Two Espressos

Hahaha me too! So funny.

I'm curious as to what everyone on here thinks about this: http://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/ It's certainly not a fun read, but I think it's an important one. Thoughts?

Yeah, the AW section is just odd. I'm really glad that that whole standardized test business is behind me now, definitely a huge relief!

It went fairly well; thanks for asking! I got a 165 on the verbal and a 151 on the math. I'm thinking the verbal score will place me at the 96th percentile or so, judging from last year, and I'm happy with that. I think my overall score is something like a 1330 on the old scale, certainly good enough for me! I can breathe a sign of relief now. The exam was shitty, but I don't have to retake it. And I think I scored well enough that most programs won't cut me right off the bat. Or at least I hope so... EDIT: Then again, I may have bombed the writing section. I felt confident about my essays, but ETS is notorious for weirdly grading that portion of the test!

Yep, that's an excellent book! I bought it a while ago and have browsed through a few sections, and I'm not even a graduate student...

He is--he's one of the nicest, most reliable people on these boards. He gives excellent advice.

Haha yes! Whenever anyone mentions criticisms of cultural theory, I always think back to that novel-- reading cereal boxes, requiring professors to spout off random dates in pop cultural history, etc...

Haha I know! I'm a lit person, but I check these fora frequently. There's like dead silence here 90% of the time.

Ditto. My school mostly churns out nurses, engineers, and education majors...with all the other majors maybe comprising 10% total of the student body.

Hahaha this is great, Trip. Thanks for posting!

Thankfully, most of those people don't get accepted to graduate school (at least, I'd hope so, with how competitive the whole process is!).

Yeah, I've heard great things about the book. And Berlant's just so goddamn cool. I have to read it for that reason alone. Exactly! I've heard the same things, both from several users on this site as well as from some professors that I trust very much. So I'm definitely sticking with both a historical period and a theoretical focus. Rupert Pupkin, thank you for your kind words! It's nice to know that I'm getting closer to articulating my interests more clearly. I feel like I've said on these fora that I want to study just about every subfield under the sun (there's ample evidence in a lot of my older posts that I didn't know what the hell I was talking about as well, not that I know what the hell I'm talking about now, haha). It's a major encouragement that you feel like I'm asking the right questions/inquiries. I've had kind of a rough week with coursework and such, and these encouraging words really help. So again, thanks a bunch! It's also nice to have the support of you, TripWillis, and others in regards to the upcoming application season. I hope not to disappoint you all come next fall! I'm nervous and excited in equal measures, but aren't we all? Thanks for the recommendation! I'll have to check him out. EDIT: I've actually just put a loan request in for his edited volume, Knowledges: Historical and Critical Studies in Disciplinarity. That is like, exactly what I was looking for, lol. So many thanks!

+1 As far as the article is concerned, the author knows far less than most any user on this site does about academe and the mysterious entity, the "real world," that people love to put into scare quotes. She's a moron.

I'd totally out of the current critical conversation loop, so to speak, but in my relatively uniformed opinion, I'd say affect theory, queer theory, disability studies, and the like are still pretty popular right now. Lauren Berlant's a big name in the former field; she just wrote a new book, Cruel Optimism, that sits patiently on my shelf, waiting to be read. So I guess you could say that those fields are offshoots of cultural studies. While I find cultural studies interesting and intellectually worthwhile fields of study, I don't want to specialize in those things at all--which I'll get to in a sec. I've been catching glimpses of such a phenomena here and there and have been thinking similarly about these things. I would by no means call the stuff I'd like to do formalism, but it's certainly not cultural studies either. If there really is such a new formalist movement, I'd wager that it'll be a movement that differs drastically from original formalistic approaches, one that appropriates some of the more salient critical material from poststructuralist/postmodernist methodologies. The latter movement was highly influential, and they had a lot of great ideas. But let's face it: there's a lot of bullshit in there, too. So hopefully any new movement can build upon the valuable contributions of those approaches without bringing up the old excesses. I suppose that's what's happened with some of the theoretical movements I mentioned above (but as I'm outside of these subfields, I cannot say for certain: perhaps others can chime in?). At a conference, a student asked me a question about whether I agreed with his professor's opinion that 9/11 crucially changed the theoretical landscape as we know it. I said that I wasn't the best person to ask about such things, but that I could definitely see how such could be the case. Anyways, I don't know whether I'm ahead of the times (highly doubtful) or simply misinformed/misguided (highly likely), but I'm having a hell of a lot of trouble finding departments that seem to fit the kind of theoretical work I want to do. UCLA has their Experimental Critical Theory Certificate thing, but other than that, I'm quite clueless. I want to study meta-theory, exploring the commonalities and presuppositions that inform the prospect of theory itself, tying this into concerns with disciplinarity/interdisciplinarity in contemporary discourse. In this sense "meta-theory" isn't some wholly different level apart from theory, but more like an extension of theorizing, theorizing about theorizing and methodology in literary study. I also want to study 20th century British literature. Maybe these are disparate, irreconcilable interests. I don't know. Blah.

Of course. My disinterest in creative writing as an act in itself is not causative of my dislike of creative writing programs (or my school's creative writing program), or the obverse. I can't really say why I no longer write creatively, probably because I never was really good at it and it was just a coping mechanism for me, haha. I think my school's creative writing program blows, but of course it's not indicative of creative writing programs across the nation. Hence why I characterized this as an "undue" dislike of creative writing programs. That's a pretty harsh characterization. The "hell no" reaction was because I'm not interested in pursuing creative writing anymore whatsoever. And of course it has nothing to do with the bad creative writing program at my school; I don't see how you inferred that from my post?

This is a troll post and probably isn't worth responding to, but alas... If by "author" you mean "creative writer," then my answer is an absolute "hell no." I have a (probably undue) dislike of creative writing programs, likely because the creative writers at my university are, for the most part, goddamn awful. More power to those who want to pursue it, but creative writing isn't my thing at all. Creative writing was a major part of my life from childhood until maybe 2 years ago, but I have no desire to write creatively anymore. So, at least for me, the whole stereotype of literature professors being failed writers or music critics being failed musicians doesn't apply. I want to pursue a Ph.D. in English because I love the field and have many theoretical questions I'd like to answer or get closer to answering. Also, I love Beckett to death, and I want to study him and other 20th century British authors. I'm primarily interested in research, though I think I'd really like teaching as well.

Yep, I have one of these. Top 75 schools with location information, writing sample/SOP/Lit GRE requirements, professors of interest, cost of living, average financial aid, teaching requirements, foreign language requirements, average time to degree, etc. Mine is still in progress. It's kinda tedious filling it out, but it's pretty fun and exciting as well! This. I registered like two weeks ago, wanting to take the General GRE towards the end of May. At my preferred testing location, the only days available were May 1-3...and then July 19th. So yeah, definitely register as soon as possible. I'm taking mine the 3rd, two weeks away, blah! I haven't started studying yet. Just waiting until this semester ends...

That's such a neat, interesting comment. Now I want to go to CUNY too so I can meet all the cool people they bring there (Spivak, Butler, etc). Everyone, I'm totally going to submit a paper to the Homonationalism conference that CUNY's hosting next year. It probably won't be accepted, but I'm certainly going to try anyways. So...maybe I'll see some of you there?

This made me smile. Seriously though, this conference is definitely up my alley. I'd like to attend (as an audience member, of course!). I could probably take a bus or something. Hm...

Thanks, Trip, I really appreciate it!

"Undergraduate submissions are also encouraged." I'm even more interested now. I might just have to submit something!