Need Advice in Choosing My Field of Study (Humanities)

[RoughlyHewn]

Hello everyone. This is a cross-post with a topic I made in the Humanities board.

I'm currently a Junior in a BFA Creative Writing program; however, I studied English at my previous college. I need help deciding where to focus my academic efforts over the next 9 months so that I'm not applying to programs which are beyond my skill-set.

I've considered pursing an MFA, but after speaking with my advisors I feel that a PhD program better suits my current interests. I'm much less interested in publishing creative work in literary journals than I am in understanding the rhetoric of artistic forms and the culture/experiences they encapsulate. 

I've been primarily looking into Comparative Literature graduate programs (the interdisciplinary potential excites me,) but

1. I only have an intermediate level of French; I can read fluently and speak fairly fluidly, but my writing skills are comparatively poor.
2. I'm very interested in Showa Era Japan, particularly post-war, and the cultural exports of Japan to the United States and France, but my Japanese is very rudimentary.

My McNair advisor suggested I pursue the UCSC History of Consciousness program or another program rooted in Critical Theory. I really took to the whole 'liberal arts' thing and waded into every pool of the humanities (visual art, philosophy, identity, etc). My small college doesn't have much to offer me in this area so I'm researching this field on my own.

I'd also be happy to focus on methodologies (Narrative and Rhetorical Theory, Marxism and Critical Social Theory, Writing Studies/Pedagogy, Cognitive Studies) so I'm open to English programs that allow me to focus on this aspect. 

My areas of academic knowledge are broad but very shallow. I'm not sure what level of experience in these areas I'm expected to have as an undergrad. I've only just started looking into some academic journals this year. My classes have focused more on theory and I've only written a couple of serious research papers. None of them have been in any of my areas of interest so far. The closest I've come was when I was translating Baudelaire, discussed its poetics, and mentioned its depiction in a manga/anime, Aku no Hana (this wasn't even a traditionally academic paper, more of a poetry/creative essay/academic hybrid.)

Is it a bad idea to pursue academic research when I've been more trained to pursue an MFA? Would an MFA allow me to explore these academic areas without jumping ship into what's essentially another discipline?

Is a bad idea to pursue interest areas in which I have only limited undergrad academic experience? 

Thank you for any feedback you can give me. I hope I have enough time between now and November to course-correct my time and studies towards a viable area of discipline. 

[mariathehumanist]

Hey! HisCon at UCSC is a super small department. Be sure they'd be able to support your interests. I'm thinking with such broad interests you have you may be more well-supported in a Comp Lit department... I would look for programs with less stringent language requirements 

 

[lilting]

definitely keep working on your French and Japanese. You can prove your competence not just via options in college, but also proficiency tests (DELF and JLPT, although I don't know if these are still taking place during the pandemic); you'll have the chance to talk about / prove your competence (and potential) in your statement of purpose and/or letters of recommendation.

If you don't have time to work on both, then work on your French to a C1 or C2 level, I think.

[studious_kirby]

What is your goal for your graduate degree? Are you hoping to end up in academia? Or beyond, how do you want to use the knowledge you gain in a graduate program?  It's never to early to think about this, and grad school is a big commitment so should not be used as much of an exploratory experience.

Between now and completing your undergrad: 

• Consider looking into Cultural & Arts Anthropology
• Try to take classes that aren't purely theory-based
• Consider looking into internships in arts administration (local govts may have an office/dept dedicated to arts and cultural affairs), art/history/cultural museums, or writing at a journalism/magazine
• If your college doesn't offer a big variety of classes, I'd say look into taking classes at another institution and seeing if you can transfer credits. Is your college part of a consortium that would allow you to do this? 
• Study abroad (France/Japan? or another country where your French and Japanese would be useful. Or in a country where you're not required to speak the language) -- in a program focused on your interest areas of english, arts, humanities, etc

I strongly believe people should take time in between under grad and applying to grad programs if you're not sure what you want to do or even what area you're interested in. (Spending some time in "the real world.") This time & reflection will also strengthen any eventual grad application essays. Unless you're planning to pursue academia as a professor, academia will end eventually, and you will have to face what is beyond it. Think longer-term as well as mid-term.

Hope this helps!

[antifarecruiter]

I say this only as someone who just got provisionally accepted into HistCon (their graduate division sends out letters after the department does) and who's currently taking a graduate class there, and my comment only relates to HistCon.

HistCon is a unique program (perhaps even more unique than most unique programs in the US). It's much more Marxist than most programs, much more (continentally) philosophical than most programs, and much more interdisciplinary than most programs. To get accepted, you have to lay out a clear reason why you couldn't do your project just in a literature department or an anthropology department or a political science department, etc. If you think that you definitely want to do something that's theoretically sophisticated, interdisciplinary, and highly political, then HistCon might make sense for you.

If you're still considering HistCon, I highly suggest that you look at what their faculty do and that you look at their course offerings for the past few years. You'll get a strong sense of HistCon's commitments to theory and politics. You'd also notice this by looking at the kinds of projects that grad students there are working on.

HistCon is a department that expects you to reach out to prospective advisors beforehand. I'm not sure that you couldn't get in without doing that, but if you're interested, you should probably shoot an email to whoever you're thinking of as a potential advisor, if no one else. In my application, I pointed to (legitimate) reasons why I thought everyone there could be helpful to me. I'm not sure that you need to do that, but I also think it's helpful to demonstrate why at least two or three people could be really helpful to what you're planning to do.

I realize that this is an old thread, so this might not be valid anymore, but hopefully it helps! Good luck!