vordhosbntwin

my affiliation is pretty similar, and i was told by my FPA that it was a strong affiliation. however, my proposal is for philosophy...

fyi, here's a message from my FP: "I’ve heard later this month from the program director. I believe the 31st is the official date, but it could be a few days earlier. "

well, at this point, it seems that both of the program managers for europe and eurasia have said that there isn't a specific date (e.g. January 31st). i contacted my FPA this evening and expect her to reply later tonight or in the morning. it would be strange if the FPAs were told January 31st while at the same time the program managers themselves are saying that there is no specific date!

she specified that it was all programs and her exact words were first "sooner rather than later" and then, "we want to get them out as soon as possible." she was also incredibly nice and genuinely interested in giving me this information. when i first called i got her voicemail, but she called me back within 45 minutes, giving me the above information.

that seems strange. when i talked to cara doble on the phone, she confirmed that decisions for all programs had been made and that they actually needed to get notifications out as soon as possible. the 31st seems kind of late, historically.

hello, i'm a german research applicant, and i just wanted to let you guys know that i talked to cara doble, one of the program managers, about 15 minutes ago. she said that first round decisions had been made and that the email will actually go out any day between NOW and the end of the month. so: it could be tomorrow, or it could be the last day of january, but she did say that it will likely be sooner rather than later.

for anyone applying to brown: i emailed and they said that a 20 pg sample was fine.

hi folks, so brown's comp lit program is asking for no more than ten pages, which seems ridiculous to me. i will have applied to 15 programs come january 10th, and brown's is the only program that has asked for so few pages; their english program, on the other hand, asks for the standard 20 or so pages. my question is this: would it be a terrible idea to just submit a twenty page writing sample? most of the work i have that is under ten pages is fine, but it isn't very compelling, i.e., they're short analytic pieces that use a few articles, but not much theory, which is my research area now. if anyone could advise, i would appreciate it.

hm, i called and my scores still aren't available :-/....

sorry, i had an email exchange with the head of the comp lit program, pericles lewis, who said that that dept accepts '2-3% of applicants.' i mixed up the percentile with number. anyway, i wasn't referring to the yale english program, but to the comp lit program, which is probably closer in spirit to the duke lit program.

here's a nice little quip from adorno for all of the hegel-haters: "He who entrusts himself to Hegel will be led to the threshold at which a decision must be made about Hegel's claim to truth. He becomes Hegel's critic by following him. From the point of view of understanding, the incomprehensible in Hegel is the scar left by identity-thinking. Hegel's dialectical philosophy gets into a dialectic it cannot account for and whose solution is beyond its omnipotence. Within the system, and in terms of the laws of the system, the truth of the nonidentical manifests itself as error, as unresolved, in the other sense of being unmastered, as the untruth of the system; and nothing that is untrue can be understood. Thus the incomprehensible explodes the system" (Drei Studien zu Hegel).

yeah, a place like yale is p. low, at 2-3.

have you guys looked at the average GRE scores for the Lit. dept. for the past 4-5 years? it's very reassuring... http://gradschool.duke.edu/about/statistics/admitlit.htm V:624 Q: 536. I can dig.

already submitted :-)

i think it's pretty common to just read 'culture industry' from DOE, so you could do that. but concept of enlightenment and the excursus on the odyssey are also good chapters.

if you want a Heidegger reader, i think "Basic Writings" is the standard these days. it's what i use, anyway. i haven't seen it recommended yet, but adorno and horkheimer's dialectic of enlightenment is a classic critique of technologization in modernity. adorno's anti-heidegger, so it may be good counterpoint to the existentialist critique of technology you're likely to find in heidegger's work. if you want something a bit more overtly political, michael hardt and antonio negri's empire trilogy is quite good and accessible. they discuss the positive and negative aspects of the proliferation of technology in globalization, or what they call empire. they're both readers of agamben.

anyone interested in doing a last-minute swap? i would be willing to just read or to do a thorough critique. my statement is geared towards programs emphasizing marx, 19th-20th century continental philosophy, and modernism. i'm particularly interested in theodor adorno's late work, benjamin's work on allegory, and the development of dialectical criticisms. my most recent research has been on the german allergy to structuralism and an analysis of deconstruction as a response to various 'negative dialectics.' top three schools: duke, upenn, johns hopkins. i'm a senior at elon university. thx, js

Bernard Stiegler on technics is good, but dense. He's a Derridean, and this work is reflective of that. As for Jameson, I'm actually taking a class with him at Duke right now, and he's had us read his Valences, which is excellent and relevant to what you're up to. The course is called "Aesthetics, Structuralism, and Dialectics," and he also has us reading some Foucault and Deleuze (as two anti-dialectical thinkers). For Foucault, we've read all of The Order of Things, and for Deleuze, we've read bits of his work on film, focusing specifically on his montage article. If you decide to go the Stiegler route, an engagement with the dialectical/anti-dialectical debate could be especially fruitful, and therefore it might be worth considering Foucault's OoT. If you don't have any Hegel, I would maybe read "Sense-Certainty" in the Phenomenology. Jameson himself is about as dialectical as they come, if a bit vulgarly materialist.

I'm currently doing grad work at Duke, and I would say that it's a place for that. For what it's worth - Fredric Jameson has a huge presence in the program, and I have him as a professor right now.