claritus

To play devil's advocate, while there are problems distinct to Comparative Literature, I think there are some significant upsides as well. I'd also say it comes down to your personal goals & strategy, particularly in the long run. If you are dead set on working in a Comp Lit program after graduation, I don't think it's a wise decision—the same goes for smaller language departments. However, I can think of many recent hires in English departments who have come from Comp Lit. At Berkeley, for example, I think around 7-8 of our junior faculty members (a significant majority) have PhDs in Comp Lit, rather than in English. Off the top of my head, I would say that similar trends are visible in other comparable departments, with Princeton and Chicago coming to mind. There are various reasons for this, including broad transnational turns in the field, which I can't really go fully go into. I'd say that in many cases the additional language training does help candidates stand out. However, this isn't really beneficial unless there is a significant and/or central Anglophone component to their work. So the proper strategy seems be to work in Comp Lit, but with an eye towards English jobs—i.e. work with a mentor who does Anglophone work, but have a secondary mentor or co-advisor in another language. There's also a lot to be said for working in non-Western languages, particularly Asian languages and Arabic, as well as Indigenous languages. Whether or not Comparative Literature itself is expanding as a discipline, the expansion of subfields like Asian American, Native American, and "Global Anglophone" has opened space for comparatists in other ways.

I'm going to jump in and say that German is pretty huge in the period! You'll have a hard time avoiding Hegel and German Idealism, as evidenced by a text like Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. Likewise, if you have any interest in George Eliot you'll be hard pressed to avoid Feuerbach, since she translated much of his work into English. French is useful, of course, but I don't think it has nearly the same impact philosophically as German. Aside from Hegel and Feuerbach, we're talking Schiller, Kant, Goethe, Freud, Nietzsche...

I'm not a Victorianist, but I know that they lost Andrew Miller to JHU a year or so ago, alongside Mary Favret (who is a Romanticist, but still a very significant loss). Obviously it remains a strong department for Victorian Studies, but I imagine they're doing a little bit of rebuilding right now.

Officially declined PhD offers from JHU and Brown yesterday, as well as an MA offer from UBC. Hope this helps someone!

I've also accepted my offer from Berkeley! Super excited about the program—it really felt right during the visit. @imogenshakes Glad to see you accepted the offer from Davis! You might have to take the train down to Berkeley for a seminar

I'd say Emory.

Don't do a PhD for "job prospects." Just don't do it.

It's obviously not radically efficient, but I've found that going through dissertations on ProQuest—sorted by advisor/committee—gives you a fairly good idea of placement statistics, provided you do a little bit of google followup. Research quality is a lot harder to figure out, especially since it's subjective, but I try to follow the significant journals and imprints in my field. Special issues of journals and published roundtables are incredibly helpful (in my opinion) because they frame/are framed by immediate scholarly conversations. Obviously there will be bad and good work in each case, but the more important part is having an idea of who is involved in the conversations, and where they're writing from.

I was not able to attend, but it was scheduled for this week.

Hi all, I expect to decline an offer from Brown this week.

Not really, no. I don't know where you are getting your stats, but they have placed numerous grad in TT positions over past the past two years. And while CUNY does have some excellent faculty members, the quality of work of those at Harvard is pretty undeniable, at least in terms of pedigree. It's really not about frequency of publication; it's about the quality of journals and academic presses. Likewise, while Rhet-Comp and Digital Humanities are "hot," that doesn't necessarily translate to rankings. In particular, Rhet-Comp is not even always considered to be part of these rankings, which are focused on Literary Studies. Moreover, while Harvard isn't great re. Digital Humanities, people like Leah Price, Philip Fisher, and Deidre Lynch are at the forefront of other "hot" fields like Book History and Affect, so I don't think your characterization of the department as outmoded is totally fair. I get where you're coming from—I wouldn't want to attend Harvard, at least not for my subfield. It doesn't have the same sort of dynamism or sheen as some of the other programs in the top 10, and some of the prominent faculty members are close to retirement. That being said, they will always be able to make good hires, the faculty will always have publications with a golden pedigree, and no matter how conservative the department seems, they will still have grad students who go on to do amazing work. Think of people like Namwali Serpell and Sianne Ngai, Jared Hickman, Holger Syme, etc... No arguments against CUNY being a great program, but it really doesn't have the same profile as Harvard.

You can follow me if you can find me I think I've probably left enough of a paper trail here...

PhD or MA? And are these American programs? If the second choice is asking for any sort of decision by March 15 (and they're American) it's pretty fucked up. The standard April 15th date exists for a good reason—diverging from it to add undue pressure to admitted students is shitty and you should email them saying that (in a more formal manner, of course). That being said, you could also email the first choice and tell them about the second—it could potentially force their hand on acceptance and funding. Either way though, second choice is, uh, not behaving well. If you accepted them now and then reneged later on based on a better offer from first choice, I wouldn't feel guilty at all. They're not doing anything illegal, of course, but it's really bad academic etiquette to force an admitted student's hand based on funding.

One sort of counterintuitive piece of advice I'll give is JOIN TWITTER. There is a fantastic academic community, and it has definitely helped me keep up with changes in the field. Follow scholars, journals, departments, other organizations, etc. I've been on the platform for a few years now, and though I won't try to make some sort of causal connection between that and my acceptances, I've definitely come in contact with some great scholars, and also given access to some rad (otherwise paywalled) resources. Some newer journals and organizations (V21, Post45, and postmedieval—for example) also solicit for papers/articles/reviews from their followers. I'll also say that aside from all the potential career & academic benefits, it's just enjoyable. Scholars are hilarious, human people; interacting with them in this context really shows you that.

I tried to be fairly practical & straightforward. So essentially I gave a brief description of my research interests, aligned them with the work of the POI in question, and then asked if they were available to work with students/whether they felt the program would be a good fit for me. There's no need to go overboard—really you just want to portray yourself as engaged & amiable.