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Everything posted by Indecisive Poet
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Emeritus Involvement
Indecisive Poet replied to Scarlet A+'s topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
@a_sort_of_fractious_angel Re: location -- much of the reason I feel limited is that I do not enjoy living in the city, so big city locations are all immediately out of the question for me. In this sense I have opposite preferences to yours. But I also struggle with the idea of living in any city at all and much prefer the thought of a rural location or college town. I'd also like to be near good hiking/nature of some kind and ideally in the northern half of the country. There are some locations, like the Eastern Pennsylvania/NJ/NYC/Delaware/Maryland/DC area that I'm just not willing to live in (I grew up there and did my undergrad there and for various reasons my mental health could not take living there again). This is what I mean by VERY picky, so I'm finding already that I'll need to compromise -- including some cities, some locations in the South. In a perfect world, I'd only apply to programs on the West Coast, near the Rockies, or in the New England region. That ain't happening because the programs just aren't there, and these also seem like the most expensive places to live. So perhaps, as you suggest, it's about having rules and sticking to them to the greatest extent possible, but also being flexible, especially if programs in unideal locations are the ones that seem like the best fit. @Warelin I guess I threw out "summer funding" as an example of the general type of thing I've completely bypassed, but it's good to know that it's generally not guaranteed. With regard to guaranteed funding, I believe @Scarlet A+ posted a topic about this recently but eliminating programs that don't explicitly guarantee it seems like a tough first step to take for narrowing down programs because there are very, very few websites and handbooks that lay out that information. Most say nebulous things like "we attempt to offer all of our applicants funding" or, what I think is most common, "we have various TAships and fellowships available". I think I'm looking for an easy answer where there isn't one, but how am I supposed to puzzle this out without spending several hours each researching 60-80 initial-list programs' funding situations? By "guarantee funding," BTW, I mean guarantee full funding for 5-7 years of the program. So many programs seem to provide some form of funding and I guess I'm having trouble chucking out programs that otherwise really excite me but don't do the former. But as you suggest, perhaps their lack of guaranteed full funding indicates deficiencies that should knock them off my list anyway. -
Kind of a related question that nobody here probably knows anything about, but: my PhD LoRs will be written by British faculty for the most part and they have strange names for faculty over there that don't correlate with ours. Very few are "Professor of English;" most are Reader/Senior Lecturer, titles that translate to our Associate Professor from what I understand. Surely (I'm hoping) asking these faculty members for LoRs will be appropriate, right? Should I expect programs in the US to know that Lecturer in the UK does not equal Lecturer in the US? Perhaps more important might be whether the faculty are well known in their respective fields but I'm not sure any of them at Edinburgh would be bell-ringing names, even if they are strong scholars with interests similar to mine.
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Emeritus Involvement
Indecisive Poet replied to Scarlet A+'s topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Hey @Kilos, I never thanked you for your response because life got ahead of me but I have been ruminating on it ever since I read it and I actually re-vamped my research/spreadsheet-ing approach to be a little more similar to what you did. Thank you so much for writing all of this out! You and everyone in this community will be the reason I get into a PhD program, if that happens... A weird thought -- I think that sometimes seeing how much thought everyone here put into ensuring a program was the right fit for them and would provide them with more than enough support has almost... intimidated me? And I find myself wanting to write off certain things like, for example, eliminating programs that don't guarantee summer funding or even something like making sure current graduate students are happy there, because I don't feel like I'm allowed to be that picky. Like I'm kind of telling myself I'll be lucky to get in and I should take what I can get. But I know on some level that something I need to work on over this year of research is convincing myself that I'm a candidate that departments should want at their program, and it should be equally if not moreso about convincing departments of this and ensuring I'm at the right program rather than begging to get in wherever they'll take me. I also wonder, though, if it might not be possible for me to find "perfect" programs because I'm very picky with location and because my fields/interests aren't super prevalent areas. It's already looking like I won't be able to put together a list of 10-20 programs that are in places where I'd want to live, guarantee funding, guarantee other kinds of support, and have 3 or so faculty members in my general areas. I suppose location is the first thing that should go but I find myself thinking things like "I don't need to eliminate programs that don't guarantee funding/conference funding etc because I might still be offered funding." But what if I only get into those programs and I'm not offered funding? Realistically I'd just take the loss and apply again the next year and I really want to avoid having to do that. So I'm not sure whether those are worth the application or not. -
@Bumblebea This makes a lot of sense and thanks for the recommendation on Garrett! I'll check him out. Edit: it's also kind of funny that this discussion is being had because I took a novel theory seminar with a professor at my undergrad university who studies precisely the history of literary and cultural forms, looking at form with a Marxist-historicist perspective. The seminar was centered around reading novel theory with a historicist slant. But the pure theory element was also way over my head, so perhaps I didn't absorb as much as would have been helpful... @jrockford27 - I'll tag you here as well since this is essentially one conversation at this point. I understand, I think, what you're saying in terms of any given project and the kinds of research it'll entail. I guess I'm thinking right now about marketing myself in an SoP, though. Even though throughout my career and within each project I'll draw on a ton of different theoretical approaches, do I mention those I'm most influenced by in my SoP? Or do I focus more on the content of my research question? I guess, like, I know I wouldn't say something like "I'd like to study x literature and x questions from a formalist approach" but I would instead expound upon the formal/aesthetic questions that interest me. So there really isn't a need to name-drop particular brands of theory at all, right? Instead I might be name-dropping particular authors/works or contemporary scholars in my period/maybe within aesthetics & such if I learn more about what's going on in the contemporary world there (lol), but largely focusing on the questions I'm trying to work on and how I arrived at my interest there. I suppose the reason I was initially worried is that those questions aren't the kinds of things I'm used to seeing in SoPs ("I'm interested in the autonomous identity of Caribbean peoples in pre-colonial American lit", for example -- cultural problems that are relevant to what's going on with marginalized groups today, as you've both mentioned), but instead they are rather more abstract, airy-fairy, aestheticist questions (though I will certainly narrow them down to something that hopefully doesn't sound abstract or airy-fairy in a year's time). And certainly when I visit faculty pages they have those handy labels that tell me their research falls into 20th Century American and Gender Studies or whatever their combination is, and then their individual pages tell me their work deals with questions of gender in whatever more specific way. So it's not so much that they only analyze work from a feminist theory standpoint but I suppose, again, the content of what they want to research is pointing them in that direction. I'm also rambly right now and don't know what I'm saying but I think everyone's responses have given me the answers I needed if not the ones I made the post to receive, haha. Thank you! I'm happy to distract you both from dissertating with my questions at any point desired
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Thanks, @Ramus. Lesson definitely learned about asking this sort of question/thinking this way, and it's actually really reassuring to hear departments don't work like this. I think I overstated my case in assuming how uncommon those approaches may be; I suppose looking at websites can make certain things that are already worrying to me seem more overwhelming than they are. I admit I've also been influenced by various posts on here that have suggested it's not possible to not incorporate one of those approaches into your major area of interest (though I suppose it may be a matter of, like, of course any given paper I write will probably make mention of gender or race at some point). At any rate, it's definitely also reassuring to hear that's not as uncommon as I'd thought.
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Thank you for your responses, @Bumblebea & @jrockford27! I'll address both of them here: I suppose that was poorly worded on my part; I wasn't trying to ask for recommendations for programs that don't do this type of scholarship as much as I was programs that aren't...completely built on it? I'm not sure how to express the feeling I've had when sifting through websites that most of them seem to operate in large part in this language and I keep having the nagging feeling that I won't fit in. Just goes to show how little I know right now! I hope to have a better idea when I'm applying a year from now of what current trends are in scholarship. It seems like whenever I learn about a trend in the humanities I learn something new that renders it outdated. I do consider myself influenced greatly by formalist modes of thought but I also certainly don't think myself in a formalist/new critical bubble. I am excited about history and hope to address it in all the work I do (in particular I'm interested in thinking about Enlightenment ideas and shifts to the industrial, etc). But to me that consideration of history feels a little bit different from coming at things from a primarily critical race/gender theory perspective. Maybe this is too specific of a question, but do you have any ideas about how I would show this in a SoP if it isn't my primary area of focus? I am definitely interested in Western Marxist theory but right now it seems more like an undercurrent that might not even be worth mentioning in an SoP (though this could change in a year). Do you think a statement that makes no mention of these "hot" areas specifically could still somehow show that I could become conversant in those areas? And re: the rest of your post, I really hadn't thought about it like that -- that no department has one emphasis, per se. I guess that's maybe been my impression as I go through websites and it seems like many faculty members are doing the same kinds of things or that the program offers certificates in say ecocrit or critical theory and has a lot of resources in those areas. I suppose just because those areas are strengths for the department doesn't mean they don't have strengths in wildly different areas too. I see now that my question was probably not a good one... but these answers have been as useful as those I was expecting!
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I don't have any more experience than you do with applying to/being accepted into programs, but as an undergrad I was in a situation where I unfortunately hadn't gotten to know many faculty members and had taken my courses mostly with grad students/post-docs/lecturers (one of the reasons I chose to pursue a terminal MA before PhD) and I was told by the one faculty member who I did have a strong relationship with that I essentially could not (if I wanted to get into a program) use a letter from a grad student, even for MA applications. She suggested that a mediocre letter from a faculty member was preferable to a strong letter from a grad student and she helped me get an okay letter from another faculty member that got me into my MA. That said, that's just one person's perspective; I've been told many conflicting things by many faculty members on all things applications/job market.
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I'm wondering whether anyone knows of programs that are not heavily invested in the more popular contemporary approaches to literary studies including feminist theory, critical race theory, deconstruction, etc. I don't ask because I'm opposed to any of these approaches or applying to programs built by them (they are incredibly important) but because my own most specific interests happen to be quite removed from these approaches (I'm just not driven by these kinds of questions). As a result I imagine I may have difficult faring as well as the majority of applicants, who are doing this type of work. I know it's not very common to not be studying literature from a socio-political/social justice standpoint so I imagine I'll need to amend my approach to get in to programs. I thought, however, that I'd run this question by you all on the off chance there are any programs that you know of that might be interested in an un-amended me! I'm interested in aesthetic and broadly philosophical approaches, looking at things like genre theory, form, the history and function of literary criticism, poetry, etc (I know all of the above brands of critical theory have a role to play in all of these fields -- they are just not my subfields of interest).
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PhD Research: Funding
Indecisive Poet replied to Scarlet A+'s topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Thanks for posting this topic, @Scarlet A+. I have come across the exact same problem myself with nebulous wording surrounding funding on virtually all program websites (i.e. most just say 'we make every effort to offer students funding' or 'we have a variety of fellowships and TA-ships available') and thought I was just missing something obvious. Many programs in the top 30-50 also say these are competitive. From these responses, it seems people are suggesting the only way to figure out if a program offers guaranteed, liveable funding is to email current graduate students on their website and ask. Is that right? -
GRE Writing Feedback
Indecisive Poet replied to Violin21's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Seconded. I didn't write a single practice essay; I just memorized the form that the Princeton Review book proposed and made sure I knew how to adapt it to any question thrown at me. On test day, I thought my essays were pretty weak but I got a perfect score as well. -
@CulturalCriminal Wonderful information, thank you. I'm primarily interested in Romanticism but I understand I'll have to place that in the context of either c18 or c19 British for the sake of marketability and I'm continually torn between the two. My plan is to probably write my MA dissertation on a topic in Romanticism and then decide during the next year and especially during that process which century I'll choose to focus on in my PhD SoPs once it's all done. I think I see what you're saying about theory -- less paradigmatic texts in critical theory and more the theoretical and other research areas that are currently going on in my period or subfields, right? I definitely think I'll need to do independent reading here this next year or so as I think it's my weakest area (as an undergrad I felt very underexposed to any type of contemporary discussion -- just primary texts and a little bit of standard theory). I'm not sure whether we'll have additional readings assigned (I hope so), but even looking at the syllabi for the seminars I'll be taking this next year is worrying because it seems to be mostly primary texts with a little bit of major theorists. So all to say I'm thinking about picking up an anthology or two on my theoretical field(s) of interest and asking faculty for recommendations for readings in Romanticism. I will shoot for one a month in addition to what I'm reading for class; that seems more doable.
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Emeritus Involvement
Indecisive Poet replied to Scarlet A+'s topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
These points are really helpful. I still have time to feel all of this out but I'm definitely leaning strongly toward not mentioning faculty by name. As you also point out, I wonder if it's maybe best left to what the individual applicant is comfortable with and what makes for the strongest statement. It does seem like ultimately there are successful SoPs from all avenues and the most important thing does end up being your merits and interests rather than how you structured the SoP. I've also been warned by another successful applicant a top program who didn't mention faculty that there are many more interdepartmental spats than I realise and the faculty members I mention may be the cause of those. I suppose it's also worth considering that the faculty members I'm interested in may not be accepting graduate students to advise, may be going on sabbatical, etc. To me it just feels safer not to mention names. In my M.A. statements, which were a much less rigorous process, I mentioned something like "faculty expertise in x" being appealing without going into greater detail. I wonder if that would work for PhD statements? Do you have any tips for what kinds of things to mention about the school and department (and even what kinds of things I should be looking at when narrowing down)? I haven't gotten too deep into looking at programs yet other than narrowing down by faculty interests, but aside from things like some programs having very distinct flairs for particular subfields (ie Oregon and ecocriticism or some of the UC schools and critical theory), it seems to me like many of the programs and departments themselves are very much the same and very much traditional apart from what individual faculty members are studying. I know this isn't really the case -- I imagine once you begin a program it becomes clear what the 'feel' or ethos of that program is, but it's not really something I'm finding palpable from websites and handbooks. Also, for courses offered: since they change every year, did you just allude in your SoPs to courses in the past maybe being reflective of what might be offered for you? -
Emeritus Involvement
Indecisive Poet replied to Scarlet A+'s topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
@Kilos May I ask how you 'tailored' your SoPs to the program without mentioning faculty members by name? I just ask because the successful SoPs I've read did so and I'm not sure what the tailored section of the SoP would look like structurally without that. Is there another way to prove you've done your research and know what the faculty there are up to? I've heard advice on both ends of the debate for this but I know I'd probably feel more comfortable not mentioning people by name. I've also been advised by some to do some digging on whether the specific programs I apply to prefer faculty to be mentioned or not but I'm not sure how I would do this other than by shooting emails to random grad students at said program. -
I know this is SO old, sorry -- any tips on how the process of narrowing down the research question works? Or on creating a theory reading list and why that's so important? I can't imagine having time to read a book of dense theory every week (especially since this month and next I am doing a summer program that requires me to read a lot of primary literature). I took a novel theory graduate seminar (which involved a ton of classical theory readings) during undergrad and am taking another graduate seminar in standard critical theory for my MA this fall. I also did a good bit of reading in theory/philo on my own last year. I was hoping this would be enough and I could spend any free time I might have during my MA when I'm not already reading something for class catching up on contemporary scholarship in my fields, which is really my weak area. Thoughts?
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@jrockford27 This is so helpful, thank you! I imagine I'm selling myself a bit short as always, if anything mostly because I do have a year of intensive studying and dissertation-writing ahead of me that should prep me to write an SoP much more developed than what I would be able to write right now. I suppose adcoms are looking for general fit, promise, and instincts for research rather than a developed proposal that's going to make waves in the discipline. "a few theorists who were essential to my work" -- do you mean contemporary theorists? While I have a good grip on what I need to read in terms of primary literature and 20th-century "founders" of scholarship in my area (for example, people like M.H. Abrams in Romanticism), I'm at a loss (at this stage) when it comes to figuring out what the CURRENT conversation is in my areas of interest, who "matters," and what kind of contemporary papers I should be reading.
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Awesome advice, everyone. Especially your words on imposter syndrome, @Kilos. It plagues me in most everything I do but it feels like academia and writing are not the places for it if I'm to complete any kind of productive work. I will keep your perspective in mind. It feels like I don't even have enough of a handle on my research interests at this point to determine where any gaps are or what the conversation is (if any) surrounding my areas -- maybe because my interests have less to do with particular niches, texts, authors, critical approaches and more to do with thinking about how literature plays a role in what interests me about the human world? But I think the problem is also that there are a few different areas I'm interested in and could potentially write on this year and I just need to narrow it all down. I'm sure a few conversations with some faculty members will prove useful here, and perhaps as you suggest, @bpilgrim89, my first step may be to see which of these areas has been least explored. It also doesn't help that I'm hopelessly torn between the non-consecutive movements of Romanticism and Modernism (though my MA is in 18th & 19th British, so I'm almost positive Modernism will have to be a peripheral interest for later in my career). I am sure that working on seminar papers and a dissertation all year and being surrounded by faculty will help me with this and I won't feel nearly as lost when I start outlining a SoP this time next year. @jrockford27 -- so did you do exactly this -- propose a dissertation topic -- in your SoP? I'm wondering what that looks like. I've read a couple of SoPs by PhD students at my undergrad (a top 15 program, if we're going to lend that any credence); one came from an MA and had an impressive array of publications/conferences but took up a lot of the SoP laying out his general field and a little bit of space talking about his basic interest in that field, and most of the SoP explaining and bragging about past papers, publications, etc. The other came from her BA and got no more specific than "I'm interested in how we decide what is 'literary' in [insert period here] literature." I suppose a greater level of specificity will be expected of me post-MA.
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During undergrad? Afterward? Through a class? How does one do enough reading of contemporary scholarship to determine what they're interested in has not already been claimed? How does one narrow down from broad strokes to something SoP-worthy, and how narrow does the SoP need be? How did you choose your period? I'm talking basics here, folks. I consider my undergrad education to have been largely time wasted and I really did not know academia was for me or embark on most of my study until just after graduation. I'm completing my MA this coming year and I know myself well enough to know I'm well-equipped to succeed in the PhD realm but I can't help but have major imposter syndrome virtually all of the time and feel panicked about not knowing my research interests. I know the VERY broad and abstract, intellectual/philosophical questions that have led me to literary studies and I know the periods and general fields I'm interested in but I am not sure how to get more focused other than by reading a lot more literature and a lot more criticism. It feels like no matter how much I read, though, there will always be something I'm missing that will make my SoP sound silly and uninformed. Would love some perspective, ideas, and anecdotes.
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How 'fitted' does 'fit' have to be?
Indecisive Poet replied to GoneWilde's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
@FugitiveSahib That makes sense, thank you! I do resent the necessity of periodising and am hoping it's something I can do to get into programs but that I don't necessarily have to stick to in my career. I really am torn between my love for Modernism and my interest in the 18th/19th centuries & Romanticism; in a perfect world, I'd study literature 1700-1945, or even beginning earlier! And I do come across quite a few faculty whose pages say they study literature in a similarly broad historical range or who have an eclectic mix of historical interests that are non-consecutive, but my feeling is that I probably need to 'earn the right' to do so by first passing oral exams in my one or two consecutive periods of choice. -
Lecturing During Round 2/3?
Indecisive Poet replied to CulturalCriminal's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
@Hermenewtics Any tips on applying to high school teaching jobs? When to do so, how to look for openings, what to put in applications/interviews, etc. Also, I assume these are all private schools, right? Also, any tips on what to say when reaching out to university English departments and when to do so? -
How 'fitted' does 'fit' have to be?
Indecisive Poet replied to GoneWilde's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
@FugitiveSahib Could you elaborate a little bit on what you mean when you say you're looking for professors engaged with the questions/concerns you're asking about/interested in? I'm thinking about it like this: my interests are in Romantic & c18 or c19 (haven't decided yet) but I find that in general the interests that motivate me to pursue research are less coming from within that specific archive and more coming from larger philosophical questions that are then being applied to that archive. I find that there are some scholars working in these areas who share larger guiding interests with me, but most of those who do seem to be studying Modernism (and generally there are very, very few with similar guiding questions as me). As I've been looking through faculty pages, I'm wondering whether I should be focusing more on the Romanticists/etc who study the same period and authors as me but with very different interests within that, or if I should be focusing on the Modernists or whoever else that have the same guiding interests as me but study a different period. @TeaOverCoffee If not faculty with the same research interests as the applicant, what would you suggest being the determiner of 'fit'? Just from looking through the faculty pages I have, I can say there are Victorian/gender studies scholars at almost every single English department. What then becomes the factor used to narrow down? Also, I'd love if you could elaborate on your argument about Romanticism! As I've mentioned above, I know Romanticism is my greatest period of interest, but I'm having trouble choosing between c18 and c19 for the context of that. I'm interested in Enlightenment and the major changes in thought/the transition to 'modernity' in c18, but I'm not so big on the literature itself. I prefer Victorian, and I'm also very interested in urbanisation, responses to it, work etc, as well as novel theory. -
Lecturing During Round 2/3?
Indecisive Poet replied to CulturalCriminal's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
I don't have any answers, but I'm posting here because I'd love to hear what everyone has to say about this and any general tips for applying for lecturer/adjunct positions. I will finish my MA in 2019 and take a gap before (hopefully) beginning PhD in 2020, and I am definitely hoping to land a lecturer or adjunct position during that gap (not sure how likely this will be because my MA program does not include any TAing). Any tips for when to apply, how to apply, how to look for jobs, what interviewing and timeline is like, etc., much appreciated! -
Hey all! This thread is fairly dead but I figured I'd give it a go -- I'm moving to Edinburgh for a 1-year MA program at the end of August. I'll most likely be living in private student accommodation about a half hour's walk from campus, though uni accommodation closer to campus is also an option if I'm offered a studio apartment. I'm planning not to take the busses (transportation is an expense I rarely prioritise when things are within reasonable walking distance) and I'm wondering whether it's excessive to think I'll be happy walking 30 minutes to and from campus every day. Generally I'm a big walker, but I know it also rains in Edinburgh more than it does in England and can get quite windy and cold in the winter. Thoughts? My other option is to buy a bike, but I'd have to either sell it or transport it back to the US somehow at the end of the year. Also, I've only been to Edinburgh once for a few days a couple years ago, but the main thing I remember about the city is HILLS. My memory might be exaggerating how huge the incline is from Princes St to Old College --> George Square, but it doesn't seem bike-friendly to me.
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Happy to say I will be attending the program at Edinburgh! I absolutely can't wait to live there -- I studied in Ireland during undergrad and visited Edinburgh for just a few days on what I believe were the only sunny, 70-degree days of the whole year, and I loved it so, so much. This is saying quite a bit for me as I am generally not much of a city person at all. Definitely reach out if you come for a visit!
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BA to MA or PhD?
Indecisive Poet replied to ashley623's topic in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Thank you! That does sound super helpful -- I've found that most websites don't have a clear picture of what their research strengths are.