Glasperlenspieler

Alternative idea: give Garamond a try. It's an academically and professionally acceptable font, that in my opinion is more attractive than times new roman. And 12 point Garamond is slightly smaller than 12 point times new roman.

How exactly does this connect to your proposed research interests? Are you just drawing a parallel between communications issues today and the problems of communication in modernist literature? If so, I think the connection is too strained to bother with. Spend your time on more clearly articulating your project instead. If there's more to the connection, you need to make that clear, because right now it isn't.
This needs to be a lot more specific. I'm not really sure what you mean by "connecting" or "understanding." If these terms are central to your project,  you need to be clear about what you mean by them.
Which decontructionist ideas? Derrida had many. His ideas were also often abstract and not directly pertinent to literature, so how do you intend to use/apply them? Also, Derrida and Deconstruction aren't in vogue today like they once were. So, if this is your approach, it may make sense to justify this theoretical framework.
Has deconstruction never been applied to American modernism? That would surprise. If it has, how did you situate your work in relation to what others have done and how do you plan to build on/go beyond what is already out there? What do you mean by diversity? Racial? Ethnic? Religious? Linguistic? Intellectual? Gender? Sexual? And how does diversity play into the expansive scholarship regarding modernism and the atomization of the individual in modern society (which seems to be what you're getting at)? Also, whose voices need to be heard? The authors you mention? Their characters? The readers? The contemporary world? And if it's the latter, you need to make clear why literature from 100 years ago is ripe to make contributions to understanding today's world.
For better or worse, most PhD programs aren't admitting people based on their experience or enjoyment teaching. Save that for your CV. Is the university your applying to in SoCal? If not, why are you discussing California? Don't talk about why you're prepared to succeed at any school, talk about why you're prepared to succeed at this school. Also, success doesn't work the same way in grad school. It's less about doing well in classes and more about becoming a scholar who can meaningfully contribute to one's field. Show why that's you.

I've taken the meatiest paragraph to unpack. The more I examine your statement, the more it becomes clear that there are major gaps in your understanding and application of deconstructivism. I suggest you re-read foundational deconstructivist theory, as I'm not convinced it's the approach you want to take.
"To facilitate better communication and understanding of people with strikingly different experiences I will first use Deconstruction to break down axiomatic views of other groups so they can be replaced with more inclusive ways of discussing our experiences. Deconstructivism has nothing to do with facilitating "better communication and understanding of people," but rather approaches literary texts in order to note tensions and contradictions within a (perceived) unified text. It demonstrates that meanings are multiple and unstable and points out where 'slippage' occurs. 
I will do this through the use of American Modernist writers and their fascination with internal thought processes and the exceptional variance within every human life. Authors that I am interested in include: Sherwood Anderson, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and Faulkner. I take this to mean you have authors whose work you'd like to 'deconstruct.' Yet deconstructivism has been around since the 1970s; surely this has already been done. Drop what you're doing and go read how scholars have deconstructed particular works so that you can participate in this conversation. You need to know what others have done in order to make a convincing case as to what you'll contribute. 
These authors pushed for something new in their writing and this extends to how they represent thought. This is not very clear. What is new about their writing and thinking? And how does deconstructivism apply? This highlights the differences in not just what we think but also what leads someone to having that thought. I don't understand this sentence. This time period and group of writers is an important resource for those trying to build relationships and strengthen communication." Are you saying that modernist texts offer insight into human relationships and behavior? If so, what insight? And how does deconstructivism help us understand that? 
 
Stepping away from your statement, can you give me your elevator pitch? What is it that you hope to learn, and why is it urgent and important? 
 

How exactly does this connect to your proposed research interests? Are you just drawing a parallel between communications issues today and the problems of communication in modernist literature? If so, I think the connection is too strained to bother with. Spend your time on more clearly articulating your project instead. If there's more to the connection, you need to make that clear, because right now it isn't.
This needs to be a lot more specific. I'm not really sure what you mean by "connecting" or "understanding." If these terms are central to your project,  you need to be clear about what you mean by them.
Which decontructionist ideas? Derrida had many. His ideas were also often abstract and not directly pertinent to literature, so how do you intend to use/apply them? Also, Derrida and Deconstruction aren't in vogue today like they once were. So, if this is your approach, it may make sense to justify this theoretical framework.
Has deconstruction never been applied to American modernism? That would surprise. If it has, how did you situate your work in relation to what others have done and how do you plan to build on/go beyond what is already out there? What do you mean by diversity? Racial? Ethnic? Religious? Linguistic? Intellectual? Gender? Sexual? And how does diversity play into the expansive scholarship regarding modernism and the atomization of the individual in modern society (which seems to be what you're getting at)? Also, whose voices need to be heard? The authors you mention? Their characters? The readers? The contemporary world? And if it's the latter, you need to make clear why literature from 100 years ago is ripe to make contributions to understanding today's world.
For better or worse, most PhD programs aren't admitting people based on their experience or enjoyment teaching. Save that for your CV. Is the university your applying to in SoCal? If not, why are you discussing California? Don't talk about why you're prepared to succeed at any school, talk about why you're prepared to succeed at this school. Also, success doesn't work the same way in grad school. It's less about doing well in classes and more about becoming a scholar who can meaningfully contribute to one's field. Show why that's you.

Acceptable: Yes.
Would it be a good idea: Yes, provided you know enough about his work and have a legitimate question (and if the question 'would he potentially supervise my work' is a natural thing to ask given the flow of the conversation). No, provided you are super awkward or are literally just trying to influence the admissions process.

Your stats are such that they won't keep you out of anywhere. That, of course, is not a guarantee of anything. It'll come down to writing sample, SOP, fit, and what the admissions committee had for breakfast on the day they review your file. Polish as much as you can but don't lose too much sleep over it. It will be out of your hands very soon.

I can't claim to speak authoritatively on this, but I researched SOP norms a lot when I was writing mine, and I had one of my professors review it multiple times. Having a list of references never came up. I think that as long as the attribution is clear, an extended citation is not needed (in the same way extended attributions are not needed in pop-sci/science news reporting and other non academic forms of writing).

You can try to transfer out of a PhD program. It's not unheard of. However, I don't think that it's very likely that you'll be able to get into a better program. From what I've heard, people who do this usually end up moving laterally, not up, and there's usually some reason other than trying to move up in the rankings (issues of fit or culture with the program, etc.).
Continental-friendly programs like Chicago, etc., have a different methodological approach than most SPEP programs, so I'm not sure that having an SPEP continental background will help you, particularly if you're not planning on doing work in those areas. It seems to me you'd just be saying, "hey I have an SPEP continental background, but I don't want to work on continental stuff anymore."
My two cents' worth of advice: if you want to do analytic work but have little background, then apply to some of the top MA's. You'll set yourself up better for doing PhD work.

You won't get in.
Everyone else has already hit on the substantive points why, but I'll put it in more direct language. You don't need 18 credits in English necessarily, but you need substantial upper-level humanities coursework to be considered and to write a decent SOP and WS. 3 gen eds is not enough. You also need specific research interests (specific: Turkish women's poetry in the 20th century) as well as apparent understanding of how they fit into the context of the relevant subfield and why anyone should care about them, which requires knowledge of the field (what was written about Turkish women's poetry in the past? What is being written now? Who are main scholars working on this thematic? What are the theoretical lenses used? What are the questions people are interested in?) as well as of the content. You need to be fluent in the language(s) of your primary sources and proficient or close to proficient in other relevant languages. You need to have grounding in critical theory, ideally demonstrated through advanced theory classes and in your writing sample. Finally, you need a 15-20 pp writing sample on your topic of interest that demonstrates extensive use of primary and secondary sources, and 3 letters from professors who can speak to your potential as a literature scholar (they don't have to be comparative literature professors, but they can't be engineering professors).
All of the above is what you need just to be a viable candidate for admission at any PhD program. Getting admitted to a top program like Yale is another story.


Would it make sense for the admissions team to factor in a metric which has no impact on your likelihood of excelling in their program? Because, irrespectively of any grade inflation, your ability to, say, integrate a function over a 3D plane has no application in humanities scholarship, and contrary to what you are implying, your ability in the former may have little or no relationship to your ability in the latter. So really your irrelevant GPA would tell the admissions committee almost nothing. GPA and GRE also aren't very important.
I think you are misunderstanding what a PhD is: it is helpful to think of it as a job rather than as school. The reason you are funded in a PhD program is because the department expects you to be a professional who is doing a job. And whereas good departments won't saddle you with teaching duties in your first semester, they very much will expect you to hit the ground running: to be able to participate in graduate theory seminars, to immediately start working with primary sources without needing 2 years of language classes, to start producing publishable work soon after comps. Just as an engineering firm wouldn't hire you for an engineering position without an engineering degree, a PhD program wouldn't hire you for a grad student position when you can present no evidence that you know what you're doing.
I think @itslit is right on with telling you that literary scholarship is not a book club. Lots of people declare a literature major because they enjoy reading and writing and then discover that a) literary scholarship is very unlike the casual reading and writing they like to do, b) therefore they're bad at it. The other reason you shouldn't apply for PhDs right now, besides the fact that you won't get in, is that you really have no idea what literary scholarship entails. Right now you see this as an escape from the grueling coursework that I'm sure you're being put through and the scary job market, but it's also, you know, a bonafide occupation with its bad sides and long days. It seems like you think that because it's not engineering, it won't be hard - and it will be very hard, just in a different way. You really should give this project a lot more thought and work than you have.
That said, if you're still curious about transitioning, I'd try it out - but I'd try a more cautious approach. Especially since you have student debt, I'd finish the MS and get a job, then audit some literature electives at a local college. It's a cheap and efficient way to get introduced to the field, and sometimes, if you do well, the professor may be able to write you a letter of recommendation for your master's application. I don't think this transition is possible for you without a relevant master's. You certainly shouldn't pay for a master's in the humanities, by the way, but if you put in a strong enough application, you may be able to get in fully funded (which will entail TA or RA work). A master's is also a good way to taste the academic life without committing to it. Good luck!

I'm in a different humanities field but I did cold e-mail a number of students and got several helpful responses in return. However,  I only did so after I was accepted. Grad students are generally willing to provide advice to applicants, but we are very busy, so that could diminish the likelihood or thoroughness of responses. I agree with @AfricanusCrowther that any more delicate topics should wait until an a campus visits.
At the application stage, I would say that your questions should probably be focused on two points: Is it worth spending the time and money to apply to this program? And, what can I do to maximize my chances of acceptance? I'm not sure graduate students will be too helpful on the latter point, although it's possible they could have some insight to the process at their program. They could however be useful on the first question is you have some make or break qualifications for programs (such as, is it possible to live reasonable comfortably on the stipend without taking out loans? Or, it seems like you're only person working on X, does the department provide adequate resources for doing that sort of research?). If you've already determined you'll apply to the program though, I'd probably wait until you're accepted to contact grad students.

I think this is acceptable, and actually good practice for graduate school, where you sometimes have to email academics you don’t know (potential outside committee members, big names you want to meet at a conference, journal editors). You want to be polite (perhaps even acknowledging the awkwardness of the situation), but treat them like a future colleague. I would also make sure to email a graduate student in your sub-field, who will generally be able to give the most helpful answers to any question, and explain why you reached out to them in particular. If I were on the receiving end of this, I would be happy to answer.
 I think you can ask about anything germane to the program, but I would not voice any concerns about it (especially not about individuals you might want to work with). Not only is this premature, but also better saved for conversations on a campus visit. I would also try to make sure your question is relatively straightforward and best answered by a graduate student.

If this is your response to @Sigaba's mild suggestion that you take a step back and reevaluate, then maybe they're not as off base with their comments as you want to think they are.

I think your post means well but I'm not sure how useful it is when applying to a Ph.D. in the Humanities. 

Humanities tend to rely significantly less on stats than than Math does and relies more on "fit". The same applicant could submit the same application to 12 programs one year and get rejected from all 12. They could reapply next year and get into a number of schools that previously rejected them. Departments change. And the applicants they're looking for also change from year to year. You might get rejected from a school ranked T150, T100, T80, T60 but get accepted into a T40 , T20, and T30 school. You might also end up rejecting the T20 and T30 school for the T40 simply because it's a better fit. 

We've also seen people with perfect GRE scores and GPAs from ivy league institutions get rejected from every single school they've applied to. Writing matters. Interests matter.

It might be worth considering getting one of your letters from an undergrad prof, if you have one that will write an especially strong letter. When I applied to PhD programs, I got two letters from MA profs, and one from my undergraduate advisor. 

I was told, e-mail if you actually have a worthwhile question. Don't e-mail just to introduce yourself. I think worthwhile questions would be things like, are you taking advisees, what is the status of subfield [x] in the grad program right now, etc.  The same goes for emailing a DGS.  
 
As a general rule, e-mailing to introduce yourself probably wont help. In my experience, you probably won't get a reply to e-mails with legit questions, much less introductions. Most people have a hard time getting e-mail responses from professors who are actually on their committee, much less professors who are total strangers.  The only e-mail introduction I sent was to a school I didn't get into. I only got into schools where I didn't contact any professors, except the DGS.

I've been thinking lately about what it takes to be successful coming from an MA, since I'm wrapping up my own this year. I have a few thoughts:
1. I think your choice of advisor matters significantly--way more than the rank status of your program. If you end up working with someone who doesn't really take the time to mentor you, you're not going to be able to produce as polished and nuanced a writing sample. One might also think that someone who isn't invested in your success might not take the time to write you as strong a letter. I'm lucky; my advisor is great. Not everyone fares so well, though. Take your time to evaluate the faculty before you pick someone to work with, and choose with your eyes open.
2. It can be tricky to do this in an MA, but I think it can be useful to try to get letters from faculty with whom you've done more than taken one class. Maybe you were also a TA for the faculty member, etc. Again--can be tricky to pull off in an MA, but if you can do it, it gives you a better chance to get to know each faculty member a bit more, and (hopefully) they'll write you a more informed letter as a result.
3. Don't be afraid to consult with your advisor (as long as you know she or he is in your corner) about your choice of letter writers. She or he may have better insight than you about who may be a good choice if you're trying to pick between several options.
4. Start your writing sample early (summer after first year at the latest, though it's not a bad idea to be thinking about what you might want to be working on before then).
5. Perhaps this goes without saying, but I've found that doing an MA first brings with it an extra burden; when you apply to programs the first time, many people apply to MAs as a backup. But when you're applying out of an MA, there's no MA as a backup. You may feel increased pressure on yourself. I think it's extra important as a result of that pressure to manage that stress well. So do something other than philosophy while you're doing your MA to keep yourself sane!

MOO, the emphasis on number of posts is ill considered given the nature of this BB.
A member could drive up one's post count in a number of existing pass the time threads. Another member could easily confuse the post count as an indication of knowledge and credibility and, in his haste, accept uncritically guidance that does not reflect "best practices" for securing admission to graduate school.
I understand that the new ownership purchased TGC to make money. I think that the ownership team should invest more time developing an understanding of this BB and the needs of its members and, from there, develop a sustainable plan that squares the circle of increasing traffic without diluting the overall quality of the posts.
My $0.02.

The downfall of an MA is that two years (or really 1.5 years) is not typically a long enough period of time to build up strong relationships with multiple professors. However, admissions committees are certainly aware of this fact and are unlikely to hold it against you. What you need is philosophers who can speak to your abilities and potential to produce high quality scholarly work. The fact that you're close to one professor is great and that will be a particularly valuable letter. The second professor you mention also seems like a strong candidate for being a good letter writer. Just make sure he knows who you are at the beginning of the semester and try to be an active participant in the class. I would be a little more wary of asking the third professor, as you've never had a class with him. I don't think a few meetings would allow him to evaluate your work and potential as a philosopher to the same degree as someone with whom you've had a seminar. That being said, if he's impressed with your work and you don't have other viable options, it may be worth asking if he'd be willing to write a letter for you.

As of 08/08/18, the history forum has over 40k posts. 
Please consider the advantages of
using the BB's search button. https://forum.thegradcafe.com/search/ and contributing to existing threads, especially the thread for the current application season, so that current and future users will have common points of reference Here's the thing. Academic historians distinguish themselves from other professions in the Ivory Tower in many ways, not the least of which are:
Self-reliance; The ability to generate meaningful questions; and The ability to do research in support of answering those questions. FWIW, while there are ongoing conversations over generational sensibilities IRT work, training, and interpersonal relationships (the boomer/xer/millenial/z "debate"), for better and for worse, professional academic historians continue to do things the old way. This old way includes an unstated expectations that aspiring graduate students are going to do a significant, if not exhaustive,  amount of self-motivated legwork before asking questions.
ETA: If one reads extensively, one will come across "first time" posts by "long time lurkers" who share their elation at getting into Happy Land University with full funding and their appreciation for the wealth of information they found in existing threads. Is it just by accident that they get to where they want to go without starting new threads?
 

It's very hard for you to know, for sure. I did not begin to have a real handle on reputation until I was in grad school for awhile. Which is why reputation isn't really a great litmus test for determining whether to apply to a school. I will tell you, my first time around I was focused much much more on prestige than fit in putting together my list, which is one of many explanations of why I was shut out.
I'll tell you what I did the second time around.  Maybe this sounds super tedious, but this is a major process and must involve some tedium: I went to the U.S. news rankings, and I just started going down the list, looking at the faculty in the programs, skimming their publication titles or their listed interests.  Some schools make this exceptionally easy.  If I could find 2-3 professors who really seemed to interest me, I put the department on the "long list." I stuck in the top 50.
Then, my "long list" established, I started looking a little deeper, actually skimming book chapters and articles, reading the department's grad handbook (if it was available), and that was how I constructed my short list. It contained programs from across the top 40.  After I'd conducted this process, in fact it emerged that all things being equal, my favorite two programs on the list were in the 20s and 30s. Indeed, in my first time around I had my head so far up my ass about prestige that I didn't even realize there were programs so well attuned to the type of work I wanted to do.  Those programs weren't even on my radar the first time around.
In determining fit, too, I'll go back to something I said in another thread last week, that no department is likely to contain a "dream team" of faculty working and actively publishing in your area.  My committee's work has very very little to do with the content of my dissertation.  Instead, I chose them based on a combination of how well I worked with them (which you wont know until you get there) but also how interested I was in their work, and if I sensed it had methodological or theoretical kinship with mine. Actually, I picked  my chair in part because her work differs so wildly from my own inclinations, and that I knew she could keep me honest and make sure I don't drift too far afield ("fit" is very complicated!).

If you're asking about a PhD program, then this is a decision that could affect the next 5+ years of your life and beyond. I think if you can, it's best not to make such decisions sight unseen.

To be honest, it's impossible to say with the information you've given. As you probably know, people pick up languages as different rates. The learning environment determines a lot as well. An intensive language training is worlds apart from a couple of hours a week and then your degree of engagement also determines whether those contact hours make a difference. Heck, I've known people how have lived abroad for multiple years without any significant improvement in their ability to speak the local language.
Point being, the years of study doesn't really matter. What matters is your level of competency. Assuming field research involves interviews or something of that nature, I'd say a C1 on the CEFR scale is a good goal. You could maybe get by with a B2 but I'd shoot for a C1. Of course, as @MastersHoping points out, language leanring never ends. So a C1 certification isn't an end point, but rather a helpful checkpoint.

There's been a lot of good points made in the thread, but I wanted to highlight this question because it seems to me that it hasn't gotten as much attention. While the others are certainly right to suggest applying to the best programs with people in your field, to point out that "fit" is often only clear in hindsight, and to highlight the importance of flexibility and willingness to engage with other topics and perspectives as a grad students, I don't think fit should be dismissed as a factor in narrowing down programs to apply to. The thing is, however, is that "fit" is hardly ever captured in terms like 'Victorianism', 'Romanticism', or 'Gender Studies'. All of those terms are broad umbrella terms that cover a wide range of research. If you start digging around in the secondary literature, you will probably quickly discover that a Victorianist is not a Victorianist is not a Victorianist.
The upshot of this, is that making sure a program has a few people working in your field is an inadequate way of determining fit. At best, it's useful for a first pass of eliminating potential programs. The next step is to spend some serious times reading CVs, abstracts, and if something catches your attention reading the article or book chapter. In doing this, you will probably find that many people who are ostensibly in your field, approach their texts in ways that are irrelevant or at odds with what you want to do. Certainly, there's something to be said for being pushed in new directions be a professor, but I also think it's good to avoid situations where people are entirely unsympathetic to your approaches. Doing lots of reading, I think, is the only way to discover these nuances as an applicant. Even then, it's insufficient. In entering a program, you will almost certainly realize things about fit that you couldn't have known as an applicant. But I do think some research beyond labels of fields can help narrow down the programs that it makes sense to apply to.
Fun exercise: take a look at the CVs of scholars who have broad ranging interests. In my experience, most of those professors started out working in a well defined area of study and branched out later in their careers (probably when they got tenure but maybe later too). For better or worse, literary studies is a field based discipline and scholars typically need to prove their chops in a well defined field before they have the liberty to expand to broadly beyond that. That doesn't mean you need to ignore your other interests though. I think looking at other fields is often a useful way to develop question to bring new light to your own field.
Also, in terms of wide-ranging scholars, I bet that in many cases their research interests, while broad, are perhaps not as eclectic as they may seem at first. Often scholars who come a broad period of time or geographic region are nonetheless motivated by closely related questions even if they manifest themselves differently in different places. To use Isaiah Berlin's terminology, I think that successfully broad ranging scholars in the humanities today are far more likely to be hedgehogs than foxes.

There's been a lot of good points made in the thread, but I wanted to highlight this question because it seems to me that it hasn't gotten as much attention. While the others are certainly right to suggest applying to the best programs with people in your field, to point out that "fit" is often only clear in hindsight, and to highlight the importance of flexibility and willingness to engage with other topics and perspectives as a grad students, I don't think fit should be dismissed as a factor in narrowing down programs to apply to. The thing is, however, is that "fit" is hardly ever captured in terms like 'Victorianism', 'Romanticism', or 'Gender Studies'. All of those terms are broad umbrella terms that cover a wide range of research. If you start digging around in the secondary literature, you will probably quickly discover that a Victorianist is not a Victorianist is not a Victorianist.
The upshot of this, is that making sure a program has a few people working in your field is an inadequate way of determining fit. At best, it's useful for a first pass of eliminating potential programs. The next step is to spend some serious times reading CVs, abstracts, and if something catches your attention reading the article or book chapter. In doing this, you will probably find that many people who are ostensibly in your field, approach their texts in ways that are irrelevant or at odds with what you want to do. Certainly, there's something to be said for being pushed in new directions be a professor, but I also think it's good to avoid situations where people are entirely unsympathetic to your approaches. Doing lots of reading, I think, is the only way to discover these nuances as an applicant. Even then, it's insufficient. In entering a program, you will almost certainly realize things about fit that you couldn't have known as an applicant. But I do think some research beyond labels of fields can help narrow down the programs that it makes sense to apply to.
Fun exercise: take a look at the CVs of scholars who have broad ranging interests. In my experience, most of those professors started out working in a well defined area of study and branched out later in their careers (probably when they got tenure but maybe later too). For better or worse, literary studies is a field based discipline and scholars typically need to prove their chops in a well defined field before they have the liberty to expand to broadly beyond that. That doesn't mean you need to ignore your other interests though. I think looking at other fields is often a useful way to develop question to bring new light to your own field.
Also, in terms of wide-ranging scholars, I bet that in many cases their research interests, while broad, are perhaps not as eclectic as they may seem at first. Often scholars who come a broad period of time or geographic region are nonetheless motivated by closely related questions even if they manifest themselves differently in different places. To use Isaiah Berlin's terminology, I think that successfully broad ranging scholars in the humanities today are far more likely to be hedgehogs than foxes.

I'd like to make a case for using this website's forum. There's a lot of useful information and discussion that I've found by searching and digging around in old threads. Discussion in a closed FB group won't be accessible to future philosophy applicants.
I'm not saying don't use the FB group; one could use both the forum and the group of course! However, I do think there are distinct advantages to having discussion and the like on this forum rather than a FB group.