echo449

Chicago, & Hilary Chute, would be a very good choice for you.

You're right--philosophy and literature is not mainstream. In fact, it's well-known for its conservatism and anti-theory bias. The major journals in our field for theoretical work--and they may not accept unsolicited work--are: New Literary History, boundary2, Public Culture, Representations, differences, Critical Inquiry, October, and Social Text (tho that last one has not really recovered from the damage done by the Sokal Hoax in the 90s). There are others, such as Mediations and Critique, that are less well-known/more niche.

Berkeley, Yale, Columbia, UChicago, UCLA, Penn State...I mean, a lot of places have a lot of faculty doing this stuff. Rutgers is also good, particularly if you are interested in specializing in AF-AM lit.

Oh, I guess I'm an appropriate person to respond to this. Different programs have different specialties, yada yada. Berkeley and Chicago, for instance, have a ton of 20th century american lit offerings. My program is having a banner year with 6 20th century courses overall, and 4 of those being American. The number of Americanist courses being offered, like the number of anything being offered, will waver depending on who is up to teach a grad course in a given year.

Period matters more than theory, period. Since you'll be on the market as a Victorianist, you should privilege programs w/ Victorianist scholars. You can be the person to bring back Husserl, or whoever, but the market will care much more about your grounding in your field as such, since that's what you'll be teaching. Also, a lot of advisors will let you do the work you want to do--the dissertation phase, for better or worse, is a lonely place.

Sure, why don't you PM me. I'd be happy to talk more. To alleviate some concerns, tho, I don't think psychoanalytic criticism is necessarily generic.

There's no reason that you wouldn't be able to do a psycho-analytic project at many English programs. Why do you need to be in an interdisciplinary program specifically? Do you intend to make contributions to the field of psychoanalysis as such? Look for programs w/ faculty who are doing psychoanalytic projects--I bet you'll find a decent amount in "traditional" departments as well. Psychoanalytic criticism is pretty "standard," as far as it goes, as an approach within our field. (Depending on what kinds of psychoanalytic projects you might be envisioning, you might even be *old-fashioned*!)

To clarify, I do think matching is important, just that it's not a necessary condition for acceptance. If your far-and-away best writing (as in, you have no doubt what your strongest work is) doesn't match your field, it's definitely still worth considering submitting that.

FWIW, I was at a dinner a few months back with a group of Early Modernists and Victorianists, and almost all of them had written on modernists for their writing samples, though they had explained in detail in their statements of purpose the relevance of their submissions to their projected fields.

Your grade is your grade. I don't think you have to worry about revising it. One thing you have to remember is that we are only small parts of our professors lives--it's tempting to give in to a kind of paranoid "what are they thinking when they blinked twice during our meeting last week" kind of mindset, but it is never helpful. Plus, it's the summer, when many people avoid emails to relax/finally work on their own projects. That you received a lot of comments that were critical is not necessarily bad; you can write an "A" paper that is still nowhere near where it could be w/ further revision. So, my advice: revise if you want to work on this topic further, don't if you don't. Don't worry about ruining your relationship w/ the professor; it seems pretty clear that she is invested in your progress.

The easiest way is to find a contemporary book, such as Levine's recent Forms, and to look at what she's citing. Even one book w/ a decent bibliography will probably open up more doors than you could possibly chase down--and that's okay! The dirty secret of a thesis (whether it's a diss, a Master's Thesis, or an honors thesis in undergrad) is that it's not finished when you've done all the work you possibly can and have read everything, it's finished when your time in the program is up.

That's normal for undergrad! It's useful to try out different ways of thinking, for sure. And, also, you can always write something and then re-purpose it--in other words, you can write this paper on structuralism, then, when you are applying, do some extra tinkering to insert yourself into dialogue w/ current people. My tone in the original post was a little too dismissive--you should totally pursue this line of inquiry if it's the road you want to go down. If you have the time to do so, it might be interesting to take a look at the first part of Cusset's French Theory, which really usefully lays out the historical reception of structuralism in the United States.

Everything poliscar said is correct. I just want to offer some (admittedly unsolicited) advice on your thesis: you will not be showing your awareness of critical debates in literary studies or contemporary theory if you do a structuralist reading of a text unless you demonstrate why structuralism should not have been superseded by other approaches, and what it has to offer today in our "post-critical" climate. This doesn't need to be a major part of your thesis, but structuralism is not considered current & it doesn't really reflect current approaches to theory. This is not to say "if you write on this, you will not get in," but it is to say that, if you go ahead with this approach, you need to do extra work to justify its application.

It's late, so I don't have a ton of thoughts at the moment, but you should definitely add Austin to your list. They have a well-regarded American Studies program as well as a diverse and large English faculty (w/ film incorporated!). Can I ask what theory yr using, and how exactly your interests are? If you don't want to reveal too much specific info, feel free to PM.

@aob981, I don't want to discourage you from applying to American Studies programs--as I think that the fact that your writing sample is on film makes clear a commitment to interdisciplinary work--but you should keep in mind that AS programs have worse placement rates than their English counterparts, except at the very top. Interdisciplinary/cultural studies programs do not do as well as they did a decade or two ago, as the market has gotten worse. Not to be a downer, but that's kind of important. Secondly, if you are applying to English departments...you really ought to have a writing sample that involves the close reading of literature. Film is not considered "in field" in most departments--it may be "in period," but only in the same way a fresco is "in period" to an early modernist. This is not to say you cannot work on the intersection of film and literature--I read a decent amount of film theory myself--but that, since many of the programs you're applying to won't have the faculty necessary to do a dissertation on film, a film writing sample could well announce you as a poor fit for the department, right off the bat. Thirdly, and I'm just going off of my personal experience here: contacting PoI's doesn't really matter. I got lovely responses from schools that rejected me; completely ignored by schools that recruited me heavily once offers went out. But! YMMV. Fourthly, cuz I'm just editing this post as I browse the internet and realize I have more to say, not having big deal recommenders won't hurt you. I mean, it certainly helps to be anointed by Stephen Greenblatt after doing yr undergrad at Harvard, but that's not a pre-requisite for getting into a top program. Fifthly, (see how I'm really just going about this at random?), being older and applying after having been out of school is DEFINITELY not an issue in the humanities. While certain programs tend to attract people going straight through, a lot of programs tend to have average ages in the mid-twenties. I was on the younger side of my cohort by starting at 23. You just need to make sure that your writing sample and SoP demonstrates your current knowledge of the field...something even recent undergrads may not know a lot about, given how many undergrad curriculums are structured. Can you tell us the whole list of schools that you have right now?

I would add that deferrals can cost you hundreds of dollars in fees. The school 'holds' the spot for you, as it were, and, at least at my institution, it is actually pretty costly.

I decided to write something from scratch to apply with; I didn't have a draft ready until roughly Halloween. Because I took so long to get it done, none of my letter writers even saw the finished version of my sample, which I would revise daily. I didn't have a draft of my statement of purpose until Thanksgiving, but my letter writers were incredibly helpful and supportive during the week that I had to make it presentable. My advice is to not do what I did, cuz it almost killed me. I did, however, talk to my letter writers the summer before, making sure that they knew relatively early in the process that I was going to ask them for letters.

Fair, and I'm sorry for down voting the post, that wasn't productive. However, I take issue with the use of the word "elitist" and a lot of the aesthetic judgements that you make. I'm not even sure (c.f. Mark McGurl's fine work on the subject) that MFAs even produce work that is all that intellectual, except in programs known for avant-garde proclivities. But bracketing aesthetic judgments for a second: I think the view that art should be first and foremost about telling a good story or whatever is a profoundly weird position, especially in this discipline. I can't say I'm moved by the poetry that I study, or even that I enjoy reading much of the more abstract works, but I don't think of that as a sign that contemporary poetic culture has abandoned the mass audience that it should be directed at. Basically, I'm weirded out by the normative claims your post makes, as a person who studies post-45 lit. I don't particularly care for MFA programs either, but not because of their "elitism".

*thinking face emoji*

Hurm. Is Rutgers amenable to cross-disciplinary work? As a student here currently, I would say "yes," but I would add that we restrict coursework outside of the department in ways that other programs do not (for the better, IMO). If you'd like to talk about this sort of work more, and the possibilities that are open to prospective students, feel free to PM me. This is not to say that inter-disciplinary work is not done at Rutgers (Josh Gang, who you were referred to in another thread, is actually a Rutgers grad), but I think you have to approach that sort of work differently here than in other departments.

Do as many conferences as you like, where "like" means: 1) you are not paying substantial amounts of money (and departments vary on how much they can fund students; my own department gives preference to national rather than regional conferences for funding) and 2) working on conference papers is not detracting from your actually required work. You don't need to do that many conferences per year, so it's up to what you think will benefit your projects.

So, a couple things, MargeryUnkempet: First, graduate programs view the specialization that they accept you in as a fiction, to some degree. They expect that someone in every cohort will switch their field, especially in departments with multiple strengths. And that's okay! I've actually drifted forward in time by a couple decades for my focus, and that's okay. In short, the specialization you apply in is not the research project you will have to follow for your entire graduate career. Secondly, one thing you can do is to go read a bunch of secondary literature in different periods. While reading, ask yourself: Who are the faculty members doing projects that I find the most exciting? What themes do I find myself drawn to? What period would allow to work on those themes in ways that I would find interesting? I bet once you start asking yourself those questions, you'll figure it out.

Also, and not to be rude here, but I think it's really important for you to get some coursework under your belt before you apply to a PhD program in English, not just so you can get in, but also so you can know if this is right for you? It's a large commitment to make, and I can't image making it having never had been in an English seminar before. Have you read much criticism yet? If not, you should definitely begin to read some secondary works on writers/periods you are interested in, so that you can get a sense of just what it is that we actually do.

You're going to need a certain amount of English classes, as a kind of hard minimum--possibly at least a minor's worth. I would find a few programs that you'd be interested in, and then email the listed faculty contact to ask about their policies regarding the minimum number of English classes required. No matter what you will have to take some, somewhere, and they really, really should not be online. You need letters of rec. I think a funded MA (or one of the cash cow MAs, if you can personally afford it) would be really helpful to you, and if you flit through other threads on this forum, you'll find rec's for which ones are worth looking into. And again, online courses are basically useless for someone who needs to build connections and writing samples. As for a post-bac....I really dunno. I don't know anyone in my program who did one...I think most people did MAs if they needed to shore up their background in some way.

I mean, Villanova and Maryland, for two. I'm not that up on who offers funded masters...I know Mizzou also offers one, and met a few people on campus visits who had received PhD offers after finishing that program. UI-UC and Penn State have masters programs that are sort-of-but-not-quite distinct from their PhDs, and often students will go elsewhere after finishing the first part in those places. So, ja, look around. (I also think that, if you're considering a career in academia, just going for a PhD at this point also makes sense. You should talk to faculty about it, and see what people who know you think). And I know exactly what you're feeling when you talk about how amazing those courses at Columbia sound, but, I mean, oftentimes the best syllabus with the trendiest stuff is a weird headache when you're actually in that seminar (not to say that Columbia's courses aren't great, tho I have no experience with them). Most of your best work will be self-directed; you'll discover the writers and theorists you need on your own. Also, FWIW, I'm at a program that is relatively theoretically conservative, and I'm frequently assigned tons and tons of trendy stuff, more than I would have expected before my seminars began. What is more important is that you are in a program that supports you and helps you develop as a scholar without doing you harm in other ways. To that point: I know that sometimes doing a paid masters works out for people. Cool. I believe that. A pretty famous poet/PhD is a graduate of Chicago's MAPH. But, overall, and in this market, it is probably not a safe choice for MOST people. It's to that 'most' that I'm directing my advice.