Ballardesque

I was going to suggest UC Berkeley's Rhetoric dept, because the first of two required undergrad seminars is pretty much what you described--lots of Greeks and Romans (lots of them). But I'm not sure they do much of that at the graduate level. My impression (I was an English major at Cal who had a foot in the water at Rhetoric and Anthropology) is that they focus more on abstract philosophy--post-structuralism/post-modernism--at the graduate level (which is the focus of the second of those undergrad seminars). It's worth a look, however. Otherwise, have you thought about Classics or European History?

Excellent. I'm curious how you perceive the utility of the degree, in terms of opening doors to the next phase of your academic endeavors. While the program looks a perfect fit for my interests, for the money, it really needs to operate in this way for me, creating opportunities in what increasingly looks like the new normal in an MA being yet another qualification for entry into a PhD.

Ah, heterotopias... Have you read de Certeau? He has a pretty novel approach to occupied space and power manipulation as a response to both Foucault and Bourdieu, although there's a lot to disagree with, imo.

That sounds great. Draper really looks good to me for similar reasons--what appears to be a good mix of independence and structure I would have expected anyway. I did my undergrad at UCB, and had the opportunity to move between English, Rhetoric, Anthro, Linguistics, etc., and that really worked for me, although the global nature of my interests I think is going to make a PhD in 'English' a harder fit. Either way, thanks for the info and the support. I wish I had you guys as a resource during my first round of applications.

Thanks a lot. That confirms a lot of my own suspicions. I was wondering what your sense of how doing an interdisciplinary MA is going to propel you to the next level?

Thanks for the reply. I would only add that, from what I can tell by looking at class schedules past and present, actual NYU faculty from a variety of different departments are involved (one class available this Spring is being taught by Avital Ronell). Students are also allowed to take half their units outside the program. In a lot of ways it really looks like an MA version of Stanford's MTL program, which is currently at the top of my list, next round.

Hey all, I'm new to the forum, and, having done a little wandering around the English thread, I joined in the hopes that someone out there could help with some information. I was rejected by NYU's English PhD program about a month ago, and last week I received an invitation to apply to the Draper Program--what appears to be a pretty interesting interdisciplinary/humanities thing at NYU. (From what little I could gather, last round applicants who are ultimately rejected have their info forwarded to Draper). It's actually a bit eerie how accurately they assessed my potential interest in the program, based on my SOP (I'm into social theory and science studies, within the rubric of literature). I'm interested, but I live in California, and moving out to NYC would represent a significant effort to do an expensive MA, preparatory to reapplying (all my app's were rejected this year, like a lot of other people's). I could shoulder the debt, and my wife is a native New Yorker, but I don't want to go unless it can serve the dual purpose of acting as a form of entree once I start looking at PhD's again. My ultimate question is then a request for information regarding the program. I'm aware of the rhetoric surrounding interdisciplinary degrees and the sense that they exist solely to create revenue for universities; it's primarily why I'm asking for info specific to the program, rather than just the obvious criticism of institutional greed. Has anyone here gone through Draper, or known someone who has? Or, perhaps, does anyone know what the upward mobility of past students is like, and where they end up? My own interests are primarily theoretical, and something like this could provide me with a good footing in the direction I started going in during my upper divisions. But it has to provide an equal amount of utility for the chaos it would put my family through. Thanks for any help.