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Meh. My impulse would be to say I would treat it the same as sexuality/gender... as long as it's expressed tastefully, than I wouldn't worry. The most cynical good case scenario I could imagine is that it would make you seem "interesting" . At this point, with all apps in, I would prefer to never read my SOP ever again and pretend that it's immaculate, daring, and gorgeously written.

Ugh. Like filling out government forms online. One step away from requiring you to use IE...

Congrats, mightysparrow! And yeah, OSU's interface was THE most annoying of any application I did this season, aside from the myriad of janky online job applications I've filled out. But I'm stoked to visit and actually meet some of wonderful GC people I've encountered virtually over the past months!

Congrats everyone! Y'all just got me to go and check my application status at OSU too - I got in! No email yet, but first acceptance!

Congrats, unraed and hypervodka! Killin' it! I'll now commence the compulsive e-mail checking for UMD emails...

Sure did! I was surprised and pleased. First time I was thankful for their website being poorly organized and self-contradictory. Yes. Totally. This is my biggest issue with this whole process. Why is it that the most wealthy and prestigious schools have the highest application fees? Especially since those same schools absolutely require the Subject Test... which is, as you note, less well-distributed. Fuck that. I cannot think of any good reason for the graduate school application process to be so expensive for any logical reason except to weed out people who can't afford to do it. Which I don't want to think is intentional, but it does make one pause... I dunno, it's complete bullshit if you ask me. Sure there are fee waivers available here and there, but they sure know how to make those difficult to access. Sometimes anyway. U of Chicago was very easy for me to get a waiver for. Also, ROFL @ "I also realized that most of what I knew came from Peanuts cartoons and Jeopardy." I feel like that's exactly how I would feel taking it... Yo, Wyatt, from what I can tell you are a highly eligible candidate. If some snotty place like Harvard rejects you because of a subject test score, fuck them! Also, you applied to like 17 amazing schools! My GRE's and GPA aren't amazing; I'm just betting on my sparkling personality . And also pre-formulating disses for all the super white collar fancy schools that are too pretentious to handle me.

Word. While I recognize some standards are needed, there's no escaping this: it's awfully scammy. I ended up having to cut schools I was interested in because of the subject test but I don't really regret it. I was still able to apply to nine schools, any of which I'd be excited to go to. Granted, a few were not English programs. Honestly, I don't think it's as big a deal as I thought it would be when I initially decided to just ignore it. I couldn't spare the money at the time (Fall was very tight for me). There's a couple schools that it would have been nice to be able to apply to, but on the whole I'm happy with my list, which I think was long enough. Also, yeah LA can be super expensive if you live in the city-city (rather than the SF Valley or something). USC is a gross campus too. Re: replacing the GRE Lit exam... I don't see any point in having a Lit exam. The WS and SOP seems enough to me. No other Language area (French, Chinese, Spanish, what have you) or Comp Lit seems to need one -- what makes English so special? One thing I kind of wish I had done was build up the gusto to ask departments if they cared if I took it. Boston College told me they wouldn't require it for me because I want to do medieval studies and the GRE Lit test is completely useless for evaluating knowledge of that field.

lol yeah. I have my B.A. in English and am about to start a couple jobs... substitute teacher by day, data entry clerk by night. Job market sucks where I am, but I'm hoping my "in-between" job as a sub will translate to a career in teaching if I don't get into a PhD program. At least I'd feel like I'd be doing something more useful than wanking off to Foucault. Pardon my cynicism. I don't see any point in even going for a humanities M.A. if it's not funded, which is why I only applied to one M.A. program. I have to work a bunch and have enough debt as it is. A PhD program is something I see as a luxury. Yes, I've gone out of my way to throw a bunch of hard-earned money into applying, but in the end I'm applying so I can be supported financially by a university to study literature. If it doesn't pan out, no love lost. There are other good things to throw oneself into. But yes, it's a luxury. Most academics I've met come from more secure, better socioeconomic backgrounds than I do. A lot of the academy that I've experienced exists in a kind of annoying upper middle class white bubble that affects working class sentiments that I find largely disingenuous, to be honest. And yes, it's a fucking crime that higher education costs money. It's a crime that I have to work as much as I do at pretty shitty jobs even though I just went into a lot of debt to go get my B.A. It's a crime that the money that should be put into teaching kids and making sure everyone has access to a good education is put into the Pentagon and a militarized police force. Welcome to America guys.

Hey all, been away from GC for a minute now. Interesting thread though. Honestly these issues didn't occur to me as I was applying, but my sexuality has little to do with my general academic interests. Does it influence them? Probably. But I didn't get very "personal" at all in my personal statement -- I treated it more like a professional statement, though I tried to keep it pretty poetic in the beginning. This. I almost wish I had alluded to my sexuality very slightly just so I could get thrown out if all the medievalists in my prospective programs turn out to have the mindset of 80 year-old Victorian aristocratic breeders from another dimension. But I generally avoid in my writing the things that I find boring or didactic in other students' writing... such as rattling on about one's sexual preferences. That's just me though. If you're writing significantly on say, drag culture, and your work is heavily informed by being part of one, than obviously it would make sense. But I had a boyfriend once who would go on about all the suffering he went through as a gay man all the time to anyone who would listen, including to get out of class work, to get pity from professors, etc and I found it incredibly irritating and irresponsible. Which doesn't mean that suffering wasn't valid or anything. I just hate it when an academic setting turns into a therapy session. When I'm in the classroom, or writing, that's when I want to be throwing myself into my work, into a space where my personal feelings and identities can get a chance to be irrelevant. But, then again, I work with a lot of things written in the distant past where my convictions often truly have nothing to do with the mindsets of the writers I engage. Regarding it being obvious from one's interests... I feel like I've read plenty of extremely queer academic writing written by men married to women with children... so I don't even know about that. If my personal feelings and identities were so wrapped up in my interests, I'd probably have developed some uber-schizoid multiple-personality complex by now that I'd like to go on thinking I don't have . I also happen to find a lot of extremely un-PC and intolerant works of art to be quite beautiful. Sue me. Am I surprised at the amount of queers here? Not really, judging from how chill I've found a lot of people on this forum to be. I tend to assume most people are queer to some extent... as someone who's been kind of ambiguous about my sexual preferences for a while, I'm used to having people of more straight-forward orientations, whether "straight" or "gay," casually opening up to me about encounters and feelings they've had that would traditionally go against that grain. *shrug* It has nothing to do with me as a future professional though. I don't give a shit about the orientations of the people evaluating me, so I figure mine is none of their business either -- they're strangers to me. For queer novels to be read during free time, I recommend Samuel R. Delany's Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand or James Purdy's In A Shallow Grave. Purdy's descriptions of sexuality make more sense to me than almost any other modern fiction writer I've read. He also knows how to make me cry like a little bitch.

Yeah. I feel like you have to be a bit of an obsessive person to be applying to a PhD program in the first place. I also think that when people talk about how much the job market sucks, 1. I'm hearing it from tenured professors and 2. that's just in academia. If I wanted to be making a bunch of money, I wouldn't have studied literature and medieval studies for my B.A. in the first place. If I get into a PhD, I'll spend 5-6 years getting paid to do something I love and even if its not an impressive salary, I'll be too absorbed in my studies to care that much. I'll be making more money than I have been lately. After that... who knows? I have work experience elsewhere and I'm not ashamed to go back to school to get a teaching degree or an MLIS. The country certainly needs more teachers. With a PhD, you could have a shot at teaching a private school (if that's what you'd want to do) and make more money than you would as a professor anyway. Or working for a non-profit. There are still lots of things you could do with a PhD. For me, there are economically practical reasons for it -- I'll be deferring my loans, and I'll be supported by my university while I study what I love to study without accruing more debt.

I'm sorry dazedandbemused. Since I'm not in your program and not familiar with the environment you work in, I in no way feel entitled to tell you what would be an appropriate way to deal with this. I'm often disappointed by the apathy I see at my SLAC, but this is the kind of stuff that would not be allowed to fly here. Maybe it's just because of the environment I've spent the last 4.5 years studying in, but "micro-aggressions" (though these seem, to me, more blatant than that) such as these would be totally fair game for classroom discussion where I am. The things you've listed (war without imperialism, antebellum south without race discussion) seem completely irresponsible, not only socially, but even in a scholarly "vacuum" (a notion I reject -- too much Marxism in my blood I suppose). As for the use of the "n-word," come on. Again, I don't know your comfort levels and the acceptance of this where you are, but it seems to me that you should be able to call attention to such things. In class. In my experiences here, which I recognize are different than many peoples', calling someone out on this type of thinking could lead to a rich conversation that could benefit everyone. If a professor is letting this stuff be said without comment, I would definitely try to have a conversation with him or her if you aren't comfortable bringing it up in class discussions. Best of luck to you and anyone else who experiences this bullshit. This is the kind of shit that I think people need to have a better outlet for discussing. How can we eradicate this sort of crap without discussion? People saying these kind of things may have the best of intentions, but in my mind, they ought appreciate being called out on saying things like that because it will only improve their ability to be responsible with respect to both social interactions and scholarly research. I know if I were saying things like that I would want to be called out on it because I wouldn't want to be walking around saying shit like that without realizing it! The best way to learn is to learn to recognize when you are making mistakes. EDIT: to add that I think that duran0 and toasterezzi's points above are excellent ones that I sought to reaffirm in my above post. People at my institution make an active effort to be more racially conscious, at least in my experience -- which isn't to say I haven't encountered problems. They were often able to be talked out and I've learned a lot about becoming more conscious of my own words and actions and noticing others' simply through some of the people I've befriended and had discussions with inside and outside of class. As a queer person who only came out during the course of my college career, I'll say that I've encountered way more "micro-aggressions" due to that -- but then again, I'm "white." When I started dating a girl after being with boys for a couple years I couldn't even tell you how many times my girlfriend was told that it was "impossible" that we were getting together, or that being gay had been a "phase" or a call for attention or that I wasn't "really gay." I also had to really interrogate myself to get over a lot of presuppositions, language, and ideas that I had simply from growing up around very racist, homophobic people -- many of whom were good friends of mine and even close family members. It can be painful to have these sorts of discussions with people you love and discussions of sexuality and race with my own parents caused tensions and alienation that we still haven't completely overcome. But there has been progress. My mother grew up very poor in the Deep South and encountered a lot of angry riots just going to school where she felt genuinely frightened on a regularly basis and had Black cohorts who came from more money than her getting college scholarships that she couldn't get -- these things require honest, painful, and sensitive discussions to address very deep-set problems. But I won't say that I regret the conversations, even if I regret the way I personally went into them at times. So I take these things very seriously and personally. I think "white" people in general ought to as well. People with white skin ought be disgusted when they hear racially insensitive things coming out of their own or out of other white peoples' mouths. I really do believe that. There used to be a wonderful online journal called Race Traitor that is unfortunately defunct now, but their website is still up and their mission, I think, still relevant: http://racetraitor.org/. I only wish that it would have continued so as to contribute to the conversation today. As for the use of the n-word, yes, there has been much debate on it, but I think if a text that uses it a lot is going to be used in a class, it is the professor's job to check in with the students and see what they're comfortable with beforehand, even if they believe in the importance of not "censoring" the text when reading out loud. Because you never know the life stories of all your students, if any.

Has anyone read any James Purdy? I'm fixing to read some more of him once I get done with some of the loads of stuff on my plate right now. In A Shallow Grave and Eustace Chisolm and the Works are devastating even as they are heart-warming (in a weird way) but he's the first writer in years to make me cry honest tears. The former I read in one day with my jaw dropped for half of it. I feel like Purdy is one of those Great American Novelists that everyone forgot. I was visiting my folks in Los Angeles last month and managed to pick up The Nephew and Malcolm for buck each at the fantastic Last Bookstore in downtown LA (worth checking out for anyone in the area or visiting the area, along with the Iliad in North Hollywood). ^^ Yep! I'll certainly be busting out the pulp science fiction and comic books as palette cleansers.

^^ Oddly enough, I've encountered this same phenomenon. It's weird. I've hardly encountered anyone applying for grad schools and don't know any lit people from my graduating class who applied for graduate programs -- and the college I graduated from (and have been doing work for this semester) is, while not being a super prestigious LAC, quite well known in the region for producing lots of future-PhDs. I've talked to a couple people who I graduated with who even have a slight attitude when I tell them I'm applying to Ph.D. programs, which is kind of shocking. I used to get endless shit-talking from high school friends for leaving my city to go to a "fancy-pants-liberal-arts-school" (I was one of the few who went to college at all, and went on fantastic scholarships), and I wasn't quite expecting to see that attitude from my college peers. It's been scant and not malicious or anything, but I think it stands out more because of the source. *shrug* I, too, wonder if there's just less people applying to humanities Ph.D. programs. My SO is getting ready to apply to law schools and has been talking about how much application rates for law schools has dived -- half of her programs are just getting rid of application fees altogether this year. I wouldn't be surprised if there were similar dives with the humanities. Fingers crossed -- this could tip the odds ever so slightly in our favor!

^^ God, this is so typical LA... *rolls eyes* ^^ I've had this same frustration for a while. As wonderful as I think it is that we've seen the proliferation of feminism and Marxism in academic work in recent years (decades), I often feel that there aren't as many politically active practicing academics as there were. Sure, we have certain politically active "celebrities" (i.e., Cornel West, Slavoj Zizek), but from what I've seen where I am at least, most of the activism has been done by often well-meaning but under-informed undergraduates who have the outrage that comes with being new to some of these ideas, but (at least from what I've seen) are often quick to jump on bandwagons of higher-than-thou moral outrage. I'm very glad that you've had access to such emotionally supportive peers and professors though. I would be curious to hear about the "ahistorical" approaches you've encountered and their relation to such discussions. And Fancypants, your post was incredibly invigorating and I think you make fantastic points. What I fundamentally love about the political significance of something like a boycott (like #HandsUpDontSpend) or a die-in that blocks traffic is that it reminds me that there can be a political significance to inaction (at least inaction within the web of capitalist systems). When it comes down to it, we live in a Capitalist, corporatist society, where something "active" or "productive" or "positive" or even "good" is rendered something that involves continuing an self-destructive free market that I think fundamentally harmful to human lives. If done in a self-aware and self-critical way, a "useless" practice like immersing oneself in literature can be revolutionary -- even if it is on a small scale. I do worry though, too. ^^This is so well put, proflorax. I think education in general is in danger in this country, and this is something we all need to be concerning ourselves with. My "plan B" at this point, if I don't get into Ph.D. programs, is to start teaching in public schools (sub for a while, maybe get a teaching degree if I don't give PhD apps another go). I live in Wisconsin and remember the protests -- Jesse Jackson came to my campus and rallied up a bunch of people to go vote. Sadly, things are looking more and more grim here after the recent elections. I'm very disturbed by how rapidly education seems to be declining. My younger sister (in California) is starting high school soon and there's only one high school near her that teaches any foreign languages. In a county that is 40% Latino. I'm hearing about first-years at my (pretty selective) liberal arts colleges taking introductory English classes who have never read Shakespeare. These are not underprivileged people either. I don't know. To me, literacy is important for political engagement. In the world we live in, the economic stratification and fetishization of products makes this generation very much focused on their identities and identification with commodities. To me, studying literature (any literature) has a fundamental social importance in that it can exercise the mind to imagine other worlds, other mindsets, other viewpoints, to learn to understand (or at least strive to recognize what they can't understand) things that one can't identify with, at least not wholly. To me, this has an inherent social value that can't be learned at once or in one course, but can certainly be nurtured over the course of an education. That's what keeps me going, at least. I haven't had access to nearly as many opportunities as many people I've come to know growing up or coming to college, but I know for damned sure that I've had access to so much more educationally nourishing opportunities than many people and I can't even begin to express how frustrating it is that today, in 2014, we still live in such a stratified society where I've seen so many people with every opportunity to do good things selfishly squander those opportunities and watched people with so much potential fall through the cracks. Thanks y'all for a good discussion. This is a wonderful outlet, I think. P.S. -- unraed: there's an essay by David F. Hult in a volume called The New Medievalism called "Reading it Right: the Ideology of Text Editing" that you might find interesting. It examines the role of authority and authorial power dynamics in the act of medieval textual editing practices. I wanted to include it in the readings for the manuscript studies class I TA'd this semester, but unfortunately we never found time for it.

^^Yeah, what 1Q84 said. Comp Lit you'll need at least one other language besides English. Most doctorate programs (if you're doing modern literature) will want you to be a proficient speaker, reader, and writer in at least one foreign language going into it and reading language of one or two others over the course of the program. I've seen master's programs that simply ask for reading knowledge of one non-native language (like Indiana), but warn that more language knowledge is necessary if your trying to go on beyond a terminal Master's. These things can have many nuances from program to program, but many Comp Lit programs are very theory-heavy, and tend to work with texts across languages, times, and/or cultures. Critical theory is important in many, many English programs too though. Some English departments will encourage more comparative work, and many will encourage engagement with critical theory. This varies a lot, but if you want to focus on English literature in a specific time and place (i.e., 18th century English lit, 19th century American, what have you), English will probably be better for you. English (insert language here) degrees often, from what I've heard, have an easier time finding academic jobs because a degree in English is often perceived as more "disciplined" and "specialized" (though this is of course not necessarily true at all) than Comp Lit, which is more interdisciplinary.

I wish I had more upvotes for today. Those articles you linked are fantastic, proflorax, so thank you for that. There's a fantastic article written a little while ago on the Chronicle of Higher Ed that I think everyone should read: http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/11/25/fergusonsyllabus/ Actually, in my Latin class yesterday, we managed to discuss it a little bit. The class was on Roman epistulary literature and as we were discussing what we had learned this semester, I made a working definition of letter-writing practices as being a unidirectional dialogue from one person that address at least one other, touching on the fact that there is an undeniable authority that comes from that (we were reading letters from Cicero and Pliny, Seneca's Epistulae Morales, and Ovid's Heroides). Someone made a comment on the trouble of using certain letters as historical sources, and then this managed to turn into conversation about authority and narrative in contemporary media: Darren Wilson's narrative, monstrous, dehumanizing language used for Mike Brown, etc. I think that such discussions can be really enlightening, they certainly make the premodern writings seem closer, more visceral, less emotionally removed. I work with old literature, for the most part -- I'm an aspiring medievalist. Race is a huge aspect of medieval culture, and a very rich topic of investigation. But it's also a field dominated by upper-middle-class people (I would say men, but women have been, increasingly, much more active in the field over the past 20 or so years, and the changes that have come along with that shift have been wonderful, in my opinion). I completely understand, therefore, Wyatt's point of feeling like contemporary issues might not always fit in the classroom. I think this is valid. While I think medievalists and early modernists often overly treasure the idea that their periods are in some way 'alien' to our current culture, that these periods were 'their own thing,' I also fear the idea of appropriation, of turning such discussions into white-academic-dominated scholarly 'trends.' So I totally agree with you, andalus: Academia often gives me this feeling, of adopting this "PC" attitude that actually is completely hollow. While I do often have the feeling of wanting to abandon my degree and go out on the streets (a couple years ago there was a kind of wonderful article in n + 1 about burning your PhDs, tee-hee), I also feel like, as people who are about to be, or already are, attending graduate school we should be asking ourselves these questions early: what do we want to see change in academia, in the dialogue? How can we have more inclusive, engaged debates, without sugar-coating it with that academic "sheen" while also remaining responsible scholars? Also, in the worst case scenario that we don't end up in grad schools next year, how can we be applying our academic learning, even if its "only" a BA or Masters (either of which, where I'm from, is considered "fancy") in something that doesn't at first seem relevant?

I created thread for this type of discussion if anyone's interested. I hope not to distract this thread from it's intended purpose.

Starting this thread because I accidentally caused some conversation about this in the Writing Samples thread and don't want to distract that thread from its stated purpose. I've been reading a lot of articles about "Ferguson in the Classroom" and what humanities academics can do with some of the recent things that have been happening across the United States and thought it might be a good idea to have a thread about it. I know that Columbia's school of law in NYC recently accepted a petition to grant extensions for exams for students of color psychologically affected by what's been going on. If anyone needs a (relatively) anonymous space to discuss how this has been affecting your graduate school application season, post here. I see no reason why this shouldn't be discussed on here -- it's the middle of application season and there are some historic events happening right now! Personally I've found it very distressing. I live in the state with the highest incarceration of African Americans in the country. I grew up in the city of Rodney King. I've watched racism happen in front of me -- affecting both my friends and strangers -- all my life. I work at a college campus in a small city that is racked with socio-economic and racial tensions, a college that purports to be "activist," but I'm seeing nothing being organized or done except self-righteous posts on Facebook. I'm white and male -- I recognize the privileges that come with this status. But honestly, it's hard to focus for me right now and I'm scared for what's going to come. I feel isolated from what's going on because of the relative remoteness of where I currently live and my lack of financial stability to just skip work and drive down to the nearest big city and join in. Especially while applying to schools. Anyone else feel kind of powerless right now? Is there a place for literature (or rhetoric, or whatever you study) Ph.D.s in the current dialogue? I think there is, but I'm wondering what other people are thinking right now. Anybody else trying to balance these concerns?

The technique is one I would probably use as well... it's also probably a good thing to try on one's own writing to see how well the paper threads together... And I meant no critique of you by the photo. I guess it was my own weird and ineffective way of saying "don't fret the small stuff, there's plenty other things going on rather than a misplaced semicolon or an awkward phrase!" EDIT, to elaborate: I completely identify with this sort of fretting and nitpicking. I also often catch myself obsessing over details and tidbits like the one you mentioned about the professor at the expense of the world outside of graduate applications. I was probably projecting though, and I do apologize if it seemed rude. Maybe there should be a venting thread specifically about how certain recent events might be affecting us emotionally during the application process. Because I'm freaking out. Like, can't even bring myself to look seriously at my apps anymore.

Yeah, I don't even include the more blue collar jobs I've had on my regular resume anymore, let alone my CV. No academic will care that I was a landscaper or a janitor or a dishwasher, but a couple years working at a reference desk in an academic library is perhaps of some relevance... I would think that anything that you have some sort of pride of is relevant for a CV. I'm using it as an opportunity to show off things that don't get mentioned elsewhere in the app. I have awards, scholarships, and a category of "recent work experience" of academic-related jobs I've had. I'd think anything related to editing or publishing would be relevant because it makes you seem all the more interesting. An MA thesis would, I think, be relevant too -- from programs I've looked at, not all MAs require one (correct me if I'm wrong) and it shows you can do a lengthy scholarly project.

Honestly this doesn't surprise me at all from a Berkeley professor... especially considering how many applications he probably reads every year.... Also, if I were in Berkeley right now, I'm not sure it'd be my school applications that would be the main thing preoccupying me to be honest...

Chicago is way simpler than MLA. The only circumstance I would say it's more of a pain in the ass would be if you're using a typewriter. Which I hope you're not. I think you could look up a brief guide and have it down in like five or ten minutes.

The Leviathan is dope. Hobbes is definitely one of the most fun social contract philosophers to read. I'm currently reading William Langland's Piers Plowman (B-Text) and His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem. One thing I hate about school being in session is how little time I have for pleasure reading. When I'm working a 9-5, I still manage to swallow novels whole... when there's research to be done, not so much. I have a whole long super long "I need to read this before grad school so I don't feel like an idiot/science fiction/contemporary poetry/James Baldwin" reading list for this spring and summer though that I'm stoked to dive into... ^^ (confession: I had to try really hard not to laugh out loud at my desk at work.) Ugh. I'm sorry.

I use explanatory footnotes all the time in MLA and did in my sample as well. None of my professors have ever batted an eye. Though I've heard some rather catty rants from Chicago Style evangelists about the supremacy of the footnote and on the atrocities known as in-text citations. I hope my "hybrid MLA" isn't a problem. Because I'm not going to go back and change it at this point