CulturalCriminal

@HistorianInTheMaking@Ian Han@evanmarie What's the word on UT's American Studies? If you're in, are you going to go? If you're still on the waitlist, are you going to hold on hope until the bitter (or hopeful) end?

you're entering a field where you will essentially commit to a lifetime of learning, or perish in irrelevancy. Though I have certainly been in graduate courses that were not as great as I could have hoped, I have benefited from every graduate course I've taken. This can be in the general, "I know am better qualified to teach X" statement for courses not tied to my research OR have been able to apply aspects and writing from a course to my own research. The more graduate courses you can take, the more chances you have to vet your research and make connections with professors. Yes, all the credits you earn during your MA won't significantly reduce your time to degree with a PhD. It depends on the specific PhD program, though; some will take 2 classes top, others count 3-4 semesters worth. This actually makes a great deal of sense, given no university teaches the same exact graduate class. In English/lit, there seems to in fact only be a consistent one or two courses that most universities touch on. The rest varies greatly. If you're looking for a career that has a clear, quick path that can be easily managed and predicted, academia isn't it. Yes, people experience fatigue and drop-out. This is the nature of the career path though; even those who finish their doctorates in under 5 years can still experience burn-out with academia after completing their degrees. Coming off of UG, it might be tempting to see the whole MA/PhD question in the same vein that most UG folks see their lives -- "the faster I finish my B.A., the faster I can start my actual career." In other words, it seems like the mindset of runners with distance events (i.e. sprint, 10K). The reality is academia is a life-long distance event that, though there are desired goals (finish PhD, get on the TT, get tenure, etc), doesn't really stop until you die or retire. Further, you have already started your career. This is it. Though you are incredibly limited in what you can do, research and teaching-wise, you are know basically considered a member of the academic profession. Returning to my distance event analogy, with your BA you've essentially completed a 5K. Though you may be able to, why jump straight to one 10K (MA en-route to PhD) while training for a Marathon? Knock out a 10K before you start training for that Marathon. Yeah, you'll need to do more running, but you'll be better prepared for the marathon. Plus, you aren't doing just one marathon in this analogy; you're entire life will be marathon after marathon (publishing, getting tenure, publishing more, etc) until you're physically or mentally unable to run anymore marathons. All of this is to say that another year or two between now and getting your PhD is not as big a deal as I think you think it is. Instead of most well-known, you might instead consider if the professors are a good fit for your specific interests. Just because a program is X rank on USNWR, doesn't mean that the faculty will be able to help you develop as a researcher. Then consider funding. Some may disagree, but I think a well-fit program with full-funding and profs who don't have PhD students to wrangle is a far better option than having partial- to no-funding in a big program where you'll be competing with PhD candidates for attention.

K, but you don’t need a PhD, much less an MA to work in marketing, professional writing, content writing, or editing. Even just getting the MA R/C is meant to direct you towards teaching; it’s not a professional degree. This is not to say that you shouldn’t get either, just be aware that (except for tech comm) a graduate English degree isn’t going to do much for you in professional writing save being able to say you have a Masters. This is information you should consider in determining if this is really something you want to do. Despite all this, if you think the PhD is at a better program with cooler faculty, nothing’s stopping you from going there and leaving once you’ve gotten to the point where you can walk away with a MA.

Given the fact that lit & rhet/comp folks often also apply to Am Studies programs, I've added a tab for American Studies PhD programs on the funding/offer tracker that has been circulated in the LRC threads. I think it could be a great resource for future applicants. If anyone has offers or inside info, could you fill out what your program is offering? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XNJR4IhOJ56zd7zLuVSUK7h054dBRNvyiC7iStCOsxo/

Given the number of applicants that seem to apply both at English & American Studies programs, I hope y'all don't mind that I've added an AmStudies tab. It'd be really cool if folks could fill in any info they know...

@worried2018I’ve contacted a POI and it seems positive. Not that it has gotten me bumped up, but it seems like it was a good idea given the warm response back. waitlist success story: one of my recommenders got in off the waitlist at UCLA (English), where she got her PhD.

Can confirm, traffic is awful

The nice thing about MAs that don't have a PhD in their department is that, even if you are assigned some gen.eric advisor who you don't gel with, quite a few of the professors you might gel with are open to you essentially making them an unofficial/designated mentor. This is not always the case; I've given up on getting the prof most aligned with my interests to take an interest in guiding me. Despite this, there are two specific profs at my MA that aren't my designated advisor nor the head of my committee, yet it is pretty common that I get the sit-down chat with them once a week. Though both of these profs work in the same general area I'm interested (20th C. Americanist OR Film & TV studies), we depart pretty significantly once you zero in. Yet, these profs are super supportive of my work, are the first to agree to write a letter, and always are willing to offer advise with my teaching. While I am itching to jump into a PhD next year, I'm sad that this is the last semester I'll have access to these folks.

I was expecting it, but it still stung when I randomly checked UT's portal to find that ominous, orange "denied" for Media Studies. That clears me out on the Media Studies programs (and all other programs). Here's hoping UT's American Studies program gives me the bump up off of the wait-list, because otherwise it's round 2 for me.

just my two cents, but I'd go with whichever has both a great fit and prestige. If that's the MA en route to PhD, nothing's stopping you from applying for other PhDs when you get to the point where you can say adios with an MA.

Same for all the ones in/near Philly, NJ, VA, MD, & DE. If archival research is your jam, being coastal must be nice.

So I am in your field. You have some interrelated interests, but are still quite broad. You might look at the lit threads for more on this, but right now it seems you’re quite broadly interested in American Studies (not a negative), but haven’t quite landed on a unifying methodology and/or specific period. That said, you just started your MA, so no worries on not having these spelled out. I’d suggest reading up on the various major Americanist lit, Film/TV, Culture Studies, and American Studies journals to see what folks are doing currently (American Quarterly, American Literature, Film Quarterly, Film Criticism, The Velvet Light Trap, Camera Obscura, and Journal of Popular Culture are what I can think of off the top of my head).

Not quite the experience you’re looking to draw on, but I was actually stationed in Hawaii (Schofield Barracks) for three years before returning to my education. In my (very different) experience, you’ll need a car. Traffic sucks, but so does local transportation.

I apologize for letting this slip so far away from the original purpose, instead drifting into semantics. I’ve only been keeping an eye on the job boards for the last few years, so I suppose I assumed the lack of Visiting Professor/Scholar positions (I’ve seen less than four in three years) with it being relatively rare. In earlier posts I’ve used visiting professor interchangeably with visiting assistant professor becuase of this rareity, but there is a clear difference and I defer to the folks with all the rank dots on this matter. Getting back to original topic, I try to gauge how effectively a program can place people by seeing if grads are in tenure-track positions. As this is my end goal, this is what I focus on. A visiting assistant professor position would be the next ideal slot I’d look for. As mentioned earlier, these can be exploitative, but so can lecturer positions. Because I’m looking at only the past 10 years, I don’t see much else besides adjunct and lecturer positions from seeing where folks are landing. Essentially, I look at if relatively recent grads are landing in the types of positions I want or if they’re making progress to be a candidate similar to the candidates who have gotten TT offers in similar programs that are in my geographical area (especially my current uni, where I always try to attend the research review and guest lecture aspects of the final interview process).

@rising_star I think I might have not been as clear as I could have. There are certainly visiting professors (and visiting assistant professors), it just seems that what we are calling "visiting" differs. For V.A.P.s it seems every job posting is akin to this one: https://www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/details.cfm?JobCode=176671706&Title=Visiting Assistant Professor of English (Early American Literature) V.P.s tend to seem much rarer, but this one seems pretty consistent: https://www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/details.cfm?JobCode=176658993&Title=Visiting Professor for English Literature Neither one of these expect someone to be established faculty somewhere else, with the VAPs worded mostly for candidates that will come straight off of their PhD. Working as a VAP (if not also a Post-doc) seems to be increasingly the standard for recent successful tenure-track candidates. VPs--again, much rarer--are worded to encourage slightly more experienced candidates, but is still noticeably different than what seems to be the STEM version.

I don’t know much about it, but I’ve added it to my list for next year (unless waitlist status changes), mostly because Eric Lott is the head honcho.

Kansas does have a pretty good Am Studies PhD, which is why I’m eyeing applying there next year if waitlist life doesn’t workout.

Sounds like it’s time for some of you to call up some departments and make some decisions. Good luck to those that are waiting on news! Please let UT know if you’re not interested?. I think @evanmarie and I would both really appreciate the bump...

pSA: there’s a page called “results” on here that you can search with specific terms (I.e. American Studies, Harvard) to see if folks have posted their results. Obviously, not everyone knows about it. It seems though that at least one person posts their results for each of the AmStudies programs, so it’s a decent way to see if your program has started sending notifications out. Hope that helps folks trying to figure out what’s going on. It helps with if you haven’t heard anything because the program has not decided or because the program is holding off sending rejections to folks they might need to bump to waitlist status. That info might be enough to let you know you need to start making serious decisions about where you’ll be in the fall. It also helps you get through a pint of Hagen-Dazs while watching Dirty Dancing.

You might take a look in the city section; there’s one for Lawrence, KS.

congrats on UC-I, and the waitlists!

@Oklash My interests changed markedly just in the first month of my MA. Even then, my interests have shifted slightly (I'm focusing on a different genre and sprinkling space/place in). Programs expect these things to change. For PhD, I wouldn't be surprised--should I move up off the waitlist for the one program I've got good news on--if I'm pushed towards a parallel interest (false cultural memory, whiteness studies,etc); I wouldn't be the first person I specifically know that was nudged towards something else (I know folks at UCI and UCSC that had this happen to them, just as it did for the head of my MA exam committee when she was at Duke). Consider that even for PhD, they don't necessarily expect your stated research project to be the same by the time you finish it (though there is less wiggle room). The specificity desired of a SOP is more for the sake of showing that you're well-read and are engaged with a lens enough to create a narrow project, then it is for them to lock you into some sort of research project. I do feel that there is a need to interrogate why research interests change, when they do. The jump from Modernist, African American Lit (relatively narrow) to 19th century/Victorian (much wider) is a big one. Are your interests turning transatlantic, or are you still interested mostly in American literature? What is making you back off from your original research interests? Do you have a methodology that is staying the same, or is that changing as well?

Read up on whatever is being published at the big journals relevant to you. If it’s still being used as a lens, you’re probably good.

Both fantastic and both have increasingly informed my own research. I would consider Nothing Ever Dies to be more of a highly successful piece of academic-level writing in American and Asian American Studies, that just so happens to be well written and read by non-profs.

Reading Felski is always a good idea, even if you aren't operating within her methodology/framework. I would say don't overlook the values of reading recent scholarly articles or books that are highly valued in your prospective fields/methodologies. Don't be that person in the first grad class talking about something that has been overly played out or not reflective of the current dialogues. For me, my reading list is mostly crit theory/cultural studies focused (trying to fill whatever gaps I have and expand on my database of summary and quotes). As I'm getting deeper and deeper into the space/place hole, I'm trying to read people who are often discussed by geographers but are rarely mentioned in literary or cultural studies criticism. Also, keeping up with the current novels or comics is always a struggle I try to meet, as I claim to be mostly interested in the contemporary. That said, it is important to make room for just fun reading that isn't tied to your research interests. Same thing with film, comics, tv, games, etc that aren't tied to research interests. This is double true while you are in grad school; the occasional political satire novel or stand-up special can go along way when you spend all your time being hyper-engaged with Victorian drama. I actually have heard of folks doing research on their 2nd favorite subject, so that they could still causally engage with their first favorite subject in a manner that won't feel like work.