brigadierpudding

Nokingofengland, given your interest in teaching, interdisciplinary studies, and early modern literature, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has a lot to recommend it. When I visited a month ago, I was impressed by their emphasis on pedagogy: not only do they have the customary seminar on teaching first year-composition, but they also offer one on teaching literature and another one on teaching film. After the first year, you usually teach 2 classes a semester, and there are a lot of options for teaching a variety of lit classes. For an early modernist like yourself, the ones you'd probably want to teach include Intro to Shakespeare, English Lit before 1800, and Renaissance Lit & Culture, but you can also pick up classes like Intro to Drama, Intro to Poetry, and Intro to Fiction, any of which could demonstrate your credentials as a generalist. Suffice to say, at UIUC you'd get a lot of training and experience as a teacher. UIUC also tried to emphasize the interdisciplinary opportunities available to its students. You can take graduate seminars in other departments, and they're home to the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. Finally, they have a very solid faculty for early modern studies, all of whom (the ones I met, anyway) seemed very friendly and accessible, so you'd be able to get plenty of individual attention, no doubt.

In addition to the ones Phil Sparrow mentioned, I'd suggest you look into Ohio State and UT Austin, both of which have a number of great scholars working on early modern drama. Selecting the best and most appropriate programs to apply to also depends on what your particular research interests are. Do you know what you want to focus on?

I have a feeling we're going to have a great cohort

OMG Yes! You'll have to tell me all about it this Fall!

I'm glad someone gets the reference! I love Pynchon and other postmodernists. They're not all that different from early modern writers, many of whom can't resist stuff like metatheatricality. There's definitely a reason Pynchon lampoons Jacobean revenge tragedy in The Crying of Lot 49!

'Sup, fellow OSU early modernist.

You really couldn't make a bad decision. See you at OSU in the Fall!

Fit is fate, my friends. Dazedandbemused, it was nice meeting you, too, and I'm really glad that UT Austin has lived up to your dreams! Best wishes for your future scholarly endeavors.

Count me in for Ohio State!

Ohio State! Yeah. It came down to faculty fit, really. I had such a positive experience meeting the profs at OSU, and their research interests work really well with mine. Still, it was tough turning UT down. I've had to spend the past few days telling myself that it's OK. I'll take that as a promise.

As much as I loved UT Austin, I had to decline their offer. My research interest fit well there, but they fit really well at OSU. It was really great meeting everyone in Austin! And good luck to the new recruits, you lucky soon-to-be Austinites!

I've declined UIUC and UT Austin, so I hope someone's going to receive a nice e-mail soon.

Congratulations! Dreams do come true!

I was at visiting day, and I will PM you immediately.

Haha, yeah, that was me! I was out of it half the time because of exhaustion, but I had a blast. It was helpful talking to the early modernist students, and I've set up times to talk to a couple of the Shakespeareans. The next couple weeks of deciding are going to be rough, but it's a good problem to have.