ivandub
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Posts posted by ivandub
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Thanks, and congrats to you too.
I've received one other offer, from Romance Studies at Cornell. I originally applied to Comp Lit there but was instead accepted by Romance Studies. Assuming these are the only two offers I get, it'll be a difficult decision -- there are various advantages to Cornell, but I do have some uncertainty about being defined in that narrower disciplinary area, even though it's true that the Cornell program is quite open and I would be free to take classes in various departments. My two foreign languages are both romance languages, so in that way it makes sense... but I had also anticipated working on Anglophone literature as well. Anyway, it's exciting to have two great offers. I also applied to Duke, Yale and NYU - interviewed with Duke, no news from the other two.
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Just had my interview. Was way friendlier and more relaxed than the Duke one, and I definitely did better as a result. I was interviewed by Bennington, Robbins, Reed, and Quiroga. They say I should hear something within about ten days. Good luck Margarethe and to anyone else being interviewed!
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Thanks for those comments, Bennett. Your last point definitely gives me hope!
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Yep, next Tuesday for me
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No there was no info given about visiting, just Skype - maybe they've canceled the visiting weekend part of the process in recent years.
The most frustrating thing about my interview was that they were slow in setting up and I lost five minutes, and they didn't give me extra time at the end to compensate, meaning that I only got 15 rather than 20 minutes. Obviously it's a bunch of very famous people in a room interviewing you and that can be a bit scary, but they're perfectly straightforward, if a bit stiff in their demeanour. They basically just asked me about the various things I brought up in my statement of purpose. I was a bit unprepared for some of the questions which was really my own fault for not preparing properly. I was a bit surprised and disappointed they didn't say anything about my writing sample, especially as I felt some of the critical things they asked about my project were actually answered more articulately in the writing sample itself than in what I was able to say in response to them. There was supposed to be time for me to ask questions about the program but I guess owing to the lost time that didn't happen. The whole thing was a bit awkward, Katherine Hayles particularly who runs the interviews I found hard to interact with... basically you just need to be confident about yourself and your work and you'll do well; but be prepared to have to answer challenging/critical questions
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I'm not certain, but I think based on what I've heard about previous years that they generally interview everyone on their short-list -- so in other words, if you weren't already invited for an interview, that probably means a rejection. Note that this only applies to the Literature program, I don't think English does interviews at all. Others might be able to give more information but I'm afraid I think that might be the case.
I just did my interview. Is there anyone else on here who's had one today or is doing one later in the week? How did people think they went? I wasn't too happy with how I did but it's not easy to tell I guess
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I've read one White novel, which I loved (The Vivisector), but no it's not anything I've read or studied seriously. I'm in a critical theory MA program, and in some ways my interests now are more in philosophy than literature (though my undergraduate degree was in English); my plan for a PhD is to find a comparative literature program that is somewhat interdisciplinary and with strengths in European philosophy. I guess basically I'm interested in theoretical questions of modernity and modernism seen with regard to the development of modernist forms in the novel and in cinema. So I'm in a different situation from you, my sense of what I want to do in a PhD remains rather too broad.
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As someone from Australia, I can tell you -- if you're approaching your work with enough seriousness to be a competitive applicant at US schools, then you will easily get a scholarship at whatever Australian university you apply to. The difference in levels of competitiveness is enormous. Basically if you have around an A average in the final two years of your undergrad, you'll almost certainly get a scholarship. GREs and even writing samples don't happen here. Having a publication can help too -- but, if you've already done an MA, you must have plenty of material that could find publication in a graduate student journal or something. From what I can gather I think roughly 50% of applicants at my university (one of the top handful in the country) receive scholarships... Compare that with any English PhD program in the US.
I would however agree with vosemdesyatvosem that you would probably be better off finding an English program in the US with some good people working in British modernism and postcolonial literature, and maybe try to spend 6 months at an Australian university while you're writing your dissertation.
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what school did you end up choosing, takethiswaltz?
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Yeah, waitlisted too. I've become a bit disenchanted with the whole thing, but having been rejected from the only other school I applied to, I might as well keep my hand in and see what happens.
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Do we think that those of us who haven't heard yet should assume rejection? Or maybe waitlisting at best
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ugh, that's a lot more waiting than i'd been anticipating... anyway, congrats to takethiswaltz!
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You might also find that you're able to take classes and work with faculty in the English and French/German departments at Hopkins, which might work to overcome some of the deficiency in modernist lit people. I expect there'd be a number of strong people in literary modernism in those departments, though I don't know about them in any detail
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oh sorry, shouldn't have said that while people are still awaiting theirs! don't worry, and i may be exaggerating coming straight out of it. it wasn't really that bad. it just felt much more like a formal interview than a conversation, which i guess is what i'd hoped it'd be like
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yeah, very dry... strange experience. hardt was kind of friendly, the rest were very stone-faced
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Good luck to everyone else doing their Skype interviews today!
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Hmm, interesting. I don't have any particular interest in Lacan, was just an example of what looked like a good theory class on their current course schedule. Thanks though for all the info, these are all things I should be giving some thought to, if I do end up getting an offer.
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Hi, I'd appreciate some of your feedback as well. It's unclear to me what you mean by cutting edge/trendy literary theory, or reasons why you feel they're 'against' comp lit departments. I'd be interested also to know who the people you identify as unapproachable are; it's a good chance those may be the people that made me take an interest in Duke in the first place, so that would be useful for me to know something about. My own theoretical interests also veer much more in the direction of European philosophy than literary theory per se; but I guess it's seemed to me that Duke is strong in that area. But perhaps I'm putting too much emphasis on Jameson's presence in my own imaginings of what the place is actually like. The main other advantage for me in getting in is that there are people who do film studies there, which is part of my background, even if it's not what I plan to emphasise primarily in my graduate work. It's unclear to me if that's what you're identifying when you talk of a 'cultural studies' presence at Duke, or something else.
I don't know, when I look at their course guide I just see -- a class on Lacan, a class on poststructuralist thought, a class on conceptions of the university in modern european thought from Fichte onwards, a class on stevens & yeats... which all sound great, and which make it seem to me much more like a good, theory & philosophy-heavy comp lit program than what you're describing, so I'll be interested to know if there are things I'm not getting.
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Hi all -- for the Duke Literature applicants, I managed to find my way to a course guide that provides synopses of the classes taught in the department in previous semesters. You may have noticed that going through the department website it's impossible to find more than a title and a generic one-sentence description for all the classes, but this page provides much more. I'm sure some of you will have found it of your own accord, but it may be of interest to some of you -- http://fds.duke.edu/db?courses-29-0-2011-Fall-0-
Good luck to everyone who's at the campus visit this weekend
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Actually it now seems there may be... five people interviewing via Skype? Something confusing about the webpage where we're asked to sign up for interview times. And no, I have no idea how many finalists there are in total. Seems like thanks to time zone difficulties, I'll be doing mine in the middle of the night, just to make things even more pleasant...
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For those of you who'll be going to Duke for the Lit interviews: I seem to be one of two 'finalists' who'll be doing their interviews via Skype. They'll be on Feb 20. An email was just sent to us via Tiwonda. So presumably all the others will be attending Duke for the prospectives weekend. Good luck to everyone
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Looks like you're already batting 100 koolherc. Congrats: where'd you have success at already, if you don't mind my asking?
If this was addressed to me -- Duke is the only place I've heard back from. I only applied to two schools, Duke and Princeton
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That one's me, I didn't get around to posting mine initially. So one of the first two must be someone other than me & Enzian
Cornell Comp. lit???
in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Posted
Same thing happened to me as TDazzle -- ended up being made an offer by Romance Studies, and yeah they told me they only admit 2 people a year to Comp Lit. I still haven't made a decision but I will most likely accept the offer, even though I applied to Comp Lit and have received Comp Lit offers from elsewhere. Romance Studies is still a good enough fit for me, especially given that, as TDazzle says, they're quite open to more comparative work. And the draw of Cornell in general is pretty strong. Out of curiosity, which program did you choose over Cornell, TDazzle?