j.alicea

@pdh12 congratulations! Maybe we will be cohortmates! UCSC is my top choice, i am enthralled with the work their faculty is doing as far as hemispheric approaches to American lit. goes, plus I heard from a professor that graduated two years ago (now on track for tenured position) that Angela Davis teaches a course every couple of years!!! I am also worried about funding and costs of living... we wil just have to see

Indeed! Nothing would be worse than getting into a PhD, and then suddenly no one wants to chair the committee for your disertación!

I can’t speak with authority, and I’ve never been interviewed myself, but here is what I’ve heard from a prof/friend who has served for an adcom in a humanities department that does interviews. - It allows the dept. to gauge secondary language skills, if that is important to the program. - It gives the applicant an opportunity to ask questions and make a decision for themselves regarding whether it really is a “good fit.” When we apply, sometimes a place seems like a good fit simply because you want to go somewhere. - It is also to test the waters and see if they like you on a personal level... this was a little disconcerting to hear, but it’s not necessary that everyone in the department get along. Hopefully you and some of your POIs do hit it off, otherwise the next 5-6 years could be rather unpleasant.

@sad_diamond Congrats! Great program for your research interests! Good luck!

Just some notes from my personal experience with this kind of thing... - Don’t assume they will contact you with a “.edu” email: for my MA, I was first contacted by a prof who prefers to use their gmail. - Don’t assume you’ll be getting a call from a number with an area code matching that of the university/ies to which you’ve applied: this year, a UCSC prof. contacted me using their cell (NY number). - Don’t assume you’re out because you aren’t contacted at the same time as others: this is a given. It is a long process, and some of you will receive acceptances as late as April 24th. I was just speaking with a prof. who claimed that they consistently send 2 or 3 acceptance letters as late as April. I just wanted to remind everyone that you cannot control what happens next, you cannot predict based on data you’ve found here or elsewhere (its useful, and sometimes necessary to help ameliorate the angst of applying for just about anything in academia). Oh, and (believe it or not) I have a friend who started PhD recently who was notified unofficially in person at their local socialist group meeting, which a professor happened to take part in. And another who was called back after the 25th two years back! And for those of you who are really down about their apps (way too early for that, but I definitely understand): there are still places accepting apps, especially for MA programs, and it is possible to get a terminal MA funded! good luck, all!

@spectrum-in and @Englishtea1 Congratulations! Such an amazing program. Tejumola Olaniyan's Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance has been on my reading list for nearly two years, hopefully I will find time to read it over the summer.

Hello! Additional info. in case you/anyone else is waiting to hear from them: official letters should be rolling out toward the end of this week and the accepted students date is March 14th.

I must be mistaken then - I can't imagine they would be accepting applications with no intention of admitting students. The chair of my department is the one who passed along that info in September - so maybe something changed between then and December, or I am misremembering things (most likely scenario). *** In fact, I know that I am misremembering things - I think it was Notre Dame (once again, someone correct me if I am wrong). The person who told me graduated from Duke, so I think that's where the false memory is coming from! Sorry if this freaked anybody out!

There is Duke GPL (Grad. Program in Literature) which seems comparable to a comp. lit. or literature/cultural and media studies program. I believe that they weren't going to accept new students this year (please correct me if I am wrong), whereas Duke PhD English is accepting new students.

@Matthew3957 Thank you! Just got the call today around four from a poi- he said funding info and official acceptance letter would be sent later this week. Good luck, I’m sure you’ll hear something soon.

@dilby Oh! Also look at Stanford’s modern thought and literature program - Very similar program, and they have funding (I think).

@dilby You may want to consider UCSC’s Literature Phd. Chief reason being that lit. Students receive funding, while the history of consciousness students are unfunded. Also, history of consciousness usually admits 5 or fewer per year, and literature dept. admits something like 12 to 15. Finally, if you are doing a literature PhD, you will still be able to take HoC courses. Their lit program is super interesting, some liken it to a cultural studies program as opposed to an English program. An issue with the literature PhD: you need to have a masters degree in English, cultural studies, American studies, or some other related field. Not sure if this is the same for history of consciousness. @Ranmaag I wouldn’t give up yet, it’s not even February yet! Also, most go at this process several times, and many “leave” academia to pursue an alternate path, and find themselves coming back. Now is a good time to think about what you could do for a year that will allow you to work as an independent scholar. Keep looking for opportunities to publish and present at conferences, and research scholars and other universities that fit your research interests, rather than the big names that may or may not be a great fit, and receive 500+ applicants annually (I presume this is what you meant by "name-brand" programs). I've been at this process since 2014. Tried once for a philosophy PhD after undergrad, failed, gave up, taught high school math to ESL students in Chicago, then tried again years later and found myself in an English masters, now looking at PhDs. Point is, keep your options open and enjoy the ride.

@rxing963 To clarify, I was looking at quite a few Literature and Comp. Lit. programs, which (from my research) tend to have an ancient language requirement. The onl program I ended up applying to with such a requirement was UCSC (minimum of 1.5 years in ancient and 2 in modern to qualify for acceptance). Your research sounds fascinating! Don’t know much about punk (more of a reggaetón and rap head, myself), but I suspect that its ardent anti-commercialism and taste for anarchism has seeped into other contemporary counter-cultural discourses in ways that are too often uncritically brushed aside. Also happy to hear you are interested in engaging with Chinese contributions to the culture - I imagine this will be rather interesting considering the political and economic differences between the UK and US and China.

@rxing963 I really wanted to take a course to brush up on my Spanish, but between the cost of taking an additional course that my department wouldn’t fund, my thesis, and grad. ass. research assignments, I decided to not do that to myself... So instead, I have required my family to only speak to me in Spanish or Spanglish for the next few months, and I am working on translating some essays by Antonio Benítez-Rojo with a friend/prof. In the philosophy dept. for fun/maybe for my thesis. Finally, set all my electronics to Spanish. We will see how this all goes. What requirements do you all have? I was surprised by how many programs require an ancient language, so I am thankful for those two years of Ancient Greek that I hardly use. And @rxing963 (and others) to what extent do you expect to use secondary languages for your research? I do a lot of Latinx, Caribbean, and decolonial work from 20th/21st centuries, so Spanish and French have been and will continue to be absolutely necessary. I would like to be exposed to other languages, too, especially Eastern languages (of which I am utterly ignorant)

@flungoutofspace there is Bloom (2004). Haven’t watched it myself, but someone in my cohort is doing her thesis on several adaptations of Ulysses, specifically looking at the different ways Molly is represented. Won’t say more than that since I don’t want to misrepresent her work or the film.

@Bopie5 Don't count yourself out yet! And I personally think $2,000/month is more than enough for your Midwest picks, at the very least. You'll of course be buying books, but I managed to save a lot by having professors provide pdfs of articles and books, or just using library and whatever inter-library loan systems they might have in place. Personally, I'd avoid loans at all costs. @aporeticpoetic @mandelbulb I did not apply to Harvard, but I had thought that there wasn't a specific language requirement for admission. Also, wouldn't the necessary info. be in your transcript(s)?

I've found that it varies person-to-person. 30% of my monthly stipend covers my costs for rent and utilities, and my Master's does not offer quite as much as PhD's would usually offer. However, I live in area of the city this is not ideal for everyone. I grew up southside Chi, so I don't mind, but I know people in my cohort who are just not comfortable with that, and so pretty much all of their stipend goes toward rent, and some even need additional loans. Its tough. You want to live comfortably, but a stipend might require that you be flexible with your idea of comfort.

To clarify, no such edition exists yet, she just wants it to exist lol but who knows, maybe she or someone else is working on that at this very moment.

I've been a lurker for a while, finally decided to make an account... Anyways, I have not read the new translation, and I do not know anyone personally who has done a full read through, but a few profs in the GWS dept. at my University have said it is superior in several ways, and is at the very least a more accurate translation (closer to her style in the French, doesn't make huge cuts the way the first translation did). If you are interested, I would recommend reading "Translating 'The Second Sex'" (written by the translators Borde and Malovany-Chevallier), which can be found on JSTOR. Perhaps a more unbiased article on the new translation is "Two English Translations" by Emily Grosholz that was published 3 or 4 years ago I think. She seems to prefer the new translation, but suggests a digital (facing) edition comprised of the 1953 translation, its drafts, and the 2009 translation, with notes. Wish I had the time to read it so I could give you my own opinion, but I hope this is helpful.