(no subject)
Hello all,
I am in desperate need of help in developing a SOP to fit my application for a Ph.D in creative writing as well as for a Ph.D in British literature. I currently have two SOPs: one is a general SOP that was required as part of a masters course; the other is a specific SOP geared toward a particular school. If I appear to talk out of both sides of my mouth, that's because I am - I can see both value and weaknesses.
I really don't feel like recreating the wheel for my application to the Ph.D. What I need is advice on which approach works best and what I should keep / discard in each so I can reuse what I already have. I know I will need to do some detail work in order to shape the document to fit the school, but at this point I can't even decide where to start.
Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated!
General SOP
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!
These minatory words, haunting the latter pages of an ancient children’s classics book given to me by mother, adumbrated a pervasive interest in literature that was to accompany me my whole life. Only in the Romantic movement do such disparate and contradictory elements as the natural and supernatural, the erotic and the pneumatic, the religious and the profane culminate in a patent rejection of a ubiquitous rationalism and empiricism that defined the Enlightenment period and presaged the advent of nascent post-modernism. It was this paradoxical, introspective discourse located within an eloquent and oftentimes symphonic poetry that led me to pursue my undergraduate degree in English at Meredith College and to seek my master’s degree in literature at the X.
At the latter institution, my interests were embellished via coursework on the English Renaissance as taught by X, which allowed me to pursue the Greek influences on Shakespeare’s sonnets (and consequently Shakespeare’s sonnets and his Hamlet upon Byron) and on modernism as taught by X, which gave me the opportunity to trace the effect of Romanticism upon the Aesthetes such as Ruskin and Wilde, whose theories crucially informed the work of James Joyce. I have also pursued thesis projects on sadomasochism in the metaphysical works of John Donne and the presence of Hegel’s Master-Slave dynamic in Sartre and its implications on feminism, but my research has not been limited by my coursework alone. An innate curiosity in systematic theology coupled with philosophy has driven me to study Kant’s Critique of Reason and its destructive force upon essentialism and ethics and the pervasion of Calvinism, from the puritans to the contemporary reformed theological movement.
My concerns include the cultural narcissism inherent in postmodern Western society, the baneful co modification of art - literature, music, etc - by capitalism and the subsequent depreciation and impoverishment of it by highly marketed popular fiction that appeals to the lowest common denominator, and the decay of humanity’s moral fabric as a result of a ubiquitous cynicism and nihilism. I believe the current solipsist social atmosphere is the natural consequence of Enlightenment thinking, especially that of Kant’s Copernican Turn and his Transcendental Idealism, which espouses the dominance of a subjective reality to the exclusion of an objective one, ie “the thing in itself”. In literature, this philosophy found its advocate in the contemporary realism espoused by most modernist novels. Economically, the enlightenment approach has led to the capitalistic and unscrupulous exploitation of the arts - especially literature and music - purely for financial gain through formulaic and unsophisticated works published on a low grade level. Subsequently, we have fostered an unimaginative and illiterate generation of young people who nevertheless possess a self-esteem incommensurate with their talents and skills.
I believe a return to 19th century British literature, with its emphasis on imagination and eloquence, its simultaneous recognition of good and evil, may revive in us a new appreciation for aesthetics while simultaneously renewing our ethical values through the acknowledgement of the supernatural. As a grad student, I plan to explore the ways we can address today’s issues through reengagement with the past, to a time when writers rejected the hollowness of an embodied mind by lucubrating the horrors within the human soul.
Specific SOP
Art, the temple of literature, is being assaulted on all sides. Of course, art as a discipline is always undergoing assault in that its historicity is cyclical violence: the revolution that inaugurates a new school is also the exodus of its predecessor with the caveat that there is always a trace of the former in the latter. In this new and pernicious encroachment, however, the aggressor is not merely a dissatisfied collective denouncing contemporary aesthetic principles or even a school promulgating neoteric philosophy, it is an adversary that speaks of cost-benefits analysis, of mass marketing to the lowest common denominator, of maximizing profit while minimizing overhead and expenses. In short, the offensive regime is not a school but an economy, one in which art serves as a commodity fetish.
Adorno criticizes this capitalistic objectification of art in his work, Aesthetic Theory, and locates art not within the parameters of its economic function or analytic category but within a socio-historical series of Hegelian dialectics. It is from within this dialectical process that I wish to situate my study, exploring the ways Marxist theory, Kantian philosophy, Wildean aestheticism, French symbolism and gothic literature speak to each other and open up possibilities for an artistic renaissance, one that is emancipated from an economy of fetishism and the disadvantages of mass reproduction. A Ph.D specializing in 19th Century British Literature at the X will allow me entrance into the discussion from the vantage point of the British novel while also authorizing a consideration of both its historical and social influences.
To prepare for the above program, I have utilized my graduate classes to autodidactic ends. For my English Renaissance final, Dr. Romack allowed me to purse a study of Greek influences on Shakespeare’s sonnets, which along with Hamlet informed the poetry of Lord Byron, while in my Modernism class Dr. Earle gave me the opportunity to explore the presence of Byronic heroism, French symbolism and Paterian aestheticism in the work of James Joyce. I have also pursued projects on the influence of Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic on the philosophy of Sartre and Beauvoir, deconstruction and post-modern relativity in The Picture of Dorian Gray, intertextuality between Kant’s Critique of Judgment and Wilde’s Decay of Lying, and a psychoanalytic reading of the intersexuality of Wilde’s text. In addition to these opportunities, I was able to take a year of French so that I might begin to read such poets as Baudelaire in French, and an advanced theory course entitled “Foucault versus Derrida”, which contributed significantly to my understanding of post-structuralism and deconstruction.
The professor of that course, X, has played a crucial part in my academic success, not only as my professor but also as my thesis reader and as head of the honors program at UWF. It was he who recommended me as a teacher’s assistant for the classical literature honors class and he who, after reading the 40 page excerpt from my novel submitted for my thesis, was gracious enough to request the first half of it. Chapter excerpts from this novel as well as poems have been published in X, X's annual student anthology, as well as online.
While there are many professors at UT at Austin who specialize in my fields of interest, I feel Elizabeth Cullingford and Elizabeth-Richmond Garza are particularly situated to instruct me. Professor Cullingford’s expertise in Irish literature, politics and culture as well as modernism will be invaluable to me in my approach to the problem of art through the aesthetics of Irish writers Wilde and Joyce. Her Modern British and Irish Poetry class, which proposes a study modern poetry through the lens of psychoanalytic theory and formal aesthetics, sounds particularly interesting. Uncannily, Professor Garza’s areas of interest are virtually synonymous with mine: her class Vampires and Dandies would be for me a decadent pleasure rather than a necessary scholastic exercise. Both her nineteenth century and world literature classes promise a multimedia approach to art along with nods to Russian and French authors, all of which would be beneficial in rethinking a contemporary aesthetic and art form free from the constraints of Western capitalism.
Having worked as a marketing manager for IBM, a technical data manager at DRS technologies and as a current manager at Walmart, I am in a unique position to explore the commodification of art by capitalism. In these positions, I have experienced first-hand the organizational arrangements, the tactical and strategic programs, the “messaging” and the deployment of marketing campaigns aimed at maximizing profit through the distribution of a product. If accepted, I hope to bring this experience to the table in my studies at UT at Austin.
As my formal writing sample, I have submitted a paper that explores the vampire as a literal figure and metaphorical device in the British adventure novel She and the gothic novel Dracula. The emphasis on the gothic as an expression of the minor term in Western binaries points back to Adorno’s Aesthetics, where art itself serves as the other to various hegemonic structures.
I am in desperate need of help in developing a SOP to fit my application for a Ph.D in creative writing as well as for a Ph.D in British literature. I currently have two SOPs: one is a general SOP that was required as part of a masters course; the other is a specific SOP geared toward a particular school. If I appear to talk out of both sides of my mouth, that's because I am - I can see both value and weaknesses.
I really don't feel like recreating the wheel for my application to the Ph.D. What I need is advice on which approach works best and what I should keep / discard in each so I can reuse what I already have. I know I will need to do some detail work in order to shape the document to fit the school, but at this point I can't even decide where to start.
Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated!
General SOP
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!
These minatory words, haunting the latter pages of an ancient children’s classics book given to me by mother, adumbrated a pervasive interest in literature that was to accompany me my whole life. Only in the Romantic movement do such disparate and contradictory elements as the natural and supernatural, the erotic and the pneumatic, the religious and the profane culminate in a patent rejection of a ubiquitous rationalism and empiricism that defined the Enlightenment period and presaged the advent of nascent post-modernism. It was this paradoxical, introspective discourse located within an eloquent and oftentimes symphonic poetry that led me to pursue my undergraduate degree in English at Meredith College and to seek my master’s degree in literature at the X.
At the latter institution, my interests were embellished via coursework on the English Renaissance as taught by X, which allowed me to pursue the Greek influences on Shakespeare’s sonnets (and consequently Shakespeare’s sonnets and his Hamlet upon Byron) and on modernism as taught by X, which gave me the opportunity to trace the effect of Romanticism upon the Aesthetes such as Ruskin and Wilde, whose theories crucially informed the work of James Joyce. I have also pursued thesis projects on sadomasochism in the metaphysical works of John Donne and the presence of Hegel’s Master-Slave dynamic in Sartre and its implications on feminism, but my research has not been limited by my coursework alone. An innate curiosity in systematic theology coupled with philosophy has driven me to study Kant’s Critique of Reason and its destructive force upon essentialism and ethics and the pervasion of Calvinism, from the puritans to the contemporary reformed theological movement.
My concerns include the cultural narcissism inherent in postmodern Western society, the baneful co modification of art - literature, music, etc - by capitalism and the subsequent depreciation and impoverishment of it by highly marketed popular fiction that appeals to the lowest common denominator, and the decay of humanity’s moral fabric as a result of a ubiquitous cynicism and nihilism. I believe the current solipsist social atmosphere is the natural consequence of Enlightenment thinking, especially that of Kant’s Copernican Turn and his Transcendental Idealism, which espouses the dominance of a subjective reality to the exclusion of an objective one, ie “the thing in itself”. In literature, this philosophy found its advocate in the contemporary realism espoused by most modernist novels. Economically, the enlightenment approach has led to the capitalistic and unscrupulous exploitation of the arts - especially literature and music - purely for financial gain through formulaic and unsophisticated works published on a low grade level. Subsequently, we have fostered an unimaginative and illiterate generation of young people who nevertheless possess a self-esteem incommensurate with their talents and skills.
I believe a return to 19th century British literature, with its emphasis on imagination and eloquence, its simultaneous recognition of good and evil, may revive in us a new appreciation for aesthetics while simultaneously renewing our ethical values through the acknowledgement of the supernatural. As a grad student, I plan to explore the ways we can address today’s issues through reengagement with the past, to a time when writers rejected the hollowness of an embodied mind by lucubrating the horrors within the human soul.
Specific SOP
Art, the temple of literature, is being assaulted on all sides. Of course, art as a discipline is always undergoing assault in that its historicity is cyclical violence: the revolution that inaugurates a new school is also the exodus of its predecessor with the caveat that there is always a trace of the former in the latter. In this new and pernicious encroachment, however, the aggressor is not merely a dissatisfied collective denouncing contemporary aesthetic principles or even a school promulgating neoteric philosophy, it is an adversary that speaks of cost-benefits analysis, of mass marketing to the lowest common denominator, of maximizing profit while minimizing overhead and expenses. In short, the offensive regime is not a school but an economy, one in which art serves as a commodity fetish.
Adorno criticizes this capitalistic objectification of art in his work, Aesthetic Theory, and locates art not within the parameters of its economic function or analytic category but within a socio-historical series of Hegelian dialectics. It is from within this dialectical process that I wish to situate my study, exploring the ways Marxist theory, Kantian philosophy, Wildean aestheticism, French symbolism and gothic literature speak to each other and open up possibilities for an artistic renaissance, one that is emancipated from an economy of fetishism and the disadvantages of mass reproduction. A Ph.D specializing in 19th Century British Literature at the X will allow me entrance into the discussion from the vantage point of the British novel while also authorizing a consideration of both its historical and social influences.
To prepare for the above program, I have utilized my graduate classes to autodidactic ends. For my English Renaissance final, Dr. Romack allowed me to purse a study of Greek influences on Shakespeare’s sonnets, which along with Hamlet informed the poetry of Lord Byron, while in my Modernism class Dr. Earle gave me the opportunity to explore the presence of Byronic heroism, French symbolism and Paterian aestheticism in the work of James Joyce. I have also pursued projects on the influence of Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic on the philosophy of Sartre and Beauvoir, deconstruction and post-modern relativity in The Picture of Dorian Gray, intertextuality between Kant’s Critique of Judgment and Wilde’s Decay of Lying, and a psychoanalytic reading of the intersexuality of Wilde’s text. In addition to these opportunities, I was able to take a year of French so that I might begin to read such poets as Baudelaire in French, and an advanced theory course entitled “Foucault versus Derrida”, which contributed significantly to my understanding of post-structuralism and deconstruction.
The professor of that course, X, has played a crucial part in my academic success, not only as my professor but also as my thesis reader and as head of the honors program at UWF. It was he who recommended me as a teacher’s assistant for the classical literature honors class and he who, after reading the 40 page excerpt from my novel submitted for my thesis, was gracious enough to request the first half of it. Chapter excerpts from this novel as well as poems have been published in X, X's annual student anthology, as well as online.
While there are many professors at UT at Austin who specialize in my fields of interest, I feel Elizabeth Cullingford and Elizabeth-Richmond Garza are particularly situated to instruct me. Professor Cullingford’s expertise in Irish literature, politics and culture as well as modernism will be invaluable to me in my approach to the problem of art through the aesthetics of Irish writers Wilde and Joyce. Her Modern British and Irish Poetry class, which proposes a study modern poetry through the lens of psychoanalytic theory and formal aesthetics, sounds particularly interesting. Uncannily, Professor Garza’s areas of interest are virtually synonymous with mine: her class Vampires and Dandies would be for me a decadent pleasure rather than a necessary scholastic exercise. Both her nineteenth century and world literature classes promise a multimedia approach to art along with nods to Russian and French authors, all of which would be beneficial in rethinking a contemporary aesthetic and art form free from the constraints of Western capitalism.
Having worked as a marketing manager for IBM, a technical data manager at DRS technologies and as a current manager at Walmart, I am in a unique position to explore the commodification of art by capitalism. In these positions, I have experienced first-hand the organizational arrangements, the tactical and strategic programs, the “messaging” and the deployment of marketing campaigns aimed at maximizing profit through the distribution of a product. If accepted, I hope to bring this experience to the table in my studies at UT at Austin.
As my formal writing sample, I have submitted a paper that explores the vampire as a literal figure and metaphorical device in the British adventure novel She and the gothic novel Dracula. The emphasis on the gothic as an expression of the minor term in Western binaries points back to Adorno’s Aesthetics, where art itself serves as the other to various hegemonic structures.