Pepé Le Pew

Theofan, If you are truly keen to rent a car for a year you can do that. car rental places like enterprise or budget can do month-to-month rentals and a credit card should cover the insurance for rental. The price will vary widely and will also depend on what kind of car you get. But you can figure all that out on their websites. Buying a used car can be a good idea if you don’t mind spending some time, and have a good sense of what you want. I don’t know much about the local vendors but Jordan Ford in Mishawaka has a reputation as an honest dealer. YMMV, as they say. It’s worth considering whether or not you need one. Uber and Lyft are all over the campus area and south bend, and the cost is low. There are zipcars available to rent on campus. And the local car rental places will bring a car to you if you want to rent one for a few days. I know a lot of graduate students who get along just fine without a vehicle. In fact, many professors do. There is plenty of shopping within walking distance of campus, and a vast amount of good housing.

Anna, It’s likely that a good portion of the inhabitants of the city live under 23k, so it’s quite feasible. The cost of living in this town is low enough that many of us stick around after graduation. So long as you don’t have to spend a lot of money on transportation, you’ll be fine.

hello atiti, Since you have to do your housing remotely, and you're only going to be there for a year, it might be wise to use the Notre Dame housing. Some things to consider: it's simple to arrange (no landloards, leases, application fees or large deposits) many graduate students live on campus - you'll have a lot of company, and more a sense of community the costs are reasonable compared to similar private housing near campus your walk to class will be very short. as an international student you're unlikely to have a vehicle. so - given the heavy snow and mess on the ground through a good part of the school year, it'll be nice for you to not have to travel far to campus they certainly let you retain your rented rooms during the holidays! many graduate students are from overseas, and have a similar need to yours security is through on-campus cops. probably more dependable than city cops, who are responsible for a much greater area. I guess if you were looking for a 'con' list: if you have more than three children or a very large household (unlikely it seems), the on-campus accommodations are not big enough. And your variety of housing off campus is greater. And - if you have tons of money to spend, you can get fancier housing off-campus. good luck, and see you this august

I lived in Columbus at various places near OSU for about fourteen years. To answer the question about when: There are a few zones of housing, usually very close to the university (looking S E and N) that, for the most part, fill up in advance. If you don't mind living in an area not totally dominated by students (i.e. more than a mile away), it is very easy to find housing during the summer. Remember, this is a big city, and housing churns like crazy year-round. Let me suggest two things: First, place an ad on Craigslist explaining who you are, and what you want in housing - and, when you'd like to move into it. People who aren't currently listing will contact you. This works. Bump the ad up to the top every couple of weeks. This will save you enormous amounts of scouring. Second, compare property addresses online to a map of sex offender registrants. This is easy to find. Not only do you not want them as neighbors, but you can also get a pattern of where good and bad areas are, down to the street level. Rapists and child molesters don't cluster in decent areas of the city.

It looks like a big spacious room when you are all talking together (and crying a little) - but the sphere of those fascinated by contemporary artists is a tiny, well-insulated bubble - perhaps small even among art historians.

runaway, My own aside: I like going back and forth with you more than you do, I suspect, because aside from the silly accusation of misogyny (as if I had made a judgment about women in art history general instead of circumscribing it to my own interactions in several classrooms - where my comments apply to the guys as well) you offer a spirited opposition. Looking above, note how artofdescrbing and mckee002 immediately leap to note their indignation and offense. When grievance is the currency students carry, they begin to expect others to recognize its value. On your photo: you've found a limitation I'll freely acknowledge (with some guilt): an interest that wanes around mannerism, and is barely measurable by the 20th c. On Freud: of course people still cite him, but he was all over scholarship two generations ago. He as indeed become quaint with age - like a 80's rock anthem turned into muzak. Here's another example: Gombrich chasing modern theories of vision and Gestalt psychology in his Art and Illusion. Very 1950's. Not so useful, in retrospect. And John Berger: look, you're only making my point for me. What's ironic is to see him portrayed as supplanting old elitists like Clarke - but what could be more elitist than his dessicated Marxism? artofdescribing: you clearly have your own anxieties (Kimball, folks who use the word 'feminazi'). My point, by contrast, was against the whole lot of those whose preoccupation is politics, and ideology, not art. Before it was evil capitalism, now it's grievance studies, next generation it'll be something else. It doesn't matter, though, if the underlying ideology is left or right. What matters is that it masquerades as serious scholarship. And it's perpetrated by folks who can't be bothered to actually study the art and produce valuable insights about the art itself, not the intersection of contemp. fads and the art. If I pick twenty recent articles on, say, Piero della Francesca, most of them still attempt traditional scholarship - some even succeed. That is what I mean about grievance studies being a magnet that draws bad scholarship away from good subjects.

My, the response got shrill pretty fast. Very quickly: mckee002: 1) 'beta male' is not the same as 'gay man'. I'm sure as a gay man in the Bay area, you could confirm that vast numbers of gay men are not at all 'beta males' as it is generally understood. I'm uninterested in the sexuality of my classmates, but in appearance and demeanor, there is a variance from a guyish guy type. I don't care if the guy is gay - I do care if I can't find a single dude who looks like he could throw a football in the park. 2) art history can and should be a serious discipline. 3) you and I will have to agree to disagree about the value of grievance studies vs. traditional art history. I don't buy your defense (the likes of which I've read a hundred times 'interrogating gender and race' and other nonsense). But you are probably in the majority, while I'm one of a few young fogeys, I guess. runaway: 1) your icon is clocks, didn't recognize it as art. sorry about that. 2) rereading my #4 response for 'snide misogyny' - perhaps I was unclear. I don't think much so much scholarship is unserious because it seems to be practiced by women. Those were adjacent observations, but not related. As for attitude within graduate school, the not-so-serious approach to scholarship compared to other disciplines: surely that has some other cause than the sex of the student. I know plenty of female musicians, for example, who practice as hard and perform as well as the men. artofdescribing: 1) if you can imagine, it's not worth a penny to me or anybody if you find my remarks offensive or presumptuous. I quite clearly said my observations were from limited experience - familiarity with three above average departments - and that would rather find out that i was wrong. 2) no doubt there are serious, ambitious, scholarly students. Great to hear you've met some! 3) sorry about the 'red flags' - you may find, one day, that pseudo-intellectual academic fads don't have quite the heft they once did. Think how quaint a Freudian reading now looks in most subject areas - not far from a phrenological one. I do expect there is room in the field, still, for those who aren't committed to nonsense of that sort. In fact, it's easy to find young professors teaching at good schools who aren't theory heads, and who aren't abusing good art with contemporary political hobbyhorses.

runaway, I have no idea whether you're interested or not in 'gendered' historical studies. The comment isn't personal. There is simply an immense amount of bad scholarship in what one might call grievance studies - the various subfields that have taken up the shabby banner once carried by marxists and later theory-heads. There are folks who care about art, and there are folks who care about politics and theory, and then happen to relate it to art. Now, as I said above: my experience is very narrow. But such as it is, it surprises me to find very few men, and an atmosphere of scholarship tending somewhat towards the not-so-serious, compared to similar fields in the Humanities. Reading through conference notices, I'm not inclined to expect it's much different in the field. But - hope springs eternal. Finally, on physics: having practiced it previously, and moved in those circles for a while, I can tell you the guys there only dream about women darkening the doors of their departments. There are exceptions, but as a sociological reality: it's (lamentably) a guy's field, especially at the graduate level.

runaway, Despite regretting the academic cant of the very phrase 'gendered histories of art', I'm still thankful for its existence: as a kind of magnet to attract and identify those without the creativity or intelligence to actually practice art history. But my point about the composition of the classes was offered only as a description. Not sure what to think about it. Perhaps my experience is at odds with the broader pattern. Or maybe the field changed in the past generation, driving men away (like, say, physics repels women). It wasn't always this way.

This is an interesting question. When I'm in classes with Seniors and first or second year graduate students, I often wonder what drew them into this field. This is my (admittedly limited) experience: Almost all of them are female (in at least the three schools I've known). The few guys are usually beta males. Most of the students don't have what one might call a driven, scholarly disposition (easy to see if you compare the atmosphere to a History seminar, or even moreso, to one in the sciences). It is more of the 'I like to read about this and be the art history person among my friends'. A pleasant niche. Few of the students seem to have retained only a superficial familiarity with the art outside their range of particular interest. Why do they move on to graduate study? Some combination of a naive sense of the job market (perhaps they assume they'll marry a guy with a job) and a gentle drift into something comfortable after the BA. After all, who wants to look for a job with a BA in art history??

Courtauld is good. But that level of debt for any MA in Art History borders on insanity.

humilis - I'm beginning Notre Dame this fall as well, and am bringing two young children. A friend is already in the Classics graduate program there, and his wife is a delightful babysitter (she's the only one we've trusted outside of family). Send me a private message if you'd like details.

kaejo, not sure which Notre Dame admit you were referring to. I was admitted, though: it was from a phone call from the DGS. He wanted to settle on a list of likely Acceptances before sending the decision through formal university channels. I guess, by doing this, they avoid dealing with a wait list.

Notre Dame's MA is accepting in an interesting way. The DGS calls first and asks for a quick pre-acceptance before sending the formal acceptances (and rejections) through ordinary channels. I guess it's a way for them to avoid wait-list limbo. I accepted - eager to study Italian late medieval or early Ren.