i understand and i really dislike it as well, but i think it’s important to remember that much of that distrust comes from real and historical patterns of intellectual theft (which hit disproportionately across academia). it’s shitty! the world is a better place when we can share openly and help each other get through the absolute absurdity of the academy! but i can’t think badly of anyone who chooses not to spread their materials around. even though they’re not the same kind of work as, say, a book chapter or an article, we put a lot of labor into documents like proposals and applications, and i think it’s okay to be protective of that labor. 

that said, i’m really open with mine, particularly with people that i actually know. my roommate’s getting a big folder of fellowship and job application materials from me, for example, which is partially bc i love him & the other younger premodernists in my program and want them to succeed, and partially bc i want to save our shared advisor some work. my fellowship group have swapped and given feedback all our job materials, and juliana @caffeinebooks & i exchange proposals all the time. i’m happy to share things like cover letters and research statements with people that i know, because i want to save them some of the angst i went through (which was already ameliorated by the folks who did this for me). it’s harder to muster that kind of generosity towards people i don’t know, because, as selfish as it sounds, i spent 9 hours getting the wording on that cover letter right and i’m enough of an asshole to want to reserve the fruits of that labor for people i know and love, at least until i’ve moved on to other forms of labor. i was not planning on sharing my job materials until i got a job. now i’m cool with it.   

i feel an obligation to pay forward a lot of the help that i’ve gotten on my materials from people who shared theirs with me. but i also understand not being comfortable doing that, or only being comfortable doing that in certain ways. the giving and the getting should be balanced, IMO, but i think it’s up to the individual to decide what that balance looks like for them.

thank you!! ok one: i discourage the idea of thinking any phd program as a “safety”  -- some are ranked higher than than others, and some have access to more resources, but unlike safety undergrad programs (which give you some guarantee of admittance, as long as you hit a certain number of criteria), even lower-profile grad programs tend to have a really rigorous admissions process, and there’s absolutely no guarantee you’ll get in anywhere. i got accepted to higher-profile programs and rejected from many that i had considered back-ups, so don’t get too hung up on rankings as an indicator of success! 

all of that said! imo the best way to find lower-profile programs that are doing cool stuff is to do some sleuthing. if you’re nearing the end of your undergrad, odds are you’ve read a fair amount of secondary criticism--collect a handful of your favorite scholars and google them! you’ll see where they’re currently based and where they were trained (and if their CV is available, you can also often see who supervised their graduate work.)

you should also ask faculty members in the field you’re interested in pursuing--they’ll know where their colleagues and friends teach; they may have insider knowledge about program reputations; and might even be able to send some emails of their own, if you decide to apply to one of those places.

i've actually never run into this! plenty of long s's (which look like an f without the crossbar: ſ), but i've never worked with a document that used an actual f in place of an s. long s's get transcribed as s's, because that's what they are!

Paradise lost, not Paradife loft.

you do run into this with v/u and j/i quite often (ouerioyed = overjoyed, for ex) and then you just have to make a decision abt whether you're doing a diplomatic or semi-diplomatic transcript--in other words, are you going for accuracy or readability? for my own work, i stick as close to what's on the page as possible when I'm transcribing. you can easily clean a text up later if needed, but it's INCREDIBLY annoying to have to go back to the images and put parentheses around all the abbreviations you silently expanded as you went, put weird capitalizations back where you lowercased, figure out which of the v's were originally u's, etc.

so if you are in a situation where they're real f's (?? crazy!) i would transcribe them as written and include a note for future-you or current readers that mentions what's going on there.

hello! I received a diss completion fellowship that (forcibly) released me from my teaching obligations and provided the money that i’ve used to travel and live for the past few months. grants and fellowships aren’t too different from one another; the main difference is that fellowships generally provide more money.

both grants and fellowships tend to privilege applicants who need to be in a particular place for their work. this is a distinct (and rare) advantage for those of us who need to travel to consult our objects--if you work on something that’s widely available online, or if your work doesn’t require much archival labor at all, it can be significantly harder to find someone willing to give you money to travel just for the sake of writing someplace nice. not impossible! but harder. it’s the difference between saying “i literally cannot complete my groundbreaking dissertation without spending a month in this archive 5,000 miles away” vs saying “i can complete my groundbreaking dissertation anywhere, but it would be nice to do it someplace not here!” usually, the funding goes to applicants who can make a clear case for their need. 

that said! there are absolutely fellowships that consider the funding a reward for good work and an investment in future good work, rather than as a way of facilitating that work. 

there’s a big big list here for your perusal (tw for the wiki being the wiki); you’ll want to look specifically for ones that don’t award based on demonstrated research need. in the US, the major humanities DCFs (dissertation completion fellowships) are the mellon/acls, the newcombe, the ford, the aauw, and the de karman, but there are also plenty of discipline-specific ones! these posts might be useful as well.

short answer: no, probably not? i mean, it’s entirely up to you, but uprooting and moving schools is a lot of work and you definitely don’t need to go to a school with a dedicated medievalist in order to study the subject at the graduate level! i took one medieval lit survey and did a summer supervision on chaucer--that was the extent of my medieval knowledge before grad school. as long as you have professors willing to help you do good brain work (even if it’s not in their area of speciality), you’ll do just fine, esp if you already know you want to study it! 

tanisha!! <3 <3 

not stupid! nobody tells you these things! once a professor has used their first name with you (in an email, in conversation, whatever), you have a green light to call them by their first name. 

shree!! it’s been forever! this is so lovely--best wishes for yr graduation <3

yeah i had a few! tips for video interviews: 

thank youuu!

this is a totally subjective thing, which is what makes it so annoying. my personal rule is a week, and i remind myself that my own reaction to being nudged on things is a sense of gratitude, not irritation.  

uhh sure! (post here) there’s not much to tell other than what i’ve already written, though. it’s expected that you’ll negotiate, so when you get the offer (usually over the phone) you never give a verbal yes. wait for the official offer letter so you can see everything in writing and then decide if you’re happy with it and/or what else you’d like to try for. obviously it’s great to have leverage in the form of another offer, but even without one, there’s usually some wiggle room! so you either email or call the dept chair back, asking if it’s possible for them to accomodate any of your asks. sometimes they will, sometimes they won’t! most of it’s up to the dean, not the chair. once they’ve talked it over, you’ll get a revised offer letter, and you can decide whether to accept that one or ask for additional things. ex: your first request, for a bump in salary, is refused; you might come back and ask if, instead, you can have money to fly out and look at houses before you officially move. the bottom line is that you want everything in writing before you sign on. 

that’s it! not super complicated, esp if you’re working with your own department, where faculty members will have lots of experience doing this. we’ve had a lot of new hires lately so my chair was like, “i have done six negotiations in the last 3 years, this is fine” haha. it’s totally normal and expected and as long as you’re respectful and intelligent abt your asks (not asking for a course release at a SLAC, for example), it can also be pretty painless.