BlueB

Both Copeland and Marcus have stopped taking graduate students. I believe Marcus was will sit on committees and Copeland is advising her remaining students, but neither will take new students and both are actively looking to retire regardless of the department hires replacements.

Rejections from USC and UCSB! Save me, Minnesota and/or Austin... Minnesota and/or Austin, save me...

Hi all! Long time lurker, thought I'd throw in my experience so far! Subfield is Japanese media and film. Last year was a total shut out for me (8r), but my application wasn't as strong as it could be. So this cycle, I really polished up a section of my MA thesis for my writing sample, spent a lot of time individualizing my cover letters and... Immediately got rejected by Chicago and Michigan Anne-Arbor lol. I also applied to UCSB, USC, Minnesota, and University of Texas-Austin. Haven't heard a word from any of them, and I know UCSB and USC typically do interviews, so I've basically written them off. Refreshing the portals five times a minute surprisingly has not helped my anxiety! As a fair warning: I got my MA at WashU and intended to go straight to their PhD program, but the entire department is a mess. They won't have ANY tenure-track modern Japanese literature professors next year and the chair of the department is very difficult to work with (if you're not in their subfield you may as well not exist). The Korean side just lost most of their resources due to the librarian leaving, and the Chinese track is full of internal politics. Practically everyone in the department said I shouldn't even bother applying. Getting any offer is a miracle, but if it's from WashU... Well, I can answer any questions in DM.

Hi, all. Happy to be here. Long time lurker, first time poster. I'm throwing myself back into the application game for Fall '21 and I'm trying to get a head start since I have some downtime. I'm applying to Japanese and East Asian Lit programs with an undergrad in Asian Studies and some years of work experience teaching English to Japanese students. I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to research, but initial reactions to it have been... Less than positive. My real passion is Japanese horror books. I know they get a bad rap for being nothing more than cheap gorey thrills, but academically I really want to explore the upward trend of women as perpetrators of violence in contemporary literature and how it correlates to feminist movements in Japan. Which is really specific. And people always tell you to shoot for specific when defining your research scope. Unfortunately, I've had several people read my SoP drafts and there have been some noted concerns that my research is "too dark" or "creepy." I'm pretty sure my writing style is plenty academic (blog posts notwithstanding), it's the subject matter rubbing people the wrong way. I know horror is already the black sheep of the literary world, and I've considered making my interest simply "women in lit," but that seems way too broad. One bit of feedback I got was that I have to "ease them into it" but I feel that a unique and timely research interest is a big selling point. There's also been a concern that focusing on violence and women (even though I'm a lady myself) makes me sound like a serial killer, and I feel like the more I insist that it's purely academic the less convincing I sound. One of my potential PoIs is currently researching "Japanese death literature" and has experience writing about women's roles in Japanese lit, which makes me think we would make an especially good match, but since getting feedback I've been scared to approach anyone with my current research topic for fear of ending up on a list. I guess my question is: does anyone have experience with "creepy" research interests? How did you deal with the feedback? Should I change my proposed research topic if I want any hope of getting in? Is it actually really creepy and now I'm on a list anyway? I feel like I'm bending over backwards justifying my interest and it's really affecting the quality of my new SoP drafts. Help me out here.