Glasperlenspieler

I think that for lots of people it can actually be beneficial. I actually applied for graduate school during my senior year and was shut out (despite a couple promising wait-lists). I'm only now applying for graduate schools again. So if I get accepted it will have been three years out of school. Obviously I'll have to wait and see how things play out, but I'm feeling much more confident this time around. Looking back, I simply wasn't ready. I wasn't mature enough and my intellectual interests hadn't crystallized enough to make me a competitive applicant. Obviously we'll have to wait and see how things play out, but I think that the personal growth, experiences, and time away from school (to consider what I was really interested in with the benefit of a little distance) will only help me be a stronger applicant and more successful in my program if I am admitted. So not only do I think some time off is OK, I'd encourage it for most people (there are obviously exceptions), and while an admissions committee might raise on eyebrow about an applicant who has been out of school for 5+ years (depending on what she was doing in that time), I think they won't care about a few years, especially if you have been using them to grow in some way.

It probably depends a lot on how you write. I'm in the process of writing a new writing sample for this upcoming application season, but I think I'm at a pretty good place. It was an idea that had been sitting on the back burner for a year or so, and when I realized I didn't have anything I wanted to use as a writing sample, I decided to try to turn my idea into a paper. I worked through the corresponding literature over the summer and busted out a solid draft over the course of a week at the end of August. I'll probably continue tinkering with it and sending it to other people until I submit my applications, but I'm pretty happy with what I have so far. So hopefully it works out! So if you have a good idea and are familiar with the literature on the topic, I definitely think it's possible, but you better get moving. I think I'd be pretty uneasy if I didn't have a good draft by the end of September, but everyone works differently.

Hi! I certainly don't think your language skills will put you at a disadvantage. Having a command of five languages to varying degrees should be more than sufficient. The one question I would have would be about the applicability of your languages to your research interests. I think comparative literature programs want to see not only that you have substantial language skills, but more specifically that your language skills are strong enough to allow you to pursue the research projects that you want to take on. So your knowledge of Hindi and Bengali will be less helpful if you don't plan on studying Indian texts at all. But if you're hoping to pursue a comparative project relating Indian texts to European ones, then I'd say you have pretty good preparation so long as everything else is up to par (writing samples, proposed course of study, grades, letters of rec, etc.). The other thing that it may be important to demonstrate is that you have some familiarity with French and Italian literature and not just the language, although I don't think that necessarily means you have to have read them in the original (although that's certainly helpful!).

I've definitely seen people argue both sides on these boards. My general takeaway is that it's very unlikely to help you but it also probably won't hurt unless you do something to make yourself look like a fool or annoy the person you contact. Based on this I've tended not to contact professors, although I think there are (at least) two cases where it could prove helpful. The first is if you suspect that a professor you would like to work with is likely to retire or move to another university in the next few years. In that case it is probably a good idea, to (discretely) inquire about whether he or she will be taking on new advisees in the coming year(s). The other situation is if you are genuinely uncertain about whether a given program is a good match for your research interests. These are cases where emailing a professor probably won't make a difference in regards to whether you will be admitted, but it could help prevent you from wasting time and money on applying to school where you probably wouldn't be admitted or even want to attend on the basis of fit.

To be honest, I would *hope* that most literature professors have at least a passing familiarity with issues in rhet/comp. They're of course not going to have the same level of expertise as a rhet/comp specialist, but presumably their students will still be writing essays in their literature classes. And while a course focused on writing composition clearly allows a greater opportunity to hone student writing skills, if a literature professor is completely unable to teach writing at all, it seems that he or she is not doing her job very well. Literary studies and rhet/comp are sufficiently intertwined that you can't (or at least shouldn't) try to separate them completely. That's fully compatible with recognizing that the two fields are sufficiently complex to necessitate specializing in one or the other.

Two thoughts on the writing sample: 1) It seems like the most valuable opinion on the paper should be from the professor whose field it is. So the fact that she is a big fan of it seems like it should be weighted very heavily. That being said, an admissions committee is probably not going to consist only of people in your specialty, so maybe for some reason this paper is less attractive to people not familiar with the field. If so, is there a way you can address this problem? 2) Can you run the paper by someone who has a little more distance from you and your work? Maybe a professor from your undergrad who works in your area or someone you've met a conferences? I get the sense that it might be helpful to get an outside voice but from someone who is still knowledgeable on the topic, since these professors have presumably been working fairly closely with you for some time now. Then again, this might just add another perspective to the mix leaving you even more confused. So there's always a risk to hearing from more people.

I know variations of this question have been asked a number of times on these boards. I think I've real all the relevant threads but I'm not sure if I've gotten any closer to answering the question for my situation. So I figured I'd give it a go. I'm try to weigh the potential benefits and drawbacks of applying a comparative literature department as opposed to a national literature department (German in my case). For some of the universities I'm looking at I've already made my decision one way or another based on peculiar features of the departments, but for others I feel like I could go either way, partly because my POIs would remain largely the same in either case. I like the interdisciplinary opportunities available in a comparative literature department and my language skills should be sufficient to be a competitive applicant. A lot of my worries come down to job opportunities afterwards. I know that comparative literature PhDs are sometimes seen as not having a real home department and hence can have a tough time on the job market because they don't really fit anywhere and there aren't that many comparative literature departments beyond the elite universities. At the same time, the job prospects for German are not particularly bright, probably worse than for the humanities in general. Furthermore, on the assumption that the majority of my teaching career will be introductory level course, I think I'd rather teach 100-level literature courses than 100-level language courses, but that's not necessarily decisive for me. My thought was that in a comparative literature department, if I were to thoughtfully choose my coursework, orals, and dissertation topic (focusing on English and German language modernist novels, for example), then I could potentially compete for the few jobs there in comp lit, as well as jobs in German or English departments. Thus, done right, a PhD in comparative literature could actually allow for more job opportunities than one in a national literature. Is this a realistic idea? Are there other factors I should be considering? It would be helpful if comparative literature and German departments kept comprehensive placement records on their websites, but maybe that's asking too much.

Sorry, I said I was done, but I guess I lied. A couple more quick comments. 1) Another update as the story develops: http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/08/27/college-pushes-back-vs-political-correctness.cnn Apparently the administration is not entirely happy with how the letter went down. A law professor attempts to clarify their views in the above interview. I'm pretty much in complete agreement with him. 2) Two quick responses to @TakeruK. I guess a lot of my views come from the fact that there have been a number of times where I have changed my mind or even radically altered the way I've looked at something through calm rational conversation and gentle persuasion from my peers. When on the other hand someone shoves their views in my face, my first response is to shut down and I often gravitate toward the opposing view almost on principle. This may be a peculiar fact about my psychology, it's probably also heavily influence by my academic training in philosophy. Maybe I shouldn't generalize here or maybe it's idealistic of me to think that this will always work this way, but it's something I think we should strive for in academic and public discourse.' To clarify, the sort of protesting that actually bothers me is going into an event and deliberately disrupting it. That takes away from people who do want to attend from being able to listen to the speaker. I'm pretty OK with about anything short of that. Finally, while I get where your coming from about closing off new modes of discourse, I guess this is where my old-school intuitions really come in. It seems that one of the primary goals of a university (although certainly not the only one) is to uphold certain wissenschaftlich standards. I get that this can be constricting, and I think it should be done in such a way as to allow as much possibility for change as possible, but it still seems like an important role of universities. Again I think implementing this in effective, fair ways that also support diversity is extremely difficult and I don't have any solution for how to do this. 3) Not sure why @telkanuru got downvoted. I very much appreciate you opening up the discussion even if we disagree on the topic. I upvoted you to even it out.

Last post and then I'm done. While I can't access the two articles he links to because they are behind paywall (if someone with access want to send them to me, I'd be grateful), this seems to indicate that my reading of the letter is more or less on the right track. Chicago isn't so much concerned with trigger warnings and safe spaces as pedagocial practices. Rather, they're seeking to defend freedom of speech in such a way that all ideas can be profitably discussed: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2016/08/university-of-chicagos-free-speech-crusade.html Furthermore, the University's free expression statement shows that this is not simply a new response to movements in academia that Chicago dislikes, but rather a retiteration of their commitment to certain values in the face of what they see as recent threats to them.

While I certainly see the second set of examples as being unacceptable, I guess I find the first set of examples more problematic than you do (that was more or less what I originally had in mind). I probably need to think about it more to clarify why. Perhaps I just have an over-idealized view of what intellectual discourse should be like, and would like to think the universities would foster that. Rather than speaking over someone, why not ask a devastating question in the Q and A that shows how much of a fool he or she really is. It's sort of like people who deliberately disrupt Trump rallies. I'm sympathetic to what they're doing, but it also sort of seems like they're stooping to his level (of course what role a university should take in restricting such action is another, and admittedly more complicated, matter). You're certainly right that these demands can often be a bargaining chip or a symbolic gesture, but they also often strike me as naive or immature. Perhaps that's just a difference of intuitions. I guess my other problem is that they often strike me as counterproductive. Rather than a basis for further discussion, I think these moves can alienate the people that don't already agree. It's this sort of thing that frustrates me when people advance causes I support in over the top ways. It just adds fuel to the fire for people that are already against them. I sense that you and I are actually on the same page to a large degree, but just tend to view things through different lenses. These are definitely difficult issues without easy answers.

Students should of course be allowed to protest a speaker they disagree with. This strikes me as an important and profitable way of engaging with ideas you don't accept. The problem arises when you protest in such a way that the speaker isn't even allowed to speak. That is a case of limiting academic freedom in such a way That some voices and ideas aren't even allowed to the table, which is deeply troubling to me. Intellectual discourse should not devolve into who can speak loudest. To be fair, I do think some ideas ought not be allowed to the table. It seems perfectly legitimate to prevent David Duke from disseminating his views on campus. Where the line is between which ideas are acceptable and which are not in this sense is certainly not an easy thing to decidel, but I do think many recent cases are instances of going to far in prohibiting people from speaking whose ideas might be unappealing but whose right to discuss then should not be impeded. While I agree with you that one "safe space" on campus certainly doesn't destroy the academic integrity of the university, I guess I don't see the "elite" mentality you mention. One of the (non-elite) schools I mention is my alma mater, and what I saw in that instance was students demanding things from the administration that would have been in poor judgement, not feasible, and in some cases actually illegal had they been adopted. This struck me as a case of students who were not fighting against an elitist mentality, but rather did not want ideas they disagreed with to be allowed even to be considered and saw any resistance from the administration to now to their demands as unthinkable. Perhaps I'm wrong in interpreting the situation as I do, or in generalizing to other cases, but what I've read from other campuses indicates to me that this is not an isolated phenomenon. It's very possible that I just have the intuitions of an anti-consumerist elitist fuddy-duddy, but in so far as Chicago's statement is an attempt to ward off what strikes me as an attempt to narrow the acceptable sphere of academic discourse, then I can't help but support. If, of course, I'm reading their statement wrong and they are implying something different, then I'll withhold my support.

I suppose I’m somewhat more sympathetic to the University of Chicago’s position. While I’m not against the use of trigger warnings per se and I do thing Chicago could have approached the topic better, it strikes me that their message is not so much an attack on a particular pedagogical practice as a statement that they are unwilling to condone the sort of shenanigans and serious attacks on academic freedom and intellectual integrity that have gone on in the past few years. Consider: -The Kipnis affair at Northwestern (http://jezebel.com/feminist-students-protest-feminist-prof-for-writing-abo-1707714321) -Columbia students demant trigger warnings for greek mythology: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/05/14/columbia-students-claim-greek-mythology-needs-a-trigger-warning/ -Identity politics run amok at Oberlin (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/the-new-activism-of-liberal-arts-colleges) and Wesleyan (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/23/wesleyan-students-boycott-campus-newspaper-threaten-funding) -Speakers being disinvited or disrupted for holding unappealing views at Cardiff (http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2015/10/28/comment-the-attack-on-germaine-greer-shows-identity-politics), Yale (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/), and Brown (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/06/brown-university-professor-denounces-mccarthy-witch-hunts.html) And this is all in the past two years! So while I agree that we ought to approach difficult topics with caution and let students make informed decisions about what is best for them and their intellectual development (and perhaps trigger warning are an effective way to do this). I can understand Chicago’s position and see it as taking a stand for academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas, and I rather appreciate their reluctance to get pulled into the muck that these cases demonstrate. Indeed, I tend to think that a lot of the above problems come from the increasingly consumerist approach to higher education that exists in this country where students see colleges and universities as offering a service and thus have the right to complain and demand change when the service doesn’t match their perceived needs and desires. I think there are some strengths to this approach but a number of risks as well. I certainly don’t know the best way to handle these difficulties and I’m not convinced that Chicago has the right approach, but I do appreciate them taking a stand. Two other pieces of food for thought: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/253641-obama-hits-coddled-liberal-college-students http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/189543/trigger-warnings-on-campus

It seems like most programs are fairly reluctant to let people defer, doing so only in the case of a Fulbright or something comparable, and even then many programs will refuse to do it. So I sort of doubt they'd take too kindly to you asking for a deferral right of the bat. Why would you want to do that anyway? Just take the extra year to fine tune your materials and you'll probably have a stronger application when the time comes around.

It does seem like the language requirement is being phased out at many programs (instead you often have to demonstrate a research tool for which a language would qualify but so might taking a couple of high level statistics classes depending on your research area). That being said for schools that do still have a language requirement, they typically want Latin, Greek, French, or German, so the Spanish may not be of much help here. Although if you're motivated to study Spanish for other reasons, then by all means.

As a general rule, it seems that language departments at elite private universities tend to have very limited offerings in linguistics (often a pedagogy course and not much more). So you're probably better off looking at flagship public universities, which tend to have richer linguistics-related resources in their language departments (I'd be curious to hear an explanation of why this is the case) or at linguistics departments.

Yeah, for one reason or another Schopenhauer seems to be somewhat out of vogue in contemporary philosophy. The two other philosophers I can think of with an interest in Schopenhauer are Paul Katsafanas at Boston University and Christopher Janaway at Southhampton. I suspect that finding a program suitable for studying philosophy of religion and Schopenhauer may be a little difficult. You're best bet will probably be a program strong in philosophy of religion with someone strong in 19th century German philosophy. Even if it's not a publishing specialty, I suspect that most philosophers working in 19th century German philosophy could supervise a dissertation on Schopenhauer (particularly Nietzsche scholars). In this sense, it may be worth looking at Notre Dame which is probably the strongest place in the world right now for philosophy of religion and also has two people working on German philosophy (Fred Rush and Stephen Watson).

Which schools would be a good fit will probably depend heavily on what area(s) in the history of philosophy you are interested in. Very few schools are top notch in history of philosophy across the board, but rather have particular areas of strength (go to A, B, or C if you want to study Aquinas, but X, Y, or Z if you're interested in Hume). So any useful suggestions will probably require a more detailed explanation of your interests.

Goehr, having written extensively on Adorno, may be the exception to this. And while Higgins is certainly not a Marxist or a Deconstructionist, she is a Nietzsche scholar, so she would perhaps be more open to "non-analytic" approaches.

Since nobody else has responded, I'll give it a shot. I can't speak for the relative competitiveness for the two countries (you are talking about the research grant, right?), but I suspect that given similar acceptance rates, you'll have a better shot at whichever country you can make a more convincing case for the applicability of your research project. That being said, I'd like to urge you not to think of Austria as a consolation prize (not saying that you are doing this, but I think it's not an uncommon perspective). After living in Austria for almost a year now, I find it actually preferable to living in Germany (full disclosure: I haven't actually lived in Germany long-term, but I am fairly familiar with it at this point). With a Fulbright, I think it's fair to factor in quality of living, and depending on your interests Austria has a lot to offer and in my mind some substantial benefits over Germany. Particularly if you are into the outdoors, Austria (especially the western part) has a lot to offer. Plus being a smaller country, I think Austria can be a little quirkier and more unique which I really appreciate.

When applying for MA programs for Fall 2017, don't just focus on UWM. There are about 5 or 6 other well respected philosophy MA programs that offer full funding (I think there's a list floating around on these forums somewhere). Apply to as many as you afford/that seem interesting. Given your psych background/interest, Georgia State might be a particularly good fit for you.

I think this is right, but only on the assumption that it's a fairly research oriented department. If a professor is teaching a seminar on her area of expertise, and she's fairly well respected in the field, you can probably safely assume you have a good overview of what's "cutting edge" on the topic (not that more outside reading wouldn't help). But I do get the sense that not all departments are like this. So if your classes don't include many readings that have been published in the last ten years, you may be at a disadvantage. That being said, I think PhD programs (at least in theory) prioritize philosophical potential over knowledge of what's cutting edge in your AOI. But given the competitive nature of graduate admissions, it probably doesn't hurt to have both.

You might also take a look at Chicago's Divinity School. Chicago is already know for being pretty disciplinarily flexible, and the Divinity School seems to be especially broad in terms of topics and approaches.

I actually had really good experiences with the bus system. When I lived off campus I lived just south of campus and could easily get to campus, downtown, fairhaven, lakeway, and sehome (typically without changing buses as long as I was careful). And most everything I needed for day-to-day life was in this area. It's a little harder to get to north Bellingham with the buses, but I rarely needed to do that unless I had to go shopping at the mall, big box chain stores, or costco, and even then I'd say you can probably get there with one change (maybe two) and less than an hour. I had a friend that actually worked out that way as a student and commuted with the bus. I don't think I'd want to do that, but it's definitely feasible. There are fewer bus routes east of I-5 but there are still some, and honestly unless you end up living out that way, there's not a lot of reason to be on that side of town as a student or at least not on a regular basis. I lived in Bellingham for five years without a car and it wasn't a problem at all. That being said, it can be nice to have a friend with a car when you do need to get outside of the neighborhoods surrounding campus.

An early September move-in should be very doable, although I would recommend starting to look right now since many students will already be trying to figure out there living situations for next year. There's a number of different rental agencies and pretty much all of them work with students regularly. I don't know much about Chuckanut, but I think some friends of mine rented from them and I didn't hear any complaints. Apex probably owns the most properties around campus. Unless things have changed substantially, I'd probably avoid Landmark. I've heard of a number of bad experiences with them. You can probably find a number of other agencies online, but since you're not that far away, I'd recommend taking a day trip up there, driving around to get a feel for the area, and grabbing any flyers/noting any for signs advertising pre-leasing. If you're looking to live with others you could also check the WWU message boards (Viking Village, I think) and/or craigslist.

Didn't live in Bham as a grad student, but did live there off campus for three years, so I know the area pretty well. If you're looking for housing near campus, things tend to open up with the school schedule. So there's a fair amount available at the beginning of July, but also beginning of August and September. The further away from campus you are, the less the rental market revolves around students, so there's probably a little more freedom in timing. If you have any specific questions about the city, let me know. It's truly a wonderful part of the country to live in.