SHOULD I GO TO G R A D S C H O O L ?
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SHOULD I G O TO GRAD SCHOOL? 41 Answers to an Impossible Question
Edited by Jessica Loudis, Boško Blagojevic´, John Arthur Peetz, and Allison Rodman
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Collection copyright © 2014 by Jessica Loudis, Boško Blagojevic´, John Arthur Peetz, and Allison Rodman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018. Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York Bloomsbury is a trademark of Bloomsbury Plc All papers used by Bloomsbury USA are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR.
ISBN: 978-1-62040-598-7 First U.S. Edition 2014 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh Printed and bound in the U.S.A. by Thomson-Shore Inc., Dexter, Michigan Bloomsbury books may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at specialmarkets@macmillan.com.
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To our parents
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CONTENTS Introduction
1
STEPHEN BURT
Academic/Critic
STEPHEN SQUIBB
Student
14
A M Y O’L E A R Y
Journalist
18
EBEN KLEMM
Mixologist
26
DAVID ORR
Poet/Critic
31
MAGGIE NELSON
Writer
34
MEEHAN CRIST
Writer
41
DUNCAN WATTS
Social Scientist
44
ELIZABETH SCHAMBELAN
Editor
52
ASTRA TAYLOR
Filmmaker/Writer
61
SAMUEL ZIPP
Professor/Writer
65
ANDREA FRASER
Artist
71
DAVID LEVINE
Artist
76
NANCY BAUER
Academic
80
BEN NUGENT
Writer
86
NIKIL SAVAL
Writer
90
JOHN QUIJADA
Linguist
97
ERIK LINDMAN
Artist
102
PETER COVIELLO
Professor
105
SARA MARCUS
Writer
110
ROSS PERLIN
Writer/Linguist
117
KENNETH GOLDSMITH
Poet
121
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ALEXANDER NAGEL
Art Historian
123
GABRIEL WINANT
Labor Historian
129
DALE STEPHENS
Dropout
136
MICHELLE ORANGE
Writer/Critic
139
TERRY CASTLE
Writer/Scholar
146
NAMWALI SERPELL
Writer
155
L I L I H O L Z E R -G L I E R
Photographer/Journalist
166
SIMON CRITCHLEY
Writer/Teacher
169
DAVID AUERBACH
Writer/Engineer
175
JAKE HEGGIE
Composer
180
RON ROSENBAUM
Writer/Dropout
187
LUCY IVES
Writer/Poet
196
NICOLA TWILLEY
Writer/Curator
200
JOSH BOLDT
Writer
204
AMY SILLMAN
Artist
210
RHONDA LIEBERMAN
Writer
214
DAVID VELASCO
Writer/Editor
222
JAMES FRANCO
Actor
229
SHEILA HETI
Writer
232
Acknowledgments
237
About the Contributors
239
About the Editors
247
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Introduction
T HE FIRST THING TO say about this book is that when we refer to “grad school,” we’re not talking about programs in the life sciences, law, engineering, or business. What we mean are master’s degrees in things like English and history, MFAs in art and poetry, and doctoral degrees in the humanities, cultural studies, and social sciences. Unlike a medical or law degree—or, really, any degree required to advance in a field other than academia itself—humanities and arts degrees run a high likelihood of not paying off on the investment. Master’s degrees are routinely derided as cash cows for universities. Doctoral programs, if they do offer stipends, provide less than most entry-level salaries, and only a lucky few can hope to land academic jobs afterward. Finally, there’s the problem facing every writer and artist considering an exorbitantly expensive MFA: If you don’t need a degree to do what you do, then why get one? If this book approached grad school from a purely economic perspective, it would be much shorter and far more depressing. The crisis of higher education is a critical issue these days, but this book is not about plundered personal bank accounts, struggling institutions, or the rise of credentialization—at least not directly. It’s about what drives people to consider going back to school in the first place, the point at which rational choice intersects with personal predilection, unpredictable circumstances, and anxiety about the future. As Heather Horn noted in a 2013 Atlantic piece about why doctoral programs persist against all statistical odds, “Asking why young people keep entering PhD programs is a lot like 1
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Should I Go To Grad School?
asking why young people keep moving to New York planning to become actors.” Grad school certainly held an appeal for us. We four editors began working together in 2012 through Platform for Pedagogy, an organization that publicizes and promotes free public lectures, symposia, and cultural events around New York City. Though none of us were enrolled in school at the time—we were all only a few years out of college—we attended university conferences and talks in our spare time, browsed course catalogs, and flirted with the idea of going back. (Since then, one of us has.) We all work in different fields—literary magazines, programming, the art world—and Should I Go to Grad School? grew out of conversations about how and why degrees matter in our respective professions, as well as what the future might hold without any extra letters after our names. The purpose of this book is to provide a broad, unempirical look at how a variety of people in the arts, academia, social sciences, and humanities have personally engaged with the problem of grad school. Rather than solicit a yes-or-no answer to our titular question, we wanted each writer to reflect on his or her own history. Contributors who did go were asked to discuss the issues, exhilarations, and traumas they confronted while enrolled. We were lucky to receive many excellent essays and were struck by the fact that no two stories are the same (though certain themes—the effects academia can have on writing, the decision to spend one’s twenties in New York City, the theories of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu—do appear again and again). There are accounts of coming to terms with one’s priorities, struggling through—or abandoning—a dissertation, and returning to school after more than a decade away. People wrote about the joys of learning to speak the language of academic specialization, the bizarre interpersonal dynamics of MFA writing workshops, the subtle psychological conditioning integral to doctoral programs, and the freedom, thanks to school, to finally finish a book or relocate to a new city. While the majority of the people in this book did go to grad school— sometimes more than once—a number of our contributors didn’t, never considered it. Sheila Heti told us that going back to school never occurred to her: Instead, to satisfy the need for creative and social stimulation, she
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Introduction
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ran a salon of sorts out of her apartment in Toronto. Kenneth Goldsmith and Andrea Fraser noted that when they were starting out in the art world, nobody would have ever thought to get an MFA; people just moved to New York and joined the scene. In casting a wide net, we aimed to reflect both the realities of various kinds of academic programs and the range of opportunities available to people who choose to forgo them. Our youngest contributor is barely in his twenties (though he’s already founded a company); our oldest contributors have upward of five decades of experience in their respective fields. In addition to academics and writers, we asked journalists, sociologists, painters, poets, programmers, historians, activists, novelists, an actor, and a mixologist. We had no agenda when we set to work on this book. There was no bias for or against grad school, no intention of proselytizing about higher education, or of offering career advice. Our goal was to assemble an array of voices in the hopes that this might broaden the conversation about grad school in the arts and humanities, and to assuage the anxieties of anybody in the process of deciding whether to go. There are, of course, no obvious answers to the question of this book, only examples to be considered and mistakes to be learned from. But if there’s one message that we’ve come away with in the process of working on this book, it’s that so long as you surround yourself with the right people and questions, it’s possible to lead a meaningful and intellectually engaged life no matter what you decide. —Jessica Loudis
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