Fall 2014 applicants??

[Kamisha]

Is anyone a title savant? I need a blog name. Haha. 

[Datatape]

Is anyone a title savant? I need a blog name. Haha. 

 

"Doctoral Applications or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Booze"

[Kamisha]

"Doctoral Applications or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Booze"

 

Genius. Pure genius. 

[Academicat]

"Doctoral Applications or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Booze"

 

Yes. yes. I love you.

[NowMoreSerious]

"Doctoral Program or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Booze"

 

I slightly edited this for you (I hope you don't mind)

[gwarner13]

I slightly edited this for you (I hope you don't mind)

You beat me to this!

[gwarner13]

I slightly edited this for you (I hope you don't mind)

 Except more so this:

 

Doctoral Program, or: How I Learned to Love the Booze

Edited February 9, 2014 by gwarner13

[bhr]

Kamisha. that's going to be up to us to change - that's the task of our generation of scholars. Everything is shifting right now, and we're riding the front edge of the wave. It's an exciting time to be getting a PhD.

 

What if we don't want it to change? I'm a comp guy, with a heavy tech focus, and I'm not sure if the future of Comp/Rhet is in the English department at all. I argue that comp/PW shares more with Mass Comm that it does with creative wrting or lit, and departments should reflect that. If Composition is the "cash cow" that keeps Lit/CW afloat, maybe those departments need to be reassessed. Philosophy, Art, Theater, all get funded based on majors and minors that those department enroll, and if Lit/CW can't support their current model maybe they do need to get cut back to those levels.

There is amazing research being done in Comp these days, stuff that can change the entire college writing model. Shouldn't schools use the money generated by comp to support... comp?

[NowMoreSerious]

What if we don't want it to change? I'm a comp guy, with a heavy tech focus, and I'm not sure if the future of Comp/Rhet is in the English department at all. I argue that comp/PW shares more with Mass Comm that it does with creative wrting or lit, and departments should reflect that. If Composition is the "cash cow" that keeps Lit/CW afloat, maybe those departments need to be reassessed. Philosophy, Art, Theater, all get funded based on majors and minors that those department enroll, and if Lit/CW can't support their current model maybe they do need to get cut back to those levels.

There is amazing research being done in Comp these days, stuff that can change the entire college writing model. Shouldn't schools use the money generated by comp to support... comp?

 

In what sense are you suggesting that Composition is the "cash cow" that keeps Lit/CW afloat?  

[Kamisha]

Kamisha. that's going to be up to us to change - that's the task of our generation of scholars. Everything is shifting right now, and we're riding the front edge of the wave. It's an exciting time to be getting a PhD.

 

You’re right. It is exciting. 

 

One day, they will call us all the “GradCafe generation of scholars” and talk about how we changed the world. 

 

Wishful thinking? Haha

[iExcelAtMicrosoftPuns]

You’re right. It is exciting. 

 

One day, they will call us all the “GradCafe generation of scholars” and talk about how we changed the world. 

 

Wishful thinking? Haha

Any of us can change the world.

[NowMoreSerious]

There’s an inherent fallacy in this line of logic and one that I think really hurts the credibility of those who ascribe to the argument you make: that reading literature is now somehow separate from becoming a successful writer and rhetorician. 

 

From the looks of it, you’re an undergraduate applying to Master’s program. I’m assuming that means you don’t have any experience actually teaching composition at the university level. Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m currently a composition instructor but, more than that, I’m the Assistant Director of Composition for my university. I design curriculum and assess program outcomes. As a result of my experiences, I can tell you that student writing scores go up when they are exposed to literature and critical thinking. Student outcomes tend to dramatically decrease when those elements are removed. I won’t commit the anecdotal evidence fallacy by claiming that my experience is universal, but I think it is more often than not. 

 

I agree that there are wonderful things being done in Composition Studies right now. As a matter of fact, I’ve been working to help do some of those amazing things in my university’s program. That being said, ego is the kill-shot of all positive changes; don’t become too overconfident in Comp’s ability to “change the entire college writing model” and assume that doing so somehow invalidates the importance of literary studies. 

 

Mass communication and Rhetoric/Composition are absolutely tied together, but so are Rhetoric/Composition and Literature. I would argue that the latter connection is far more important than the former. I also own a freelance writing company (a job I don’t enjoy, but the private sector pays the bills better than the public sector) and I can tell you that the reason we are so successful is because we largely veer away from the typical rules associated with “technical” writing and adopt a much more literary and creative approach; there is even overlap in those fields. My point is this: you can’t create a false dichotomy where there isn’t one. 

 

Also, composition is far from a “cash cow.” Sure, the job outlook is much better for Comp grads right now than it is for us literature folks, but I wouldn’t go so far as to assume that English departments are wholly dependent upon them to prop up those of us who study literature. Composition programs aren’t immune from the economic crisis at the university. If you’ve been told otherwise, you’ve been misled. 

 

As a final note, it’s one thing to want your program to be separated from English departments. It’s quite another to say that you don’t want the current trend of interdepartmental hostility to go away. It seems like you are implying the latter, but I really hope that isn’t the case. That kind of mentality that only breeds unnecessary contempt. English emphases don’t need to attack one another from inside the department. We get enough of it from outside sources. All emphases are valid and all contribute to the overall success of English departments. 

 

Are you assistant director, or assistant TO the director?

[iExcelAtMicrosoftPuns]

There’s an inherent fallacy in this line of logic and one that I think really hurts the credibility of those who ascribe to the argument you make: that reading literature is now somehow separate from becoming a successful writer and rhetorician. 

 

From the looks of it, you’re an undergraduate applying to Master’s program. I’m assuming that means you don’t have any experience actually teaching composition at the university level. Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m currently a composition instructor but, more than that, I’m the Assistant Director of Composition for my university. I design curriculum and assess program outcomes. As a result of my experiences, I can tell you that student writing scores go up when they are exposed to literature and critical thinking. Student outcomes tend to dramatically decrease when those elements are removed. I won’t commit the anecdotal evidence fallacy by claiming that my experience is universal, but I think it is more often than not. 

 

I agree that there are wonderful things being done in Composition Studies right now. As a matter of fact, I’ve been working to help do some of those amazing things in my university’s program. That being said, ego is the kill-shot of all positive changes; don’t become too overconfident in Comp’s ability to “change the entire college writing model” and assume that doing so somehow invalidates the importance of literary studies. 

 

Mass communication and Rhetoric/Composition are absolutely tied together, but so are Rhetoric/Composition and Literature. I would argue that the latter connection is far more important than the former. I also own a freelance writing company (a job I don’t enjoy, but the private sector pays the bills better than the public sector) and I can tell you that the reason we are so successful is because we largely veer away from the typical rules associated with “technical” writing and adopt a much more literary and creative approach; there is even overlap in those fields. My point is this: you can’t create a false dichotomy where there isn’t one. 

 

Also, composition is far from a “cash cow.” Sure, the job outlook is much better for Comp grads right now than it is for us literature folks, but I wouldn’t go so far as to assume that English departments are wholly dependent upon them to prop up those of us who study literature. Composition programs aren’t immune from the economic crisis at the university. If you’ve been told otherwise, you’ve been misled. 

 

As a final note, it’s one thing to want your program to be separated from English departments. It’s quite another to say that you don’t want the current trend of interdepartmental hostility to go away. It seems like you are implying the latter, but I really hope that isn’t the case. That kind of mentality that only breeds unnecessary contempt. English emphases don’t need to attack one another from inside the department. We get enough of it from outside sources. All emphases are valid and all contribute to the overall success of English departments.

On the topic of fallacy.

Causal or correlational?

Variables? Could it be the instructors enjoy teaching lit and engage the students differently because of this?

[Imaginary]

Are you assistant director, or assistant TO the director?

Wow. This question is loaded with worth assumptions, and frankly, I wonder what prompted it. At no point does she say she is the director's assistant. She says, "assistant director." She describes her job as "design[ing] curriculum and assess[ing] program outcomes." Let's just say, though, that she WERE the director's assistant. Often personal and administrative assistants do a lot of work behind the scenes.

Edited to add: Sorry if I misread this. Maybe I just need more context.

Edited February 9, 2014 by Aspireperspireinspire

[ProfLorax]

In my observation, the tension isn't between lit and rhet/comp because of the cash cow aspect or the content aspect; that was certainly the case in the past, as you can read about in Stephen North's The Making of Knowledge in Composition. Rather, the growing rift in English Departments, and one we should be aware of as academic workers, is between contingent faculty and administration (with TT faculty siding with one group or another or none at all). Comp classes tend to be taught by adjunct labor, however with the market as it is today, those teachers are not all rhet/comp scholars, but also lit MA and PhD's and creative writing MFA's. Furthermore, the majority of teaching staff in English departments is contingent. If you followed the live tweeting from MLA 2014, you probably noticed that lots of resentment and discussion came out of the low attendance on the panel about contingent faculty. Concurrently, a shadow conference emerged, MLA Subconference, that confronted labor issues and the trajectory of English and other humanities departments. 

 

One crisis always seems to either help us resolve a former conflict or at least ignore it for the time being. Any sense of competition between literature and rhet/comp as areas of study has lessened as the concerns about labor issues and quality of life take center stage. 

[jazzyd]

Wow. This question is loaded with worth assumptions, and frankly, I wonder what prompted it. At no point does she say she is the director's assistant. She says, "assistant director." She describes her job as "design[ing] curriculum and assess[ing] program outcomes." Let's just say, though, that she WERE the director's assistant. Often personal and administrative assistants do a lot of work behind the scenes.

Edited to add: Sorry if I misread this. Maybe I just need more context.

It's a play off of a joke from The Office. Dwight considering himself to be Assistant Regional Manager, with Michael (the Regional Manager) correcting him ("Assistant to the Regional Manager").

Edited February 9, 2014 by jazzy dubois

[Imaginary]

It's a play off of a joke from The Office. Dwight considering himself to ube Assistant Regional Manager, with Michael (the Regional Manager) correcting him ("Assistant to the Regional Manager").

Oh. Oops.

[mikers86]

My goal is to not look at this site or the forums from Monday morning until Monday night after I've presented this bloody conference paper. Don't want to wreak of rejection while speaking at Harvard - I think they can smell it on you. 

[shortstack51]

This is just a general thank you from a lurker and first-time poster. It's kind of wonderful to see a supportive community of people here. One of my big concerns, as something of an introvert, is going to a new school and acclimating to new people and communities, but you all give me some hope that there will be cool people to meet at a great many schools. Also, it's nice to not be the only one who is feeling that creeping sense of anxiety and eagerness about what the next few weeks will bring!

Hello and welcome! I'm glad you find support here. I think many of us probably would define ourselves as introverts. In my experience, there are usually plenty of wonderful people who are just as awkward, introverted, and excited about literature and discussion as myself in programs. One of the best things about graduate school, for me, was the close and intimate discussions that small classes and seminar-style instruction fostered. I know not all programs do this, but I think many do and it's a great experience.

[Kamisha]

Are you assistant director, or assistant TO the director?

 

Dwight is my spirit animal. 

[CommPhD20]

FWIW, rhetoric is indeed already a part of many communication departments -- it is basically what founded that field. It seems like the main difference between comp/rhet. and rhetoric is whether the program cares much about whether you can do it rather than simply studying it. After that, of course, there are other differences, most importantly the context in which rhetoric is studied. The communication side of rhetoric is often focused much more on public/political rhetoric.

 

The justification, whether fair or not, for comp./rhet. being in English literature departments is the idea that it is invested in the creation of literary texts. Obviously, it would be easy to say that this is the vocation of creative writing rather than comp./rhet. I also think that most comp./rhet. folks here have a vision for the field beyond the "public communication" component as well.

[shortstack51]

More NYU acceptances

[grubyczarnykot]

That's me, and I am stoked! It was so unexpected. Were you in the English Dept? Can I pick your brain in a message?

Yep, I was in the English department. Yeah, feel free to message me!

[andrewcycs]

I guess we didn't make the cut, shortstack! That's quite unfortunate. Of all the schools I applied, I felt that one was the best fit! Oy vay!! Not the best sign. Lol.

Congrats you guys!!!! I am so happy for you all who got into NYU!! I bet you are all dying of excitement. . . So just go ahead and finish the dying process so I can get in.

[bhr]

In what sense are you suggesting that Composition is the "cash cow" that keeps Lit/CW afloat?  

Someone else suggested that, I was just responding to their assertion that comp needed to be kept in English to keep the rest of the department flush.