Maybe the issue is not what we study but how we study it. When I visited programs, I had many conversations with other prospective feeling uncomfortable for this reason. what we witnessed and question was an endless parade of historicism, representations of X and Y in such and such school of literature. While this work is not really bad work, there was something disheartening about its dominance in the thoughts of grad students, as it seemed a sign of a profound lack of confidence of the prospects of the profession. It is safe to follow in Foucault's (or Greenblatt's) footsteps because, well, good rigorous historicism is hard to find a problem with. People can always respond with that is an interesting viewpoint and it can come from any number of new subjective/political positions, like the Simpsons, its an endless well of commentary, its accessible, and its only about skin deep (most of the time). Many prospectives I had spoken with were modernists or postmodernists obsessed and driven by formal and philosophical questions, looking for the shape of literature and ethics (or anti-ethics) in the coming age. So some of those questions where as old as the 60's if not older, but it was certainly a different orientation, from the impressions gathered at some programs of the work being done. Is this a case of careerism? The suggestion I got on attending Grad School was to go because that is where you wanted to be for the next few years, I can think of nothing better to do with my time than study these things in a small intense intellectually community, (one school I visited did seem to offer this), for the sake of literature itself, and my own interest in the possibility of ethics under postmodern/poststructuralist conditions. I have no stance here, and am fascinated by the question. Will this give me a career in the academe, I hope so. But thats up to the winds of intellectual/economic fashion. Maybe the problem here is fear? But what's to be afraid of? Get a good PhD. and if that doesn't get you a job, find something else to pay the bills. I have a few skills to fall back on. Perhaps I am able to be blithe about this because I have no responsibilities except an undergraduate loan payment, but aren't we all driven to devote our lives to this stuff because of a passionate interest in the material under consideration? Or is it just another job? Maybe I have unreal expectations, so be it.