Naito
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Everything posted by Naito
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@costevens, I love your Sushi's quatrains! Funny the other day I was quoting Du Fu in an email to a professor at one of the places I applied to, and the dominant metaphor is also "mountain": 會當凌絕頂，一覽眾山小! 《望岳》 杜甫 岱宗夫如何？齊魯青未了。 造化鐘神秀，陰陽割昏曉。 蕩胸生曾云，決眥入歸鳥。 會當凌絕頂，一覽眾山小。 The sentiment in the last line perfectly captures what we are all going through. Once descending the top of the mountain, we will see all other mountains much more easily. So fighting! Good luck everyone!
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@kotatsumuri CONGRATS!!! Well done! Fingers crossed for you to get full funding. (^o^)v
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@mxiongturquoise Btw, there is an interesting comparative study between China's Warring States & Early Modern Europe, but it's from an international relations perspective, not comparative lit. War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe. https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/111/4/1133/26934 I think a comparative study of Confucian literature (with local characteristics) in Tang, Heian, and Korean Three Kingdoms (後三國) would be of great interest to me, and I can use Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, maybe learn Middle Korean in the process.
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Thanks @mxiongturquoise -- I will take a few complit theory and (French/German/Russian lit) courses to see if that's the right path for me. If not I might just add a third examination field in comparative East-West literature (first two being 1. classical Chinese literature and philology from Zhou ~ Tang/Song, and 2. classical Japanese literature, Nara ~ Heian), or perhaps just do comparative lit within the Chinese, Japanese, Korean languages. I'm very excited and looking forward to it!
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@mxiongturquoise The info on how many are admitted each year at UChicago's CompLit is extremely interesting. I'm hoping to apply to several PhDs in CompLit (in addition to EALC) as well. Which one is more competitive to get in -- EALC or CompLit? I'd like to do English, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.
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I just saw a UPenn PhD admit. Was it someone in our thread? Big congrats anyhow!! If we both accept and end up at Philly, let's meet up for coffee (in real life, not on the grad café...) and 煮酒論史.
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@lordtiandao That's very interesting! It's good that you have an overwhelming advantage over international students with regard to Berkeley! I hope you'll get accepted to their PhD program soon!
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@nc484dsltyyz Ah I see. I wrote essays for classes in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and it really is time consuming. (Had to rummage for words and model examples in multiple dictionaries just to draft 1 sentence). I use 小倉書店's books and a bunch of dictionaries for academic Japanese writing (e.g. 論文・スピーチの英語表現（スピーチに必要な慣用表現）plus 大学院留学生の日本語. For Chinese I use pretty much everything from this electronic dictionary http://www.casio.com.cn/e-edu/dic/E-G200/collect.html -- many, many Chinese students use this.
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http://bbs.gter.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2070259 He/she got accepted everywhere, except UC Berkeley which he/she described as not "friendly" to Chinese students...This is a student extraordinaire (學霸是也！神人也！） and his/her test scores remind me of two drama series from Japan and Korea...(1) ドラゴン桜 and (2) 공부의신 ... And I like his/her quote, which is directly from the classics: "人一能之，己百之。人十能之，己千之。果能此道矣，虽愚必明，虽柔必强。"
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Hmm do Chinese students from China have an advantage? I wish I were Chinese!
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I think this advice from a Chinese national who got accepted to Princeton last year is quite helpful: http://bbs.gter.net/thread-2070258-1-1.html
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Welcome @nc484dsltyyz! It's great to see so many medievalists joining recently! Hopefully there will be more pre-Qin people joining!
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@spicyramen Congrats, spicyramen!
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Thanks @ba1dp, this is a very useful forum. I didn't think about checking Chinese forums at all! Such an oversight/gross negligence...! A quick look yields a thread on someone's experience interviewing with WUSTL. Very helpful to know the specifics. "WUSTL EALC面经" http://bbs.gter.net/thread-2142945-1-1.html I wonder what one can find on Japanese and Korean forums as well...
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@mxiongturquoise. Welcome! Very nice to see a comparative literature person joining the thread. Comparative poetry sounds very interesting!
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@archimon Some more that I just remembered: 4. Once you're done with introductory/intermediate Classical Chinese and move on to Advanced Classical Chinese, you should consider using the annotations of other writers on the classical texts to study the texts. Classical Chinese can be worded to have many, many meanings. E.g.: "非澹泊無以明志，非寧靜無以致遠" (諸葛亮). So see what other ancient writers have annotated. Some prominent scholars have annotated classical texts before, and even published encyclopedia of annotations. You can use Emperor Kangxi's encyclopedia 《四庫全書》 for example. 5. Get Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (yellow book), Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar (blue book), and Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar (red book). With your knowledge of Chinese characters (preferably traditional because Japanese Kanji is more like traditional Chinese characters), you just need to study hiragana and katakana which should take less than a day, and then you just need to learn the grammar to be able to read Japanese.
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@archimon You're welcome. Here are some suggestions (feel free to disregard): 1. Take either/or/both HSK 6 (漢語水平考試第六級) and TOCFL Band C (華語文能力測驗 流利精通級) and get Level 6 in the Band C. This is equivalent to CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference) of linguistic competency C2. Then add that to your CV and keep a copy of each diploma, scan, and upload to your application eventually. 2. Take Classical Chinese courses each semester at RSEA. Get Kroll's Student's Dictionary of Classical Chinese and Du's Handbook of Classical Chinese books. And, classical and medieval Chinese are akin to poetry, so try to note the pattern AND approximate it, e.g. a sample Chinese verse that is quite symmetrical here: 《論語‧季氏篇》「益者三友章」云：「孔子曰：益者三友，損者三友。友直，友諒，友多聞，益矣。友便辟，友善柔，友便佞，損矣。」. Note that approximating the pattern is extremely important because chinese wasn't written with punctuations (commas, period) back then so unless you read more well known texts the sentences are not punctuated for you in the archives. 3. If you're abroad, try to audit undergrad courses in Chinese, e.g. philosophy, literature, etc. but taught in Chinese.
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From what I heard, if your file goes from PhD to the AM program, this usually means you probably lack several things that the admission committee thinks can be improved during the AM so that your future re-application to the PhD will be stronger. A professor told me that during an AM/MA, one should do all one can, inside and outside classes, in order to: 1. Push one's linguistic competence forward (classical/modern if applicable and one European language, usually français or deutsch) 2. Sharpen one's training in a discipline (e.g. literature, philosophy) So if you are admitted to the AM program, you should work on those things for your re-application to the PhD! Now, the admission committees for the AM and the PhD are not necessarily the same people, but your chances are probably good if a professor roots for you, so fingers crossed for your acceptance to the AM program!
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@Ouyang Wow that is such a great honor to know Ou Yang Xiu's descendant!!! *bow*
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@Ouyang Welcome, big welcome! I hope you get accepted to a PhD in the US! Nice to see an international student applying! 歡迎大駕光臨！ 子曰：“有朋自遠方來，不亦樂乎?"
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@costevens Recently there is a good historical drama regarding the Three Kingdoms. In preparation to read Tian Xiaobei's upcoming book this is a must-watch as background! And good for Classical Chinese practice (subtitles included)! Trailer below (full episodes on youku)
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Yes, very true. In technical term this is called "impact factor." I edited law journals before (relating to East Asia) and certainly impact factor is incredibly important, and the chief editor routinely rejects articles that are trivial. Maybe this is apple and orange but the principle is parallel. By the way, if you can somehow get your first book published by HUP and then also somehow get it translated to Chinese, Japanese, etc. (not by yourself, but maybe by professional translator/professors in those countries) then that will be bonus points to the impact factor. Happy writing!
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@lordtiandao, you should try to submit to 1st tier journals first, then cascade from there, IMHO. Or maybe try working paper series or conferences or invited talks. But publication is too important and usually new and innovative research happens at the dissertation stage, and you can take a little out of your dissertation and revise into a publishable high quality journal article, or maybe expand at the same time condense the dissertation into a journal article but always get it published in a top journal even if it's your first piece. A professor I know only got 1 paper published in top tier journal and he got TT... And sure, you can have more freedom after you have tenure (albeit some universities have started to discuss de-tenuring for unproductive faculty), but people in the field know what is a good journal and what is a great journal. Anna Shields of Princeton for example continuously published in Harvard University Press. She was made full professor at Princeton and before that, she was at somewhere else that is lower-ranked. Also, getting tenure just means you become an associate professor and really, if you want to move up in the ranks to full professor, another promotion application is necessitated and when that happens, post-tenure publications are scrutinized.
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Also, one of my professors said that the reason as to why it is so unlikely to get published as an MA student is the competition for very limited spots in an issue of a journal is fierce, to say the least. Also plenty of postdocs, plus young professors and old professors alike, compete to publish in very reputable journals too. You want to publish in something like this (Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies) http://hjas.org/ Chances are better if you are a PhD candidate than prior to that, but the thing is, "better" as in like 0.5% more likely (say your chance of publication as an MA student is 0.2% and as a PhD candidate that will be 0.7%) Again, each and every professor I have ever talked to emphasized this and repeated ad nauseum many, many times: less-than-high-quality publications will come back to haunt you. The proverbial 天時地利人和 (The right Time, Geography, and People) applies here too. And, Sun Tzu said in the 謀攻 (plan of strategy) chapter: "故知勝者有五：知可以戰與不可以戰者勝" (Lionel Giles' translation: "He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.") And, back to what I commented regarding the PhD in previous posts, the PHD is not about reading & liking what you read. It is a very brutal process where you really are at the scary edge of human knowledge, have read everything on the subject including primary and secondary, and then come up with a "Eureka!" moment when you come up with something so original and so new to say. And that is what reputable peer-reviewed journals look for. To use a more modern analogy, the PhD is like an entrepreneurship. You're working on this "billion" dollar business idea, and you start it from scratch and nobody has done it before (Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. are examples). So the journals really look for the same, and the peers, who do the peer-review thing, look for that, too; and these professors already know so, so much about the field they will know what is original and creative. It is brutal, but it is what it is.
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@kotatsumuri Sorry to hear that! Hopefully the next time you open an email it will be an acceptance. Fingers crossed!
