johnmarksteve

Here's my advice, Francophile: stick with national literature departments unless you feel like you really must be in a comparative literature department. Almost all comp lit graduates get jobs in non-comp lit departments. Which departments you can apply to will depend on your focus. Also, it should be said that the language requirements in comp lit programs are quite strict; it does vary from program to program (some are stricter than others), but by and large your language skills will be among the first (if not the first) thing considered in your application. At least this is how it works at Yale. You've said that you studied linguistics, so I can imagine you have good language skills--nonetheless, many of the comp lit grad students that I know were multi-lingual from an early age. There isn't stimga against interdisciplinarity, although I suppose that depends on your definition. There's a lot of push back happening right now against the national literature paradigm, periodization, and the like--and much of the most interesting work right now moves across the temporal and spatial boundaries we're used to. But it should also be said that much of that work is coming from already tenured professors (ie already experts in such periods). My suggestion would be to familiarize yourself (as best as possible) with the different characteristics of different departments: some being more liberal than others. If you're interested in working with anglophone lit. then there are definitely a few english depts that would appeal to you--meaning they have more open boundaries to the kind of work it seems like you wanna do. as for teaching: yeah, a comp lit students teach language classes post-coursework, unless youre in english in which case you teach 101 equivalents. again depending largely on the program, the university (public or private), etc. there isn't a stigma against comp lit or against interdisciplinarity as such: reservations come from being practical (ie, what you'll be able to teach, where you'll be able to get your books published, and of course the difficulty of gaining expertise in variety of fields, periods, languages, etc.). There's also a lot of "neither fish nor fowl" arguments against comp lit, as in youll get breadth but not depth, but I think that just depends on your work. I hope this helps. For what it's worth, im not a comp lit student.