I think one effective strategy is to identify a few journals that interest you, read the abstracts for all or most of the essays those journals published over the last few years, and then--if you have access--read several of the essays that sound most interesting to you. If you don't have access, lots of scholars are very amenable to sending you pdfs if you email them. This website has descriptions of most of the major journals in the humanities, so it's a really good tool for figuring out which journals might interest you. This is also a good way to find programs; if you like an essay and it's by a junior scholar, find out where they got their PhD.