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Free Sample Personal Statement in English
Program: Ph.D. in English
After a year and a half of graduate study in English, I am certain that
I want to continue studying toward a Ph.D. in English and eventually
teach literature at the college level. I have decided to continue
studying and researching within the discipline of literary criticism
because I consider it an especially fruitful one in which to work,
allowing as it does for supplemental study in any number of other
disciplines like anthropology, film, history, linguistics, and
psychology, to name a few. I plan to specialize in American fiction
written since World War II, because the "postmodern" period and its
historical context interest me the most and because I find the
epistemological, ethical, and critical questions raised by the more
experimental fictions of this period especially worthy of critical
analysis. I would also like to focus on critical theory, because I
believe that a thorough knowledge of contemporary critical debate and
its pedagogical implications is indispensable to anyone who intends to
teach literature, particularly contemporary literature.
At this point, my background consists of three years of undergraduate
study and a year and a half of graduate study of the major historical
periods and figures of English and American literature, from Old English
to modernism. Although I have not yet formally studied contemporary
American fiction, I have read much or all of the work of such novelists
as Don DeLillo, William Gaddis, Joseph Heller, Vladimir Nabokov, and
Thomas Pynchon, as well as much of the secondary criticism on DeLillo
and Gaddis. In addition, I have an introductory knowledge of most of the
major critical movements of the twentieth century, from Russian
formalism to postcolonial theory. Finally, I have studied Latin, German,
French, and, less extensively, Italian, and would be prepared to fulfill
the departmental foreign language requirements within the first year of
admission to the program.
In regard to occupational experience, for the last year and a half I
have taught freshman composition at the University of Mahomet. In
addition, this last fall I assisted Professor Jean Saltzguber, the
Director of the Writing Fellows Program at the University of Mahomet, in
supervising undergraduate honors students whose job was to edit
preliminary drafts of papers written for honors courses. This coming
spring, I will continue to teach freshman composition.
In conclusion, I would like to pursue graduate study at the University
of Springfield because of the reputation of the Department of English
and because I believe the size of both the University and the Department
of English would be ideal for the kind of interdisciplinary work with
which I would like to supplement my study of literature (perhaps through
the Program for Cultural Studies). I am particularly attracted to the
Department of English at the University of Springfield because it offers
plenty of opportunities for teaching.
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