Two Espressos

It's interesting that you called it "progressive" of your parents to start your education in the language of the colonial opressor before teaching you the languages indigenous to your land.
 
Edit: this is just an observation that I literally find "interesting." The view of progressive in India is basically the inverse of what is considered progressive in Catalonia, the Basque country, Galicia and South America, which is what I've been studying. Enough with the downvotes. 

I hear you don't even have to go.

/end profession.
 
If Paradise Lost can't be deemed superior to anything else other than in the context of empire and ideological control, we've lost the plot.

Damnit, I accidentally down voted you when I meant to upvote. I blame the canon.

How do you determine what works you study? Whatever you happen to stumble upon? If we've entered a "post-medium condition," why not read your grandpa farting as a "text"? 

But an "aesthetic worth valuation system" is necessary to determine what works are used in the more interesting pursuits. If not, we enter a nihilistic abyss. Aesthetic value is irrelevant in choosing the african-american and queer works you study? Why do you study them then? 
 
Two Espressos isn't saying our entire project should be to categorize and rank works based on aesthetic value. I believe he's saying, as literary scholars, aesthetic value should play a role in determining which works we choose to study; otherwise, we just become second-rate social scientists. 
 
ETA: This was in response to Trip Willis.

The Atlantic data is showing how the employment situation is at graduation, which doesn't really reflect the job situation for PhDs. Some people may be lucky enough to actually have work lined up right after graduation, but 30% needing a couple of months to find a job doesn't mean the job isn't there, especially since a lot of that depends on how soon a person starts looking for work and whether they start well before graduation or not.

Take the money and run.

Just got accepted to Penn State's MA from the waitlist. If you go to Penn Stare or an MA, do they pretty much expect you to get your PhD there? I know they have a high percentage of MA's continuing, but is this a free will arrangement? Or will I be tied down and force fed my PhD?

It's almost like an Easter egg, hidden in the rankings to tip people off that they're bullshit.

YES! I really, really hope that you get accepted. Let's launch an elaborate plan to sabotage everyone else at the Open House! 
 
...Well, OK, that would be really shitty of us (and you don't need to fight dirty anyway), but I'm pulling for you. Waitlisterz 4 lyfe!

I have a different question about these rankings. I noticed that Bryn Mawr College is ranked #59 in US English PhD programs, above schools like SUNY Binghamton and George Washington, for example. Does Bryn Mawr even have an English PhD program? I can't find it on their website. In the ranked list of English PhD programs, shouldn't universities that HAVE English PhD programs be ranked higher than those that don't?

True, but these rankings are for programs in 2013, not 1980.

I haven't accused the OP of lying or seen anyone else do that; Most of us have no knowledge of any of this so we can't speak to what did or did not happen. If this person had come here honestly and made a thread that explained some of the problems with the program, we would have had a completely different reaction. But the OP created a thread in which they offered to "answer questions" about Emory, and then proceeded to make more than a dozen separate posts, each of which reads like a Page Six blind item. The second account is suspicious. It is just so bizarre and wildly unprofessional that I cannot take it seriously.

Congrats, Datatape! 

So, what I hear you saying is that you are from the future, and this comp/rhet professor who is also an ASL translator for Obama is actually me in six years. Cool. Very cool.
 
(No, seriously. That professor is living the dream! The Dream, I tell you!)

I just checked Georgia State's website and finally have another acceptance to my name.  It's beyond thrilling to know I have a choice and that it wasn't just a fluke I got into one program.  No official word on funding yet, though.

Yeah, these new rankings are boring and poorly designed: averaging scores from two time periods was a terrible idea, and they definitely could tweak the way they solicit participants.  I don't feel like these rankings accurately reflect the sense of the discipline as a whole; for example, why is Yale listed as one of the best programs for literary criticism and theory?  Who on here, when asked about top programs for theoretical work, honestly thinks, "Ooh, Yale!"?  I'd like to see an English academic create a separate system, perhaps like Brain Leiter's rankings for philosophy.
 
Unlike others on here, I do think that rankings, while to a degree subjective, possess some value and shouldn't be disregarded entirely.  But these U.S. News and Word Report ones are just shitty.

Maybe their fellowship package comes with a time machine to the early 1980s.

Yeah, these new rankings are boring and poorly designed: averaging scores from two time periods was a terrible idea, and they definitely could tweak the way they solicit participants.  I don't feel like these rankings accurately reflect the sense of the discipline as a whole; for example, why is Yale listed as one of the best programs for literary criticism and theory?  Who on here, when asked about top programs for theoretical work, honestly thinks, "Ooh, Yale!"?  I'd like to see an English academic create a separate system, perhaps like Brain Leiter's rankings for philosophy.
 
Unlike others on here, I do think that rankings, while to a degree subjective, possess some value and shouldn't be disregarded entirely.  But these U.S. News and Word Report ones are just shitty.

Congrats!!!
 
 
Haha, right? I also love how "shocked" some folks are to be rejected from a school that rejects like 98% of applicants. Get over yourself.

Looks like NYU finally sent out rejections.  But goddamn, the "Butler-and-Foucault-spouting dipshits" post was lame.  There's nothing more pathetic than a self-loathing humanities student.

Looks like NYU finally sent out rejections.  But goddamn, the "Butler-and-Foucault-spouting dipshits" post was lame.  There's nothing more pathetic than a self-loathing humanities student.

Looks like NYU finally sent out rejections.  But goddamn, the "Butler-and-Foucault-spouting dipshits" post was lame.  There's nothing more pathetic than a self-loathing humanities student.