jakebarnes

Your "field of research" is far too vague for anyone to give you any concrete advice.

I would be wary about stating this on a PhD application. While it may seem like a good combination to you, most PhD admissions committees will likely see it as a potential distraction from your dissertation/academic research. Furthermore PhD programs, above all, are looking to place graduates in tenure-track academic positions. Although some PhDs do go on to work in prestigious academic libraries, it is by no means a common or easy path, and I would be worried that admissions committees might see your wish to pursue an MLIS as indicative of a lack of dedication to/interest in academia. Unless you feel that you can really strongly sell the MLIS as being necessary to your academic work (interest in archival systems, book history, paperwork, cataloguing, etc) I would step back and think carefully. While it might seem like a pragmatic decision, it could potentially do more harm than good.

There is so much fantastic Canadian lit! Have you read any Bowering or anything from the group that formed around TISH Magazine? Timothy Findley? Leonard Cohen? Roy Kiyooka? Ondaatje? I had to go through the Canadian schol system as well, and I still think of Who Has Seen the Wind with loathing, but don't everything with the same brush :'(.

What about Ewa Lajer-Burcharth at Harvard, or Michael Fried at John Hopkins?

Sorry for the late response, but everything that has been said in the meantime has been right on the mark. Best of luck!

A couple answers: 1. Realistically, your writing sample should be in your stated area of interest. Even if you intend to work on earlier French Modernisms, I would say that the Gericault paper is not a good fit. To be frank, I would not hand in work on anything prior to 1880—especially if you're leaning more towards the Contemporary in Modern/Contemporary. The writing sample and the statement of purpose are where you have a chance to shine in your application; submitting a writing sample outside of your stated period of interest only serves to make your application look incoherent/sloppy. 2. GRE doesn't really matter. Your writing sample and statement of purpose will more than redeem poor test results. Still, to be on the safe side aim for that 160V. 3. Your grades are more than fine. Brush up on your German and start French (unless you plan on doing Contemporary Diaspora work with your asian language, then you might be able to swing that as an added bonus). What you need to focus on more than anything is a) a statement of purpose that shows a coherent, compelling interest and b ) a writing sample that shows your ability to transfer that interest into convincing scholarship, and demonstrates an awareness of current art historical methodology/theory. Moving back to your paper on Gericault, I don't think 6 sources would be enough, especially if they aren't theoretical. As a field Modern/Contemporary is pretty closely tied in with theory, so if you're not comfortable with the basics of Deconstruction/Frankfurt School/Psychoanalysis/Postcolonialism/etc I'd say it would be necessary for you to gain some familiarity with the aforementioned theories before jumping into a doctoral program. One issue which you have not addressed is that of letters of recommendation. Although the fact that you're 6 years out of your bachelors could make acquiring LoRs difficult, a good recommendation from someone at Berkeley like T.J. Clark, Darcy Grimaldo-Grigsby or Anne Wagner could make or break an application. The same goes for high-profile profs in the German department. Look back at the classes you excelled in and get in contact with those professors ASAP imo. Good luck!

This is the Art History forum. You want to be here — http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/34-economics/

This is a pretty presumptuous statement to make. Butler has chaired 20 dissertations in the past 10 years, and Spivak, while less prolific, has chaired 9. Furthermore, I've heard from quite a few sources that Butler is a highly involved and exceedingly generous advisor—not at all the aloof "rockstar" that some people would like to think she is. Maybe she'll chair fewer dissertation committees at Columbia, (who knows?), but I would not rule her out at all. All you need to do to figure out whether a prof is actively working with doctoral students is to list them as advisor on a ProQuest search. While some of the "rockstars" don't advise regularly, you'd be surprised at the number of them that do.

I know Jaleh Mansoor at UBC has published on Mona Hatoum, but I don't know how deep her interests in Middle Eastern art are. TJ Demos at UCL might also be someone to look at. He seems to have a PhD student at the moment who is doing work on the Middle East. The presence of Tamar Garb and Briony Fer would be pretty awesome as well. I'd look further afield than just Art History departments though. Maybe Berkeley Rhetoric? Or even trawl History/Literature departments for potential committee members... there's probably a lot more going on in the area in French departments, for example.

Most of the advice on that page is alarmingly off-mark. He places far too much emphasis on GRE/GPA, for example. Top programs do not reject people on GRE alone. Your writing sample, statement of purpose and letters of recommendation are aeons more important than your GRE score, and to an extent, your GPA (provided it reaches general benchmark). Not only that, but his assertion that "it's probably better to submit your strongest paper regardless of topic rather than a weaker one more closely related to an area you hope to specialize in" is really just blatantly wrong. An Admissions Committee will probably laugh in your face if you say you want to focus on 19th century lit, and then submit a writing sample with a medieval or postmodern focus. I'd also say that this guy also seems bizarrely biased against top programs/Ivies. It's really just pure speculation for him to say that "many Ivies are probably not placing their weakest students given the widespread suspicion that the scholarly training in English that they offer is irrelevant to the needs of many humbler institutions looking to hire." Frankly, whether he likes it or not, the top programs — many of them Ivies — are the programs that are most likely to place their students in tenure-track positions.

I hate to be blunt, but you WILL need to choose some sort of period focus for your dissertation. Your assertion that you "love all areas of literature equally, and cannot see [your]self specializing in a period, as opposed to a topic or theme", is a pretty naive flight of fancy. For a thesis or dissertation it is necessary to have (roughly speaking) both a "topic or theme" AND a rough period (or perhaps two related periods). You can't just dance around expecting to become an expert in ALL OF AESTHETICS and ALL AREAS OF LITERATURE, because doing so will prevent you from developing any sort of expertise of depth of knowledge. Yes, you should be familiar with the field (from Plato to Kant to the Frankfurt School, etc) but a dissertation on aesthetics will, in a nutshell, "focus upon a small historical range of literature". A dissertation is not about broad topics, it is a pointed, in depth study of a certain subject/figure(s)/text/etc. Honestly I think you're jumping the gun. You have two years left of your degree — potentially including an independent study and/or an honours thesis. My advice to you, which may seem somewhat paradoxical, is to be both more open, and to try to narrow down your interests. Like others have said, don't rule out theoretical approaches you haven't really used yet. If you decide you hate psychoanalysis before you've given it a chance, not only are you missing out on Freud and Lacan, but you're also missing Irigaray, Kristeva and Zizek + you will be very puzzled should you decide to read Derrida, Badiou, Althusser, Deleuze & Guattari, etc. Nothing says you have to agree with everything said by ANY theorist — it's your prerogative as an academic to sift through and decide what you feel is worthwhile — but to ignore psychoanalysis is to ignore a VERY significant portion of modern theory. If you don't understand it, you aren't going to understand a theorist arguing against it, and in many cases that will be exactly what you want. However, you really do need to pick some sort of chronological area/theme if you want to apply to a graduate program, be it english, philosophy or an interdisciplinary program. It's necessary for all sorts of reasons (choosing a relevant writing sample, finding an appropriate advisor, choosing a dissertation topic, finding work afterwards, etc). I'd advise you to find programs you're interested in, and to look at past dissertation topics to get an idea of what a PhD entails, because really, your dissertation is your degree, coursework really means very little in comparison. Some programs you might find interesting: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/MTL/cgi-bin/drupal/ http://socialthought.uchicago.edu/ http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/subpage.aspx?id=9836

What a joke. The fact that Yale allowed him to enroll in a second PhD program at another university just shows that his acceptance was a publicity stunt, and that they don't expect him to actually complete a dissertation.

Vermeer's View of Delft perhaps?

Although people have mentioned the Courtauld, I am almost 100% sure they require applicants to have a 3.5 cumulative GPA at least. I'd suggest looking into Canadian schools. UBC, UofT and McGill all have rigorous two year MA programs that offer quite a bit of flexibility in regards to subject area (major/minor sort of system, thesis + coursework in major, coursework in minor). All three universities are pretty reputable, so it's very possible to go on to a top American PhD program from one.

You're in a PhD program and you still don't know the difference between your and you're?