silenus_thescribe

It does not. It has two MFAs, both of which are great: the New Writer's Project (housed in the English department) and the prestigious Michener Center MFA (housed within the university, with some English department crossover). The latter is extremely competitive but lucrative; if you get it, it's three years of no-teaching funding at 30k/year.

Hey all -- current UT Austin PhD candidate writing, to say that if you have any questions about UT's program vis-a-vis your interests, feel free to PM me! Happy to answer questions about the department and program as a whole.

So yes, I don't know the full lived and affective experience of what it's like to be an adjunct, or to complete a PhD. (Though I have published and done lots of other things that come with the PhD experience.) But I do know that the odds of getting tenure-track or even just solidly permanent employment in my field are not great, and I have no rosy vision about that. Nor, and I'm going to keep stressing this, does anyone else I know who is currently getting an English PhD. Your picture of the post-PhD life doesn't "threaten" me or anyone on this forum; we know that those possibilities are quite likely. I have never once read your comments (or the comments of others who have expressed similar things to you) and thought, "Damn, I didn't think that could be a possibility for me." My point is: this forum is designed for people to come and talk about their experiences applying to graduate school, getting into grad school, etc. I am willing to wager that most people already know the grimness of the job market. The fact that they've then chosen to apply to PhD programs doesn't mean they've stuck their head in the sand about the picture you describe; it just means that they've chosen to take the calculated risk and pursue something that's important to them. The logic of what you're saying in your post seems to be, "If you're applying to English PhDs, you're necessarily ignorant of how bad things are." That's not true in the slightest. As I said, it's not like the choice is between total uncertainty and doom on the PhD track and job security anywhere else we go. If the profession truly slides into the ocean by the time I complete my PhD and I'm forced to get work elsewhere, it will suck but I will live with that. And, crucially, I won't regret having earned a degree that's really important to me, nor will I regret getting to do work that's important to me. I stand with you in calling out departments who present graduates with an overly rosy picture of what getting a job will be like. It's important that we as grad students, and those like you who have earned a PhD, to hold departments accountable to an accurate representation of placement. But I also think that even in the face of a contracting discipline that getting a PhD is still worth it for many people, including myself, and I don't have to put my head in the sand to feel that way.

I would agree with this, if the purpose of wordstew's comments was simply to point out the inaccuracy of Rutgers' placement rate. As I said, that information is important, and we should be holding departments accountable for placement stats. The main thing with which I was taking issue is the second half of wordstew's post, the "this is the profession you want to enter" part, which to me smacks of the nihilism to which I refer. Moving away from the troll-y stuff and toward Rutgers' actual placement rate: looking at their website, I would say that 10 percent is certainly too low in describing their placement, but I also think wordstew is right to say that 87 percent is a gross exaggeration. Unless Rutgers provides *detailed* job placement -- that is, name of PhD recipient, what year they earned their PhD, and then all subsequent placement(s) -- it is indeed irresponsible to make it seem as if getting a PhD at Rutgers will just shy of almost certainly land you a prof job. I'm going to be entering the job market phase of my PhD here in the next few years, and as I've been thinking about things I've looked at placement pages of numerous PhD programs. Generally speaking, I'd say that most programs are actually not great about accurately advertising placement rates. Typically, you see one of the following things: "Our graduates have gotten jobs at": This is one of the worst, if not the worst way to list placement. This will simply be a list of universities where PhDs at that uni will "have gotten jobs," typically with no delineation of what type (e.g. TT, VAP, lecturership, etc). Only good placements: It's also quite common to see graduate schools only list people who have gotten jobs of some type. While if specific enough this can tell you some things, it also masks the problem of ratios, for this doesn't give you the full picture of all PhD recipients. I saw this on Emory's page recently; I could see several excellent placements, but I have no sense of how many PhDs they're turning out vs. how many jobs are acquired. Listing placements solely by year: This is where I give Rutgers some credence in how they present their 87 percent statistic. That number, it seems, is based on a "three year job market" period, meaning that it's not "87 percent get jobs right away," but rather that "87 percent within the now-standard 3 year job search will get jobs." It's better to be honest about that up front, as Rutgers is, because too often I see programs simply list job placements earned within a given academic year. But that doesn't tell us if those placements come from people who were on the market for years or only one year, which is a relevant factor in figuring out a uni's placement rate. And these are not even to mention the surprising amount of schools I saw which made no effort to present even just their best-case placement rates! I'd love to hear what y'all think, but to me a complete placement picture should look something like this: have placements broken down by academic year, but then in each year list name, year of PhD earned, and, if relevant, jobs earned prior to listed placement. I also think area of specialty should be listed, so that it's clear where a department is most successful at turning out scholars.

If I may. I say what I'm about to say while still recognizing that there is truth in your comments. The discipline is not what it once was. There is a vast disparity between how many people get PhDs and how many academic jobs are available for those PhDs. Tenure is being gutted at universities across the country. It is, indeed, not the best time historically to get an English PhD (not to mention other types of PhDs). It is also good to point out when departments exaggerate placement statistics, as it well seems Rutgers may have done here. It is concerning that Rutgers' placement page just lists "jobs gotten", without specifying who got those jobs and when they received their PhDs. (And, even if there is some truth to the 87 percent figure, it's worth noting that Rutgers qualifies that by saying, "In assessing our success, we exclude data from the most recent three years, since the job search has evolved nationally into a two- or three-year process, often requiring jobseekers to hold temporary positions before moving into tenure-track jobs (during this transitional period, Rutgers continues to offer support to our students, financial and otherwise)." That is to say: it takes awhile to get to that 87 percent, if it truly happens.) With that said. I've been in graduate school for four years now, and *never once* have I met a graduate student in my department or elsewhere who is either deluded or ignorant about the job market. The "holy shit what is happening to the profession" panel has been a staple of just about every significant conference I've ever been to, and they're quite well attended by current graduate students. Professionalization courses, including ones which tailor to non-tenure track jobs, are starting to crop up in grad programs across the country. All this to say: I think it's safe to assume that most people applying for PhDs in 2019 know that things are not great, academic job-wise. I do not know a single person who has ever thought that a published article(s), good letters, and a smile will get them a TT job the minute they turn their dissertation in. Why do I say this? During my application season on Grad Cafe and, it seems, somewhat persistently since, there are a certain crop of "grad school nihilists" who come on here and insert themselves in conversations being had by people who, in the face of crappy odds, are working hard to chase a grad school dream. Many if not most of them are already struggIing with the high difficulty of just getting into a funded PhD program at all, with all the resultant anxieties that come with that. I don't want to suppose right off the bat that you're necessarily one of these people, but your post does remind me of that kind of unqualified negativity I've seen on these forums. To be fair, some of these more nihilistic posts come from people who, not unreasonably, have had their hopes charred after a successful time in grad school, only to find slim to no pickings job-wise. I'd be bitter in that situation too, and it's a reality for which I'm going to have to prepare -- and, in fact, something for which essentially all of my colleagues have prepared. But the brutal reality of the job market is known by people who are signing up for PhDs, so coming onto Grad Cafe to tell people that they're foolish for chasing a "dying profession" doesn't really help things, and at worst it can needlessly stoke the anxieties of prospective applicants who, again, already know how bad things are getting, and continue to get. Because the other thing is -- and in the face of job market nihilism I always find myself asking this: what's the alternative? Precarity and oversaturation are hitting all different markets right now in the US. Sure, your odds of making a living wage are better if you'd started off being a computer programmer, but even now those programs at universities are getting overcrowded. It's not like the dichotomy is, "Either you risk everything on the chance of a tenure-track job, or you go for something more stable in a non-academic environment." Plenty of people with seemingly "stable" jobs get downsized, and whole industries right now are facing similar circumstances to the academy. The other career I was interested in prior to committing to grad school -- web publishing -- suffers an "independent contractor" disease even worse than the adjuncting crisis in the academy; I tried working there to see if I prefer it, and I made the calculated choice -- factoring the very risks you talk about -- to go to graduate school. So, taking your comments charitably, I would suggest that in a forum like this one -- whose directive is connecting people who have already made the decision to apply to grad school -- defeatist comments are at best pointless and at worst needlessly destructive. We know what we're getting ourselves into.

To any of y'all who choose UT Austin: DM me if you'd like info on moving/finding neighborhoods, etc. I can also forward your info to department listservs to see if any current grad students are looking for roommates.

Not to be too negative, because obviously these people mean well, but there's nothing like talking to someone who knows nothing about how lit/rhet/comp academia works, and fielding questions like, "Oh, so you're getting your PhD in X city! Will you try to get a job in X city when you leave?"

If these people don't know much about academia -- particularly the intricacies and nuances of graduate programs and their rankings, which differ from the prestige of schools in general, the kind of prestige that the average layperson perceives -- then you can take most of what they recommend with a grain of salt. We're talking about humanities degrees here, which means going into substantial debt should be avoided at all costs. The NYU MA is unfunded, and an easy way to get into six-figure debt during a time in your life where you won't be making much money to pay off the principal.

Kendall says it perfectly here. I don't know that I'd say that MA prestige doesn't matter at all, but I am skeptical that it matters enough that you should look more favorably upon Wake over Duquesne. I mean, it says something that there's no US News and World Report or similar ranking index for MA programs. The thing to remember about MAs is that not everyone goes into them to then get a PhD; plenty of folks go in because they want some professionalization experience that undergrad couldn't give them, or because going back for an MA might mean getting more likely pay raises down the line if they teach at a place where MAs are rewarded in that fashion. Because not all MA students end up going for the PhD, the question is: how do you make yourself competitive with other students who are coming out of MAs and going into PhD programs? To me, the things that will make you a stronger candidate if you want to get into PhD programs are the things above and beyond the "credential" numbers (e.g. GPA): teaching experience, potentially conference or even publication experience, and strong letters of rec from faculty who have seen you do graduate-level work. Those things are more likely to happen at a place where you not only have tuition relief but also are getting paid to do work that will make you a more appealing applicant for PhD programs, which is the kind of stuff that comes with an assistanship. To me, there's no choice here, especially if you do want to go on to the PhD after the fact: in one place, you're getting what is undeniably a good education (a friend of mine did her Comm MA at Wake), but you're either going to have to work outside of school or go into debt, which will decrease the time you have to spend building the CV components which will make you a strong PhD applicant. In the other, you don't have to worry much about finances (though I don't know what living is like in Pittsburgh), and you'll get the chance not only at advanced study but also employment at a university. Barring any better offer, Duquesne seems to me the clear winner.

Ramus illustrates an important principle I was thankfully told early on in my application season: when it comes to grad school: programs, not universities as a whole, have reputations. There are plenty of top-tier schools which, depending on your discipline/area of specialty, wouldn't scream "prestige."

I went to a SLAC and got two BAs, one in English, the other in philosophy. I debated the merits of getting PhDs in either subject, and ultimately chose English because (a) it was my first disciplinary love, (b) the job market for philosophy is substantially worse -- yes, that is possible, and (c) I knew that whatever my research was, it would ultimately involve English and philosophy. By and large, the English programs I got into (and the one I'm currently at) not only make it easy but actively encourage that kind of interdisciplinary work, whereas it's harder to do so in philosophy departments, particularly if they're analytic as most American unis are. In short: you aren't nuts. But you'll need a clear rationale as to why you feel your philosophy education equips you for an English PhD, especially if you want to continue your MA work into a lit dissertation. My committee is letting me write a somewhat heterodox diss that involves a lot of philosophy, but in my prospectus I made the links to literary scholarship clear, as I did in my writing sample.

Actually y'all, I spoke a bit too soon about one thing in my last post... it looks like they have updated placement info on the site. I think some of the folks that have been listed actually haven't defended yet (things might have changed up schedule-wise), and there are some jobs that the listed folks have gotten quite recently, been but otherwise that is the most recent stuff.

@tacocat211, @millw, @gloriagilbert: Hey all, current UT PhD student here. I'm not sure why the department hasn't updated the placement information yet, but hopefully that should happen soon. While all the standard qualifiers apply to the following statement (e.g. "the job market is tough, etc"), here it goes: We have had several straight-to-TT placements in recent years, or at least TT after one year of completion. Generally speaking, UT fares better on the small-to-mid size universities, especially liberal arts schools, but if you're in the Rhet/Comp track you're likely to do extremely well, as UT is in the top three of that category and is generally well regarded, with lots of big names in that department. I would say that attrition is relatively common pre-MA; at least one person per year since I've been here has left after getting their MA, commonly due to losing interest in academia/not wanting to slog through the job market. Some have dropped out pre-diss defense but it is uncommon. My own feeling is that people who are fully committed to the job market typically end up coming out pretty well in lit (my field), with virtually almost perfect placement in the Rhet/Comp field (fewer of those students are accepted each year; it's something like 12-15 lit, 4-5 in Rhet Comp per cohort). I work in modern and contemporary dramatic literature, which is not a super robust field in literary studies on the comparative (in my experience looking for PhD programs back during my application season, when a department listed "drama" as a speciality of its faculty, it was typically a 60-90 percent Shakespearean subset of the professoriate), so I might have a harder time on the job market than some other fields, but overall I don't have anything above the typical sense of dread about the job market. UT is still a well regarded school with a large, respected faculty; it's a great place to study. If y'all have any more questions specific to your field and interests, feel free to PM me. I can be more helpful if I know specifics about what you're working in.

Unfortunately I don't! I've taken some classes with American studies folks, but I don't know much about the structure of that program and its admissions. Sorry I can't be of more help.

Congrats to all y'all UT Austin admits! If you have any questions about the program, feel free to shoot me a PM; being here for grad school is definitely one of the best decisions I've ever made!

First off, congrats on getting acceptances for the top English PhD and the top MFA program! Secondly, I echo @punctilious's comments: if you want a career in the academy, a PhD in English is more likely to allow you the flexibility in job prospects. Even with Iowa's prestige, the MFA job market is even rougher than it is for English writ large, and while literary agents do try to poach most Iowa workshop grads, in my experience you have to do a lot more work post-MFA to land an academic job (hell, someone in my program working on an English PhD already has an MFA from Iowa). Also ask yourself if upon completing the MFA you feel like you'd want to pursue a PhD, and all the complications that come with re-applying for that. If your focus really is creative writing, and you're willing to rough it, Iowa's MFA is a fine choice, and cost-of-living-wise you'll avoid the impossibly expensive Bay area. Given that you're looking at two top-of-field options, at this juncture I would ask yourself what you want most out of your graduate degree. That should give you your answer.

I said something similar to this back when a bunch of us on this forum discussed the updated US News and World Report rankings in 2017, but as best as I can tell rankings are better understood an expression of already existing preferences, rather than a system that is supposed to impute preferences either in hiring or graduate admissions. The methodology of these ranking lists couldn't be taken as credibly serious by any scholar -- especially US News'. I've talked to people in my own institution and elsewhere who have worked on hiring committees and none of them have mentioned ever looking at rankings as a means of seriously vetting candidates, which makes sense because once you're at the graduate level, your dissertation work is all about with who you work. Your department could be top 10 by reputation as a whole, but if there aren't faculty at your university that are standouts in the field, then the top 10 ranking won't help you job-wise than if you had been at a school where the faculty fit match was stronger. I know I would have been worse off at the schools ahead of me in the top 20, even though they're ranked higher, because at my current institution the faculty match is near peerless. So, in short, when you see rankings like US News or the NRC's, my advice is to say, "Think of this how the professionals in the field tend to see these departments," and nothing more -- certainly not "I won't get a job if I don't get a school at X rank."

Yes, it sometimes happens that you meet with faculty who aren't necessarily in your field; it all depends on who is in town and is available that weekend. I met with the person who became my advisor (and was my POI on my statement of purpose), and a professor that I have barely seen since that recruitment weekend.

I echo everything that @dazedandbemused said, and would especially stress not getting a parking pass from the university. They run about ~200 per year, which is pretty high given that you aren't guaranteed parking. Also, traffic is a bloody mess around that area, and I think that + gas makes it not worth it. To expand on a comment of mine from earlier: While east/west bus service in town is really spotty, if you can land somewhere on the North-South angle of town, you can usually land a bus that will get you to campus, and at no cost to you as a UT student. Even for some of the more southmost/northmost parts of town, you can catch the 801 or 803 rapid shuttle, which will drop you off right on the main drag of campus, and pretty quickly at that. If you want to avoid some of the higher Hyde Park/North Campus rents and are willing to go north (up by 183) or south (down by 290/Southpark Meadows), both the 801 or 803 are an excellent bus option. Personally, my recommendation would be to land a place with reliable bus service and save yourself the trouble of car costs (gas, insurance, repairs, etc). I all things considered am glad I have a car, but I recently had an expensive repair bill that made me wish I only needed to rely on the bus. If you know you'll be flying a couple times a year, there's a bus that leaves from campus (the 100) and goes straight to the airport. Like all buses, it's free for UT students. My first year, I got to campus on the 7 bus, which from my neighborhood at the time (where I rented a place for a cool $500/month, a price that's still kind of available there) took between 35-45 minutes. Not ideal, but with traffic you aren't guaranteed a fast commute a lot of the time, and if you can read on the bus, which I can, it's not wasted time.

1. If you're coming in with an MA, you might TA for one year, but if your MA came with teaching experience you might start teaching intro-level rhetoric and composition. If you're coming in with a BA, you TA for a large lecture class in either American, Brit, or World lit. You get two groups of 25 students once a week each for a discussion section lasting 50 minutes, so I suppose you might call it a "2/2" but it feels more like a 1/1 since in terms of hours in the classroom you're only spending an hour and forty minutes per week. You get a chance to rank your preferences before each semester that you TA, and typically I've got to TA for one of the top three options I rank. Those assignments are made based more on time (i.e. when your seminars are) and availability rather than what your own field is. Typically, you TA at least one Brit and American class each, in my experience (I did a full year of both). World Lit has pronouncedly lower enrollment than American or Brit, so if there's lots of demand for that class it's less likely you'll get it. 2. No dress code, but from what I remember from my own year and the years succeeding, it ranged from business casual to standard business dress. Basically, don't dress *too* down, but don't feel like you need to bust out a suit or anything like that. 3. I might be the wrong person to ask about this, because for some reason I arrived at a time where I had plenty of coursework in my field (modern/contemporary drama). For my two coursework years I had at least one drama class per semester, usually two (though half of those were Renaissance/Shakespeare classes). I know some of my friends who study 18th century lit have a harder time finding classes and will go out of department on occasion. Generally speaking, though, UT recruits based on the strengths of its professoriate, so my general feeling is that you won't have a hard time finding interesting classes. I didn't have a dud in my whole coursework period. 4. As I said in my response to @RK092089: if rents were lower in Austin, I would say it's a completely affordable city. Not much else is expensive when compared to other cities like it, and if you're able to get on a good bus corridor to campus (or live in a neighborhood with a UT shuttle), you ride the bus for free as a UT student, so it's easy to spend little on transport. As for the funding, yes, it is quite egalitarian; even inter-departmental jobs that are competitive and sometimes come with teaching relief pay the same as the stipend you make when you're teaching as an instructor of record. 5. Depends on what you mean by "highly experimental," I suppose, but my general statement here is that everyone I am friends with in the program doesn't have issue with their advisors pushing back on their research agendas. When I have heard cases of advisors and their advisees butting heads, which is few and far between, it's not usually because of the "experimental" nature of the advisee's work. 6. I could write a whole tome on this, but the answer is YES, and it's one of the biggest reasons why I'm happy I chose UT. Everyone was super collegial at the recruitment weekend, and that atmosphere remained in place when I arrived at UT to start my PhD. You'll hear people talk about "collegiality" in our department, and it's not just a buzzword.

Congrats to you and to all who got in to UT! Feel free to ask any questions, either in this thread or via DM. Couple of things to say here, although take all of the below lightly at this point, since I think your decision will be heavily informed by seeing whatever campuses you get invited to for recruitment weekends. Many of the comparisons you list do have an element of truth to them, but there's also that ineffable quality that comes from actually experiencing a university and the city that houses it. With that said: (1) It's interesting that you lead with "the funding is good enough," because the single most common complaint with our program is the funding, which while guaranteed has not caught up with the cost of living in Austin. By and large, most things aren't expensive -- lots to do on the cheap, drinks are cheap -- but the rent has really taken a hike. That said, since you have a partner, that should help offset the costs some. But do know that Austin may seem cheap by many metrics (no state income tax!), but on big ones like rent it has gotten more expensive. And for what it's worth, us grad students complain about funding all the time, but we have an extremely collegial department and we get along in spite of the financial hurdles you'd expect from being a grad student. One other thing with funding and employment: I'm not sure what line of work your fiancee is in, but if she's in English or the humanities it is unlikely if not outright impossible to adjunct at UT. I know lots of people doing the adjunct life in town, and they're all doing it either at St. Edward's University or Austin Community College. UT is big enough and well-financed enough that tenured faculty cover most of the courseload, with renewable lecturerships filling up the rest, and those aren't available that often. (2) I cannot recommend the Renaissance faculty highly enough. Rumrich is indeed your guy if you're working on Milton; one of my good friends in the program is a Miltonist and works with him a lot. Doug Bruster and Eric Mallin are brilliant and unique Shakespearians in their own right. J.K. Barrett recently got a prestigious Huntington fellowship. You'd definitely be in great hands at UT, especially with a Milton focus. Another major Milton scholar, Stephen Dobranski, got his PhD at UT. (3) To add to your observation about our placement record, which has been faring quite well in recent years given the state of the job market: our department has gotten a lot better about not treating "alt-ac" (not a great term, I know) with disdain. The job placement officers and departmental climate generally have not only been accepting of but encouraging of those individuals who realize that a tenure-track professor job isn't for them. (4) With respect to UVa: I'm conflicted, because I love UT's program and recommend it highly to anyone who would benefit from the kind of research our department does. But your point about not finding any Miltonists of Rumrich's caliber at UVa: while that is a relevant consideration, you shouldn't tell yourself that you need one professor who does *exactly* what you do (or close enough for what you do) to have good space to do your own research. It might be that UVa has a faculty that you gel better with for whatever reason, and it could be that they're supportive of your Milton project that you'd find good space for it. For instance, when I was looking at departments during my application season, I found some faculty where there was one person who was PERFECT for me, and then no one else. In that circumstance, I'd rather have a broad sub-specialty faculty even if no one professor was working on stuff related to my project. Now, fortunately, UT does have more than one professor that would be useful to your research as you describe it, so based on your description alone UT is indeed the better fit. (And you should come here, of course, because it rules.) But I say this to keep in mind in case you get acceptances to other programs where there isn't a Rumrich but there is a strong Renaissance faculty. (5) On rankings: UVa currently sits in the top 10 of the US News and World Report rankings, with UT on the lower end of the top 20. Both are excellent programs that have good reputations. Does the discrepancy matter? Ultimately, with top 20 programs, not that much. Not just because US News' ranking methodology is highly dubious at best, but also because once you're on the job market, what matters is your dissertation project and who's recommending you. Institutional rep does matter, but job committees aren't trolling the US News rankings when going through applicants. A former professor of mine who has worked at three R1s has said that the first thing they look at in job packets are the recommenders and then the writing sample. Additionally, the rankings reflect departments as a whole, but when you're going up for jobs people care about who you work with within your sub-specialty. I applied to top 20 programs ranked ahead of UT that had little or no faculty in my field, which would have handicapped me even if I had a marginal boost in institutional prestige (and, probably, funding). Now, if you were choosing between a top 20 school and one ranked, like, 70, this would be an easier decision. But here, the operative question is this: where do you think you will get the most significant research done, the kind that will make a splash in your field and most allow you to speak to the subject you're most passionate about? From the sound of it, UT is that for you. Rank and prestige look nice on a CV, but they can't rescue a relatively unflashy dissertation if that's what you'd feel like you'd write absent a Rumrich. (FWIW, my closest friend in the program here went to UVa undergrad and said that if Milton is your subject, UT is the better faculty match.) Frankly, what I would expect to weigh heavily on the UT/UVa decision, if it came to that, is the funding. While some costs are higher in Charlottesville than in Austin (including taxes), rent there is cheaper, and grad students there start at 26k/year, according to UVa's website, which is noticeably higher than UT's stipends. While I don't think money should be enough to sway a perfect/great research fit in the abstract, I also know how much it sucks living on grad student wages, and no one should be faulted for choosing better financial security. I hope that answers your questions; if not, let me know and I'd be happy to elaborate. Being in UT's program is one of the best things to ever happen in my life, and I'm always happy to spread the word about it.

I was in the same boat as you coming into my PhD two years ago. At UT Austin, if you come in with a BA (as I did) you're required to teach two discussion sections of about 25 students per week for a large literature survey course (whose overall enrollment runs anywhere from 250-400, and even 900 for a synchronous multi-person online course version of the class). Even during my second year, I'd get jitters before class sometimes; it is a big responsibility, and you don't want to let down a bunch of students who have potentially taken out tons of loans for a university education. However, it wasn't long after I began my TA assignment that I fell into "the normal swing of things." A couple things to say to assuage your concerns: (1) As Caroline wisely puts it early in this thread: you know more than the students. I know that younger TAs often get tripped up when they see that they are teaching students separated maybe by 3-4 years. I've even had students 10+ years my senior. Nevertheless, you have already earned a BA in the field that you're teaching, and you spend substantially more time with literature than your students do (or will in your class, sadly). Impostor syndrome is real, but after a few class sessions you'll see that while you don't have a PhD in English yet, you're on the road to it, whereas many of your students will likely be doing serious close reading for the first time. (2) Being a TA, while not undaunting in some ways (I find grading the most stressful, as I never feel I'm "getting it right" even when my professor says I am), is not like being an instructor of record. You're there to help your prof with the clerical/grading work of the class, and to supplement their lectures and the readings. If you can talk about books intelligently -- which I know you can -- then you'll be absolutely fine. Just do the reading, come prepared, and be energetic; give your students a reason to be excited about the subject, even if they don't love reading literature. If you show confidence to your students, they'll respect your knowledge. They know you aren't as experienced as the professor, and they won't hold that against you.

Dystopian and post-apocalyptic literature? Why would you want to study such a thing? I mean, surely there's nothing going on politically at the moment that would make studying those fields especially timely...

Of course!

I acknowledge my bias here as well; UT Austin is great for writing center work, and for writing center job placements. A colleague of mine went straight from her PhD to a writing center gig at a great school on the east coast. We also placed someone at the Columbia writing center. Students at UT get the opportunity to work at the University Writing Center both as consultants and as Assistant Directors (a kind of administrative position). I know lots of fellow PhD students who work at the UWC even though they are not interested in writing center work down the line.