This_madness
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Posts posted by This_madness
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Just sent my acceptance notes to UMass-Amherst. I delayed for a few days because I had a strange fear of finalizing the entire process.
Anyone else feel similarly?
- muchado, TripWillis, Datatape and 1 other
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Yeah, Pitt's English department doesn't really accept its own undergrads into the PhD program, unless that student is so perfect that the adcom can't reasonably deny acceptance. (One of my profs mentioned that only 2 of the department’s undergrads have been accepted into the doctoral program in the last decade, and both declined for Ivy League schools? Or something like that.) I guess it stems from the difficulties of the TT job market, where people with all three degrees from the same school are at a disadvantage.
In any case, the Writing Center is wonderful. The tutors are a healthy mix of faculty members, grad students, and highly trained undergrads who each tutor for 10 hours a week. The undergrad tutors are paid hourly, but I'm pretty sure the faculty members/grad students get 1 course release for 10 hours of tutoring.
It's a nurturing, supportive environment, seemingly free of the infighting that occurs within the rest of the English department. (As an undergrad, I wasn’t privy to the nature of the department’s infighting, but I did hear it mentioned on numerous occasions and one of my recommenders said that it made her regret taking the position there. I’m not sure how much this dysfunction affects grad students in the department.)
Tutors attend professional development meetings about once a month or so, usually conducted by tutors themselves who specialize in one thing or another (ESL, developmental editing, etc.)
I’d estimate that 50% of the tutees are ESL students, and another 15-20% are freshman engineering students who have to take a rigorous research writing course. Some of the tutors I worked with found the frequency of ESL/engineering students to be dull and repetitive, but if you’re the sort of person who likes to work with writers of any sort, you probably won’t mind.
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Me, of course.
(Okay, that was hilarious in my head.)
- ProfLorax, sf210, FlamingoLingo and 1 other
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I was offered a TOship today! Woo.
I'm going to give it the weekend to mull it over, but I think I'm almost definitely going to accept. I suppose I'll see you there, Ategenos!
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I went to Pitt for my undergrad and loved it. Loved the English department, the composition faculty I came to know, and loved living in Pittsburgh. Had I been able, I would've applied there for my PhD in comp/rhet.
Since I tutored in the Writing Center, TAed for freshman classes, and took almost every composition class offered to undergrads, I know many of the faculty members well and have a good sense of how the comp program functions. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to try and answer them!
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My MA thesis revolved around TV and poetry. I had to include poetry, but I didn't mind because I was able to devote an entire chapter to my favorite poet, Gwendolyn Brooks. However, I feel like my chapter analyzing the rhetoric surrounding the abortion narrative in Degrassi: The Next Generation was my most significant chapter. Why? Because I felt that analyzing how the stories of abortion are censored and circulated, how they resist the political spectacle, and how they affirm or complicate the assumptions surrounding abortion really fucking matters. Looking at how we tell the stories of abortion in public spheres not only supplied me with a wealth of material to analyze, it also, I believe, could have real, tangible effects on the political and interpersonal discourse surrounding abortion. I'm not saying that literature also doesn't have that power; I'm saying that texts from all sorts of medium do.
Furthermore, it's critical to acknowledge how our definition of texts are evolving. Let me just quickly assume that the definition of great literature is the telling of a great story that also grapples with significant philosophical questions. Given that definition, if I were asked, what was the greatest piece of literature to emerge in the past five years, I would say Mad Men. The language, the stories, the characters, the symbolism, the grappling: it's all there. Yes, it's a TV show, but how is a weekly episodic telling of a story for popular culture any different from A Tale of Two Cities? How we tell stories and create texts is changing, and I believe we can both celebrate and teach the canon while reaching out to other forms of text for rich and significant literary study.
Proflorax, I think we might be intellectual twins. I don't know much about Mad Men, but I've argued on numerous occasions that The Wire is just as great, if not greater, than any work of literature to emerge in the 21st century. I even wrote a term paper stating as such for a contemporary literature course.
Also, I'd love to read your thesis sometime! Is it available online anywhere?
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I'm not sure that I'd throw away the traditional canon, but revise it. It might be important for students to have a sense of what used to be considered the canon in order to better appreciate the progress, if that's what it is, the new canon exemplifies.
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Awesome! I just sent an email to see when/if I'll be notified about the TOship. If I was, in fact, hired, I'll probably accept this week. If I wasn't, I suppose I'll go to Louisville or Nebraska...but I like UMass so much more.
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Congrats, proflorax and ategenos! Do either of you think you'll accept?
I haven't heard from anyone yet, although I'm not as nervous about that fact as I could (should?) be. I can't imagine my interview went so horribly that I'd be declined--I am a rhet/comp person, after all.
How were you notified--telephone or email?
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Thanks for your input. I did consider the lack of Elbow and Herrington, but neither of them were my POIs. With any luck, the department will hire some new associate/full professors in rhetcomp soon! I won't hold my breath on that, though, and still find the remaining faculty attractive enough to attend.
I should get accustomed to Massachusetts' winters. People say Pittsburgh winters are bad, but the last few have been mild...my cold defenses are probably weakened. (In any case, I don't deal well with hot weather at all...so I'm better off in New England than, say, Florida.)
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I'm leaning, strongly, towards UMass-Amherst's MA/PhD program, provided that I get a TOship. The Rhet/Comp faculty, although small, does interesting work and aligns the most closely with my interests. The faculty members I've spoken to already have been nice, and obviously interested in my work and research interests. (One even drew a rather unexpected comparison between my interests and her own that I never would've considered, exciting me greatly.)
More pragmatically, UMass offers a nice funding package (guaranteed for seven years!), good placement records, and is in a great location.
If they don't offer me a TOship, I'll attend Louisville.
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That's a shame about Pitt, my undergrad alma mater. They've actually managed to place a lot of their recent grads into good TT jobs.
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Thanks! My nerves are bit calmer now.
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Has anyone heard about TOships from the Writing Program yet? I thought the interview went well at the time, but I keep replaying it in my head, thinking of things I should've said.
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Probably UMass. Louisville made an attractive offer too, but in the end I think UMass is the best fit for me.
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I see now that some people have posted rejections. My status online hasn't been updated, nor have I heard from anyone. I'm assuming this means a spot on the wait-list? Or does Washington just does these things strangely?
Not, I suppose, that it matters since I've already received offers from two schools I like better...but still, it'd be nice to know!
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I just emailed UWM to decline my offer. I hope they offer funding to someone on the wait list!
Best of luck to everyone. UWM's program indeed sounds wonderful, and I made the decision to decline with more than a bit of hesitation.
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But if you go to the supermarket the cheapest available foods are grains and vegetables bought in bulk.
Poor people do tend to buy things in bulk, what with all of the excess storage space and large refrigerators they have in their cramped apartments and houses. Not to mention the excess cash they have to front the cost of bulk foods (cheaper over time does not make something affordable in the moment).
And when it comes to dining out, as even poor people occasionally do, I suppose if McDonald's would sell organic veggie burgers for the same price as their $0.99 cheeseburgers, the personal responsibility argument would carry more weight.
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But you're missing the point of Fat Studies. They don't want to analyze how fatness arises and thus how to combat it. They want to celebrate it as a legitimate body form that has been unfairly maligned. What you're discussing is a public health problem. Fat Studies wants to remove "health" from the discussion entirely.
I wasn't suggesting that the field of Fat Studies was about how to combat fatness, I was merely responding another poster's claim that in the vast majority of cases, weight is about personal responsibility. That's not always the case.
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Is this real life? Am I the only person that thinks this is ridiculous? The "personal responsibility" comment that you "don't get" derives from the fact that in the vast majority of cases being overweight is directly involved with diet and physical activity. Are you sure you didn't know that? I know it's hip and trendy to claim that pretty much everyone is a minority, but seriously this kind nonsense is only advocated by WASPS who are desperately trying to minoritize damn near everyone.
It's a much more complicated issue, I think. For one thing, high quality, nutritious food is much more expensive than fattening foods. For another, many communities, particularly in poor urban neighborhoods, are food deserts in which access to nutritional food is limited but access to fast food restaurants is high. (One neighborhood in Pittsburgh that I can think of has a KFC and a pizza joint, but no grocery store.) I won't deny that personal responsibility plays some part in body type, for many people, but the issue isn't quite so simple.
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I think a lot of what we take to be "common knowledge" is made such through the work of people who study identity.
Fair enough. I guess I was just surprised that that particular essay would need to be reprinted in a recent anthology. Surely the connection between weight and social class was established so long ago that anyone at the point in their educational/professional careers in which they'd pick up an anthology of essays in such specific subfield would be aware of it.
I might be entirely wrong, though. Perhaps the connection between weight and social class is a much more recent discovery than I think?
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it's just so the sort of thing that makes our field seem like a parody of itself. it's so hyper-specific and so aimed at a very specific set of very contemporary concerns. i mean i'm sure there are papers to be written about various body types in literature. but is it really worthy of its own subfield?
I totally understand this concern, but I also think the same argument could have been (and probably was) used in the past to describe then-burgeoning fields like Queer Studies, Black Studies, Chicano Studies and so on. Obesity is such an issue today, at least in America, that the topic merits some level of discussion from people other than public health professionals.
I hadn't heard of this subfield until just now, but I'm intrigued. Some readings in "The Fat Studies Reader" sound interesting to me ("Double Stigma: Fat Men and their Admirers," comes to mind) whereas others seem a bit obvious ("Does Social Class Explain the Connection Between Weight and Health?" I assumed this to be common-ish knowledge?).
In any case, I've always wanted to thoroughly examine the nearly barbaric obsession with fatness in the gay male community. Perhaps I'll be able to, now, and get it published in a future edition of The Fat Studies Reader!
- 28verses, asleepawake, damequixote and 2 others
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As it turns out, I was accepted with full funding! Very, very excited about this. I'm still going to hold out until I hear back from a few other places, but I can say that UWM is at the top of my list now.
Best of luck to everyone!
University of Washington
in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Posted
I still haven't heard from them either. I'll assume that I'm in the same boat...but why couldn't they just say so a few weeks ago?
It doesn't matter in any case, as I've already accepted another offer.