Jeppe
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Posts posted by Jeppe
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NYU!
in 2011 Archive
Brooklyn (Williamsburg,etc), Queens (Astoria), and Upper East Side (below Harlem) are more affordable and popular with grad students. The East Village is ideal but a bit pricey. Manhattan apt hunting is an art so I recommend doing lots of research before you make any moves. Student housing may not always be the cheapest option but it is probably the easiest.
I'll second all of this. In Brooklyn, Williamsburg is popular and still somewhat affordable. In Queens, Astoria is great and Forest Hills is good and cheap, although a bit far away.
Be aware that the housing market has turned again, and it's become even harder than in the last couple of years to get a place. That said, I spent the last two weeks apartment hunting in Manhattan and ended up with a decent place on the Upper East Side, so it's certainly doable!
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NYU!
in 2011 Archive
Hello fellow NYUers!
I'm going for a PhD in History. I'm already living in Brooklyn, but since I'll be moving in with my girlfriend over the summer, I'm also getting ready for some intensive apartment hunting. Good luck everyone!
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Just taken off the waitlist at Michigan. As that was my only prospect I am pretty ECSTATIC about the decision.
Congratulations, that sounds great!
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we are at the end of the cultural turn. and sports history/the history of sport is an incredibly well developed field. CLR james' book about cricket said more about the caribbean than almost any other, and it was written decades ago.
That's really in the eye of the beholder though, isn't it? And at the very least, it depends on fields and subfields. You're probably right about sport history though.
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The problem is that this subject matter has been covered pretty heavily in the past (what hasn't though?), and I'm not sure how great of a research focus it would make, for that reason. Obviously I need to do more research myself in this area to figure out how tired this ground really is, but I thought there might be people on this site that already have a good notion of it. I'm also interested in the concept of a German Diaspora across the Baltic Region via Hanse trading activities, and at looking at the entire Baltic region as a unit, similar to what's been done with the Mediterranean in the past thirty or forty years.
I have quite a number of other potential topics, mostly in the early modern period, but this one is my favorite, and I'm wondering how viable the general premise sounds. Obviously my actual research or dissertation would be focused far more narrowly on some sub-set within this (Let's say the role of resident German merchants in transforming religious life in Riga, Latvia in the 16th century, off the top of my head), but getting a sense for whether this subject matter is acceptable or not would be helpful at this point. I haven't done research for very many schools yet (over the summer I shall be getting more involved in all of this), but my top choice, Carnegie Mellon, has 2 professors whose research interests fit very well (early modern and modern Germany) and a couple others whose research interests overlap a bit, or can be brought to bear on the subject matter.
It sounds like a perfectly viable subject area, but I think you're on to something particularly interesting in your more regional approach and focus on diasporas and trade networks. If you go this route, you would be able to tie it together with some very recent studies on social networks in the early modern period (see for example Francesca Trivellato's The Familiarity of Strangers, about the Sephardic diaspora in Livorno and beyond), and it would resonate with current trends theoretically, if not as much geographically. That isn't to say that there are no people in the US working on Hanseatic history, but it is arguably a pretty narrow field these days.
Also, as a minor nitpick, Braudel's magisterial work on the Mediterranean came out more than 60 years ago (1949), so the regional unit analysis of Southern Europe is hardly new
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Jeppe,
What did you think about the departmental atmosphere? Did students seem happy? I haven't heard great things about grad students quality of life at NYU, and since I didn't attend the weekend was wondering what you thought about it.
Hi Barricades,
I had heard a few of the bad rumors about NYU previously, but my impression at the weekend was very positive. The students didn't seem any less happy than the students at other graduate departments I've been at, and I think that the new financial aid package has done a lot to alleviate some of the previous sore points. There is no longer any required teaching, but students are generally expected to TA for at least a year, with the possibility of 'banking' their earnings towards a sixth year of funded study.
I also think that a lot of the bad rep comes from the way the graduate school handles the application process from an administrative angle, which doesn't seem to be reflected in the daily life of current students.
All in all I was very happy with what I saw of the department and the faculty, and I didn't have any negative encounters. I've also been to a few events following the weekend (in the Atlantic Workshop and elsewhere), and they have all been pleasant. There definitely seems to be a less formal atmosphere than at Princeton, and the barrier between students and faculty seems less insurmountable, to compare it with at least one of your other choices.
If you want any other details (about advisers or something else), feel free to PM me and I'll see if I can answer.
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Here's a suggestion: be extremely selective about the courses you take. If the course offerings don't jive well with your research interests, enroll in independent reading courses instead. This is especially important if the professors you want to work with aren't teaching graduate classes. The coursework phase isn't so much about absorbing new material, it's about making good faculty connections.
I would certainly agree with this, but also add that the first two years of coursework is one way for you to get at least somewhat proficient in material that you can potentially teach. Even if a reading course in Early American History might not relate to your dissertation project, it might very well benefit you if you plan to market yourself as someone who can teach undergraduate courses in that area later. Just a thought.
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I accepted an offer from NYU the same day I got it. It was a pretty easy decision, as I basically had two schools at the top of my list, and the other one had rejected me the week before. After the prospective students weekend at NYU I felt very confident that it would be the best fit in terms of faculty strengths and general research interests. I work on early modern imperial history in the Atlantic, with a focus on legal and political issues, and I don't think that there are many places out there that do this as well as NYU, especially considering that Lauren Benton's work has been a key influence on the contours of my own project.
Geography also played a key part of it, since my girlfriend who I live with will be in NYC to finish her degree for the next year and a half.
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Great topic and discussion!
As an interesting aside, the Skeptoid podcast had an episode on so-called speed reading courses. Entertaining reading, especially if you feel bad about your own reading speed. http://skeptoid.com/mobile/4229
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My experience doing an interdisciplinary MA was that there was a pretty big difference between departments, and I'm sure this is also the case between universities.
In our history department, we had two basic type of graduate seminars - Reading seminars and Research seminars.
In a reading seminar we would read between one and three books a week, write either six 3-page response papers or weekly 1-2 page reviews on the readings, and then produce a 20-25 page historiographical paper at the end of the seminar.
In a research seminar we would read about one book a week, and produce a longer (25+ pages) research paper based on primary sources. The format was much like the 300-level UG seminars you describe, with the readings stopping about 2/3 or 3/4 in and being replaced by student presentations of their final research papers.
I think the requirement for doctoral students is that they do at least three research seminars, and the advice people get is to not take more than one per semester.
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Actually, in most top programs you'll have no more than two semesters as TA (even if you are supposed to do more than that according to the priginal offer) as usually the 4th year you research abroad with external funding. That's the case at Yale, for instance, and the placement has hardly been a problem for ther alumni recently.
The standard for most Yale grad students is to teach two years. Just saying.
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Has anyone heard from NYU or Rutgers?
Congrats everybody! I am so excited for you all!
I (and several other people) have heard from NYU a week or two ago.
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I'm still waiting for my rejection from Columbia, but I've already accepted an offer from NYU, so I feel so much better now than two weeks ago.
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Maybe they are worried you are "too close" to your subject. They don't want you to go all Edward Said on them.
I'm guessing this is a joke, but for what it's worth both of the two professors of Native American history at Yale are Native Americans themselves. I don't really know Alyssa Mt. Pleasant, but Ned Blackhawk is a truly amazing professor, and comes highly recommended for anyone going to or considering Yale.
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Wrote my undergrad thesis on the development of the British Boy Scouts in relation to the colonies in Africa and South Asia. I applied mostly to the African field with a secondary interest in Britain/British Caribbean, though for some departments I applied to do Atlantic World. Certain programs peg Atlantic World as just 15th-18th C, which wouldn't work for me.
Interesting topic! Just out of curiosity, which program did you apply for at NYU?
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Somewhat related, does anyone have any experience with learning to read Dutch on their own? There does not seem to be a whole lot of Dutch courses around in the US.
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I'm waiting on likely rejections from Chicago and Columbia, as well as a decision from NYU (for which I'm crossing my fingers, toes, and anything else that can be crossed!)
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Harvard rejection in the snail mail today
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Just got into Michigan! Got a personal e-mail from Derek Peterson. In the email he said the Graduate Admissions Committee had a meeting this afternoon.
Congratulations
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Columbia is definitely done. Email from PA yesterday, who had been incredibly positive about my chances before (see ). Apparently, the Jewish history field got majorly screwed for the second year running, and had no admits for any of the 4 professors. I was told that my file was first ranked for the entire subfield-- which doesn't make this hurt any less. More, maybe, since it really wasn't about me and was instead about politics. Will most likely now need to move away from my husband, who is in a graduate program in NY for at least the next year. Ugh.
I'm sorry to hear that, History Hopeful. There's nothing worse than departmental politics getting in the way of an otherwise clear admission!
NYU!
in 2011 Archive
Posted
It depends entirely on where on the UES you are. If you're relatively close to one of the express subway stops (86 St and Lex or 59 St and Lex), you can get there in about half an hour. Otherwise I'd say from 40 to 50 minutes depending on location.