echo449

I'm not entirely sure what the "hot topics" in my subfield are (I think of poetics more in terms of influential scholars than theoretical perspectives), but my writing was inadvertently trendy. Basically, while I was trying to crack an angle on my thesis, I realized that all of the theorists I was citing were writing 30 years ago. To get out of the trap, I emailed a professor and just asked for names (I had a research fellowship last summer, and that helped a lot). In working through the names, it happened that Ranciere elucidated an issue in the primary text I was working on, and things went pretty easily from there. I didn't think of it as "shoehorning" at the time, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't pursue that avenue with some alacrity once I realized that it worked. I guess if I have an opinion on how to use trends or "hot" thinkers, it is that a general familiarity with them as you work on a writing sample can be super helpful, but isn't necessary either way. Deciding first that you want to write on Laruelle before picking a text would be goofy, but if you can argue that Laruelle's concepts help you articulate something about Macbeth that was latent in the play, then you're in pretty good shape. Of course, this comes with risks--if your committee has decided that your "hot" inspiration is so much hot air, then you've stabbed yourself in the foot. Edit: maybe not "goofy," as I put it earlier, but if you want to write about contemporary theory, I think you're better off just writing a THEORY sample instead of an awkward mash-up of a lit paper and a theory paper.

I did it! Ymmv, tho. It depends on where you are personally, and where you need to be in terms of yr goals. I think there are reasons that I personally would not have benefitted from an MA, but a friend of mine, from the same class and university, is in a position where hers will be a crucial part of her academic development. If you feel that you arn't exactly sure what you want to do, then an MA is especially useful in that it gives you the opportunity to do graduate level work without the pressures of a PhD program over your head (quals, dissertations, etc). Edit: Also, I had to apply twice after a misfire of a first round (0 for 10, with 2 unfunded MA offers). So it wasn't exactly straight-forward for me either.

I think for the most part, helio, that is the case. And I think your central concern is valid: how can we be as inclusive to various political identities as we try to envision politics of inclusivity (or class consciousness) in our work? But! Assuming lifealive was giving an accurate depiction of the circumstances he encountered, what kind of engagement is necessary in a situation where someone in the seminar room is loudly espousing a conservative politics if you're discussing, say, Said and cultural appropriation? I'm kind of imagining a situation not uncommon in undergrad courses--one where a particular student has rejected the basic premises of the discussion, and in a way that threatens to derail the concerns of everyone else in the room? I'm not trying to say that a conservative student should be banned from the seminar room, or treated with contempt for their beliefs. However, in this discipline especially we base a lot of work on what are, at root, political premises, and I don't think that there's an easy answer to the question of just where a conservative politics can express itself in literary studies. I'm not saying interpersonally; I'm talking about on the level of research. (And, I should add, the fact that I don't have a good answer to this is deeply troubling cuz it does go against the idea of intellectual openness that I have in my head.)

I bet a lot of it has to do with how even the application crew was never that great about dealing with the stress of stuff like the market (and political stuff is always hard to talk about over the internet among strangers), so once the active posts became primarily about those sorts of things, a lot of tensions came out. I would figure that this place will..uh...perk up once 2016's applicants begin posting in earnest.

Ah! That's probably fine then. Worst-case scenario, if you and your advisor don't get along, you will have other people to help you out/ other people in the department who will support your methods. But being conversant in (what is probably) anglo-analytic political theory may be super useful in differentiating yourself down the road from other candidates, so maybe this is actually a boon!

So, it actually matters which one you are? I'm guessing that you are the one that believes in free-market liberalism, and am going to taylor my response to that. IN THEORY, a dissenting voice--if it engages critically and fruitfully with the existing canon--will not be shut down. If you can read Marx and respond to Marx in such a way as to respect the ways in which critique grows out of Marx, while simultaneously showing how this is better served by a different approach, you will provide a good (and perhaps necessary) reminder to scholars that they cannot take their political positions for granted. (Sorta like Nozick in philosophy). So, in theory, no, you shouldn't have a problem. You are all adults. On the other hand, if your resistance to certain strains of political criticism is unsophisticated and stubborn, or you do not put your objections (however incisive they may be) in terms that appreciate your advisor's work, then you will find yourself in social/intellectual hot water. I think that this case is a little more difficult than it would be otherwise because, to my mind, so much of how we do political criticism in literary studies is indebted to a conception of social relations that is marxist. In other words, I kind of don't see how you do what Adorno or Fred Jameson does without granting them their marxism. Perhaps a free-market approach to this subject would be very useful (it'd show how this kind of interpretive move does not need a marxist metaphysics behind it), but there's a good amount of heavy-lifting to get there. However, I would also add: Assume you are all adults and maturely able to handle dissenting opinions, until it is otherwise proven. If you are that concerned with the difference, you should email your advisor and talk about your concerns. I think you'll be fine, to be honest, but if there is going to be any kind of MAJOR PERSONALITY DIFFERENCE, you need to know that ASAP, so you can plan your time in your PhD accordingly.

99.9% of incoming college students do not know what an adjunct is, or that they are teaching classes. Many students are shocked to find that they are being taught by graduate students. This is to say that who is teaching what matters a lot less to parents than it should, for better or worse. In fact, I would argue that adjunctification has become so bad in part BECAUSE parents and visiting students care more about the shininess of the new gym than the working conditions of their teachers. I actually think you cannot tie dropping enrollment to the adjunctification of the discipline--after all, many undergrad engineering courses are also taught by adjuncts or people with short term contracts. One thing we don't mention much in this forum is that tenure track jobs PERIOD don't exist like they used to, or don't exist in commensurate numbers to the amount of PhDs being produced in any discipline. You can't blame this on the defunding of the humanities; this is a problem that is felt throughout the university. Edit: Actually, I'm going to revise down my claim. To some extent, you can blame the replacement of tenure lines in the humanities with adjuncts as something that hits us particularly hard. But it's not unique to us. Likewise, our job market seems much worse, not because there are more tenure track bio positions available, but because they have industry jobs that they can go to should they need to escape academe. We are in a position where we are more obviously harmed than our colleagues outside the humanities, but that doesn't mean we are alone in being cast out of the university.

We don't cost the university (or anyone) as much as stem was my point, but I think the graphic (it's on page 20, actually) visually flattens the relative pennies that it costs to run a philosophy department vs. a chemistry department, making the former appear to be a larger burden than the latter.

What's interesting to me about page 17 and 18 is that it shows just how cheap the humanities are, in terms of their general cost to society. Also, the pie charts on 18 are more than a little misleading because while an unfair amount of humanities funding appears to come form the university, the chart on 17 implies that whatever amounts are being given to humanities faculty (from whatever source) are dwarfed by the amounts science departments receive. In other words, while the bio department may only receive 5% of its funding from the university rather than 50%, that 5% is a much larger amount in terms of dollars than the amount granted to the humanities. I focus on this in particular because there's a way in which it makes it seem, visually, like the humanities are an unfair burden on the institution.

Ah! there we go.

Did someone delete the spreadsheet? If so, that's tremendously disappointing for future applicants.

I agree, Bleep_bloop, and I'd also add the caveat that your particular genre and time period will inflect what theory you may or may not feel the need to dive into--if you are a novel person, Barthes' work will be more important than for people more interested in poetics.

I would recommend looking into recent stuff as well--a large part of the field is moving away from a Jamesonian explication of texts and towards different sorts of conceptions of reading and discovering the political in texts. This article is a useful overview and has a bibliography at the end to point you in the right direction. http://arcade.stanford.edu/content/post-critical-reading-and-new-hegelianism This is to say: In another thread, I said that I was going to spend my summer reading Freud and psychoanalytic work. For me, this is something I'm really eager to learn about, but at the same time, it's not exactly what the field is building off of (though you could make an arg that it is central to affect theory). So if you're gunna spend the summer catching up on theory, reading some of the current work could be more useful than reading a ton of Barthes (and I love Barthes). Some big current names: Lauren Berlant Fred Moten Brian Massumi (i'm spelling this wrong, sorry) Rita Felski Jacques Ranciere (I'm biased on this one) Alexander Galloway (and, through him, Laruelle) Edit to add: take any advice I give with a grain of salt--any syllabus I write will be terrible.

Hanging out with my partner before we go off to our separate programs, and trying to do a lot of readings in psychoanalytic theory since this that is like my biggest theoretical blindspot. I've been trying to relax with netflix, but I have a hard time actually veg'ing tbh.

I declined my Penn State offer, but I really think it's a great department with a lot of interesting things going on! Congratz!

Perhaps we could start a more useful thread on professionalization and that sort of thing? In other words, a proactive move rather than a reactive one? (I don't really know enough myself to open that discussion, however.)

Congratz, InHac!

Hey! Same!

We did not--I'm coming in off the waitlist, but thank you! this is good to hear!

20th century poetry and american lit--I was a, um, very late movement on the waitlist. I'm looking forward to meeting you too!

I'm v excited to say that I will be attending Rutgers for my PhD in the fall.

Received word this evening that hope should be held out--right up to the 15th I go!

You should look in the neighborhoods of Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, Greenfield, and Regents Square. All of these have multiple bus lines that go into campus. I currently live in Squirrel Hill and love it--a sort of long walk to campus, but you have 4 bus routes, and a good street with a couple great bars and a grocery store.

This is one a professor at my current institution recomends for graduate students especially: http://louisville.edu/english/Calendar/the-louisville-conference-on-literature-and-culture-since-1900

Sent!