Hello comrades — I've been lurking here a while but this is my first post. I'm a senior undergrad, graduating in May with a bachelor's in English literature and minor in philosophy (maybe French too if I can squeeze the credits in in the spring semester). I am planning on applying to literature graduate programs this fall/winter with the ultimate goal of teaching at the college level (I am aware of the state of the job market). I have a writing sample that I've been tweaking for a while and am pretty happy with, I have a fairly substantial outline for a SOP, I have three recommendation writers lined up — the main problem I'm running into is finding the right programs for me.
If we are going by time period and geography, I am mostly interested in 18th and 19th century British literature and, particularly (at this point at least) in the rise of the novel, but from a critical perspective. I am also very interested in "theory" — particularly of Nietzsche-Heidegger-Derrida (Deleuze w/o Guattari?) lineage but also psychoanalysis/Lacan. I am also very much interested in rhetoric — I think I would like a program that allows some sort of rhetoric...minor? — I don't think I want a Rhet & Comp PhD, I am too invested in literary study to give that up, but I would like it to be a large part of what I study as I want rhetoric to be a large component of what I end up *teaching*. Which brings me to the last thing I want — last but not least, maybe even the most significant — which is a program with a really strong pedagological emphasis, particularly, again, a critical pedagogy. I want a program that isn't going to just help me become a scholar, but to become a great teacher too. And this is important to me because the one thing that I feel I've missed out on in my undergrad is any kind of teaching experience.
So far I've been searching in a random, completely unmethodical way: basically just reading posts on this board, other message boards, ranking lists, etc., and whenever I see a program mentioned that I haven't looked at yet... look it up and read the website. (Maybe there is a methodology to this but it's not very efficient...) I've spoken with my professors, of course, but they can only really speak of their own programs. So, from this sloppy methodology I've come up with a few programs that look interesting: Illinois Urbana-Champaign, SUNY Buffalo, CUNY Graduate Center, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, Duke, and University of Chicago.
I guess my question for you people in the know is, then, do those programs look like they line up with my interests? And especially, what other programs would you suggest?
I'm also worried about my chances of getting into a "big" school (like Duke maybe? Tbh I'm not even entirely sure what constitutes a 'big' school)... I have a 4.0 major GPA, 3.8 overall, I've presented at a few undergraduate conferences (and won a significant award at one); but I come from a pretty small, 'unknown' state school, have no teaching experience, no 'work experience' (I've worked the same minimum wage cashier job since high school), and no publications except in my school's own small literary journal (we don't accept submissions from other schools).
Gonna wrap this up because it feels wayyyy too long for a simple little message board post. Thanks for reading and your help.
TL;DR see the post title