Current state of English departments & PhDs: traditional vs. interdisciplinary

[Minttrope]

Hi everyone,

I'm very new here to GradCafe, so apologies if I might break with normal protocol or decorum (and let me know how things work if I do slip up!).  

I've just begun the process of looking into English PhDs, though I'm not aiming to apply this fall (likely fall 2019).  For some background, I recently graduated from a Creative Writing MFA and majored in both English and Philosophy in undergrad.  I've told previous teachers of mine that, were I to do an English PhD, I don't think I would want to be in a traditional English PhD program, to which one teacher responded that most programs aren't very traditional anymore.  However, if I'm being honest with myself, I don't totally know how to track the specific differences between a program that is more "traditional" versus one that is not (or rather, more interdisciplinary).  

So, basically, I'm curious to know how folks here would characterize the difference between traditional departments &/or PhD programs and ones that are not.  I feel like the better I understand the differences, the better I can express how I would situate myself and my research to a given school/program in an SoP.  (Or at least that's my logic; if this feels like a wrongly- or ill-informed approach, I would also be grateful to know.)

[WildeThing]

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘different’, can yo be more specific?

[CulturalCriminal]

So while there could be a bit more specificity here, I'm going to go ahead and give the most obvious recommendation. If you aren't sure if a program is welcoming of your trans/interdisciplinary whims, do exactly what you should do anyways to verify if it will be a good fit: dredge through the faculty pages. If there are tenured or tenure-track profs who are aligned with your interests, then mission accomplished. Though this takes a great deal of time, it is time you should probably be spending doing this regardless of how clear-cut/conventional your interests may be. I'm sure there are people here who can point you to a few different programs that line up with your interests, but you need to be more specific for that. Even then, everyone has gaps in their knowledge of programs.

You might also look into programs that are in inherently interdisciplinary programs. With your philosophy background, you might look into the more theory-based programs out there that aren't necessarily tied to a specific discipline (Stanford Modern Thought & Lit, UCSC History of Consciousness, UC Davis Cultural Studies, etc). There are also the various regional and identity based "Studies" programs that might be worth looking into (American Studies, Latin-American Studies, Asian American Studies, Native/Indigenous American Studies African American Studies, African & African Diaspora Studies, Women & Gender Studies, Women & Gender & Sexuality Studies, Ethnic Studies, etc).

Basically, you have a lot of research ahead of you. Good thing you are looking into a research-focused degree and career.

 

[Warelin]

I think @FreakyFoucault applied to a nice range of "traditional" and "interdisciplinary" English PHD programs.

[Minttrope]

27 minutes ago, CulturalCriminal said:

So while there could be a bit more specificity here, I'm going to go ahead and give the most obvious recommendation. If you aren't sure if a program is welcoming of your trans/interdisciplinary whims, do exactly what you should do anyways to verify if it will be a good fit: dredge through the faculty pages. If there are tenured or tenure-track profs who are aligned with your interests, then mission accomplished. Though this takes a great deal of time, it is time you should probably be spending doing this regardless of how clear-cut/conventional your interests may be. I'm sure there are people here who can point you to a few different programs that line up with your interests, but you need to be more specific for that. Even then, everyone has gaps in their knowledge of programs.

You might also look into programs that are in inherently interdisciplinary programs. With your philosophy background, you might look into the more theory-based programs out there that aren't necessarily tied to a specific discipline (Stanford Modern Thought & Lit, UCSC History of Consciousness, UC Davis Cultural Studies, etc). There are also the various regional and identity based "Studies" programs that might be worth looking into (American Studies, Latin-American Studies, Asian American Studies, Native/Indigenous American Studies African American Studies, African & African Diaspora Studies, Women & Gender Studies, Women & Gender & Sexuality Studies, Ethnic Studies, etc).

Basically, you have a lot of research ahead of you. Good thing you are looking into a research-focused degree and career.

 

Thanks for this; it helps to hear about the programs you tossed out regarding a focus on theory.  

However, I'm not quite asking for the logical next step in my process or for program recommendations based on my (yet-to-be-stated) interests.  I left it open-ended because I'm curious to know how people would, starting from a blank slate, characterize how English departments are currently, typically set up as well as how they've changed over whatever period of time this purported shift occurred.  So, basically, I'm asking for insider knowledge and a little bit of history, and not trying to pose a roundabout or vague query that elides the fact that I'm actually looking for program recs (I may do that at some point, but this isn't that).  

[Minttrope]

26 minutes ago, Warelin said:

I think @FreakyFoucault applied to a nice range of "traditional" and "interdisciplinary" English PHD programs.

Thank you, Warelin!  Would love to hear from you, @FreakyFoucault

[Crow T. Robot]

I too applied to both "traditional" and "interdisciplinary" programs (including some @CulturalCriminal mentioned above)! I have to head out right now but am leaving this note here as a placeholder to remind myself to get back to you!

[youngim]

This is also something that I have been curious about, although more in terms of job prospects and research alignment. I think I've seen quite a few threads about comparative literature vs. English on GC, but I am still uncertain about which path would best suit my research interests. Of course, I understand I need to look into the faculty available and perhaps even placement records, but in the case of two similarly ranked school (for whatever that's worth), is it better to choose a PhD in an English Department or the Comparative Literature Department? Is it worth choosing the more traditional English PhD (with a number of faculty members able to support my nontraditional, somewhat comparative lit), even if there is a larger number of faculty who could support my interests in comp lit?  Ummm... lots of think about

* Edit: Also, I know US news rankings are not really accurate, but I wonder how comparable an English Department is to a Comparative Lit department? For instance, if two schools are ranked at 30 for English, does this mean the Comp Lit department is also ranked 30th and is perceived to be just as 'prestigious' as the same school's English program? 

Edited February 24, 2018 by youngim

[Warelin]

15 minutes ago, youngim said:

* Edit: Also, I know US news rankings are not really accurate, but I wonder how comparable an English Department is to a Comparative Lit department? For instance, if two schools are ranked at 30 for English, does this mean the Comp Lit department is also ranked 30th and is perceived to be just as 'prestigious' as the same school's English program? 

I can't speak with 100 percent confidence on Comp Lit, but the answer to this question for Rhetoric/Composition would be no. Syracuse, Michigan State, Illinois, Penn State, Arizona, Arizona State, Miami of Ohio, Penn State all have stronger Rhet/Comp programs than English Literature programs.

[Crow T. Robot]

On 2/23/2018 at 2:35 PM, Minttrope said:

Hi everyone,

I'm very new here to GradCafe, so apologies if I might break with normal protocol or decorum (and let me know how things work if I do slip up!).  

I've just begun the process of looking into English PhDs, though I'm not aiming to apply this fall (likely fall 2019).  For some background, I recently graduated from a Creative Writing MFA and majored in both English and Philosophy in undergrad.  I've told previous teachers of mine that, were I to do an English PhD, I don't think I would want to be in a traditional English PhD program, to which one teacher responded that most programs aren't very traditional anymore.  However, if I'm being honest with myself, I don't totally know how to track the specific differences between a program that is more "traditional" versus one that is not (or rather, more interdisciplinary).  

So, basically, I'm curious to know how folks here would characterize the difference between traditional departments &/or PhD programs and ones that are not.  I feel like the better I understand the differences, the better I can express how I would situate myself and my research to a given school/program in an SoP.  (Or at least that's my logic; if this feels like a wrongly- or ill-informed approach, I would also be grateful to know.)

Ok, so I wrote something similar to this in the "What makes research compelling?" thread, and this may be coming at it from a different angle than what you were asking about, but I think there are a few questions it might be useful to ask yourself when deciding between an English program and an interdisciplinary humanities program:

1. What's driving your inquiry? What kinds of questions do you find yourself interested in? If you find yourself drawn to questions about a particular literary form (the problem of character in the 19th-century novel, to take @Mise's fascinating example from another thread), period/region/culture (folklore and in/nonhumanism in Caribbean lit), or author/loosely associated group of authors (Henry James's engagement with discourses of tourism), an English program is probably the best place to shoot for. On the other hand, if you find yourself interested more in a concept or cluster of concepts and how they play across contexts and archives (waste and notions of wasting across literature, philosophy, and pop culture), or how different schools of thought influenced one another (the hidden Frankfurt School roots of object-oriented ontology), or, probably most clearly, intersections between literary study and other fields (a genealogy of the figure of the witness in modern thought, both legal and literary/philosophical), then an explicitly interdisciplinary program like Stanford MTL/Berkeley Rhetoric/Duke Literature/UMN CSDS/UCSC Hiscon might be for you.
2. As @CulturalCriminal asked, what is your interest in (or tolerance of) 'theory'? Interdisciplinary programs tend to be much more theory-heavy--Stanford MTL, for example, has 3 core courses, all of which are basically theory courses. In these programs, as far as I can tell, your grounding in theory is supposed to enable you to formulate questions that stretch across media and historical/cultural contexts but still have clear unifying conceptual threads running through them.

I do think your professor's point that not many English programs are "traditional" anymore should be taken seriously, though. My interests are definitely more theoretical/interdisciplinary, but I ended up applying to some English programs that seemed to welcome this kind of work.

As far as placements go, the top interdisciplinary programs are up there with the top English programs. Check out Stanford MTL's and especially Berkeley Rhetoric's placements and you'll see many grads landing tenure-track jobs at Ivy League/other highly ranked schools.

[CulturalCriminal]

6 hours ago, Minttrope said:

Thanks for this; it helps to hear about the programs you tossed out regarding a focus on theory.  

However, I'm not quite asking for the logical next step in my process or for program recommendations based on my (yet-to-be-stated) interests.  I left it open-ended because I'm curious to know how people would, starting from a blank slate, characterize how English departments are currently, typically set up as well as how they've changed over whatever period of time this purported shift occurred.  So, basically, I'm asking for insider knowledge and a little bit of history, and not trying to pose a roundabout or vague query that elides the fact that I'm actually looking for program recs (I may do that at some point, but this isn't that).  

Oh ok. Gotcha. I hate to build up a binary, but there does seem to be two approaches. One is quite traditional with a focus on specific time periods in specific regions with very narrow notions of what literature is (I'd be screwed, as I spend most of my time writing about genre fiction and [gasp] comics, tv, and film). The other approach seems to be more inline with the department I am currently at, wherein you can still have those conservative classifiers but there is also plenty of work and classes being organized around [gasp] genre and various forms (i.e. music, games, tv, memoir, oral traditions). Both tend to have some sort of critical theory aspect wherein you can take classes to help establish a methodology, though it feels the latter is easier to really zero in on certain methodologies than the former. As with all binaries this is, of course, less an A or B program dynamic and more of a scale where some programs land closer to A than B and vice-versa. I guess just like with all supposed binary structures, English departments are fluid.

[punctilious]

I feel like the transformation of English departments into more open and interdisciplinary programs is happening now. Our conversation with our POI at Harvard indicated that it’s really the future of the discipline to move in this direction—Harvard is even doing it. The departments are realizing that they need to change in such a way. While my husband definitely has a particular period and region he’s interested in, his background is actually more in history than English, and he’s also super into creative writing, but Harvard responded quite positively to that. Another thing to note is that his two writing samples were on Charles Olson and John Donne, yet his proposed field is post-45 US fiction through the lens of Thing Theory.

In my research, I found plenty of departments that definitely had scholars in the English departments focused on comics, graphic novels, film, art, science fiction, philosophy, digital humanities, etc. In fact, our Harvard POI said that these kinds of subjects are hot topics and only growing in the English departments, from my understanding. 

Edit: I’m not sure how I’d necessarily qualify ‘traditional’ versus ‘non-traditional’ or ‘interdisciplinary’ programs other than just thorough research and talking with students/professors. Some schools seem to clearly be more into it than others (like they say on their website that you can get an MA in a different field en route to your PhD, or that you can also take creative writing courses to count toward the PhD, or they have a cross-disciplinary Center in an area you are interested in kind of like UD’s Center for Material Culture Studies, or you see a lot of people in the department working across the boundaries of discipline in areas like sociology, history, philosophy, or gender studies). I’m not sure there’s an easier way to figure it out, at least in terms of English departments. 

Edited February 24, 2018 by punctilious

[agunns]

Another thing to consider when thinking about "traditional" vs. "nontraditional" English PhD programs is the opportunities available for students to engage in work outside their department. When I say this, I'm specifically thinking about the way that IU-Bloomington's program is set up. I've always considered English literature to sort of be my "home base" so to speak in terms of academic work, but my work within the field of English lit has always been more concerned with interdisciplinary research from drawing in feminist theory, queer theory, biopolitics, etc. etc., rather than a specific region or time period of literature. I received an acceptance to Bloomington's English PhD program, and they were telling me that they have a required PhD minor, which means in addition to completing the PhD requirements for English lit (I do mostly 19th c American), I need to declare a sub-field through the minor option, which extends to everything from American studies to critical theory to gender studies. I guess my point here is that whether a department is "traditional" or not doesn't necessarily need to stop you if think you've found a good fit! I particularly have a lot of friends from my MA program who do English and Philosophy, and many of them have ended up going the English PhD track due to the opportunities for PhD minors, graduate certificates, etc. So to echo others on this thread as well, I do think that many English departments moving towards a more interdisciplinary/nontraditional mode anyway, and my advice would be to consider all those extra factors as well, like opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. Bloomington's PhD minor was definitely one of the major draws for me.

[Minttrope]

Everything you said in your first point is amazingly helpful, thank you so much.  I was just messaging another person here in GC and that helped me to see that I'm likely looking for both explicitly interdisciplinary programs and innovative/interdisciplinary English programs, depending upon faculty and other factors (though probably primarily the explicitly interdisciplinary programs).  I'm very much a theory-loving person, am interested in the ways conceptual frameworks across a variety of contexts and archives, and how schools of thought have influenced one another--all of that.  I had yet to learn about programs like Stanford MTL and the other schools you've mentioned, so I'll definitely be looking into those.  I only just learned of Carnegie Mellon's Literary and Cultural Studies program, and so far it's a very appealing program in my eyes.  And that's very helpful to know, in regards to your mention of interdisciplinary programs' rankings.

So, now that I've got a better radar for schools/programs, I guess I can begin to ask folks here: what English PhDs out there would you say are closer on the spectrum to programs like Standford's MTL?  I've yet to more thoroughly know what lists of schools typically get circulated as being quite innovative/interdisciplinary, and I want to make sure I'm looking in all the relevant places, regardless of program type, for what I'm looking for.  One school that had been suggested to me by a mentor is CUNY Grad Center, and so they've certainly seemed appealing (last I looked around their website).  Still, I do get the sense that the explicitly interdisciplinary programs are going to be more of interest to me, so I guess we'll see how this initial school-list-compiling step goes.  

[Minttrope]

6 hours ago, agunns said:

Another thing to consider when thinking about "traditional" vs. "nontraditional" English PhD programs is the opportunities available for students to engage in work outside their department. When I say this, I'm specifically thinking about the way that IU-Bloomington's program is set up. I've always considered English literature to sort of be my "home base" so to speak in terms of academic work, but my work within the field of English lit has always been more concerned with interdisciplinary research from drawing in feminist theory, queer theory, biopolitics, etc. etc., rather than a specific region or time period of literature. I received an acceptance to Bloomington's English PhD program, and they were telling me that they have a required PhD minor, which means in addition to completing the PhD requirements for English lit (I do mostly 19th c American), I need to declare a sub-field through the minor option, which extends to everything from American studies to critical theory to gender studies. I guess my point here is that whether a department is "traditional" or not doesn't necessarily need to stop you if think you've found a good fit! I particularly have a lot of friends from my MA program who do English and Philosophy, and many of them have ended up going the English PhD track due to the opportunities for PhD minors, graduate certificates, etc. So to echo others on this thread as well, I do think that many English departments moving towards a more interdisciplinary/nontraditional mode anyway, and my advice would be to consider all those extra factors as well, like opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. Bloomington's PhD minor was definitely one of the major draws for me.

Yes yes yes—I'm also in the feminist theory, queer theory, and biopolitics boat.  I feel the same, re: considering English as a "home base."  And for the reason you're saying, I'm still interested in English PhDs, especially ones that allow for minors, even though explicitly interdisciplinary programs (that Crow T. pointed out) are, I think, becoming a big draw for me.  I'll have to look into IU Bloomington then, thanks!  

[Minttrope]

9 hours ago, punctilious said:

I feel like the transformation of English departments into more open and interdisciplinary programs is happening now. Our conversation with our POI at Harvard indicated that it’s really the future of the discipline to move in this direction—Harvard is even doing it. The departments are realizing that they need to change in such a way. While my husband definitely has a particular period and region he’s interested in, his background is actually more in history than English, and he’s also super into creative writing, but Harvard responded quite positively to that. Another thing to note is that his two writing samples were on Charles Olson and John Donne, yet his proposed field is post-45 US fiction through the lens of Thing Theory.

In my research, I found plenty of departments that definitely had scholars in the English departments focused on comics, graphic novels, film, art, science fiction, philosophy, digital humanities, etc. In fact, our Harvard POI said that these kinds of subjects are hot topics and only growing in the English departments, from my understanding. 

Edit: I’m not sure how I’d necessarily qualify ‘traditional’ versus ‘non-traditional’ or ‘interdisciplinary’ programs other than just thorough research and talking with students/professors. Some schools seem to clearly be more into it than others (like they say on their website that you can get an MA in a different field en route to your PhD, or that you can also take creative writing courses to count toward the PhD, or they have a cross-disciplinary Center in an area you are interested in kind of like UD’s Center for Material Culture Studies, or you see a lot of people in the department working across the boundaries of discipline in areas like sociology, history, philosophy, or gender studies). I’m not sure there’s an easier way to figure it out, at least in terms of English departments. 

Yeah, I'm getting the sense that figuring out the specific difference is more a matter of talking to people.  Also, I'm now wondering how the ongoing shift in English departments toward innovative/interdisciplinary is affecting the job market (especially since my knowledge of the job market is, I think, pretty surface-level).  Like, in looking at Stanford MTL's record of placement, and I'm sure part of that is simply due to its ranking as an interdisciplinary program and what work is coming out of there, but I also wonder if there's a growing demand (perhaps not just in English departments) for people to fill these in-between niche specializations?  Not posing this because I'm explicitly seeking and feel I need an answer, just that the thought struck me.  Although, if you or anyone has thoughts, I'm certainly all ears, particularly since I could use some further, more specific thoughts on the job market.  

[CulturalCriminal]

Alright, so now you are in the researching stage I mentioned earlier. For English/lit programs that’ll allow you to be more theory focused, you’ll need to look at both faculty pages and find the non-major programs that you can add on to your degree (they have diff names, to include interdisciplinary portfolios, designated emphasis, certificates, minors, and cognates). Check faculty for both these programs and the English/lit department. Look at both what they claim their interests to be are and hunt down publications/CVs to verify if it’ll be a good fit. 

How you decide which programs to dredge through is up to you. One way is to choose what areas you want to spend the next 4-8 years of your life and look at programs there. Another is to look at rankings and work your way down through them, checking department pages for programs you might be interested in. As annoying as it is, academia does like its prestige and there has been research done by economists that where lit/English folks get their PhDs determines where they’ll teach and how soon (or if at all) they’ll score a tenure-track gig.

Hope that helps? I recommend keeping track of programs, faculty, and non-major programs on some sort of spreadsheet, if not also application materials needed and due dates. That said, I’m a planning fiend. 

[Minttrope]

Thanks for the helpful research pointers, @CulturalCriminal.  I feel you on being a planning fiend—it was like charts on charts for my MFA apps (I one time had a friend who got an MFA—not CW but photography—tell me that he only applied to the few schools a teacher recommended to him and did no further research than that; I was shocked), and I'm already four docs deep into micro-categorizing everything, and I just started, hah.  

[nichts]

22 hours ago, youngim said:

Also, I know US news rankings are not really accurate, but I wonder how comparable an English Department is to a Comparative Lit department? For instance, if two schools are ranked at 30 for English, does this mean the Comp Lit department is also ranked 30th and is perceived to be just as 'prestigious' as the same school's English program? 

Like @Warelin said, I'm afraid not. You'll find some of the best programs at the same university (Berkeley, Harvard, your usual suspects) but past that it can vary widely, not only based on faculty interests but also the areas or media you might be working in. NRC rankings are a good place to start though.

On February 23, 2018 at 4:36 PM, Minttrope said:

I left it open-ended because I'm curious to know how people would, starting from a blank slate, characterize how English departments are currently, typically set up as well as how they've changed over whatever period of time this purported shift occurred.  So, basically, I'm asking for insider knowledge and a little bit of history, and not trying to pose a roundabout or vague query that elides the fact that I'm actually looking for program recs (I may do that at some point, but this isn't that).  

I can't speak for English departments, but if you're interested in interdisciplinary, transmedial, cross-cultural, or otherwise heavily theoretical approaches, the ACLA State of the Discipline Report (conveniently published just last year) will give you a taste of the questions comp lit is trying to address right now and what problems it's had in the past. Introducing Comparative Literature (2014) is another resource good for this purpose.

On February 23, 2018 at 3:35 PM, Minttrope said:

I don't totally know how to track the specific differences between a program that is more "traditional" versus one that is not (or rather, more interdisciplinary).  

Someone might have already said this, but mission statements, graduate handbooks, and FAQ pages were surprisingly helpful for me. I was able to cross out programs with a heavy emphasis on reading in the original, for example, since advanced knowledge of 3-4 foreign languages doesn't suit my research, or programs requiring that you declare a home department, as I don't intend to teach my primary foreign language.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Jožin z bažin

[Glasperlenspieler]

2 hours ago, Minttrope said:

Yeah, I'm getting the sense that figuring out the specific difference is more a matter of talking to people.  Also, I'm now wondering how the ongoing shift in English departments toward innovative/interdisciplinary is affecting the job market (especially since my knowledge of the job market is, I think, pretty surface-level).  Like, in looking at Stanford MTL's record of placement, and I'm sure part of that is simply due to its ranking as an interdisciplinary program and what work is coming out of there, but I also wonder if there's a growing demand (perhaps not just in English departments) for people to fill these in-between niche specializations?  Not posing this because I'm explicitly seeking and feel I need an answer, just that the thought struck me.  Although, if you or anyone has thoughts, I'm certainly all ears, particularly since I could use some further, more specific thoughts on the job market.  

I'd be curious to see data on this. 

One way to get an idea for how the job market is responding to these developments would be to look at  position descriptions on the jobs wiki (http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/English_Literature_2017-2018) . Even more informative (but also more work) would be to look at past years position descriptions and see who got those jobs (e.g. if a department is looking to someone working on Victorian literature, do they hire someone who is fairly traditional in approach or someone with more interdisciplinary research).

My suspicion is that the more innovative/interdisciplinary approaches are more heavily represented at R1s, whereas non-R1s (where the majority of the jobs are) are somewhat more traditional in approach. Academia is slow moving after all, and I think there's something of a trickle-down when it comes to new ideas. However, certain approaches that are apt to fill classrooms, such as feminist/gender/sexuality studies as well as minority/multicultural literatures, are probably in relatively high demand, at least in so far as the humanities are in demand these days. I sort of doubt, on the other hand, that regional public universities or small liberal arts colleges are actively seeking out people working on object-oriented ontology. That's all just a combination of speculation and educated guessing though. 

[CulturalCriminal]

1 hour ago, Glasperlenspieler said:

on the other hand, that regional public universities or small liberal arts colleges are actively seeking out people working on object-oriented ontology. That's all just a combination of speculation and educated guessing though. 

It depends on what you are considering regional vs national public universities and which small liberal arts colleges you’re drawing the line at, but I think you’d be surprised to find people working on non-traditional research and teaching non-traditional classes at these places. Every conference I’ve been to has had folks doing this type of work, despite being at places I’ve never heard of (including OOO at Eastern New Mexico University).

[youngim]

On 2/24/2018 at 11:16 AM, youngim said:

Also, I know US news rankings are not really accurate, but I wonder how comparable an English Department is to a Comparative Lit department? For instance, if two schools are ranked at 30 for English, does this mean the Comp Lit department is also ranked 30th and is perceived to be just as 'prestigious' as the same school's English program? 

2 hours ago, Jožin z bažin said:

Like @Warelin said, I'm afraid not. You'll find some of the best programs at the same university (Berkeley, Harvard, your usual suspects) but past that it can vary widely, not only based on faculty interests but also the areas or media you might be working in. NRC rankings are a good place to start though.

Ummm... Yes NRC rankings have been helpful to some extent. I guess I wanted to compare one school's English Department to another school's Comp Lit Department, but maybe they just aren't comparable. If the general reputation gap between the two schools were significant, maybe it wouldn't be so difficult choosing since I feel I would be able to do the research I want in both schools. Again, I feel like I am speculating about the future job market (of whether comp lit and eng lit would be more favorably received??), which may be futile at this point. I have been looking into Asian Universities (I live in East Asia), and I had the impression that an English Degree would be more valuable, but things may not be the same in the States now, or even in six years. In any case, I'll have to dig deeper into each school. 

 

 

[WildeThing]

I’ve said this before, but one of my professors, who is an active and leading member of the ACLA, actively discouraged me from getting into comp lit because fewer and fewer unis are hiring comparatists. 

[youngim]

49 minutes ago, WildeThing said:

I’ve said this before, but one of my professors, who is an active and leading member of the ACLA, actively discouraged me from getting into comp lit because fewer and fewer unis are hiring comparatists. 

1

I see. Although I've also heard from other people that comparatists may not be hired in English departments but may be prized elsewhere (for instance French, East Asian, German Departments). Do you think your professor is basing his views on the hiring practices of English departments or all universities and departments in general? 

[WildeThing]

Both. English departments are the largest and many comparatists do some English. No matter what your languages are, you will prbably be hired to teach just one. Without comparative lit departments or specialists, why should you be hired over someone who has specialized in that language? Considering the different combinations that one could do with comp, what are the odds that you will be hired to work on the one you studied? Departments usually hire someone to teach or cover a specific area and being a comparatist will limit you. 

That said, I applied anyway because I wanted to and job prospects aren’t exactly good anyway, no matter what you do. Also, I doubt that a comparatist from Yale will starve.