Hermenewtics

Hm, well, not to dodge your question, but my main point was to offer a bit of support to the premise that literary jargon can be problematic/obfuscatory, and I tried to do that by glossing a few more recent responses to a frequently criticized segment of it (poststructuralism) from a few interesting names. To respond more directly, I won't disagree with what I think you're getting at, but I will say that there's a marked difference between traditional poetics and, say, what de Man is up to in a Allegories of Reading. We can agree that one is certainly more grounded and less abstract than the other, no? This difference can lead to massive gulfs in interpretation and criticism: for example, there are some critics who have accused Lacan of being a fraud and Foucault himself famously described Derrida as an "intellectual terrorist." My point simply being that more abstracted and necessarily "difficult" approaches have the potential to fluctuate wildly in their "epically bad"-ness (or good-ness), while more "grounded" approaches tends to yield more consistently readable criticism. More importantly, "circle-jerk-y" is a perfect term and I think we all ought to use it in every theoretical discussion regardless of context.

I haven't heard of much in the way of rising_star's concerns, but I may be able to offer some insight into your concerns: think about jargon as a sort of barrier-to-entry for English scholars. If you can speak fluent jargon it usually means you care enough to have immersed yourself in the (often questionable) discourse/theory of your field and thus you're a respectable scholar. In the same way that clubs and fraternities have their otherwise meaningless rites of initiation, so many disciplines (education is the chief offender, in my mind)develop a needlessly complex series of increasingly abstruse terms and phrases which they use to isolate themselves, but also as a way to identify similarly indoctrinated individuals. example: Noam Chomsky and Martha Nussbaum have both written at great lengths about this particular feature of Poststructuralist thought, so you might track down some of their thoughts on the subject if that's of any interest to you However, the necessary caveat is that in terms of simple classification, it's important not to confuse jargon with specialized or technical language. A narratology scholar will necessarily have a different vocabulary and likely use that vocabulary quite a bit, in the same way that a poetry scholary will constantly annoy you by asking you about scansion and catalectic trochaic tetrameter.

Somewhere on this board there's a list of funded MAs. It may be worth a search (though it would require checking most of them individually).

I understand the sentiment, but it's still an MA program, and as those who have experienced things like Chicago's MAPH program will tell you, sometimes these condensed, expensive degrees offered at these sorts of institutions are just more intense, but they come without the time and opportunities you get at a 2 year funded program. Either way, though, I'm happy for those of you who got in, I'm just saying that it's worth doing some homework before you accumulate that kind of debt in a condensed MA program.

I don't want to speak for the posters above me, but I would assume their concerns have more to do with the sort of jargon one encounters in a case like the Sokal hoax as opposed to phrases like "intersectionality" and "transnational literatures."

I'm certainly not trying to discourage anyone from attending their dream school, but if any of you with half funding or partial funding are seriously interested in an MA program, your best bet is definitely to look into the fully funded programs that exist. I'm sure some of the more tenured members of the board can back this up, but an MA is an MA, and its "prestige" is significantly less important than a PhD for a whole variety of reasons. I'm also relatively sure that there are still funded MA programs taking students for the fall, so it may be worth your time to look into schools with March application deadlines.

I can only tell you what I've seen and about people I've talked to, so take this for what you will. I was in an MA cohort at a funded program and most of the people who came in for an MA had designs on PhD programs (or so they said when we started). I think out of ten, four of us applied to PhD programs and one has already changed directions. In the course of their research the other 6 people in my program decided that they had other things that they really preferred about research/teaching/etc. Most of them have great jobs and they're thrilled that they've chosen the paths they did (PM me if you want more detailed info about their alternative careers). As for me, my experience in an MA program completely changed my research interests and fields of study. I met interesting people, went to conferences, and read books I wouldn't have otherwise. I, personally, am glad I didn't go for my PhD right away because I would have ended up in a program that was wrong for me. Of course, I have friends who applied directly to PhD programs and loved them; however, I've yet to meet someone who goes through the MA process and still doesn't know what they want, whereas I have met people (a few) who have quit PhD programs because they discovered that it wasn't for them. On a more encouraging note, congrats on getting accepted to a program! You've proved to yourself that you can get in, now you have to decide if it's for you. Having written all of that, based on the fact that you're asking this question, I would tell you to go get a funded MA and apply in a few years one you're a more well-rounded scholar and have a better idea of what you want.

Could I get in on the Temple PM group? I'm in the same boat as @clinamen.

I think everyone may be overreacting. Back in my day we used to respond to posts like that with that time-honored admonition, "obvious troll is obvious." I highly doubt that post is real in any way.

I think there's a better chance we have yet to hear from Rutgers than Yale. The lack of e-mails with the Rutgers results is in line with previous years, but it also means that there isn't an official e-mail one way or another (yet). Yale sending out an e-mail blast on Monday night is much more ominous if you ask me, but I could be wrong. I tend to lose hope once people are notified via e-mail; phone calls aren't as suspect.

I can't speak to the other schools in this thread, but I know that U of T isn't sending out acceptances for a fews weeks, and they also have a strict quota on international students per cohort in the PhD program. Based on the people I've talked to and the numbers they've mentioned, my guess is a maximum of three.

Based on previous years it seems like UVA takes about 2 days to send out acceptances, so tomorrow and Wednesday are probably it.

Waitlisted at IU Bloomington as a Modernist. Definitely one of my best fits (and I don't mind snow).