EM51413

I don't know much about UC Davis and Binghamton. When I visited Emory people were talking about how their department doesn't really have faculty working on Marxism...but on the other hand, there are few better programs than Emory for studying 20th century French thought imho, and people there are very much up to speed with contemporary European conversations. The thing is, these are both really broad categories. Postmodernism go everywhere from new historicism to deconstruction to phenomenology to whatever Deleuze is doing, and Marxism can go from political economy to Frankfurt school critical theory to whatever Zizek is doing. Are there specific scholars whose work you admire? That might be a starting point for narrowing things down a little. The place traditionally known for "philosophy and literature" is Stanford, and they are still strong in that regard due to the legacy of people like Rorty and Gumbrecht...but administratively that department is complicated. Suffice to say the comp lit department there seems to share PhD spots with a number of national literature departments, and there are years when they'd interview a bunch of people and not accept any of them. Have you read stuff by Martin Hägglund at Yale? He was trained as a Derridian at Cornell but then wrote a Heideggerian reading of Marx in a public-intellectual-y book. Take a look, and if you like that approach, Yale might not be a bad option. Also a "philosophy and literature" project might be feasible in some English departments - back in undergrad I had a professor who does amazing work on philosophical existentialism and the novel. She got her PhD from Harvard English not too long ago. But I'm afraid I don't know much about English departments in general.

Rey Chow AND Fredric Jameson? That's interesting, especially since Chow is known for criticizing Western armchair Marxists such as a certain F. J... Faculty, mostly. And institutional Geist. But happy to talk about it (and writing sample stuff) more...sending you a DM!

Glad this is helpful! Yeah, Emory's comp lit department is neither particularly comparative (unless you happen to work on French) nor particularly focused on literature...it's really more a continental thought department. Both Duke and JHU sound ideal for your interests. I did my undergrad at JHU, in fact...and that's where I got my psychoanalysis and deconstruction. Both are certainly still alive in Gilman Hall. Great question. Short answer is one usually thinks of comparative literature as comparing a few literary works in two or three languages, usually connected by genre, influence, theme, the authors knowing each other...etc. (Funny enough, I don't know many colleagues who actually do stuff like this, but it remains the basic model nevertheless.) World literature as a literary-critical project is more interested in zooming all the way out and looking at global circulations of literatures, larger-scale flows and higher-level patterns. I'd check out the writings by people like Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova, and David Damrosch (who is at Harvard) to get a sense. If you haven't heard of the term don't worry about it too much, though. During my applications the only school that asked about it during interview was Yale...told them I hadn't thought about it that much and got accepted anyway. (Maybe they're feeling the pressure to do more Harvardy things? Who knows.) I wouldn't think Harvard is a good fit for you even without the language issue - they don't do a lot of theory there, at least compared to the places you're thinking about.

Current PhD student in comparative literature at UChicago here. The deconstructionists moved to UC Irvine a while back - yes, but Heidegger is having a moment at Yale. Emory is very strong on deconstruction and psychoanalysis. Harvard comp lit is more interested in "World Literature" nowadays, and so is Chicago, in a way. Columbia is great for postcolonial theory and new media. Duke is known for Marxism, critical race theory, and media theory. Stanford has a good digital humanities and German thought tradition, but is now moving more toward Critical Theory and postcolonial studies. (This is of course going off my very subjective impressions, and all these places have faculty that work on a variety of things, and sometimes there are splits between older and younger faculty...the best way to tell, actually, is to look at recent dissertations from the programs.) But in general, theory is more and more optional in many of these places, even if some programs still have strong theory-related preferences (you can't have a thing against the marxists and hope to get into Duke, for example). Most programs won't turn someone down just because they haven't read all of Lacan's Ecrits, because fewer and fewer people get rigorous theory training in undergrad. If anything, there's something of a turn away from "high theory" in general across comp lit departments, and on some occasions a theory heavy writing sample will hurt you if not paired with demonstrated knowledge of foreign languages and literatures (or if it's the "wrong" kind of theory for that department). But as always, every trend has exceptions (cf. Emory, which is almost stuck in the 80s...). Happy to answer more questions if this is all too vague!

I'm currently a PhD student in comparative literature, and I'm familiar with many of the programs you are looking into. First thing first: no one, not even Stanford (which takes languages most seriously among programs I applied to), will require you to be fluent in three languages when you enter. Programs like Duke and JHU are really critical theory programs (in fact, JHU's program was recently renamed. It used to be the Humanities Center), so language is not the emphasis either during admissions or during the program. It's the philosophy/theory work that counts, and they'll be happy if you're fluent in a second language with solid reading knowledge of third/fourth by the time you defend. In general with comp lit programs, you are expected to start working on one non-English literature as soon as you enter, and have some background to build on for your third, fourth, fifth...languages. One thing you'll notice is that comp lit people love learning languages, so it's actually hard to NOT end up fulfilling the language requirements one way or another. I'm using a language I don't really use for research for my second language just because it's the easiest paperwork-wise, and I know other people in my department sometimes do similar things. (Turns out it's difficult for an institution to verify you can read a language with only five living native speakers. Who would've thought.) You generally have two to three years to pass the language requirement, and for many languages, that's more than enough time (especially if you make good use of summer breaks) to go from elementary to high-intermediate. The "hard requirement" that you need to fill sometime in year two or three is usually much lower than full/native proficiency, and will vary depending on the language. For my institution, there's an exam where you read and summarize a scholarly article in the language within a fairly generous timeframe and with a dictionary. You can also fulfill the requirement by taking a class that reads literature in that language (and depending on the language, the class might even be conducted in English). You'll also continue improving your main languages after passing the requirement throughout your dissertating period, which often involves spending a significant amount of time abroad. Because of this built-in space for improvement, your department will allow some imperfections in your main languages early in the program/during admission. Because all this, if you have substantial background in one foreign language and are prepared to continue studying other languages throughout your program, language should not be a barrier during admissions. They put a lot more importance on other factors. This might be why people are "vague" about language requirements when you asked: the understanding is as long as you demonstrate aptitude and have some sort of plan, they'll help you get your languages once you're in. Hope this helps, and I'm happy to say more about comp lit programs - just send DM me.

So I also have a BA and MA in math (I specialized in category theory...lol), as well as a BA double major in English. I think your programming skills are very important assets that can help you in the long run (DH jobs are much easier to come by than lit crit jobs in general), and your language skills sound very solid/competitive as well. The problem is, as you say, you haven't taken a lot of lit classes at the university level. @queenofcarrotflowers has a good point. Academic literary criticism is VERY different from writing/appreciating literature in general. (This is important to know, because a good deal of people who enjoy the latter find themselves detesting the former after getting into the field more.) If you're sure you want to pursue literary theory, then it's a lot more realistic if you go for a masters first. There are places that genuinely recognize the value of a STEM background for literary studies (UPenn, Columbia, and Stanford come to mind), but even their phd programs tend to require (for good reasons) some systematic training in the humanities beforehand. Given where the field in general is moving (DH is a small part of a big interdisciplinary turn) and speaking from my own interview experiences from last cycle, your background in STEM will in all likelihood be viewed as a very big plus--provided you have enough training in the humanities so as to be able to make use of that background in connection to literary studies.

Hi! Current comp lit phd student here. It sounds like you have some specific idea about what you'd like to do once you acquire those languages, which I think is more important than language skills per se. If you acquire B2 proficiency in Malagasy and French by the time you apply, you will be a decent applicant (language-wise!) for many programs...provided that you have a more heuristic/theoretical vision of what you want to do with those languages (think period, critical perspective, kind of archive, how it fits into current debates, etc). As for your Scottish Gaelic, comparative literature programs tend to understand the need to study languages, and won't fault you for having to learn a new language or two during your time in the program. Virtually all programs I know have language study built into the coursework requirements and encourage language study during summer. I think it is also important to point out that, while it is indeed helpful that your university offers the languages you would like to study, it should not be a limiting or deciding factor in your choice of universities. A number of people in my program are studying languages (Native American languages and smaller Dravidian languages, for example) that aren't offered locally, and they take courses over summer or study remotely at other universities for those languages. Online courses are also becoming increasingly viable and legitimate ways to acquire languages for academic purposes. Again, comparative literature departments are used to students working in less commonly taught languages and are generally willing to give you the funding and flexibility to learn the languages you need. Since a comparative literature phd at places like Harvard ultimately require much more than language skills, I would suggest that you also look for literature professors whose research expertise (especially regarding critical methods, periods, and regions) align with yours, even if they don't work in your specific languages.

Some departments might have a historical reputation but have undergone radical changes (the most obvious is Yale Comp Lit), so the current leaning is more relevant. Some departments (I won't name any specific ones) also have internal splits when it comes to methodology, so there might not be a unified stance on whether/which theory is favored. One of the best ways to gauge things is to ask a current graduate student for the syllabus of the first year PhD proseminar (there usually is one) as well as current graduate course listings. You can get a good idea of what kind of research they're trying to get their students to do, and do with that info what you will. Faculty research is a tough one because you need to figure out which faculty's research is most exemplary of the department, and sometimes seniority isn't a good indicator. Some (potentially very influential) scholars have been in their department for forever and their departments let them do their own thing even though the rest of the faculty have moved on, and in this case they're unlikely to recruit students who want to study with those senior faculty. See instead who's the most active (teaching, publishing, advising). Also note that academic rockstars are generally (but not always) suboptimal advisors... Current grad student thesis is an okay indicator, but I've also met many grad students who figured out their interests late into the program and realized that their departments aren't the best for their interests, which means their theses aren't good reflections of the programs' strengths or preferences.

If you plan on working on continental philosophy, chances are that it's the philosophy departments that won't take you, at least in the U.S. where most departments are overwhelmingly analytic. Comp lit is indeed where a lot of continental philosophy gets done nowadays, and there are comp lit departments that barely have a literary component at all (UC Irvine, Emory, and Duke come to mind). A lot of continental philosophy people also work in media studies and interdisciplinary departments. Properly English departments, however, have been making an anti-theory shift over the last decade or two and don't seem to be stopping anytime soon. There you will likely be expected to write a thesis primarily on literary/textual studies, even if the department is known to be more "theoretical." As @Glasperlenspieler writes, taking a look at recent dissertations can help you get a better idea of what each program does, as comp lit programs tend to be very different from each other. You will have a hard time finding programs that combine analytic philosophy and literary studies, but it can be done. Emory's comp lit is very close to its philosophy department, which has top-notch continental AND analytic philosophers. Stanford also has an excellent tradition of mixing literary studies with analytic philosophy.

UChicago comp lit isn't taking new students either: https://complit.uchicago.edu/graduate/admissions

I just went through the last cycle as a theory-heavy comp lit applicant, and what I'll say is that language is less of an emphasis for certain departments, while others REALLY want you to know your languages/literatures and don't care much about theory. Many English departments are having an anti-theory moment right now and a more traditional Critical Theory WS might not go well in those places. Columbia is an exception, but still the theory they are into aren't the traditional kind. If you want to continue your MA work it might make more sense to seek out theory departments that are disguised as comp lit/interdisciplinary studies departments. Duke literature comes to mind (though they are very Marxist and have the most dreadful interviews), and so does Emory comp lit (which is very continental thought and has a minimal language requirement). Chicago's Social Thought also comes to mind, and I've heard good things about Stanford MTL. As others have mentioned, though, if you want to stay in academia after graduation, traditional theory isn't having a great moment right now--there's a good reason why many comp lit departments are moving toward a national literature direction.

I know a number of (well-endowed) university have suspended their hiring process for new faculty, citing financial difficulties. I don't know if the same difficulties will result in reduced number of fellowships they can offer - maybe there just isn't enough information at the moment.

From the perspective of someone in Comp Lit (though my undergrad was in English), language may well be the biggest hurdle for you if you are looking for more traditional comp lit programs, many of which expect research experience of a non-English literature, read in the original, at the time of entry. If you plan to work on post-war Japanese literature, remember you will be competing against native speakers and those with near-native proficiency when you go on the job market. The French will be useful, however: save for the folks who really do French literature, most people learn French just so they can read French theory in the original, so writing is not all that important. One difficulty with highly interdisciplinary programs - despite the quality of training, the wealth of experience, and how well they can fit your interests - is that sometimes they lack in-depth training in national languages and literatures, in the traditional sense. This is not a problem if you don't plan on finding an academic job, of course, but something to keep in mind otherwise. Sometimes jumping ship into another discipline (by doing more academic research or getting more language/national literature training) may not be the worst choice, depending what your longterm goals are. Just my two cents, of course!

Yup! Got informal acceptance email about two hours ago (!!!).

Nope. It might take some time. The graduate coordinator will probably reach out about it tomorrow or next week.