marruma

Does anyone lie awake at night and think about admissions committees as selfless human beings acting under the worst possible conditions? Or, wonder if they sometimes say to themselves, yes I love this applicant and his/her perspective but we just don't have the resources to accommodate fairly. So, it’s like an although they want you, they can’t have you kind of deal. Or, I sometimes wonder if they are really just accepting people to join their ‘family’. Anyway, my point is that I feel so alienated from this whole process that I've resorted to imaginative escapes. (I should have filed this under the creative writing post, but I haven't read that thread yet.)

Yes, Columbia is competitive and "they pretty much reject everyone." I spoke to Muhsin al-Musawi about my research proposal--he liked it but then added "I wonder how you will do in the admissions process." Also, judging by the current dissertation topics listed on the website, many students are involved in pre-modern case studies of historical events. On the other hand, those dissertations conjoined with the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society are contemporary and theoretical in approach, generally.

Hey, My research interests lie in critical and postcolonial theory (Spivak, Derrida, Said) anchored in the modern Arabic novel (esp. Hoda Barakat, Elias Khoury and Idwar al-Kharrat). I am especially interested in the decolonization of aesthetics and global narratives. I applied to MESAAS at Columbia and MTL at Stanford. Columbia is my first choice though, anyone else apply? If so, what's your 'sense' of the department (now that pressure is low with applications out and attempts to regain composure by reconsidering EVERYTHING is high; seems like the best time to comment)? Good luck to all; come april, I am sure you will be rejecting departments as well--it works both ways.

@vordhosbntwin, you are a star!

Right, but then one can argue that a formalist-linguistic reading is distant reading; used to track language, words, letters. For example, in the article he isolates the "chiasmic pattern" between b and p, which is definitely a technique in distant reading. So, if these are remarkably similar, what is the basis of his argument? That one should come first, namely distant reading must follow close reading? Doesn't this then also establish a hierarchy between the different approaches and a kind of 'value judgment'? I admire your close reading and you have really stayed close to the argument.

I am a bit disappointed in his neutral and stale argument, which upon first reading does seem polemical and controversial (though indeed reductive to the digital humanities field--especially in his characterization of digital data collection as the 'reverse' of non-digital literary analysis; how's that for black-and-white myopia). But, he repeats the argument that contextualized readings must coincide with distant readings. Or, humans can work alongside machines--which is ultimately a fair argument to make, that the one should not replace the other and are in fact co-dependent. Although, his reading of Milton is original and innovative (or is it?); and is possible because of the rising significance of distant reading, which prompts my second, more distant reading of the article, which is that he's not really deadset against digital humanities as he would have us believe because of the fact that what he considers an original reading of "Areopagitica" draws from formalist analysis coupled with "matters of statistical frequency and pattern." In other words, he has reaped the harvest of distant reading! Essentially in his repetition of an argument already made in the digital humanities and long-standing (though substantially unacknowledged and marginalized by his efforts on ephemeralizing digital scholarship), he poses as a critic who stands outside the field, and by extension is 'more qualified' to criticize. Which is of course, problematic. Great article though!

Dreamed that I had access to my file. Only one comment received on my writing sample, which read "hahahahhaha, NO!" Then, I discovered the list of accepted students, all of whom were graduates from the college I so urgently-had-to-leave and transferred from in-a-flash after my second year of study. Also, I always thought they were the pretentious jocks of academia. hahahahaha, what?

@Two Espressos, your proposal is really interesting and I just have a few suggestions on improvement. 1. Describe your methodological approach to this question. Through which particular idiom (human rights theory, political theory, literary analysis,etc) are you approaching this concept. OR, perhaps your approach is metatheoretical by interrogating the very theoretical prism by which a text is approached. This also helps with developing an argument based on your proposed question or point of departure. In other words, how are you going to 'tackle' this issue and with what tools? 2. Your proposal is highly theoretical, which is interesting because I'm assuming that you have formed the theory first, but for it to be more convincing you may want to tether it to a source or practice. Cite an example, the ambiguity between theory and practice and the cause for further study. 3. Have you read the essay by Cary Howie, "Waiting for Criticism." Essentially, he examines the concept of 'waiting' both in its fictional representations and as an apparatus for further considerations of academia. After reading your research proposal, I immeadiately thought of this essay. Maybe you will too? Hope this helps and good luck!