As the new year is now into full swing, I have begun the Great PhD Hunt of 2012. I have reviewed the website of every doctoral program in Anthropology in the U.S. (based on the AAA eGuide) and created a Google map to catalog my progress.
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Pins: Red are eliminated, Yellow require more research, Green are currently my top choices.
In this round, my main goal was to narrow down the field to a reasonable number of faculty to read up on. Schools were eliminated mainly because the faculty did not share my interests or the department’s focus was in another subfield. At this point, I am looking for faculty broadly interested in identity, representation, politics, power and inequality, particularly, but not necessarily, in the U.S. and Europe. I am also interested in finding faculty who appreciate, even if they do not partake in, deep ethnographic studies of the particular and everyday lived experiences.
With this phase of the Great PhD Hunt 2012 over, I am now starting the arduous, but intellectually more interesting, task of reading the latest two or three publications from each potential faculty member in the yellow and green schools. This will allow me to narrow the list down to people I want to contact and be prepared to discuss how their work intersects with my interests.
So, dear reader, do you know of someone I have missed? Do you have a friend or colleague who might be interested in guiding and advising an eager student with my interests? Please, comment or email me at akvbroek@gmail.com and I will add them to my list of potentials to learn more about.
[...] The Great PhD Hunt 2012, Angela K VandenBroek At this point, I am looking for faculty broadly interested in identity, representation, politics, power and inequality, particularly, but not necessarily, in the U.S. and Europe. I am also interested in finding faculty who appreciate, even if they do not partake in, deep ethnographic studies of the particular and everyday lived experiences. . . . So, dear reader, do you know of someone I have missed? Do you have a friend or colleague who might be interested in guiding and advising an eager student with my interests? How to be an Anthropologist, 5 February 2012 [...]
I am in a similar hunt although never as thorough and organized as yours I am afraid. My work is here http://independent.academia.edu/GabrielaAguero and I don’t have a US limitation. Right now it’s a question of finding funding and a person/academic that might be interested in supervising a proposal I already have. In my case I have been in university and dropped out. Someone just told me this is a disadvantage but I disagree although universities want you to graduate and will choose you for your ability to do so. The politics involved in PhD programs is something you will encounter though so besides reading the articles make sure you research what this person is all about and how they are as teachers. I was very naive but have since become more careful in my choices. Good luck in your search!
Neat map! Just one thing I noticed, you have the University of Tennessee in the wrong city. It’s in Knoxville, not Chattanooga. There is a UT-Chattanooga but I don’t think they have a PhD program. Also, as a native Knoxvillian, eliminated for location is a little harsh… but I suppose it’s what you’re interested in.
Opps! Thanks for catching my error.
When I first started, I actually eliminated all of the schools in the Southeast and in the Midwest. I don’t have anything against the areas. I have just lived in the Southeast U.S. for quite a few years and lived every year before that in the Midwest. As a young, childless woman, I want to use this time of my life to explore and try new things.
As it turns out, there aren’t that many schools who have faculty and programs that are in the same vein of research I am interested in. So, I ended up going back and reevaluating all of the schools regardless of location anyway. Somehow, I missed UTenn in that process. After checking this morning though, they still got eliminated because there weren’t any faculty with similar interests.
[...] an earlier post, The Great PhD Hunt, I showed off my Google map of schools. I want to clarify that I didn’t eliminate the [...]