factical.illusion

You too huh? ? Yeah, the only thing I'm frustrated and peeved about is the cold rejection after *a lot* of correspondence in the year leading up to it. And well, I mean, I *guess* Harvard is alright... but seriously, congrats that's absolutely amazing.

Yeah, I'm already in a PhD program, so I really can't complain at all. Rejection is redirection (or in my case, hunkering down and focusing)

I am at Hopkins (not in CTL though) and an admitted student visited one of my seminars the other day. So I deduce that acceptances have gone out.

Logged in to portal to find that I was rejected from Yale comp lit (after an okay interview which got my hopes up). Completely crushed. Gonna allow myself to wallow and feel all the feelings for a few days and then take a deep breath and pick myself back up on Monday.

^I couldn't agree more with the importance of this! Just to echo it: one of the most important things to consider is potential advisors. A lot of this depends, of course, but you want to find out if there is a person who can support, as well as challenge in order to help you develop, your research. While certainly any professor can be a critical and incisive reader of your research/dissertation, it would be even better (imo) if they are familiar with your research areas and their contours. In some (most?) cases, it's crucial. And speaking of the abysmal job market, I would suggest putting more importance on the quality of the next 5-7 years than what might come after. They are both speculative, but I think it's worth it to put the most weight behind finding a milieu and a program where you imagine yourself being the most supported, where there is the most potential for growth, and where you will feel the most satisfied and (dare I say it) happy. It would arguably make for better job portfolios in the end anyway. You obviously can't know everything ahead of time, but you can ask a lot of questions to gauge the responses and trust your gut. This is often what happens in interviews: both parties try to get a sense of the mutual fit. If you didn't/don't have an interview, it's perfectly reasonable to reach out to ask these types of questions.

I mean, sure, that could be a response, too. But it just highlights that it completely depends, not just on the program, but the individual. In any case, it's highly unlikely that whether or not you send a post-interview email will be a deciding factor in your application case. Personally, I do it just so I can have that much longer of a communication thread, and so I can read too much into a response (if I get one) to keep my morale up (i.e., so-and-so said it was a "great conversation!" WITH an exclamation point, so I convince myself it's only a good sign).

Just repeating something I read somewhere else on here: an acceptance is personal, a rejection isn’t.

From what I can tell, it’s a nice gesture (some profs might even expect it, even as a formality). Just keep it simple: a thanks, a reiteration of some of the points if you want, and maybe an invitation to ask further questions. It shouldn’t be anything that makes it seem like you want a response. You want to show you’re serious and interested but also know that they’re busy. That’s what I’ve done. There are some threads about this here too

For me its long walks without my phone so I won't be tempted to check email, portal or gradcafe

And the English dept has got to be the biggest humanities dept. Curious what that means for other programs e.g. comp lit... (answer: nothing good)

You are really onto something there. That is some next-level innovation. Yeah, thanks for reminding me about that. I'm sure that most also fixate on retracing their steps and their flubs or rougher answers....or maybe just me. But at least it's over with. All that's left is more waiting ? I've read that the Duke Lit interviews are unequivocally the toughest interviews. Kudos! None of the questions they asked were much more than a softball, which is maybe why I'm obsessing

Yeah, it signals to me that they genuinely want to get a good sense of the fit. Makes me feel like it both for a more substantive evaluation but maybe also for them to advocate (too optimistic?) for "their interviewees" at the final vote... But then it's harder to tell how/if they're trying to eliminate people from the short list

@harleth Whew, glad I'm not the only one. I didn't get nailed on any nitpicky things, but I rambled a bit too much and they lowkey had to cut me off a few times... *stomach sinks* but I guess I did get good lawful-neutral vibes overall. I feel like a requirement to be on an adcomm is to...*gestures at sky*...be impossible to read! But cheers to making it through our interviews. May I ask who your interview was with? Mine was with MH and MFi.

Just had my Yale comp lit interview with two professors, both of whom I mentioned in my SoP and cited in my WS lol. Did anyone else with an interview have mixed feelings about their own performance? I mixed up my words so much. The question that really threw me was when they asked me how all my ideas come together to be caught in a net. Thought I had that down, but I definitely didn't feel like I did. Gonna go walk it off. On the other hand, I got equal amount good vibes as I did "I'm-stressed-out" vibes. I had some some good moments, but the overall feeling is that I didn't clear the bar. Time for wine. Also they told me that various faculty are meeting with short-listed applicants over the coming weeks to learn more about their work and trajectories and how it fits with faculty interests (I got the vibe that they are doing this with all the short-listed people, but can't say for certain). The DGS will be in touch with applicants in the "next couple weeks" with decisions. So my current mood on a scale of 0-10: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ full stop. Time for more wine.

I would say, in my experience, that it's mostly either people's own preferences projected onto/against comp lit, or opinions of scholars in language depts other than English who will never believe anyone can have sufficient knowledge of a given language and national tradition if trained in comp lit and *not* be a native of said language/tradition. Even if it's a potential, given many structures of comp lit programs who emphasize theory and/or world lit, that has no bearing on a specific applicant. It's a stereotype. A prof of German once told me that the only people that are "forgiven" in job searches for doing comp lit are native German-speakers and that few things are more detrimental to a job application than "comp lit Deutsch," whatever that means (I imagine weak language skills besides reading...). That is demonstrably false, but I do feel that that old school perspective is still found (perhaps limited to German and French studies?). There is always the risk of not being "grounded enough" in a certain national tradition, since most comp lit grads have to market themselves to such departments. But imo that's a risk you take and something you have to ensure yourself. I've heard too many people complain that their dept doesn't offer the "right" courses for them (myself included), but that's just deflection of one's own agency to take their education into their own hands and acquire that knowledge. It's pretty simple (I'm oversimplifying and ranting but you get the point). It's a good challenge to bring in or combine your own interests to the class if they're not part of it (most professors are open to that; if not, that's anther convo), and we all spend most of our time in the library anyway (or used to...).

Thanks! I kind of work all over the place, trying to maintain multiple intersectional perspectives. On the more theoretical side, some of the "busiest" projects I'm working on involve revisionist interpretations/extensions of major philosophers such as Heidegger and Hegel in attempts to retrieve the archive and think the unthought (ie Hartmann) as concerns POC-blindness in the history of the Anthropocene(s), all oriented towards modes of queer futurity. On the more literary side, I'm interested concepts of literary truth and irony in modes of self-mediation and self-construction in our social media/post-truth era (autofiction, autobiography etc). And a whole bunch of other things #complit I think they def are, especially if the dept is oriented towards or friendly to cultural studies approaches and theory more generally. There generally seems to be room for theory work in lit depts, but of course it all depends (I've seen here that some English depts are having an anti-theory moment rn). I've read some interested pieces that read environmental law/policy/discourse, some of which connect them to literary texts. Probably the most innovative books I've read in recent memory is The Life and Death of Latisha King: A Critical Phenomenology of Transphobia (2018), in which the author (Gayle Salamon, whose at Princeton English, but has a PhD in rhetoric and does almost exclusively theory/philosophy) developed a phenomenological analysis of a murder trial by having been in the court room during the trial, totally transforming the written court record which does not include so many elements of the bodily movement and speech patterns. Another great book was Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives (2013) by Lisa Guenther. SO MANY GREAT BOOKS. I'm also a proponent of, once you're in and acquainted, actively making space and advocating for your work (gracefully), if it doesn't already exist. It's always a matter being able to converse in an intelligible and sympathetic way. Sorry if it seems like a bunch of platitudes, but I've had to deal with this very challenge the last three years. Indeed, do you really want to be in a place where either everything is comfortable or nothing is? Comp lit gets a bad rep (true, some of the biggest egos I have come across been with white men in comp lit, so...), but I think it's one of the most amenable fields to be in. (All of this is just a big IMO and oversharing)

It's hard to say, since the programs I've been in had/have actually more international students than American ones. So if they (the Europeans) didn't land a job in the US (TT, contingent, alt-ac or otherwise), they simply went home and kept on living. I know a few Americans with American PhDs who have gone on to Europe to work on funded projects and/or work in academic-adjacent university admin positions. And I know of a few American PhDs who ended up becoming full professors at European universities, which is astonishing (including one tenured prof in the US who went to be a postdoc in Norway but afterwards was given a full professorship...i can't even; small country/field problems?). I would guess that all such moves where Americans moved for good to Europe hinged entirely on networking. In my (anecdotal) experience, European companies/institutions rarely have any inclination to go through the hassle of hiring a non-EU citizen.

I've also thought about doing that, too. I know a few people who have; one did a UK MA at Cambridge and had rich parents, another did a German MA...and had rich parents. Beyond the financial impossibility (for me at least), it's v hard to meet all their basic admit requirements, or at least a hassle to get the degree qualifications equated and the language tests taken care of. As much as I would love/prefer to move abroad, I'm not in a position (yet?) that would enable to me to reasonably settle down with an indefinite timeline. The idea of a "there and back again" doesn't do it for me, at least not now, and in spite of all the emotional and personal yearnings. TBH my plan is to lowkey get my foot in the door as a researcher when I'm ABD. I'd rather bounce from position-to-position (or leave academia) within Europe than in the US. Like...the idea of, like, living in Berlin or St Petersburg or Stockholm or wherever as a "Barista, PhD" sounds way more appealing to me than anything other than the most elusive TT jobs in the US.

I feel that. It's amazing how much I've learned through compulsive gradcafe scrolling about programs that are completely unrelated to anything I've ever thought about. Anxious procrastination at its finest. ?

Is it just me or does nothing anyone tells us to do to cope work? Besides daydreaming about good outcomes and vindictive/passive-aggressive emails in response to a rejection/waitlist that I would never send but imagine getting satisfying feelings from, I go on a lot of long walks without my phone and lean into the distraction and daydreaming.

@surplus_valueCongrats! One of my MA committee members graduated from UCI and loved it (and not only because she got a TT job). Good luck! Sending good vibez!

@mnelmcar07 I actually know a few people who transferred to Yale from my current school (Hopkins; one was already ABD, but moved with his advisor; they made him redo coursework lol). This year was always going to be a wash, but I am of course more than grateful to be in a funded program on fellowship this AY. I work in relatively niche languages (Nordic, Russian, German), in modes that my current school is not as strong as I thought in (environmental studies/humanities/philosophy, film/media studies) and one that it is (equal focus on literature and philosophy/thought). Hopkins is obviously a good school; its humanities programs are small yet solid and as interdisciplinary as the faculty resources allow. I am plenty self-sufficient, but I am very picky (and a little stubborn), so if I can make a move to a better milieu for my work, I will. I only applied to two schools for my MA (UW-Madison, UW-Seattle; accepted and recruited at both), and only two for my PhD (acceptance, and waitlist-turned-administratively forced rejection). So far it's more or less worked out for me. And thanks! Best of luck to you! I have seen almost no comp lit chatter, so who knows how it well end. What seems to be certain is that each admissions committee that is taking apps is getting a firehose of them.

@mnelmcar07 Thanks for starting this thread. It seems to be a quiet year for comp lit. I have an "interview" with Yale comp lit later this week. I got an email for a request to "speak briefly" last week. From what I have dug up here, an interview could be just a formality (it's required for depts by the grad school) but also people have been rejected after an interview, according to the results page. With the weird and statistically likely more competitive cycle this year, it seems like a toss up. Anyway it's nice to have gotten an interview since I only applied to Yale this year, since I am already in a PhD program.

oh wow I feel seen. ??

@semiotic_mess Wow this is amazing - thank you! I have an not-interview on Thursday, and I'm equally not worried and freaking out.