eadwacer

Some totally unrelated venting: there was a ton of Cornell news today and I got excited until I remembered that I applied to medieval studies there instead of English so I won't hear anything from them for probably another entire week. Or from anywhere, honestly. I just want to rip off the band-aid already.

Does anyone remember which subfields we saw interviewing? I know I saw one for Early Modern but I don't remember seeing any medieval and I probably would have remembered that.

I'm currently wait listed at both Minnesota and Rochester for literature, specifically medieval. Got a nice, encouraging email from a POI at Minnesota about how they almost always see movement on the medieval list. No acceptances yet.

We share so many of the same interests, oh my goodness. I used to be kind of into HEMA as well, and Scandinavian is a secondary interest for me, partly because of the contact with the early medieval Middle East. I'm so into Ibn Fadlan. Also totally into magic! I've been thinking a lot about "shamanistic" modes of it, since that's also a form of liminal crossing, and one that seems really present in oral cultures like early AS and Scandinavia. I'm applying for the MA there too (didn't feel competent enough for the PhD in medieval because my Latin is... like, barely even mediocre), and it's so stresssful how late they usually notify. Like, I just want to knoooooow. Here's hoping we both get good news from them eventually!

My SOP and writing sample were both really focused on non-normative sexuality and gender in OE and Latin as well--not quite as philological. Can you tell me a little about what it's like to be an Anglo-Saxonist at Berkeley? I haven't heard from them at all, and given that there have already been a bunch of acceptances around here I'm doubtful that I got in, but I'd love to hear about your experience in the program anyway just in case.

I love that so much! I'm a medievalist so I've never really worked on Forster, but Maurice is really important to me on a personal level. I somehow never made that ecocrit connection until I read the Terminal Note and when Forster says "Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood," I just went.... oh. OH. My writing sample is sort of an extension of themes from my undergrad thesis. It took me a long time to think of a title for it other than "Grendel is a Power Bottom Who Just Wants to Get Obliterated: Anthropophagy and Butt Stuff in Beowulf." Basically it's about looking at violence as a form of intimacy between the human and inhuman nature, and how Grendel's monstrous figure and violent intimacy with Beowulf lends itself to a queer reading.

I'm a medievalist! I've been ignoring the forum a bit because the gradual trickling in of Berkeley acceptances makes my eye twitch a bit when I think about it too hard, so I'm glad I came back to see this thread. I'm mostly an Anglo-Saxonist, focusing on the construction of masculinity and the monstrous in Old English verse, but really my unifying interest is liminality throughout the Middle Ages. I'm really interested in non-normative experiences of gender and sexuality and how those experiences relate to the construction of human identity as separate from the animal, since weird sex stuff is often tied up uncanny, monstrous, partially animal figures, and I've recently been expanding that focus to look at intercultural contact with the Islamicate world and the later Mediterranean. I often get into community formation in early medieval Northern Europe with that as well, so it looks like we have something in common, @loganondorf. Right now I'm working on a reading of "Wulf and Eadwacer" where I look at the narrator as a human woman and Wulf as an actual, literal wolf, since contact with the animal in AS poetry is a lot more complicated than I think a lot of folks acknowledge, and tbh I should probably get on writing that because I'm supposed to present it at Kalamazoo in May.

I don't know about that person, but it looks like there is now one acceptance on the results page with no additional information. Personally, the portal still lists my application status as "submitted," though.

I thought I replied to this last week, but apparently not. Thank you for your advice, both of you.

I already got a rejection email from the department last week, but I just got a "check the portal" email this morning, so probably some sort of website thing happened just now? This email also solidly misgendered me so I'm feeling a lot less bad about not going there now, tbh.

Congrats on Johns Hopkins, y'all! That's great news! I just got wait listed at Rochester via email. Which like. Is also okay news, although given that this is my second wait list in a row I'm starting to feel like everyone's second choice. Oh well.

Mine still reads something about being under review by committee which is probably because I've already been wait listed. I hope you all get good news soon! (And then immediately decline so I can get in off the list ).

Road rage

I've been considering this a lot as well--part of the reason it's taken me a while since undergrad to decide that I want to go into academia is that I've always worried it's kind of masturbatory and pointless when I could be doing actual material things that actually, materially improve fellow oppressed people's lives. But now I'm trying to balance that with a commitment to diversity of tactics. If I can make my scholarship radical, and I continue resisting in more physical, boots on the ground ways through direct action and through political action as well, I'm contributing to resistance not LESS than I would be if I focused solely on material tasks, but the same amount, just through a more diverse combination of tactics. There's no reason scholarship must preclude other ways to help, and there's no reason scholarship can't also be a way to help in itself.

So I'm trying to figure out whether, etiquette-wise, I'm supposed to respond to an email informing me I'm on a wait list or not. The email only explicitly says to respond if you have another offer, it doesn't mention people still in limbo at all, but I've also read some recommendations from various other internet places that I should politely reply and gather information about the timeline of their wait list process. I'm not sure how helpful that would even be, since I'm sure it varies by area of specialty, but at the same time, I always feel like it's more polite to say thank you and ask a question than to just ignore an email. Any thoughts or recommendations for how I am actually, practically supposed to reply, or even if I am? Tl;dr I don't know how to do basic social interaction, help me be polite to the admissions people.

I was wondering the same thing. I don't remember seeing anything about interviews during the whole time I was working on my application for them.

Feel y'all on that. My lease is yearly and it's up on April 30th. I may just... move multiple states away to put my stuff in storage and live in my mom's basement until I know where I'm actually going. Grad school purgatory is the worst.

I don't know if it goes by research interest, but if it helps, mine are Old English, ecocriticism, and queer theory.

My first result was a rejection from OSU--yesterday evening my status was updated to "denied" and this morning at around 7 I got an email. Then ten minutes ago I got a wait list email from Minnesota. Apparently they were "favorably impressed," but could not offer a financial aid package, and since they guarantee funding: wait list. I'm not especially surprised about OSU since 1) I'm not the greatest fit with the program, 2) Their application confused the hell out of me so I'm sure I screwed up some part of it, and 3) I'm applying from in-state and I've heard that's not exactly a plus. I'm actually kind of surprised Minnesota liked me, to be honest. I thought I wasn't an especially good fit either, but I'm glad to know someone disagreed with me at least a bit.

I'm applying with a BA and my application is still listed as "Pending," so that's certainly possible.

Bad blood

Coincidentally, also cannibalism, but in a completely different way. I'm interested in categories of monstrousness in early medieval literature and how the shakiness of those categories leads to, basically, eroticized gay cannibalism, depending on how you interpret the humanity of various monster figures. I'm also interested in non-normative gender and sexuality in Old and Middle English literature more generally.

Buffalo Springfield

I'm also a longtime lurker, just starting to post now. I applied to like 10 programs, a mix of English and Medieval Studies, but now I'm starting to freak out because I'm definitely shooting high. Like, I'm confident in my GRE and my writing sample and rec letters, but my GPA in undergrad was mediocre and I have some weird terrible non-degree grades post-bac. But I guess since those were science classes it doesn't matter? I don't even know, y'all, I'm just trying not to flip out. In any case, nice to meet everyone.

I was thinking of reading that soon! It's a little late for me, but I've been doing a lot of work recently on dismemberment and man-eating in Old and Middle English lit, so I feel like it might be an interesting follow-up. Glad to hear it's good! Right now I'm taking a break to read some fiction, so I'm doing The Watchmaker of Filligree Street by Natasha Pulley. So far it's a quietly hilarious and emotionally gentle magical realist novel just shy of steampunk. I'm enjoying it so much I'm kind of drawing it out.