writing sample

[hadunc]

I'm trying to gear up for the next round of apps and I'm throwing around ideas for what to do my writing sample on (reusing the old one isn't an option since my interests have changed a bit and I want my new one to reflect this). I kind of want to write about "Empire Falls" by Richard Russo, but since this is a very new (2001) text, there hasn't been much scholarly work done on it yet. And when I say very little, I mean I only found three articles in the MLA bib, so the pickings are pretty slim. While I am attracted to the idea that I can really say just about anything I want to about the book, I'm worried that ad coms won't be familiar enough with the text to understand what's going on. Should I go ahead and use it anyway, and maybe summarize the text a little more than I normally would, or should I go with something that's more familiar? My focus is cultural studies and contemporary American lit, so I feel like "Empire Falls" would be a very relevant text, and it did win the Pulitzer, but I'm worried I might be putting myself at a disadvantage by using a book that was published so recently. Any advice would be very helpful!

[wrappedupinbooks]

When you work in the field of contemporary lit, that's one of the benefits! We get to write about CONTEMPORARY stuff! And we open doors for ourselves to enter the critical conversation. You can see how the other 3 articles situated themselves in their discussions to learn from them, but also to see what parts they didnt expand on but which you can expand on. When you think the audience is less familiar with the book, it seems to me all that you need to do is quote and or explain more passages before you go into your analysis. As a hopeful contemporary poetry scholar, I have to do the same, since only a handful of us end up having read the stuff I love.

I hope that helps?

[hadunc]

Thanks, that does help. This IS what I enjoy about contemporary lit, I guess I'm just worried the person reading my file won't be familiar with it. But I suppose they'd have someone in the contemporary lit field evaluating it, right? I mean that would be logical, you'd think, but then again you never know with this ridiculous process!

[kfed2020]

The adcom doesn't have to know your text! I had a successful run at grad school applications this year; for two of my admit schools, i submitted a sample on 'hood film of the early 90s, which I can't necessarily expect a Renaissance scholar (for example) to have seen -- and for my third admit school, I submitted a sample on a queer comic novel. The important thing is your ability to engage the critical literature and to display your ability to offer convincing readings of a text.

And anyway, 'Empire Falls' is a respected contemporary novel. Sure, Russo is no DeLillo or Pynchon, in terms of academia's darlings. But Pulitzer winners are always fair game. =)