Brown?

[rems]

What do you guys know about Brown's English Phd? Good program? Good profs? What makes them "unique"? Their website is fleeting at best.

Thanks!

[Stately Plump]

It's an excellent program. Their professors are prolific, which I suppose makes them good. If you mean are they good teachers and advisors, that I can't answer. You might have to be more specific about what you mean by "unique".

Not trying to be sarcastic, but your post is pretty vague. I don't know that any of us will be of much help (which is why no one has responded), because there isn't much to respond to.

[rems]

It's an excellent program. Their professors are prolific, which I suppose makes them good. If you mean are they good teachers and advisors, that I can't answer. You might have to be more specific about what you mean by "unique".

Not trying to be sarcastic, but your post is pretty vague. I don't know that any of us will be of much help (which is why no one has responded), because there isn't much to respond to.

Haha sorry about that! I more was trying to catch someone who would say, "Oh, I visited Brown. They do blahblahblah." Or, "I go there and/or went there and they have an excellent collection of X." Something like that.

OH here's a better way to put it: I've found a professor at Brown who works with what I work with theoretically, and I've been hard pressed to find anyone else as specific. But then I was looking around their website, and I can't find anything else specific about the program. Figuring as how it's an Ivy, I assume the faculty is top notch, but besides that I haven't found anything. For example, at schools like Santa Barbara and Buffalo they have interdisciplinary programs studying digital humanities or Maryland has the center for digital humanities. Even schools who are a little more fleeting about their programs like UVA have links to groups, projects, and library collections that could peek one's interest and help them figure out "fit." But at Brown, I'd been searching for about an hour and couldn't find out anything -- not even student study groups or anything. (I don't even study digital humanities I've just found that information while doing research.)

So that's what the question is asking, and I already assumed that unless someone had first hand experience with their program they wouldn't be able to say anything. More of a fishing trip than anything else

[rems]

Since thinking about a question posted a forum is more appealing to me than working on my applications, let me rephrase this one further:

Ignore everything I wrote about. I realize in reflection that I was asking someone to find a fit for me whereas if you're not me you would have no idea what I want to hear. So rather than asking what does their program offer, let me ask does anyone have any experience with Brown's application process and/or program? Is anyone else seriously considering their program? If so, why? Let's rap about it.

[alleviate]

Why not check out some of the profs on ratemyprofessor.com? It might give you a feel for them as people, or teachers.

[Delarosa]

If you're actually interested in DH at Brown, check out The Centre for Digital Scholarship (which integrates the older Scholarly Technology Group). The site has links to many, many DH-related projects at the institution, some of are leaders in the field (Julia Flanders' WWP, for example, which also invites proposals for internships, if you're interested in that kind of thing)(CDS more generally also offers similar opportunities).

I don't have first-hand experience (I'm at a university in Canada!), but here's some copy-pasta from a comment on a post from 2005 (much has probably changed; read this as worst-case scenario!) on Matthew G. Kirschehbaum's webby:

Although Brown does not have a digital-new-manities program as such, it does have something like an independent major on a doctoral level: if you are already a student in one of the departments and none of the available programs (including the one you're in) suits your research needs, go ahead. Get a faculty committee together, write an extensive description of the program, go before the Graduate Council and hey, maybe they'll approve you. This is how I'm doing a PhD in Humanities Computing, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin is pursuing one in New Media.

[rems]

Delarosa, thanks for the info! Much appreciated!