Historiogaffe

Folks, you should be showing your statements of intent to faculty to get their opinions.

To create a draft you are proud to show off, it should be:
- for the MA - maximum one page
- for the PhD - maximum two pages
Then discuss in this order:
- your research topic and methodology
- why you are interested in this and why it matters
- your preparation for this to this point
- what faculty you would work with in the department and your ultimate career goal

That's it. No bravado, no flattery, no ruminations on your theory of whatever, no long-windedness or jargon. Direct and concise. Profs have dozens of these things to read and will get frustrated if you are not direct and down to earth.

AND the main thing: write your statement to convey what you would bring to that graduate program, that you are showing signs of intellectual independence, and that you are the one to get that research done and make that department look really smart for having taken the risk of admitting you to their program with tons of funding.

http://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-300

fuck reading. TV! TV! TV! TV!

I enjoyed Eagleton's Literary Theory: An Introduction, but only as a companion guide to the writings of the original theorist, (or a student.) I agree he is more than a bit pretentious, but some of his charm comes from the unending string of jibes against anything non-Marxist.

There is so much fantastic Canadian lit! Have you read any Bowering or anything from the group that formed around TISH Magazine? Timothy Findley? Leonard Cohen? Roy Kiyooka? Ondaatje?

I had to go through the Canadian schol system as well, and I still think of Who Has Seen the Wind with loathing, but don't everything with the same brush :'(.

Canadian schools whose English departments rank in the global top 50 include the University of Toronto (#7), McGill (#12) and UBC (#13). The University of Alberta is also a great school overall, and although its English department doesn't rank among the top 50, I know people who absolutely love it there. (Edmonton has nasty weather, though.)

U of T is the only Canadian school I've heard of that does not fund its MA students. Still, American students head there in decent numbers, because all the best Canadian schools are public and relatively affordable. Also, in Canada an MA is a basic prerequisite for a PhD, and US adcoms are aware of this cultural difference.

As a sidenote, I find it strange that when people research rankings by department or field, they often only look at US-published reports that omit international schools.

*typical Canadian protesting US-centricity*
*typical Canadian who thinks education should be publicly funded*

if your PhD program provides you with full funding, that is your job. grad school isn't school, it's work. you work very hard for relatively little pay, but the trade off is that you're spending your day doing something you love, in theory.

the implicit argument in these articles is that grad school requires you to put yourself in debt (it doesn't) and that you're not earning an income or working for 5-7 years (you are). being a PhD student in a humanities program will be my job for at least the next 5 years, maybe longer. after that, if i get a job in academia, great, and if i don't, that's okay too.

now that i have an offer that i've accepted, i'm going to be relatively secure for the next 5 years. not rich, but not worried about losing my job either. can't say the same for professional journalists.

edit:

but beyond that, i agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments of both of the chronicle pieces. the "i just love it so much" argument for pursuing grad school is a bit silly and speaks to someone that hasn't thoroughly considered what they're doing with their futures or why. really and truly, my goal isn't to be a professor. it's to inform people about issues (relating to latin america) that i think are critical and that not enough people are paying attention to. a PhD will hopefully give me some measure of expertise in that area. if i can spread knowledge in a classroom, good. if i can spread knowledge in a policy advising capacity, good. if i can be in the field, getting my hands dirty, good. if i can report to newspapers, good. talking about poverty and sustainable development and race relations and migration, all of that matters to me. what form that takes matters far less.

i hope that this is a good reason to still do a PhD. but again, if i leave after 5 years and need to start over in another career, that's not a big deal. people change careers 3 or 4 times in their lifetime, people start over at much later ages than 30.

he's right, though, that entering grad school expecting to end up somewhere, anywhere in academia is the wrong way to go about it. have other plans that will hopefully still make use of the knowledge and skills you gain with a humanities PhD. i appreciate that he's not trying to sugarcoat it.

If you contact publisher's reps for your area at various publishing companies (Heinle, Pearson, McGraw Hill, Bedford St Martin's, etc.) they will listen to your needs and send you desk copies that you can choose from. Bonus: free books! Also, these books usually have instructor support materials.

Yes, but I'm doing it all for devious ends.

Maniacal laugh! Maniacal laugh!

I have brilliant thoughts about the Renaissance and Shakespeare. I think I should be fine getting a job, because those are some understudied topics, based on my evaluation.

"I can do it, but you probably couldn't."

I concur with the watercolor Stephen Colbert.

Is it wrong that student confusions and misspellings are among my main motivations to teach? Not one that'll be making it into future SOPs, mind, but -- whenever I read something (everything) over at Shit My Students Write, my envy is palpable. It's like watching accidental stand-up comedy.

Is it wrong that student confusions and misspellings are among my main motivations to teach? Not one that'll be making it into future SOPs, mind, but -- whenever I read something (everything) over at Shit My Students Write, my envy is palpable. It's like watching accidental stand-up comedy.

There have been a few mentions throughout the thread about "gut." Totally off topic (but then again, a lot of this is) but every time I see a post about "gut," I can't help but thinking of that quote from High Fidelity: "I've been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I've come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains."

I got an acceptance from Toronto's Medieval Studies program the other day, and — does anyone else do this? — went back to read my application. Instead of feeling a warm glow of awesomeness, I noticed that my application contained at least two sentences that just make no syntactic sense. One was missing a verb. The other's a Frankenstein's derpy monster of at least two different sentences: "Augustine’s Confessions, in which, I have argued, Augustine draws from Roman theatre culture to have made itself amenable to odd texts, then the reappearance of the Confessions, perhaps the most quizzically received and politely ignored of Augustine’s works, confirms it."

Semantic sense < clause cuddle-puddles.

I incorrectly attributed a book to a faculty member at Maryland who *ahem* did not write it. I could've sworn he had, and then I pulled it off my bookshelf like a week later and went, "Whoops." So, definitely not surprised I didn't get in there.

I also put "App ID Number:" in the letterhead of some of my SoPs thinking it would be beneficial to them in sorting and organizing my file. About halfway through submitting them that way, I realized that it was probably a totally pointless move and stopped. I bet at least a couple of them were like, "What? Why is this here?"

Oh, I also remember one unnecessary comma in my writing sample, but no typos otherwise. I read it out loud like 5 f-ing times. I knew there was no way.

Yup, my acceptance to [X University] read: "Your Admnission to X."

Maybe I actually got admonished to the school.

All things being equal, I would make a decision based on job placement--what are their rates? What kind of support do they provide? How concerned does the dept seem with professionalization?

Congratulations on your success! I also study Early Modern/Renaissance poetry, though Milton falls at the opposite end of my interest timeline (I'm more of a Sidney, Donne, Marvell, Milton kind of gal).
To be honest, I think prospective Grad students are not really the best resources for you in answering this particular question To be blunt, none of us have any more idea than you do what being a Miltonist at either Princeton or Harvard is like.
I think your best course of action should be to take advantage of the knowledge of people at the other end of the graduate school spectrum (i.e. Professors). Survey some of your current profs, whose opinion you trust, to get a feel for where each program lies along that ever-changing and oh-so-subjective spectrum of "Peer Perception" (make sure you get a variety of opinions on this). Ask a current mentor who they would like to study with, given the opportunity. Take all opinions with large grains of salt, and be sure to correct for institutional bias and latent inferiority complexes.
Also, get acquainted with the Renaissance faculty at both programs (through e-mail and especially at the visiting weekends). Ask lots of questions. Be proactive about ensuring that you can do the kind of work you want to do and be supported in the kind of work you want to do at either program. If you have access to current grad students in either program (the DGS can and usually will provide you with a list of students working in your area who are willing to make themselves available to queries from prospectives), ask them specific questions about the availability of resources, quality of advising, and usefulness of courses in your specific field of interest. Browse graduate course catalogs from previous years and see what course are actually being taught by your POIs and others.
Bottom line, you have two excellent choices. You can't really choose "wrong" in terms of prestige or quality of education. Therefore, assuming the $$ is comparable at both programs, your choice comes down to your personal preference in regards to the advising style and/or likability of the profs you'll be working with. Go to the visit days. Meet profs. Talk to them. Find out who you "click" with. Choose that school. Become a fucking Milton rock star.
Seriously, you can't go wrong here.

I look forward to reading your work in the future!

Campus is quite lovely, too, now that they finished the construction. The English building isn't very nice, but then they so rarely are. The Writing department is getting folded into the new Harrington School of Communication and will be part of that new building, although I doubt it will be finished for years.

I'm fortunate enough that the only other career I can see myself doing is A. one I want to incorporate into my graduate studies and, should it materialize, eventual academic career, and B. relies on portfolio rather than résumé, so those in the biz need not and generally don't advertise accreditation. So I guess I'm also fortunate in that none of my other potential career paths pays well,* either. Ha ha. At least I managed to part with the print journalism dream with relative painlessness.

*Or "pay well," because prescriptivist ideals be damned, that's perfectly grammatical.

I didn't read this thread, but to answer your question:



(kidding! Don't kill me)

"Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance."
--Joyce, Ulysses.

More than applicable to a paper I once wrote...

Haha, I did say that the article wasn't very informative. I was originally going to say 'not very good' but was thinking about her feelings if she ever came across this site... But since she's preaching to the opposite of a choir (anti-choir?) here, I suppose that was pointless.

With many of the teachers and profs I've talked to, the PhD is a calculated decision because yes, it's not about immediate payoff. There's a lot of waiting and compromise involved in terms of job location, family, and etc. Thestage, I love this rationale for funding:

Even with funding, the newly hired profs warn us that we'll be eating ramen while friends are eating proper food... (Nothing against ramen, but let's say it's a smaller symptom of a larger problem/ synecdoche). Yet some of the reasons people have mentioned for pursuing the PhD--can't imagine doing anything else, enjoy the academic community, research my interests, write write write--resonate with me. I should remember all this as I take my 'arts & economics' course. That's pretty discouraging stuff. While academia isn't exactly the arts labor market, some of the economic theories behind the oversupply of artists apply.

But I prefer to consider how this still applies

Ful thredbare was his overeste courtepy;
For he hadde gete him yet no benefice,
Ne was so worldly for to have office.
For him was levere have at his beddes heed
Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophye,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrye.
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre!
But al that he mighte of his frendes hente,
On bookes and on lerninge he it spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf him wherewith to scoleye.