French PhD in Children's Literature

[FrenchLit]

Hi everybody!

I am currently enrolled in a Master's program in Romance Languages and I am considering applying to a French Studies PhD in the US in the future.

I am very interested in Children's literature (mostly 19th century but also keen on considering 20th century topics such as post WW1 ans WW2 production) and I was wondering which universities would be best suited for this type of topic as I haven't found much when searching online. It looks like UPenn had a few students working on the topic but I haven't indentified any other university at this stage. Looks like French Children's Literature is not a very popular subject, or am I wrong?

Thank you very much in advance for your insights!?

 

[xypathos]

French children's literature is probably going to be a bit too specific - in that you risk your application pool potentially being too small.

That said, I'd look at Pitt's Critical and Cultural Studies PhD. They have a good sized graduate certificate in Children's Lit. I'd also encourage reaching out to Courtney Weikle-Mills, she's on faculty at Pitt and Director of the Children's Lit program. She'd probably be the best person to recommend other programs too!

[Glasperlenspieler]

23 hours ago, FrenchLit said:

I am very interested in Children's literature (mostly 19th century but also keen on considering 20th century topics such as post WW1 ans WW2 production) and I was wondering which universities would be best suited for this type of topic as I haven't found much when searching online.

If you have access to the MLA bibliography, I'd recommend doing a search for publications in your area. Follow the bibliographies to expand your purview. Note the authors and figure out if any of them are teaching at Ph.D. programs or, if they got their Ph.D. relatively recently, where they studied and who their advisor was. This can be somewhat tedious but is a good way to get a sense of who's who in your field and, by extension, where you would want to study to pursue that topic.

@xypathos is perhaps right that you won't find too many hits, but that doesn't mean there isn't someone who wouldn't be interested in advising a dissertation on the subject (especially if you don't present your interests too narrowly). I'd also check for scholars interested in Benjamin, whether in the French department or in the neighboring German, Comp Lit, Art history, etc. departments. If they're not in the French department, they may not be able to be your advisor, but I bet depending on your/their theoretical/methodological orientation, I bet you could get a Benjamin scholar interested in serving on a committee for a dissertation on 19th Century French children's lit. 

Edit: If you have access to the ProQuest dissertation database, you could also do a search for recent dissertations on related topics.

Edited September 14, 2020 by Glasperlenspieler

[FrenchLit]

Thank you both for these recommandations. I will follow your suggestions and see what I can find!