Comp lit: non-national lit research interests, language proficiencies

[albertine]

Hi everyone! Reading the archives of this forum has been tremendously helpful to me, but I have woefully few comp lit scholars in my life and I'm hoping to get advice from comp lit students here on a few things that are currently making me a bit anxious!  

I'm currently an undergrad comp lit major who will be graduating within the next semester or two, but I'm graduating either two or three semesters early and I'm wondering if I should prolong my undergrad career by that extra semester so I can become more proficient in my languages, either by studying abroad within undergrad or taking more courses at my university. However, my less immediate concern is about what I'll study in grad school.

Languages: I'm a native English speaker and I will probably graduate as a double major in German (3-4 years; B2/C1, leaning towards C1). I've also studied Mandarin (equivalent of two years - one college year and Middlebury; probably like a B1?/HSK3-4), and French (equivalent of 1 year; probably A2/B1) in college. I'm going abroad and taking about 200 credit hours of German this summer so I can hopefully reach C1.

Would it benefit me to do a degree in East Asian Studies, study abroad, or otherwise augment my language proficiencies before I apply to a comp lit program, or am I overthinking this?  I've looked at grad student profiles on various comp lit departmental websites, but I'm still not exactly sure how proficient accepted applicants are in their languages, and if anyone has personal anecdotes, I'd greatly appreciate it/feel less uncertain about this. I'm worried that I'm not proficient enough in my languages to be accepted to a program and won't be given a sufficient amount of time to learn them before having to do grad-level coursework in them, or that I'll be rejected out of hand for low proficiencies.

Interests: Probably like a lot of undergrads looking to go to grad school, I have a lot of interests, but I'd have to say that my primary interests are physical illness, epistemology, and identity/memory/mind as constructs in fiction, probably philosophy and literature. I'd also like to do work on Proust for sure, and maybe the Four Classics of Chinese literature. Are these interests unusual for a comp lit scholar? Am I less competitive if I don't take up national literatures as my specializations? I'm a bit worried because, to be honest, my primary interest within French literature (and motivation for studying the language) is Proust, and I don't envision myself ever excitedly doing research on, say, the themes that link together centuries of German literature. While I've found a few, but I'd be very happy if someone could point me to scholars or departments that specialize in or are particularly attentive to my interests; I've been bookmarking every prof with similar interests because they seem rare to me. 

Hopefully my questions aren't too silly! Thanks for reading. 

[ExponentialDecay]

So my first question is, if your interest is East Asian and French literatures, why are you spending all this time on German? Knowing languages unrelated to your research, while a frequent hazard of the job, doesn't actually make you more competitive for anything or a better scholar. German isn't bad to know given how much scholarship/criticism is written in it, but unless you plan to engage deeply with Freud, frankly tugging it up to C1 doesn't seem like the best use of your time.

I'd extend your undergrad by a year, but not to improve your languages - to write a proper thesis on your area of interest, using original sources. How well you are able to work with those sources is really the only test of proficiency there is. Having a writing sample where you engage substantively with original sources is also a deciding piece of your application.

imo a PhD program, with its many conflicting demands, isn't the best place to do a lot of work on your language ability, nor is it a good use of your funded time. You should be fluent in at least one of your research languages before you start; to be safe, it's best if you're at least proficient in all of them. Most programs are also pretty explicit about their language requirements. Here's a quote from the Stanford program:

Quote

Since the program demands an advanced knowledge of two non-native languages and a reading knowledge of a third non-native language, students should at the time of application have an advanced enough knowledge of one of the three to take graduate-level courses in that language when they enter the program. They should be making enough progress in the study of a second language to enable them to take graduate courses in that language not later than the beginning of the second year, and earlier if possible. Language courses at the 100- or 200- level may be taken with approval from the Chair of the department or the Chair of Graduate Studies. Applicants are expected to take an intensive course in the third language before entrance.

Anyway, all that is to say, A-B level in both your research languages is probably not sufficient.

Regarding your interests, I'm not sure why you would be unable to work on them within a national lit context. 

Edit: entering students at top comp lit programs tend to be native or near-native in at least one of their research languages (it's just hard otherwise) and proficient in the other relevant ones. A lot of people also study related languages so picking them up once you're fluent in one is a lot easier than learning a new language family.

Edited May 29, 2018 by ExponentialDecay

[albertine]

Thanks for your reply - it's given me something to think about! 

Maybe my post should be more about narrowing down interests than about languages, because I'm not sure about how the geography of my interests works out (probably why I am so hesitant about national literatures). I don't want to become a professional scholar of French literature in general and didn't envision submitting it as a research language. Proust aside, my interests lie more on the Germanic side of things than the French, but I'm reluctant to commit to national literatures in general. I don't especially dislike German literature -- I actually quite enjoy it -- but I would hesitate to describe myself as someone with a consuming passion for German literature in general.

Sorry if I'm not explaining this very clearly or if it makes no sense. I'll have to think more about this. 

And thanks for the info about language proficiencies. I've been very confused by how different departments seem to have different standards; UChicago, for example, asks only for "strong preparation" in one language and discipline and "adequate preparation" in another for admittance whereas Harvard asks for two languages/literatures with advanced preparation and says that their program allows time for further language study, but I see that many grad students are, like you say, native speakers of the languages they study and/or have taken a master's degree for a language. 

One question about what you said: 

2 hours ago, ExponentialDecay said:

 I'd extend your undergrad by a year, but not to improve your languages - to write a proper thesis on your area of interest, using original sources. How well you are able to work with those sources is really the only test of proficiency there is. Having a writing sample where you engage substantively with original sources is also a deciding piece of your application.

I've read a lot of people talking about senior theses here, but this is a topic of confusion for me -- do you mean that I should write a thesis on my own time while I'm in undergrad? Besides the language classes, I've already exhausted what my undergrad institution has to offer me (I've taken our seminar for graduating seniors twice) and there aren't really any faculty at my school who can help me out; I've always taken comp lit courses with professors who research largely unrelated things. Our department is quite tiny and I'm thinking that maybe I should apply to a master's program. 

[ExponentialDecay]

I mean it's not strange that different departments have different requirements seeing as they're different departments. If you find it confusing, it's helpful to track them in an excel doc. The takeaway here is that your serious competition will be easily clearing whatever language hurdles.

I mean you should write an honors thesis e.g. https://www.honors.umass.edu/capstone-experience . it would be quite bizarre for your university not to offer an honors thesis credit (although it's also bizarre that your department let you take a course twice...). but if you can't do that, an independent study where you complete a substantial research project is also fine. what matters is that you complete a substantial research project, not what it's called. 

basically PhD admissions isn't about meeting requirements, it's about beating the competition. Your competition will have substantial training in their research languages and substantial research experience (by which I mean an honors thesis) that is relevant to their research interests. if you don't have good language training, you're at a disadvantage. if your department doesn't have faculty (or really, strong faculty) in your area of interest and therefore you didn't have much help developing a good research focus or contemporary expertise in that area, you're at a disadvantage. if you're at a program that doesn't send a lot of students to the programs you're targeting, you're at a disadvantage. that's why a lot of people get master's, which is not a bad thing. it's hard to know how competitive you are when you're an undergrad, so if i were you i'd apply to masters and phds and, if the phd doesn't work out, get a funded masters. you can also try writing something to present at a conference so you can meet scholars who are active in the field and get exposed to professional academia.

[rising_star]

Agreed with @ExponentialDecay. You don't mention anything about how your fluency in German will contribute to your research interests in your original post. To me, that suggests that you still need to work on refining your research interests. The best way to do this is to read, read, read. If you can do it for credit (by doing an independent study or research project), all the better. But you need to be reading the literary scholarship so you can see what piques your interest so you can delve into that more. If your PhD SOP is scattered, you're killing your chances of getting in. 

Re: languages: You need to focus on the languages which are necessary for the research you want to do. If German isn't one of those, stop studying it. If French isn't one of those, don't keep studying it. Sure it's cool to say you can converse in five languages but, if that doesn't actually connect to your research interests, you aren't really doing yourself any favors when it comes to grad admissions.

If you really want to do a PhD dissertation on classical Chinese Literature, then I'd recommend taking a year or two off to live in China (teach English to pay the bills, take language classes all the time) so that you can improve your knowledge of the language and gain some exposure to classical Chinese. An East Asian Studies MA won't give you the kind of intense language training in Mandarin that it sounds like you'd need for such a dissertation. Take a look at the coursework for an EAS program to see what I mean. (Consider also the funding or lack thereof for such MA degrees.)

Good luck!