I have been working on applying to English PhD programs for months now, and I've just gotten an email back that indicates that I should be looking at Comp Lit or Classical Studies programs instead. I was a Classical Studies and Philosophy double major in undergrad so I know what is involved in that and that I do not want to do it, but I am now concerned that an English program will not be able to accomidate me. I am under the impression that I want to focus on English departments because I want to spend my time working on Shakespeare and rhetoric and literary theory- I want to get back into writing tutoring and learn about the different ways to teach people to love what they read. I also want to take Greek literature apart and apply the analytic styles I will learn to a subject I love, but not from a perspective of cultural comparison or historical contextualization; from a focused literary perspective. Will an English department be able to accommodate these goals? I have looked for any description of various English programs that would provoke the doubt my e-mail-sender expressed but haven't found anything, which makes me think I'm not seeing something crucial. The websites indicate that people focus on everything from feminist literature to specific historical periods, and I was assuming that my classics background might steer me towards a particular historical period of literature, but still with literature as the central goal. Furthermore, when I try to look at characterists of individual programs all that I get is vague generalizations and then faculty bios- is there a way to analyse the personality of a school's department which is separate from the personality of the faculty? Someone reassure me?
