Historiogaffe

I only know of this baby: http://bookhistory.fis.utoronto.ca/ I have also, though, noticed a number of universities (UCLA springs to mind) that list "Book History" – sometimes along with electronic media – as an area of specialization for their faculty. So mining English faculty for groups of interested profs might be worthwhile...

Every morning I wake up and ask myself, "Would I be where I am today without my scant knowledge of chemical bonding equations?" Ohh, 21st-century. I'd LOL but the impact assessments ravaging the UK would make it bitter.

I echo Pamphilia on this one. To answer only one aspect of your question: As soon as an author dies, their production of primary sources ceases – regardless of the century he or she dies in. As a result, any primary sources aside from that author (e.g., epistolary from relatives) will peter out soon afterward. A dead 21st-century author is as "finite" as a dead 13th-century one, though that's a problematic way of putting it for reasons Sparky mentions above. Even if the author is still alive and productive, as soon as you write a book on something he or she has written, your book because temporally "dead"; that is, that piece of your scholarship will not as a material object spontaneously update itself at any point (though you can revise it – a practice popularised by St Augustine, 4th c., incidentally). For all the availability of primary sources might increase the closer an author is to the present day, one will have correspondingly less to examine in terms of that author's reception. We have much more to go on in terms of Chaucer's reception than Fitzgerald's, for instance. (This statement assumes a. fairly popular and/or notorious and/or canonical authors and b. comparable levels of a. between any authors put into a.'s rubric, of course.) Furthermore, if you compare scholarship on, say, Alexander Pope over the last couple of centuries, even scholars who focus on the same passages will not be saying the same things. I don't mean that they might all hypothetically be disagreeing with each other; but instead that some might be rather difficult to put into dialogue for the fact that ideologies, academic values, etc change with time. Or, short version: because times change. Even if the scholars sound like they'd agree (Milton's Satan IS evil!, they assert – but why do they assert it? Is this a good or bad thing? What does this mean? How do they write and argue it? What sources do they use? What are their political and social contexts, beyond being evidently disparate from each other?) Compare a 19th-century book review with a 21st-century one, for instance. In the Victorian era, book reviewers were very much about plumbing the work under review for its moral promise. Today, not hardly. A fair number of folks have theorized that the language we use affects how we think, to say nothing of what we can or cannot think. (Hi, Orwell.) No one has written sentences the way the 21st century writes sentences. And no one outside of the 17th century could un-selfconsciously write a sentence that belongs in the 17th century's style. This seems promising in terms of research originality. Finally, the centuries of folks who've studied Virgil have not necessarily done so via gender theory, media studies, post/colonialism, etc etc. And I'm sure we're absent a pile of approaches previous scholars enjoyed. All this to say: 4,000 Victorians aren't recycling the same old crap. Thank goodness.

I'm impressed you made it through the entire paragraph (though perhaps a vaguer term – say, prose installment – would be more apt). The contents are comprehensible enough, but the writer's ethos seemed akin to that of a vehement but ill-informed dinner companion with a piece of spinach stuck between his teeth. I imagine that's where most of us felt derailed. Understanding the point is one thing; being persuaded by it, unfortunately, is entirely another. That said, I can sympathise with the general academic-job-market woe.

As people have pointed out, rules were made to be broken. In my opinion, so was this OP's juggernaut of a paragraph.

A friend of mine got her acceptance to NYU today – to what I presume is a women's studies/sociology-related program, not lit, but perhaps this means humanities admissions in generally will start rolling out this week!

Unfortunately, I don't have anything to relate from direct experience – but your friend might find some useful advice in this recent thread:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a "double doctorate" take you up to, er, two decades to complete? Also, why do you want two doctorates in one area? By the time you finished one, you'd be overqualified for the other. Why wouldn't you just do... a doctorate in literature? As it stands, it sounds a bit like, "I want to double major in English." If you want to do more than one literature in terms of language and/or era, a program in Comp Lit might be up your alley. There are departments that offer a PhD in two areas – Yale's Classics department, for instance, offers PhDs in Classics and Comp Lit, Classics and Renaissance Studies, etc. There are also PhD programs that will do a kind of "secondary discipline" or appended MA/MPhil to your PhD, so you could do a PhD in, say, French lit, with a secondary field in medieval studies. Toronto offers a whole ton of really cool-sounding collaborative programs. Also, it's not unheard-of to fashion your own PhD – though as I say, your plans sounds vague/one-track enough that a plain old literature program would be fine. Basically, to specialize in more than one area, you don't need to put yourself through twice as many years of schooling! There are easier, and probably better, ways!

OSU does sound pretty great. I have my eye on it, actually, as it's one of the only universities I can find anywhere that's strong in both medieval studies and rhetoric! I saw the 3.85 average on the Berkeley site, and just figured (after the initial throes of panic) that this average must simply be a result of half their cohort having 3.7 and half having 4.0. I have heard of departments doing a "Well throw away anything under X" as far as GPA, but I've never heard of it being anything above 3.7. So hopefully that's a bit of a relief for both of us!

I'm curious as to who told you 640V/3.7GPA is "less than stellar" as far as stats go. Most schools have a general recommendation of minimum 3.0/3.5, and 600V+. The highest standards I've heard of, from the top, Ivy-strewn bananas, have been 700V+ and 3.7+. And since adcoms tend to use stats as throwaway evaluators, I can't see yours doing you any harm. Common wisdom gleaned from the fine folks of this board, and other places: if your acceptances aren't meeting your expectations, it'll be the LORs, writing sample and especially SOP that need work. I sincerely doubt an extra 20 points on your GREs would make a huge difference either way, ditto .5 added onto your GPA. I don't mean that to sound negative – I mean your stats sound fine. It may have been your choice in schools; you selected them to stay close to home, right? Perhaps your SOP didn't convince them you were a great fit? There are all kinds of things to revisit that will be more rewarding (and less tedious) to amp up than stats. When the GREs matter most – relatively – is for things like fellowships, etc. To put the soapbox away and actually answer your question (sorry...!), I'm double majoring in English and medieval studies. I've done an independent research project for the latter, and will be doing an honours thesis for the former this coming year. As someone said above, I think I'm going to hold off on applications – at least to PhD programs – until I'm done that. Despite a resume sporting generally good-to-have things on it (research projects, taught seminar, assistantships), and a talent for standardised testing that will probably only ever be useful for the GRE (wish I could, like, unicycle, or something), I think I'd be rejected across the board if I applied to doctoral programs this coming December – simply because I haven't made a coherent whole out of my several really strong research interests. :/ Anyway, don't worry about your stats! If this turns out to be an unsuccessful round, hone those research interests, polish-polish-polish the SOP, and work on that writing sample. Stunning quality in those areas will wow the adcoms more than a 3.95 GPA.

Oh no! Wait! I think I was mistaken, because the deadline for the "medieval M.St. and PRS is 12th March 2010." (Who knows when the M.Phil deadline is – I guess it depends what "PRS" means?) So yes, do send in an application! Apparently even after I'd checked out the site a few times myself there was still room for confusion. How embarassing. But glad it's still an option for this year for you! Now back to feeling sheepish and translating alliterative Middle English verse. Because practicality is apparently not my strong suit

Hey Katia_chan – I've been poking around the Oxford English program as well, and I think the explanation is this: the department offers all their M.St.'s in "English: year-year", along with a 2-year M.Phil in Medieval Studies. The March 12 deadline is for the M.Phil. Hope this clears things up!