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I Have Officially Passed All Three PhD Exams

Jason Ellis — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 02:09:00 +0000

I received “a very very strong pass” on my third and final PhD exam! Even though I’ve been waiting to hear about the results of that exam, I have been formulating my dissertation topic. I picked up three bags of books from the library yesterday, and I hiked another bag back home today. I’m skimming ideas to see where I can find a space to drive my first piton.

Filed under: Kent State, Personal Tagged: exams, kentstate, ksu, phd

PhD Exams, 2 Passes, Major Exam Results in July

Jason Ellis — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 02:08:11 +0000

I received word from Mack Hassler this morning that I had passed the PKD exam! That’s two down, and only one to go: 20th-Century American Literature. Kevin Floyd is working abroad in Germany this Summer, so he won’t get back to me until sometime in July. I knew this going into the exams, so no worries.

Today, I really took it easy. I slept late. I sorted some Legos from a major haul I made this past weekend (pictures to come soon). I prepared the majority of items for the next issue of Pakistaniaat. And I had some good sushi at Dancing Beta this afternoon for lunch.

I have plenty to do and other things that I would like to do given the time and energy, but anything right now is far better than the stress from each exam.

Filed under: Science Fiction Tagged: exams, kentstate, legos, phd

PhD Exams, All Done but the Waiting, 1 Pass

Jason Ellis — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:33:52 +0000

I finished my third and final PhD exam today on the fictions of Philip K. Dick. I have already received a pass from Tammy Clewell on my Postmodern Theory exam, so now I wait to hear back on my other two exams. It’s a relief to be done, but it doesn’t really feel like I’m done with the exams. I suppose that will change when I hear the results on the other two exams.

The one thing that I am very happy about is that I don’t have to sit and write any longer in the exam setting. Timed typing has destroyed my finger-wrist-arm assembly: 28 pages in 5 hours on the major exam, 21 pages in 4 hours on theory, and 27 pages in 4 hours on PKD. Not to mention the mental numbness that sets in toward the end of the exam. In fact, I began to feel like an android by the end of each exam. Running through my tape, one instruction followed by another, and another datum passed through the memory banks and into the output. Dawn Lashua, the graduate student secretary, caught something that I had not perceived in my flurry of typing today. I was not consciously aware that I had wrote the last sentence on my last exam so that it concluded: “the end.”

Filed under: Kent State, Personal Tagged: exams, kentstate, phd, pkd

PhD Exams, 1 Down, 2 to Go

Jason Ellis — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 21:11:31 +0000

I’m extremely relieved to have gotten the major exam on 20th century American literature out of the way. Though, it’s kind of painful to type this right now so I’m going to be brief. I nearly used the full five hours with a short break for lunch when Yufang dropped off some coffee. I got to a point where I didn’t want to look at it any more, and I wasn’t sure if I could type more anyways. I’m proud of my answers, but I feel undone and frayed by the work. At least I have a day to recuperate before the postmodern theory exam on Thursday.

Filed under: Kent State, Personal Tagged: exams, kentstate, phd

Tomorrow It Begins, First of Three PhD Qualifying Exams

Jason Ellis — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:06:03 +0000

Tomorrow, I will take the first of three PhD qualifying exams. The first will be the longest at five hours on 20th-century American literature. Thursday, I will take my postmodern theory exam, which will take four hours, and next Monday, I will take an exam on Philip K. Dick’s writings, also four hours.

It’s storming right now, but luckily the power went off after a lightning strike for only a few minutes. I was stressing about charging my iPod and printing out a copy of my reading list.

Our lights are back on, the reading list is printed, and my iPod is now charging. I feel as ready as I ever will be. I just need to wash my water bottle, assemble a snack kit, and get some rest.

Here I go!

Filed under: Kent State, Personal Tagged: exams, kentstate, phd

Reading List for PhD Minor Exam on the Works of Philip K. Dick

Jason Ellis — Wed, 19 May 2010 05:33:56 +0000

In June 2010, I will take my three PhD exams in the Kent State University English Literature PhD program. For these exams, I convened a committee of trusted professors, each administering one exam. I choose to take my exams in these areas: 20th Century American Literature (administered by Kevin Floyd), Postmodern Theory (administered by Tammy Clewell), and the Philip K. Dick Canon (administered by Donald “Mack” Hassler). Below, I have included my Philip K. Dick reading list. Go here to read my Postmodern Theory exam list, and here to read my 20th Century American Literature exam list.

PhD Minor Area Exam: Philip K. Dick’s Fiction and Non-Fiction, and Critical Works

Director: Donald “Mack” Hassler

Novels by Philip K. Dick, organized by date of composition.

Dick, Philip K. Gather Yourselves Together. 1950. 1994.
—. Voices from the Street. 1952. 2007.
—. Vulcan’s Hammer . 1953. 1960.
—. Dr. Futurity. 1953. 1960.
—. The Cosmic Puppets. 1953. 1957.
—. Solar Lottery. 1954. 1955.
—. Mary and the Giant. 1954. 1987.
—. The World Jones Made. 1954. 1956.
—. Eye in the Sky. 1955. 1957.
—. The Man Who Japed. 1955. 1956.
—. The Broken Bubble. 1956. 1988.
—. Puttering About in a Small Land. 1957. 1985.
—. Time Out of Joint. 1958. 1959.
—. In Milton Lumky Territory. 1958. 1985.
—. Confessions of a Crap Artist. 1959. 1975.
—. The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike. 1960. 1982.
—. Humpty Dumpty in Oakland. 1960. 1986.
—. The Man in the High Castle. 1961. 1962.
2009/12/2
—. We Can Build You. 1962. 1972.
—. Martian Time-Slip. 1962. 1964.
—. Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb. 1963. 1965.
—. The Game-Players of Titan. 1963. 1963.
—. The Simulacra. 1963. 1964.
—. The Crack in Space. 1963. 1966.
—. Now Wait for Last Year. 1963. 1966.
—. Clans of the Alphane Moon. 1964. 1964.
—. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. 1964. 1965.
—. The Zap Gun. 1964. 1967.
—. The Penultimate Truth. 1964. 1964.
—. Deus Irae. 1964. 1976. (Collaboration with Roger Zelazny).
—. The Unteleported Man. 1964. 1966. (Republished as Lies, Inc. in 1984).
—. The Ganymede Takeover. 1965. 1967. (Collaboration with Ray Nelson).
—. Counter-Clock World. 1965. 1967.
—. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1966. 1968.
—. Nick and the Glimmung. 1966. 1988.
—. Ubik. 1966. 1969.
—. Galactic Pot-Healer. 1968. 1969.
—. A Maze of Death. 1968. 1970.
—. Our Friends from Frolix 8. 1969. 1970.
—. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. 1970. 1974.
—. A Scanner Darkly. 1973. 1977.
—. Radio Free Albemuth. 1976. 1985.
—. VALIS. 1978. 1981.
—. The Divine Invasion. 1980. 1981.
—. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. 1981. 1982.

Short Fiction by Philip K. Dick, needs elaboration by individual stories.

The Philip K. Dick Reader. 1997.
Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities: The Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick. Eds. Patricia S. Warrick and Martin H. Greenberg. 1984.

Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick. 2002.

Non-Fiction by Philip K. Dick

Dick, Philip K. “The Android and the Human.” Vector: Journal of the British Science Fiction Association 64 (March/April 1973): 5-20.
—. The Dark Haired Girl. 1988.

Critical Works

Fitting, Peter. “Ubik: The Deconstruction of Bourgeois SF.” Science Fiction Studies 2:1 (1975). 19 October 2007 .
Haney, William S. II. Culture and Consciousness: Literature Regained. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2002.
Kucukalic, Lejla. Philip K. Dick: Canonical Writer of the Digital Age. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Mackey, Douglas A. Philip K. Dick. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988.
Palmer, Christopher. Philip K. Dick: Exhilaration and Terror of the Postmodern. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2003.
On Philip K. Dick: 40 Articles from Science-Fiction Studies. .
Sutin, Lawrence. Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005.
Suvin, Darko. “P.K. Dick’s Opus: Artifice as Refuge and World View.” Science Fiction Studies 2:22 (1975). 19 October 2007 .
Vest, Jason P. The Postmodern Humanism of Philip K. Dick. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009.
Warrick, Patricia S. The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1980.
—.Mind in Motion: The Fiction of Philip K. Dick. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois UP, 1987.

Filed under: Kent State, Personal, Science Fiction Tagged: exams, kentstate, phd, pkd, sciencefiction

Reading List for PhD Minor Exam in Postmodern Theory

Jason Ellis — Wed, 19 May 2010 05:30:22 +0000

In June 2010, I will take my three PhD exams in the Kent State University English Literature PhD program. For these exams, I convened a committee of trusted professors, each administering one exam. I choose to take my exams in these areas: 20th Century American Literature (administered by Kevin Floyd), Postmodern Theory (administered by Tammy Clewell), and the Philip K. Dick Canon (administered by Donald “Mack” Hassler). Below, I have included my Postmodern Theory reading list. Go here to read my 20th century American literature exam list, and here to read my Philip K. Dick exam list.

PhD Minor Exam Area: Postmodern Theory

Director: Tammy Clewell

Texts:

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation.
Berman, Marshall. All That Is Solid Melts Into Air.
Bertens, Hans. The Idea of the Postmodern: A History.
Broderick, Damien. Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction.
Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction.
Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter.
de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life.
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology.
Eagleton, Terry. The Illusions of Postmodernism.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction.
Habermas, Jürgen. “Modernity: An Incomplete Project.”
—. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.
Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity.
Hassan, Ihab. The Postmodern Turn.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.
Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
—. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions.
Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern.
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.
McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction.
Norris, Christopher. What’s Wrong with Postmodernism?
Perryman, Mark ed. Altered States: Postmodernism, Politics, Culture.
Poster, Mark. The Information Subject.
Vattimo, Gianni. The Transparent Society.
Wilde, Alan. Horizons of Assent: Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Ironic Imagination

Filed under: Kent State, Personal Tagged: exams, kentstate, phd, postmodern, poststructuralism

Reading List for PhD Major Exam on 20th Century American Literature

Jason Ellis — Wed, 19 May 2010 05:26:14 +0000

In June 2010, I will take my three PhD exams in the Kent State University English Literature PhD program. For these exams, I convened a committee of trusted professors, each administering one exam. I choose to take my exams in these areas: 20th Century American Literature (administered by Kevin Floyd), Postmodern Theory (administered by Tammy Clewell), and the Philip K. Dick Canon (administered by Donald “Mack” Hassler). Below, I have included my 20th Century American Literature reading list. Go here to read my Postmodern Theory exam list, and here to read my Philip K. Dick exam list.

PhD Major Exam Area: Twentieth-Century American Literature

Director: Kevin Floyd

Texts:

CANONICAL

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening (1899).
Cather, Willa. O Pioneers! (1913).
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper”
TS Eliot: “The Waste Land,” “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”
Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio (1919).
William, Carlos Williams. Spring and All (1923).
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby (1925).
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury (1929).
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying (1930).
Langston Hughes: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”; “Epilogue”; “Harlem”; “Same in Blues”; “Theme for English B”; “Mother to Son”; “Song for a Dark Girl.”
Countee Cullen: “Yet Do I Marvel”; “Heritage”; “Incident.”
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms (1929).
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).
Dos Passos, John. The Big Money (1936).
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath (1939).
Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).
Wright, Richard. Native Son (1940).
Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire (1947).
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman (1949).
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye (1951).
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man (1952).
Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time.
Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Eugene O’Neill, Long Days Journey Into Night
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Ginsberg, Allen. “Howl” and “Kaddish.”
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road (1957)
Burroughs, William S. Naked Lunch (1959).
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun (1959).
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962).
Plath, Sylvia. Ariel.
Pynchon, Thomas. V. (1963).
Sam Shepard, True West
LeRoi Jones, Dutchman (1964)
O’Connor, Flannery. “A good man is hard to find”; “everything that rises must converge”; “revelation”; “good country people”
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness (1969).
Reed, Ishmael. Mumbo Jumbo (1972).
Delany, Samuel R. Dhalgren (1975).
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony (1977).
Gibson, William. Neuromancer (1984)
DeLillo, Don. White Noise (1985).
Morrison, Toni. Beloved (1987).
Gloria Naylor, Linden Hills
Roth, Philip. American Pastoral (1997).
Updike, John. Rabbit, Run
Butler, Octavia. Kindred (1979).
Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex (2002).
Vonnegut, Jr., Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).

NON-CANONICAL

Asimov, Isaac. I, Robot (1950).
Bradbury, Ray. The Martian Chronicles (1950).
Kornbluth, Cyril M. and Fredrick Pohl. The Space Merchants (1953).
Ellison, Harlan. “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967).
Tiptree, James Jr. (Alice B. Sheldon), “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1973).
Delany, Samuel R. Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)
Sterling, Bruce ed. Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986).
Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash (1992).
Powers, Richard. Galatea 2.2 (1995).
Di Filippo, Paul. Ribofunk (1996).
Cunningham, Michael. Specimen Days (2005).

Filed under: Kent State, Personal Tagged: exams, kentstate, literature, phd

Amazing Sunset Picture Captured on My iPhone

Jason Ellis — Mon, 17 May 2010 03:48:43 +0000

After dinner tonight, Yufang and I saw this sunset hidden behind the Kent State University library and other buildings on campus. It was so beautiful that I wanted to save it on my iPhone knowing I would share it will you all later. The pink radiance at the center of the sky surrounded by the imposing dark blue makes me feel calm and peaceful. Besides the pleasant colors, it might have just been my baby’s company.

Filed under: Kent State, Personal Tagged: iphone, kentstate, ksu, picture, sunset

Spring 2010 AGES Grad Student Symposium, Yufang and I Are Presenting

Jason Ellis — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 03:05:37 +0000

Come out for the Spring 2010 AGES Graduate Student Symposium on April 22 from 11:00am until 1:00pm in 209 Satterfield Hall. Yufang is presenting her paper, “Cultural Memory and Schizophrenic Identity in Hua-Ling Nieh’s Mulberry and Peach,” and I will present my as-yet-unwritten essay, “James Cameron’s Avatar, Primitivism, and Pastoral Machines.” See you there!

Filed under: Conference, Kent State, Personal Tagged: ages, kentstate, ksu, symposium