wreckofthehope

a) the £12,000 is for a year's tuition (for international students) b ) an MA is only a year long (usually) £12,000 = $20,000 approximately If you're attending a US state school as an out of state student, or a private school, for your MA you'll pay more than that per year for tuition... you'll also pay it twice, and then have an extra year's worth of living expenses on top of that. If you're attending an in-state state school for your MA, your tuition will probably be less per year, but you'll pay it twice and you'll pay two years of living expenses... so it will almost certainly work out more expensive than a UK MA too. There is funding/work etc available more readily in the US, but it's available in the UK too - and at least as an international student you are free to work off campus for a certain number of hours a week. Even if you take funding into consideration a UK MA will likely cost you about the same, if not less, as doing one in-state at a state school in the US. People are probably coming across as angry because you're coming across as ill-informed and judgemental.

As opposed to those bargainous American M.A.s???

What is your worry - that they don't know your work well enough after a year or that they aren't invested enough in your future (only knowing you for a year) that they might not want to make the effort? I had three recs from profs on my 1 year UK MA, all were more than willing to help out. I had good relationships with them all - it helps that my program was very small and so they knew me fairly well but, yes, for only one year. I got one rec from undergrad and mixed them up across programs. I've heard that it is better to have recs from the most recent program you've been in, since you're hopefully always evolving and maturing as a scholar. Not having any rec from your MA would probably look pretty suspect to an adcomm - they'd be wondering why no-one cared enough about you or your work to support you, it would probably be a bit of a red flag.

Some strong ecocritical schools to look into: UC Davis From this semester, UCLA UCSB Oregon Nevada, Reno Nebraska Texas Tech (perhaps Michigan, Harvard and WUSTL, depending on your interests) UCLA has made a serious commitment to ecocriticism with its new hires - I would definitely want to apply there right now if I was applying this time around. What's your focus within the field? You should look at the ASLE website too, if you haven't already. They maintain a helpful guide for graduate students and applicants wanting to focus on ecocriticism.

Hi BubbleKiller Something you might want to look into is the University of London International Programmes. It's a very well respected provider of distance education - the degrees are considered on par with any University of London degree, as all the same content is covered and examined. Your degree certificate just reads "University of London," I believe. I think it began in the C19th as a way for poor students who couldn't travel to London for study to gain a degree. The costs are also quite reasonable. Maybe they will have a programme that suits you?

Speaking as someone who has come out of the UK system to do my PhD in the States (and so as someone who is possibly somewhat biased?), I would argue for the pedagogical superiority of the US PhD. Putting aside whether or not you should pay for a PhD (I would say 'no,' but it's an issue with somewhat different implications in the U.K. than the US), you get a much, much, much more structured and professionally focused program in the US; if you want to teach, that is an incredibly valuable thing to have. The Oxford DPhil as cultural cachet will certainly open some doors, but the lack of formal training, robust teaching experience in the American style and total absence of course work will likely close as many, if not more. If you feel certain that you can stay on in the U.K. and get a teaching job there, then it might be worth paying your way. If, however, you are likely to be heading back to the States after the DPhil, I would suggest not doing it... You should also take into consideration what your field is and a) whether Oxford is actually strong in it, andb ) what the perception from the States is of Oxford's strength in the field. If you're a Medievalist, then an Oxford DPhil is probably an asset, despite the fees and the lack of structure; if you're a twentieth century Americanist, I wouldn't touch the offer with a barge pole.

Most schools in the UK have rolling admissions, although some are different (you'd have to check with each department). I'd say that the majority of UK students plan to apply around January or February because funding council applications are due about that time. So, I'd plan to apply around then, or just before - if you're applying to American schools too, it would make sense to use the momentum generated by the US process to finish up the UK apps rather than let them become an afterthought. You usually find out really quickly in the UK and most departments interview (either in person or phone/skype). You also need to do a very different kind of application for UK schools: you are basically writing a dissertation proposal rather than laying out a possible trajectory. It's WAY less competitive than it is in the US - Oxford accepts about 45% of English PhD applicants- but funding is scarce and you'd have to weigh that up. Oh - look at University of Nottingham too!

Hey - I'm in late C20th fiction... but not necessarily postmodernism (if that makes sense...). My sense is that this is thought of more as a 'field' in the UK and Canada - and Canada, especially, has some really great departments for this - in the US, you will certainly find people to work with and be able to do great work and write a dissertation on this topic, but you might also need (for the sake of jobs, really) to label yourself as, say, a twentieth century Americanist, who is as at ease teaching American Modernism, as they are teaching Vonnegut. To that end, your exams and such might be directed to mastering a much broader field than 'postmodern American fiction.' If you were to look in the U.K. definitely take a look at Sussex and Warwick. In Canada, definitely look at UBC, Simon Fraser, and McGill. A few US departments that I can think of right now that might be possibilities are: Wisconsin Madison (Thomas Schaub), UC Davis, and UC Riverside, oh and Wisconsin Milwaukee.

It's not Anna Kavan, is it?

My sense is that MA programs, especially, are welcoming of students that didn't major in English and want to get a better grounding in the subject. I know someone that did Wake Forest's MA (funded) without much of a background in English, so that's also probably a good program to look into, We have a number of people in my program who did not major in English but did an MA elsewhere before coming here. We also have a bunch of MA students (I'm a PhD student at one of the programs you mentioned) that did not major in English as undergrads, and a lot of them have some funding. I think you should be fine - as long as you can craft a convincing SOP that explains how and why you have got to this point. Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much.

Hi UndeletedScenes I'm PM-ing you right now.

Two faculty members, especially, come to mind: Kevin Ohi - for James, aesthetics and sexuality. Chris Wilson - for realism, naturalism, social and economic approaches. Then there are a bunch of people working in American Modernism and the later C20th century. I don't know of much/any digital humanities scholarship... but there was a project recently, Joyceways, created by staff and students (undergrad and grad) that suggests there might be a lot going on creatively in those areas that I'm not aware of?

Any particular types of literature etc within those areas? I'm at BC - we have major strengths in American Studies and late 19th and C20th American. (also no with MA/straight from undergrad preference - incoming classes are mixed, but too small -4 per year- to really provide any statistical usefulness).

I love Delany

It's Delany, isn't it?

There's some very interesting recent poco eco stuff - don't know if any of that would be relevant, you're probably aware of them any way, since these are pretty obvious examples, but just in case: Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment edited by Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George Handley (both of whom have interesting work in the area of their own). Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment - Graham Huggan One of my exams is on literature and globalization, mostly, some of those might be relevant (I'd be interested to see your list - it might help mine!): Saskia Sassen - Guests and Aliens (not poco, but possibly useful) The Rebecca Walkowitz edited issue of Contemporary Fiction (winter 06) titled " Immigrant Fictions: Contemporary Literature in an Age of Globalization" has lots of cool essays in it.

At Boston College I know you can do a MAT in English Teaching which is half in the English Department and half in the Ed School, you get to take the usual grad seminars in lit topics but also do the teaching stuff, maybe you'd be interested in something like that? There's also the normal MA - it's a super collegial department, and there's (very generous) funding available for about half the incoming M.A. cohort.

I was a 2011 admit, but it shouldn't matter, should it? I was waitlisted at two schools: Rutgers and UBC (in different subjects), and eventually rejected from both. I gather that both schools had every single first round offer accepted, which was a real bummer for me. I get the sense that the two application years between 2010 and 2011 were extremely crowed with applicants and that meant that more people had only one offer, which they obviously accepted, and so waitlists were a bit less dynamic, it seems that situation that has eased off slightly this year... which could be good news for waitlisters present and future.

Sussex is not a city... Perhaps you mean Brighton? Gumtree is sort of the UK equivalent to craigslist, take a look on there for an idea of the kind of apartments available and the price, also Nestoria.co.uk is a useful site when searching for apartments. Both Brighton and Dublin are major stops on band tours; both have big music scenes. Brighton is a big LGBT city, politics there are generally liberal and/or green.

Ah- that's great - definitely look at the UC's then! At the moment, I've put Danish on the back-burner... my language skills were only at a basic level when coming into my program and would have taken a whole lot of extra-curricular work to get up to a decent enough level to use academically. I was too busy my first year to be able to do that. There is a fairly active group at Harvard (I'm at another Boston-area school) that have Swedish dinners and stuff where you can go and practice speaking Swedish... so I thought maybe I could switch to Swedish...I'm planning to try and attend those next year, probably after finding an independent language class that I can take.

I agree with your suggestion about schools strong in multiethnic lit but if the OP is an international student (which it sounds like they might be?) then UC schools are pretty much off the table (unless they have private funding/ external awards). It's crazy hard to get funding as a humanities international student at the UC schools. Which counts Berkeley out too... Sadly, this is exactly the issue I ran into when applying... most of the places that have strong Scandinavian departments/centers are schools that struggle to fund international students. Washington too... they actually made it clear on the front page of the application that funding for international students was almost non-existent. Oh - you might want to look at Oregon.

Berkeley and U of Washington both have Scandinavian Studies departments, I think. You should be able to take classes in them as a grad student in another department... (Harvard too?) I'm also interested in Danish literature, although am struggling to find a way to incorporate the interest into my work currently as my school doesn't have any Scandinavian offerings. Is your interest in contemporary literature, or older (as in Medieval?). p.s. you should probably be looking at Comp Lit departments.

The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks version)

Hey I did my MA partly at the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex; my sense, while there, was that there was a strong academic relationship with Birkbeck (many students went to Bbeck for their PhD, and many came to Essex from Bbeck and there was a lot of mixing amongst the faculty). UCL did not seem to be as big a presence (not comparable at all).... that could just be a departmental tic, but to me it suggests that Bbeck rather than UCL has the more active department. (for what it's worth Birbeck was oe of my top choices in the UK for PhD... but you're right that it has almost no name recognition outside of the country...for comparison, though, I think CUNY graduate center has a similar sort of reputation/feel).

^^ also my favourite Tom Waits song. But I'm partial to Romeo is Bleeding too, and the whole Blue Valentine album. Also, Franks Wild Years (I w Y D, Hang on St Christopher and Temptation)and The Black Rider. God, I haven't listened to any of those in toooooooooo long - thank you for the prompt!