JustAnotherModernGuy

A long time ago I said that UPenn had the best CFP website, but the more I used it the less I liked it. So I built a better CFP website: CFPlist.com Check it out! JAMG

Hi All, We just launched a new CFP website with our unique mapping and calendar tools. Easily find CFPs across the nation or the globe, from a Deaf Cinema Panel in Hong Kong to a Media Studies Panel in Ghana. Want to get away the last weekend of March—see which conferences are running where! www.cfplist.com Here's my question...how can we make this site even better and more user friendly? What user needs have we overlooked? Feedback is always appreciated. All the best, JAMG

Click below for info: And/or feel free to contact me. Best, JAMG

Here is the "conversion chart" at the bottom of my transcripts from Sussex: "100% to 70%" assessment grade = US letter grade "A" = "I" degree classification = Pass "69% to 60%" assessment grade = US letter grade "A- to B+" = "IIi" degree classification = Pass "59% to 50%" assessment grade = US letter grade "B to B-" = "IIii" degree classification = Pass "49% to 40%" assessment grade = US letter grade "C+ to C" = "III" degree classification = Pass "39% to 30%" assessment grade = US letter grade "D" = "PASS" degree classification "29% to 0%" assessment grade = US letter grade "F" = "FAIL" degree classification I hope this helps with the conversation! Best, JAMG

Hello Plasticastle, UPenn does indeed have the best CFP (call for papers) website—it’s a great place to start. While this hasn't been officially released yet, University of Rhode Island will have its fourth annual graduate student conference on April 24, 2010. The conference is “Carried Across: Translations, Temporalities, and Trajectories.” If you decide to come, do consider contacting Kathleen Davis--our wonderful medievalist (formerly teaching at Princeton)--to try to meet her in person when you come. You'd also be rather close to Storrs CT (which, I've heard, has a strong program for medievalists as well). Look for the URI CFP to be posted shortly. Best, JAMG

This definitely requires some planning ahead and/or some good acting skills. Here's your plan: First, get organized. How many transcripts do you need? Can they be sent directly to you (and then included in your application packets) or are you applying to some schools that demand transcript be sent directly? Organize and record this information. Get addresses for any

I have a different take on this than other people. I think most people say: step #1 find the schools that interest you, step #2 research the faculty at the school, step #3 revise the list of schools as needed. I disagree. You need to start with the faculty members and then look at the schools. Here

While it's too late for your current round of applications, I might have some long term advice if you find yourself needing to reapply. You might consider auditing a graduate seminar in the fall of 2010 at college near you (preferably one that you'll be applying to). The benefits are numerous: earning a new transcript that illustrates your current dedication, getting quickly caught up on the developments in your field (if you're rusty), finding a new potential (and current) Prof as a possible LoR writer, and constructing a graduate seminar paper that might function as a writing sample. Lastly, if your transcripts currently read "good-->bad" why not change them to read "good-->bad-->good"? I think that "2 out of 3" sounds better than only "50%"--right? This might also change people

Glasses, Yes--this is an excellent point and one I'm currently learning. Previously I would dogmatically claim that "Book history sucks--I want to interpret literature, not claim to do empirical analysis on the history of the book-object." I'm now taking a course which is very concerned with reader response and book history. By the end of the term, particularly after presenting on William St. Clair's The Reading Nation, I'm sure I'll have a much more intellectually rigorous reason to support my initial gut reaction. I will be better prepared if/when I give a paper on V Woolf/J Rhys/whoever and some book historian asks, "V Woolf/J Rhys/whoever really wasn't read that much and thus could not have had a significant effect on X; why aren't you working on author Z, whose texts were circulating at a rate of 150:1 to the one you discuss?" The New Historicists, frustrated by their New Critical teachers, learned of the limitations of a strict formalist approach to literature. The New Formalists, frustrated by their New Historian teachers, are starting to see their teachers' limitations too. Why not learn the specific limitations of the people you are skeptical about? This might help you argue against (or reform) their projects.

Let me hand you a virtual megaphone for your soapbox by saying "HEAR, HEAR!" Lotf629--Thanks! I'm glad you found my post worthwhile enough to warrant a cross-reference. Since that post I finally found time to read Ellen Rooney's "Form and Contentment" (MLQ March 200; 61:1 pages 17-40), which I highly recommend. A very convincing article which argues (among other things) that "the loss of form threatens both literary and cultural studies, not only at the level of methodology, where reading become impossible without it, but also at the level of disciplinarily or (in the case of a cultural studies that resists the merely disciplinary) at the level of intellectual specificity and political coherence" (Rooney 20). Rooney states that "the extinction of an entire range of modes of formal analysis has eroded our ability to read every genre of text--literary texts, nonliterary texts, aural and visual texts, and the social text itself" (italics hers 26). She also warns against a knee-jerk return to Formalism (which I myself might be prone to). Ultimately Rooney suggests that we will probably need to reassess our current models of "reading" and "textuality" in order to move ahead in both literary and cultural studies. Perhaps it's time to go back to Hayden White and see what is the baby and what is the bathwater?

I do not recall (from any of my recent 19 PhD program applications or any conversation with various professors) ever being asked

Does this mean you are suggesting, between those illegal immigrants and the corporate censorship, we really shouldn't bother with this activity of reading? I

I guess "cold" and "extremely cold" are rather subjective opinions, so let's first talk objective measurements. I am almost entirely sure that your first statistic is rather off--here's a rather reliable website (http://www.weather.com/outlook/events/s ... undeclared ) (click on "Metric" option to convert) that suggests the coldest month (January) in Providence, RI has an "average high" temperature of 37? F (or 3? C) and an "average low" temperature of 20? F (or -7? C). When you find the chart you can also activate the record highs and record lows. It seems that the record low is actually -17? F (or -27? C); it was in February (though not while I've been living here). Perhaps sometime, somewhere in Rhode Island someone once held a thermometer reading -31? F (or -35? C), but this certainly isn't the average winter temperature. Originally from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, I don't find the winters too particularly cold here. The cold, however, is a rather humid cold (which takes a while to shake off when you come inside); the skies will be dreadfully grey for months on end, but as we're rather close to water we actually don't get that much snow fall. Occasionally there is a nasty ice-storm, but so far I certainly wouldn't label the winters horrible.

A while back I added The Longest Journey (as well as Where Angels Fear to Tread) to my reading list and ordered copies. While the books have yet to come, in the meantime I've finished A Room with a View and also Howards End. I really enjoyed the narrative structure of A Room with a View, particularly the jump between part one and part two of the novel with the missing gap of Charlotte and Lucy's travels in Rome (and the original proposals for marriage in Rome). I laughed quite loudly when I came to the lines (in part two of the novel) which reads "Cecil entered. Appearing thus late in the story, Cecil must be at once described" (Forster 81). Piecing together "what happened" in Rome was quite intriguing, particularly with the help of Forster's playful narrator (who, only a few pages later, quickly dismisses a minor character on a few different levels: "Sir Harry Otway--who need not be described--came to the carriage..."). This Rome gap reminds me of the gap in "Time Passes" in Woolf's To The Lighthouse and the confusion over the Marabar cave incident in his A Passage to India (which I'll start rereading soon). I seem to find that Forster usually has a good reason for his peculiar way of telling a story (ultimately Cecil and Rome are not as important as George and Florence to Lucy), sometimes questioning perspective and priorities (perhaps Cecil is as trivial as Sir Harry Otway, but one certainly needs to describe Cecil to properly tell Lucy

Ordering a coffee at my favorite local coffee shop (see my links in Providence City Guide) I noticed a new sign sitting next to the cash register. It read something like,