FreakyFoucault

Hmmmmm this smacks of CYA! You can't fool us!!! (kidding, of course :D)

Well, for better or worse, Berkeley is the White Whale of prospective English PhDs...

Hard to say, my friend. From idly skimming past Acceptance threads, it appears that Berkeley sends out acceptances over a few days, but not weeks. It was about this time last year, before the weekend, that they e-mailed the lucky few the good news. But, then again, Grad Cafe posters are generally a small subset of applicants (for English, at least), thereby complicating our search for general trends. Perhaps our being unrepresentative is enough to allow hope? I sure hope so! Maybe our adcomm guru @Warelin can shed some light? Also: past practices don't necessarily imply future procedures!

Noiiiise! Congrats

Am I the only one here who gets motion sickness after watching this music video?

Noiiise! Congrats

This is a great topic, @Yanaka! Because I hope to study this seriously some day, I'm going to try to offer something of a cogent response. But be forewarned: it's gonna be a long-ass answer that probably won't make sense because I'm at work and should be doing actual work. Also, some of this is going to come from my undergrad thesis, so it's not as if I'm pulling all the material straight out of my head. Here it goes! “What do you research in literature?” is a simple question, right? Physicists, for example, study matter. How do they study matter? Well, as we all know, it took awhile (thousands of years) for scientists to devise a reliable method to study natural phenomena, but nowadays, such a method has been codified and is extremely powerful. So, when physicists want to "do science," they make observations, formulate hypotheses, come up with predictions, conduct experiments, record findings, compare the data with their hypotheses, and develop general theories. Clearly, that's a simplified account, but it more or less describes the scientific method. Of course, we're not natural scientists. So how does the method change when the object of inquiry isn't amenable to scientific manipulation? On that note, what is the object of our inquiry? At the most basic level, literary theorists like ourselves study texts. Okay, so, what's in a text? Words, yes. What do the words signify? It obviously depends on the text. If it's fictional literature, the words are involved in creating some sort of artistic discourse that can run the gamut in terms of aesthetic concepts. The literary theorist, therefore, is tasked with understanding these concepts. How do we do it? As undergrads, we're taught to form a thesis statement, back up our argument with evidence from the text, and possibly cite outside opinions if we're working on a research paper. That sounds straightforward, right? It really isn't. First, how do we even come up with a thesis statement? Well, we certainly must read the text several times and try to begin to understand its internal composition. Admittedly, this introductory step kind of resembles the first part of the scientific method: making observations. Fine. Now what? We've annotated the text and are beginning to form some semblance of an idea about how to interpret it. We may now have what looks like a thesis in the making. But how do we know that our thesis is correct? How do we confirm our findings? We can't really conduct an experiment, for the text doesn't respond to our demands. We can't exactly put it over a Marxist Bunsen burner and expect some tangible result... "It's subjective, dummy!" our physicist friend might point out: "Correct" doesn't belong in the interpretive analyses of aesthetic works! Perhaps, but the argument ought to be reasonable, no? For example, would it be acceptable to read Charlotte's Web as a cautionary tale of the dangers of nuclear proliferation? Most definitely not -- I wouldn't argue that in a paper. That's an extreme (and comical) case, though. What about a borderline instance in which a given text offers a range of interpretations, some of which conflict but may ultimately be consistent? Put differently, how do we decide whether an argument is reasonable? This is probably where the first layer of our problem ends. As undergrads, we don't need to consider the issue. Rather, we simply (although not often easily) devise a clever thesis statement and look for textual evidence. It is our hope that the former accords with the latter in some logically congruent fashion and we get an A+ on our assignment. We, the future grad students of tomorrow, however, must instead make the transition from "How do we interpret this text" to "How is it possible to interpret this text?" When we ask "How is it possible to interpret this text?" we begin to enter the territory of the German Enlightenment. We therefore can't go much further without mentioning Friedrich Schleiermacher, who was arguably the most important literary hermeneutician of the nineteenth century. For Schleiermacher, hermeneutics (the study of interpretation) deals only with the art of understanding; in fact, he equates the two terms almost synonymously.[1] Schleiermacher argues that, since the medium of understanding is internal speech (or “thought”), and the objective realization of thinking is external speech (or “writing”), it follows that hermeneutics is “a part of the art of thinking."[2] Moreover, all speech-acts are necessarily related to the “totality of the language and the totality of the speaker’s thoughts."[3] In order to understand what a speaker says, one must consider two psycho-linguistic aspects: (1) the grammatical—“to understand what is said in the context of the language with its possibilities”; and (2) the psychological—“to understand it as a fact in the thinking of the speaker."[4] Schleiermacher’s distinction between the grammatical and psychological moments of hermeneutic understanding is crucial because it situates both author and reader in a reflexive-communicative relation. In other words, Schleiermacher realizes that the author’s meaning originates ab intra, but at the same time must be related to the reader ab extra through a common medium, namely language. The important conclusion here is that the interpreter must grasp both psycho-linguistic moments—the psychological and grammatical—in order to discover the author’s meaning. Schleiermacher’s second major development was to distinguish a word’s meaning [Bedeutung], or “what the word is thought to mean ‘in and of itself,’” from its sense [Sinn], or “what the word is thought to mean in a given context."[5] The difference between a word’s meaning and sense is significant because it allows for an evolving interpretation of texts within the temporally fixed act of symbolic denotation. In other words, although a word’s meaning “in and of itself” remains static in a specific text, its sense (or “connotation”) may indeed develop as audiences change over time. Now, this line of thinking is all well and good, but we know that the task of understanding interpretation became much more problematic after subsequent theorists began to pick apart the rational assumptions of the Enlightenment hermenuticians. I'll give you two examples. First off, it's not entirely clear that there even is a linear relation between text and speech. Derrida, for instance, made it evident through his neologism "différance" that the textual signifier and conceptual signfied unravel into a duality between time and space; that is, they tend to fall into a system whereby each word-concept refers to a related word-concept, eventually forming a recursive chain that advances ad infinitum by way of the systematic "play of differences." Second, Schleiermacher's grammatical-psychological distinction barely acknowledges the issues of prejudice and prejudgment. According to Gadamer, prejudice [Vorurteil] means a judgment that is rendered before all the elements that determine a situation have been finally examined.[6] We are reminded here of the Latin etymology of "prejudice"—prae-judicium—which literally means “pre-judgment.” Construed this way, prejudice works more as a pre-understanding or fore-meaning concerning the object one wants to understand. For example, if a new text attributed to Chaucer were discovered, literary scholars would require at least some fore-structure of Chaucer’s prior work, medieval chivalric romances, the chanson de geste literary form, and so on, to fully understand the piece in the context of 14th-century English literature. Because pre-existing ideas can have either positive or negative values, prejudice, therefore, does not necessarily involve a negative judgment. In fact, the “historicity of our existence”—our being in the world—would not be possible without prejudices (in the Latinate sense), which constitute our ability to experience phenomena. Put differently, prejudices are biases of our openness to the world. They are merely conditions that enable us to experience something and receive whatever is said to us. Of course, Gadamer does not favor racial, cultural, or religious prejudices. In fact, he maintains that one should certainly try to discover one’s prejudices and purge those that are undesirable.[7] In my opinion, the real nail in the hermeneutic coffin came with the publication of Gadamer's Truth and Method in 1960 (which I've already cited here). In that mammoth of a book, it becomes clear that there really is no straightforward answer to related the question: Is there, or can there be, an inquisitive approach in the humanities equivalent to the scientific method? It should be fairly easy to understand why from what I've included above. In the hands of a literary theorist, texts are not scientific objects. We can't subject them to experiments that reveal their inner "nature" since this inner "nature" exists in a strange relationship between 1) psychological prejudices of the reader and the author; and 2) the deferred presence of written language. Gadamer suggests that we instead look to achieve a “historically effected consciousness” [wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein]. I'm not a Gadamer specialist, so I'm often a loss for what he means by "historically effected consciousness." But my guess is that Gadamer believes we are always involved in some hermeneutical situation in which we establish a certain perspective for ourselves as individuals and groups of individuals. He calls these perspectives "horizons," which, he argues, are quite fluid since nobody is bound to any particular standpoint; the horizon, therefore, is “something into which we move and that moves with us."[8] Going back to the original question: "What do we research in literature?” Well, in a simplistic sense, we study the horizons and perspectives that are laid bare in literature. We use many different historical and theoretical methods (Marxism, feminism, psychoanalytics, etc.), but it really isn't the case that we have one rigorous, unified tool that can dissect all textual discourses. Instead, we generally acknowledge that our domain (the mind) is filled with problems, and we do the best we can as limited subjects to understand them. Perhaps a "Humanistic Method" is out there -- if any of you finds it, let me know. In other words, don't hate us, science people! Pity our Sisyphean task of understanding why we and the aesthetic objects we produce are so messed up! Caveats: I didn't mention here (for lack of space and ability) the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, T. Aquinas, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Böckh, Droysen, Dilthey, Heidegger, or Ricouer. So obviously this is a heavily limited response. But, my real point is to demonstrate that Yanaka's question is probably the most complex problem we face in the humanities and that there is no clear answer. Notes: [1] Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher, “General Hermeneutics,” in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New York: Continuum, 1985), 73. [2] When he mentions “speaking,” Schleiermacher also includes “writing.” Schleiermacher, 74. [3] Schleiermacher, 74. [4] Schleiermacher, 74. It is interesting to note here the similarity between Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics and Saussure’s linguistics. Saussure more or less makes the same distinction between the individual speech-act (parole) and the totality of linguistic possibilities (langue) nearly forty years later. [5] Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher, “Grammatical and Technical Interpretation,” in The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New York: Continuum, 1985), 86. [6] Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, 2nd, rev. ed, Continuum Impacts (London; New York: Continuum, 2004), 273. [7] Ibid., 271. [8] Ibid., 303.

You were right, I was referring to my mom! I didn't even pick up on ltr's dating point lol.

Yikes -- name's FreakyFoucault not FreakyFreud

Jokes on them! The two rejections cancel out, because they're negatives and math. Pretty sure Northwestern has to accept you now. Now let's just hope that they're not using some paraconsistent application logic nonsense!

Or California's PR Department lol

Yes, and with each rejection from the Midwest and East, MamaFoucault is becoming more distraught at the increasing chances of my moving to CA!

Ah, rejection the second: Duke, 'twas not meant to be!

Oh HELL yes!!! Congrats !!!

THE FORCE IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE!!! CONGRATS

I speak for everyone here when I say that I, FreakyFoucault, of the Grad Café, by the utter lack of authority not vested in me, hereby declare, in the most solemn of asseverations, that you, @Warelin, also of the Grad Café, are forthwith granted tenure at the institution of your choosing!! Have a nice career!

Hmm LIKE YOUR FELLOW ADCOMM COLLEAGUES, @Warelin?!?!? #thetruthisoutthere

True, true. But who knows, maybe we’ll be in for a Friday surprise! #keepinthehopealive

I believe this is about the time they notified last year, no? Although, if we trust this year's Results entries, the decisions are a tad early.

I think this will depend on where you're applying, but dominating the GRE and Flaubertifying the SoP and WS are probably the two strategies most in your control to perfect. We all know that the GRE is an expedient way of whittling down the application pile (for top programs at least), so I'd stress that if you're like me (not gifted at standardized tests), then you should try to study for them as much and as intelligently as possible. I used spreadsheets to track my study progress and isolate areas in which I was weak. The SoP and WS, moreover, should be as flawless as you can make them. Show them to everyone: your letter writers, other professors, parents/friends, lunatics on the bus -- basically anyone whose opinion you value. As far as prestige goes, my undergrad institution is ranked somewhere in the top 50, and its English PhD program, I think, is below 100. I believe one of my letter writers has some kind of working relationship with a professor at one of the schools to which I applied, but I doubt that she reached out to him. I therefore attribute my three acceptances at this point to nothing more than good GRE scores, solid SoP and WS (I went through many, many dozens of drafts), and a lot of luck; or, in other words: blood, sweat, and tears. That's about it. In fact, if I hadn't worked for 1.5 years after graduating (which gave me time to hone my materials), I don't think I would've had as much, if any, luck. Of course, it's possible to be shut out even with perfect GREs and a stupendous SoP/WS, so YMMV. I guess what I'm saying, then, is if you think you need a little more time to prepare for grad school, it's not a bad idea to work for a year or two after graduating. And, although I'm not enamored with the business world, I have learned a lot from working in corporate America, especially about how to deal with people, set schedules, accomplish goals, etc. Most important, I matured a little more and began to understand in a deeper sense why I wanted to go to grad school. So, no shame in taking some time off!

[Note to self: upvote tomorrow once the stock is replenished]

YIKES

Crow T., sounds like you need a break! Is there any feasible way between now and conference day that you can squeeze in a Netflix binge session? Or maybe take RisingStar's advice and have a tech-free Sabbath? Or go to a gun range and shoot something? Deep breaths, you'll be fine, and your conference is going to be a breeze! Additional anecdote: my undergrad school is pretty well known for insane workloads, and I unfortunately had to pull double all-nighters with some regularity. The only way I stayed sane was by taking the occasional do-nothing / Netflix-binge day. It literally is for your health. Of course, there's that nagging thought that do-nothing days are counter-productive, but, to me, they were indispensable.

Thanks for the added perspective, @la_mod! I suppose there wouldn't be much time for lolly-gagging or tom-foolery in those programs. Which probably explains why I don't have an M.A.

Damn! I'd want my money back. In addition to finishing your research and coursework in that limited time frame, you'd also need to juggle your PhD apps for the next cycle (assuming you wanted to go right away), which, as we all know well, is a job unto itself! I agree -- I'm sure there are people who'd jibe well with the program, but I don't think I'd be one of them. So again, Bye Felicia!