writings have been deployed for postmodern/structuralist purposes.

To piggyback off of what's already been said - especially poliscar's great recommendations - barring taking a survey course in theory/criticism, which I think is extremely helpful to anyone aspiring to doctoral work in literary studies, the best thing to do is to read the leading journals in the field whose contributors tend to engage with theory more (Exemplaria, postmedieval, JMEMS - but also Speculum & Studies in the Age of Chaucer). Too, if there are certain things/areas of interest to you, you can target scholarship that way, too. Several relatively recent essay collections have been released that might be of interest to you. Cohen's The Postcolonial Middle Ages & Scala & Federico's The Post-Historical Middle Ages are two that immediately come to mind. If gender &, particularly, sexuality are interests, I can't recommend Dinshaw highly enough, particularly Getting Medieval (which also engages with postcolonial, poststructuralist &, to a lesser degree, psychoanalytic modes of thought; her Chaucer's Sexual Poetics is also excellent). Karma Lochrie's work is also fantastic - Covert Operations & Heterosyncrasies both. If psychoanalysis, I'd check out Fradenburg.

In my experience, & in conversations I've had with senior PhD students at a variety of universities - & in a variety of disciplines, also - the stigma is often (not always, but certainly often) the exact opposite. In academia, having/expressing a desire to teach can lead to being stereotyped as someone who isn't zealously committed to scholarship. Or, more plainly put: verbalizing a desire to teach will lead to people not taking you seriously in the amateur versus professional sense. As if teaching is a dirty word and/or drudgery. (An attitude students can sense, I think.) This isn't true universally, of course. It can be common (in my experience) in literary studies, however.

I voted "other," because I am equally interested in both. (And while some may view this as an unproblematic binary, I don't at all.) When I was assessing programs I might applied to, I paid very close attention to the kinds of teaching opportunities available as well as what kinds of training and support were available re: pedagogy. As in: when are people able to teach (after doing the equivalent of an MA if entering without one), how much do they teach (2-2, 1-1, etc), and do PhD students get to teach a variety of courses besides Freshman Composition? Even more: do PhD students have any opportunities to *design* their own courses? Is a pedagogy practicum required and, if so, must one take it before or concurrently the first time one teaches? Certainly, it would be detrimental to the - in my view, equally important - dissertation work required to be bogged down unduly when it's go-time, so being able to have fellowship time is also an important factor. But a program that deemphasized teaching, or seemed to "downplay" it and/or not incorporate pedagogy (sometimes very unique to the school in question) was not, in the end, a good fit for me. Happily, I lucked out in that UT-Austin does all of these things (including designing & teaching your own courses, which seems to be somewhat uncommon). Here, someone entering with a BA begins teaching in the 3rd year. Someone entering with an MA (or an MFA) and college teaching experience can potentially teach in their first year. And the pedagogy training, which I'm currently doing now (having an MFA & teaching experience) and will be continuing in a pedagogy class this Fall, is fantastic.

I investigated Toronto, yes, but - as with Notre Dame's Medieval Institute - knew I lacked the background in languages (Latin particularly) that, for those programs, would probably hurt my chances. Also, if I'm not mistaken, I don't believe they (Toronto) do much of any pedagogical training - or, at least, not that much. Teaching opportunities - & pedagogical training - were very important to me while researching programs because I genuinely want to teach & wanted one that would aid in those areas.

UNM's program sounds awesome! (And, frankly, landscape doesn't get any better than New Mexico's, in my opinion.) As far as interests go (thus far), I gravitate toward the late Middle English things: the poetry to be sure, but also the play cycles (especially the mystery and miracle plays) and, especially, visionary literature. The rise of lay spirituality and vernacular theology are two things that really interest me, whether we're talking about pre/proto-Reformation and -Protestant things like Wycliffe and Lollardy or works like Kempe's book, Julian's revelations, etc. Since it's partly the heterogeneity of fifteenth-century England that engages me - particularly where spirituality is concerned - I'm also interested in what persisted/continued into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so I guess you could say, at least in terms of periodicity, where the lines are drawn between the premodern/early modern is an open-ended question I hope to explore. (And how problematic such formulations are, to be sure.) As far as praxis or analytic axes go, my touchstones are gender and sexuality and, increasingly, temporality and affect. How about you?

You might also want to check out UT-Austin's program if you haven't already (http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/english/graduate-program/fields/medieval.php); they have 5 tenured medievalists on faculty in the English department and also have several outstanding early modern scholars, too. In my cohort, there are 3 of us who applied as/declared medieval literary studies as our primary area of focus.

Hey there, felibus, There are several medievalists around here (including me) who're enrolling in a number of programs this Fall - and I know of one other medieval Fall 2015 applicant - with a wide array of interests, all of whom would be happy to correspond with you via forum or pm, I'm sure. And, for the record, Catherine of Siena had some of the most astonishing visions of any medieval mystic I know of! Cheers, and welcome to the monkeyhouse!

I would say, yes, it is strongly to your advantage for there to be a parallel between the subject(s) listed or discussed as your current/future interests and the subject(s) of your writing sample. And, since not all programs - maybe few? I'm truthfully not sure - keep you beholden to the areas you mention in your statement (once admitted), you could use what you feel is your best writing sample and draw from it concerns, problems, areas of interest to discuss in your statement. Opinions may differ here on particulars, but I think most would argue that parallels are very important - for what it's worth. A lack thereof could create a disconnect for committees and/or professors in the fields you state you want to pursue (in the statement) as well as those brought up by the writing sample. Someone submitting a WS on Shakespeare while declaring intent to be an Americanist might suffer in the long run because s/he wouldn't be showcasing - in the WS - what kind of contributions s/he's capable of making as an Americanist to that field. I hope this helps!

Though the question of proficiency in other languages does depend upon the school and program in question -- some have clearly defined requirements with strict standards, others have clearly defined ones with less than strict standards, etc, etc -- another important thing to consider, especially when evaluating PhD programs, is how those language requirements jive with the genre, area, and/or historical period(s) you want to research in terms of primary and secondary (scholarly, critical) texts. As I understand it, this kind of thing becomes particularly important for someone wanting to work within earlier, older periods of literary history, especially the medieval and early modern periods of British literature because of the cross-pollination between French and Italian languages and literary traditions with the English, for example. A facility with, or at least a reading knowledge of, languages like this would be an asset -- and some would argue a necessity -- for someone working within such time periods. Can someone write about Chaucer's Knight's Tale and do a good job of it by referencing a translation of Boccaccio's Teseida? Sure. But being able to use/read it in the original has its benefits, too. (Then, of course, there's Latin, which virtually anyone wanting to do medieval or early modern scholarship would be wrestling with.) What's asked for, or what's required, is enough facility to be able to read and analyze primary texts in another language (Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, etc) and also be able to read/utilize/deploy scholarship written in other languages, too. And I think that Wyatt is right: if you intend to become an Americanist, you probably won't find yourself needing to read French scholarship on Salinger very often, but any program requiring foreign language proficiency re: your proposed fields will still require that you have working knowledge.

So, to bump this thread a bit, I just read Cohen's intro over at In the Middle for a panel on ice that he's moderating at the New Chaucer Society conference -- in Reykjavik, of all places -- and, suddenly, I very much wish I were hopping on a plane, too! (http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/)

Though I didn't get my act together in time to do the kind of preparation for the subject test that I intended to do -- rereading whole works and/or reading things I hadn't yet come across -- the one thing I did do was reread the critical introductions to the Norton anthologies used in some of the survey courses I took as an undergrad (British Lit I and II and American). On the test that I took, there was a lot of earlier British literature -- an area of strength for me, happily enough -- anonymous Middle English lyrics, a Shakespeare sonnet or two, some Milton (Paradise Lost), Spenser I believe (Faerie Queene), and some questions about Shakespeare's plays in general. Also, questions about the broad outlines of literary theory were asked (New Criticism, Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, New Historicism) that required general familiarity with major theorists. The biggest mistake I made -- a problem I didn't have when taking practice tests -- was budgeting my time appropriately on the actual test day. If I were doing it again, I'd go through and answer all the questions I could very quickly and then go back through for ones that required close reading. I did passably well (or well enough), but I think better time management would have increased the score by a fair amount. But I agree that the test is a gamble and think it tends to screen for breadth as opposed to depth.

I agree with heliogabalus -- I have an MFA in Poetry, an AB in English, and will be entering UT-Austin's PhD program this Fall to study medieval and early modern British lit. At UT, at least, they consider incoming students with MFA's to be incoming students with a Masters degree. Also, for what it's worth, I wasn't a TA while an MFA student, either. You could, of course, apply for MA/PhD programs -- and it is true that some programs would want you to have an MA in English and might not consider an MFA in Creative Writing to be "equivalent" -- I encountered few programs that wanted me to go get an MA in English before knocking on their doctoral door. My MFA program was similar in terms of graduate-level literary studies: we had to take 12 hours, too. Because I knew that the area I'd most likely want to study at the PhD level was medieval and early modern, I very intentionally took literature classes in those areas so that, when applying, I could 1) demonstrate to a committee that I was capable of doing graduate-level work in my proposed area of study, 2) to foster relationships with instructors I'd likely end up asking for rec letters, and 3) so that I would have a reason to write a term paper germane to my interests in spirituality and sexuality. (I don't know if this is ironic or telling or not, but I was the only MFA student in those literature courses; everyone else was an MA lit or rhet/comp student.) Two pieces of advice that I would give as someone with an MFA who applied for a PhD in a quote-un-quote "different" field -- Creative Writing/Poetry versus Medieval/Renaissance Studies etc -- would be to make very clear in your statement of purpose what your "scholarly" interests/goals are. &, also, to do everything possible to have your writing sample be well-aligned with your proposed areas of interest. I'd even say that I "downplayed" my interests/aspirations as a poet because I wanted to emphasize the scholarly interests & "prove" that I had the wherewithal to do both. & the desire to do both.

Yea! I'm going - hasn't been too much UT action on this forum. Cheers!

Getting medieval - at UT-Austin.

English PhD here - medieval/early modern & queer studies. Stoked!

Yea, AC!!!! Just in time for the shoures soote of April. Cause the droghte of March hath been perced. To the roote! (Not a UNM person, but stoked & tipping my medievalist hat to you just the same!)