If you're into queer theory and still cling, desperately, to intimate close readings, Kevin Ohi's Dead Letters Sent is a goldmine. It was a game changer for my undergrad thesis. Especially the introduction and the chapter on the Symposium blew me away. I think you can access it on JSTOR.
@flungoutofspace Ooh, one thing that I find great when I'm short on time is listening to the podcast series by Marshall Poe. They're all called "New Books in [field]." The idea behind them is that someone might not read the actual scholarly work a professor just spent years completing, so the books and ideas are in a podcast format. I listen to some that I find interesting from the little blurbs, and then sometimes I'll also check out the book after.
Unrelated to the podcast, but I checked out a book called Picturing Identity recently. It's a recent release on contemporary US autobiographies and how they have increasingly used different media than text alone Lots of good stuff out there, and not enough time!
Hello everyone, glad to see some medievalists here!
Regarding theory, I echo poliscar's and cloudofunknowing's recommendations wholeheartedly. Holsinger has done some really great work and points to some modernist theorists who I think would be potentially interesting to medievalists (and non-medievalists!) interested in the roots of contemporary critical theory - I'm a Georges Bataille nut, and he was one of the writers who got me interested in medieval studies in the first place, which is why I found it strange that Holsinger is one of the few to talk about that aspect of his work. Caroline Walker Bynum is, of course, worth checking out too (Holsinger was one of her students) because she's been so influential in the field when it comes to making more room for women's studies and more theoretical approaches to medieval culture (Holy Feast and Holy Fast, from '88, is a good place to start with her - it's a spectacular book).
If you're interested in the relationship between print history and theory, I just started reading Virtually Anglo-Saxon by Martin K. Foys, which I'm really enjoying so far. There's also a group called MEARCSTAPA (Monsters: the experimental association for the research of cryptozoology through scholarly theory and practical application) which has a lot of medievalists whose work I've yet to really delve into, but seems really cool. Asa Mittman is one of their ringleaders.
In general, knowing some about modern/contemporary philosophy would help with what is done in a lot of more theory-interested MS work. Foucault is obviously used a lot in readings I've done on asceticism/mysticism and women's studies/queer theoretical approaches to that. I found Pierre Hadot's (though he's not really a medievalist) work on Neoplatonism very useful for some work I was doing a couple years ago on Late Antique asceticism too.
No worries, this is a community and we should make it a healthy and supportive one, even if that sometimes mean enabling obsessive behavior. We're not here to cure anyone, after all.
So, I'll be honest, rejections are rough, especially when you get as many I did. Because it's so easy to obsess and overthink everything, any news makes you go into hyperdrive, so when your schools start notifying and you don't get hit, you analyze everything. Unless you're really lucky AND your applications were amazing AND you somehow figured out perfect fit and ONLY applied to perfect fit schools, you will get rejected by someone. I'd suggest expecting it. I was hopeful that at least one would fall ("come on, more than 15 schools? surely I'm among the the top 100-150 applicants out there") and none did, and that sucks. In my case, the process of hearing from everyone was so long, and the implied rejections were so many, that by the time it all ended I had already resigned myself to striking out. In that sense, having many can be helpful since you still have hope when the first body hits land but by the time the last ones come you already know you're losing. You will ALWAYS have that glimmer of hope that even if the school only takes 2 people and they have already sent out 10 confirmed acceptances last month, when you open that notification you will see "congratulations!". So don't fight it, but don't lean into it. Don't start looking for apartments or daydreaming about courses if you can avoid it.
Try to keep yourself busy. The days will go by faster and you will obsess less. If it all goes to hell, give yourself some time to not think about it (I'm big on repression, my advice might not be long-term healthy). Once some time has passed, if you want to go through this again (up to you, but don't flagellate yourself), then you need to take a good hard look at yourself and ask: a. if I apply again next year, how or why will I be a better candidate? What will I have added to my profile between one deadline and the next? And b. what did I do wrong and what can I change? Answering A is easier than B, since even inertia will usually make you a better candidate, since you add some sort of experience along the way. B will make you go crazy because there's no way to know. Was it the sample? SoP? Grades? GRE? Were you perfect but there was just enough other perfect people in your field? I think any smart candidate can figure out what things were dubious though, even if they're not necessarily what got you rejected. So set up a plan. Figure out what stays the same and what doesn't. Are you retaking GREs? Are you gonna use the same WS, or the same idea for your proposal? Are you gonna try the same schools, other schools? Same schools but different project or approach? When I was talking to an advisor about this cycle, they asked me what I think went wrong and I told them what I thought and they agreed. Point is, you know yourself, you know what proposals were a stretch, what parts of your WS are weak, etc. Don't try to address these things immediately, but in time, as you inevitable wonder what went wrong, you'll figure out. I'll let you know if I was right in 2 months.
Finally, something that helped me reapply as a better candidate, and maybe helped deal with rejection, was applying for and receiving an IRT grant. The IRT deadline is in March, I hadn't even heard back from everywhere when I applied but I figured I'd try and think about it later. I wound up getting accepted so that pushed me to try again, since it made the cost less prohibitive and increased my odds. Without IRT I might not have applied again, or certainly not to as many schools. That said, if I strike out again, I'm out unless some program makes some changes and makes my fit amazing.
I really can't recommend the IRT enough, btw. They look for students who intend on becoming educators and emphasize minorities and underprivileged groups. If you're accepted as an associate, like I was (they have an intensive summer program, too), they will cover your fees to 10-12 schools within their 41-school consortium (every school in my list is a consortium school except CUNY). They will assign you an advisor who will assist you through the process of selecting schools and another who will assist with writing your SoP. That's a lot of help. I will say that I think a lot of it is common sense in that they make you evaluate your own work, but sometimes you need fresh eyes and someone with perspective to guide you. So if you're interested, check here, the deadline is March 1st: https://www.andover.edu/about/outreach/irt/irt-application
EDIT: I forgot to add some important stats about IRT. Of everyone who received IRT support in the past two years (before my cohort), 96% got at least 1 offer with some funding. 66% got at least 3, and 33% got 6 or more. Admittedly, partial funding offers probably aren't what you're looking for so there might be some info missing in the data to get a real picture for fully-funded PhDs, but hey, it's something. Especially if you come from no-name schools like me.
RE-EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to say that I heard about the IRT through Gradcafe, when I was ready to give up. So hopefully the cycle continues (but the real hope is that everyone gets in).
This isn't a rejection but this made me laugh (even though I had no idea what it means)
Ohio State University
Economics, PhD (F18)
Accepted via E-mail on 29 Jan 2018 ♦
A
29 Jan 2018
report spam
Liars will die!
For identifying fit, I had a spreadsheet with schools/names which I shared with my LORs. I tweaked the list a bit based on their advice.
For professors I wanted to mention in my statements, I read abstracts and reviews of their books, and in a few cases listened to their lectures that were available on YouTube. I also looked at CVs (when available--it seems like they scarcely ever are!) and classes recently taught. After reading other people's posts, it seems like only having one sentence per professor may be on the short side. I didn't address departmental culture either--these are all really good things to point out that I'll take into account for next time (as it seems more likely there will be a next time!).
So who else just now got the email from humanitiesadmissions at Chicago and briefly panicked!? I read and reread the application receipt email making sure it wasn't saying anything bad haha! Looks like we'll be hearing mid-Feb.
Edit: Whoops, didn't realize there was a whole thread for this! Sorry friends.
