top ten PhD programs in art history according to you....

[qwer7890]

since the published rankings are basically useless for art history -- and much ranking is based on "reputation" anyways... I thought it might be useful to do an informal, crowdsourced gradcafe ranking... 

 

please do include any commentary/caveats/useful info on specialization, etc... 

 

i'll start: yale,uchicago, berkeley, harvard, princeton, IFA, northwestern, stanford, michigan, cuny

 

i'm most tuned in to modern/contemporary, so i'd say my list reflects that bias.

Edited December 4, 2013 by qwer7890

[Swagato]

There is a reasonably acceptable list: http://arthistorynewsletter.com/blog/?p=5204

 

However that's from 2011, and there have been shake-ups since. Nemerov and soon Joselit aren't/won't be at Yale, so depending on who comes in, there will be some movement. Darby English left Chicago for Williams, but Chicago in general has made some big hires. The rest of your list seems acceptable, but I'm not sure I'd agree with Stanford's inclusion.

[Seeking]

Much of the "ranking" business goes by the reputation, not by the actual quality.

 

Ideally, the candidates should be judged by their work, not by the reputation of their schools/departments, but we have to suffer this illogical system of ranking the quality of candidates by the reputation of their schools/departments.

[poliscar]

MIT deserves a mention here in my opinion. It's a small program, but they have an absolutely stellar placement record. 

[ameshu205]

Because I’m forever curious about how our field works – and because I’m avoiding a bit of real work – I pulled together a few lists of programs’ placement rates for:

 

Pre-Doc Fellowships, 2010-2014: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlLRiFPXoh9HdF9LUEs3QlFUOVVzclFKNUxxWmhuSXc&usp=sharing

 

Assistant Professor jobs, 2006-2013 (very narrowly defined; see below): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlLRiFPXoh9HdDRtWkdRbmVPY0tWY0NtbkJfZFJhYXc&usp=sharing

 

Take-away point (TL;DR): These lists should NOT to be taken as the last or definitive word on anything, but rather, as springboards for further additions, reflections, and conversation. If anything, I hope they reinforce the points made by many others (above and in other threads) of the impossibility of ranking programs objectively, at least based on the metrics set out here.

 

Thoughts on methodologies of gathering info:

1. Pre-Doc fellowships: This list seemed fairly straightforward, although it certainly reflects the areas I know best. I tried to include fellowships with multiple recipients per year (the Frick doesn’t fit into this category, but it was mentioned in a list in another thread); and so much the better if they cut across multiple sub-fields (CASVA, the Met, etc.). What fellowships have I overlooked?
2. Assistant Prof. jobs: This list seems much more problematic to me, although it certainly does show interesting trends. I tried to follow the methodology laid out by the Art History Newsletter (AHN; http://arthistorynewsletter.com/blog/?p=476 and http://arthistorynewsletter.com/blog/?p=483) – surveying the top 25 schools from the US News and World Report lists for both national research universities and small liberal arts colleges. The job market being what it is right now, I expanded their categories slightly to include not just the top rankings in each category, but also schools with particularly strong art history departments or university museums. I surveyed about 75 schools in all, but obviously, this is the biggest issue with this (quite incomplete) survey – without looking at a far bigger sample size, I don’t think it’s truly possible to draw any definitive conclusions about placement rates.

Another problem with this list is the types of jobs it includes. Following the structure of the AHN survey, I looked at only tenure-track assistant professors at each school. While this makes comparisons between the two surveys possible, I don’t think it reflects the realities of today’s job market (vs. the job market in 2007, when the AHN list was compiled). The limitation to just TT assistant profs means that, even though it’s become standard practice to spend a few years as a visiting assistant professor (non-TT) or on a post-doc fellowship, these positions aren’t included on the list.

 

Further caveats:

1. I’m absolutely certain that art historians who have earned their PhDs from Indiana, Maryland, OSU, Penn State, WashU, and Case Western since 2006 are out there doing fantastic work, despite what this list says. They just happen not to be working at the places I researched.
2. These job numbers represent only a fraction of all possible jobs that are held by PhD graduates. Among those are many curators, many professors who earned tenure more quickly, and many scholars who teach at places not surveyed. (If the data for recent curatorial hires were easily available, I certainly would have included that info too!)

I’m refraining from putting forth conclusions from this data, given its significant limitations (although I’ve realized, in doing this, how very many issues I have with the methodology set up by the AHN list…). But even taking these issues into account, I hope that the lists might generate some productive and interesting discussion. Thoughts? Reactions? Comments?

 

And apologies, of course, for enabling anyone’s procrastination!

[c2670383]

Wow, thanks for doing this research.  A few remarks.

 

NYU obviously has an "in" with the Met and that is why many people go there, so the fact they placed 22 in the Met internship is not very surprising. Also, the number of NYU PhDs per year is not 22, and a lot of people go to NYU to become curators, not professors. So NYU's placement rate for professorships is actually much better than it looks on the spreadsheet, probably similar to Columbia's.

 

Berkeley's placement rate will be lower in the future because many top profs retired, such as TJ Clark and Anne Wagner. It's still a good PhD program but not what it was like 10-15 years ago.

 

BU is a pretty good school but its placement rate seems a bit high on the spreadsheet.

 

Please delete SCAD from your list of "good" placements, because it really isn't.

 

 

Overall results are not surprising. The same 5 programs that have been the "top" programs for the past 50 years (Columbia, NYU, Harvard, Princeton, Yale) are still there at the top, with the same 5 programs that have always been just behind them (Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, Penn, Michigan) still right there behind them.

 

The lesson is that if you want to be a professor, go to one of those 10 programs (which one is a personal choice depending on your field, $$, so on), or possibly MIT for modern architecture, or else don't go at all.

 

Maybe the list is different for curators and someone can crunch the numbers for that???

[condivi]

Wow, thanks for doing this research.  A few remarks.

 

NYU obviously has an "in" with the Met and that is why many people go there, so the fact they placed 22 in the Met internship is not very surprising. Also, the number of NYU PhDs per year is not 22, and a lot of people go to NYU to become curators, not professors. So NYU's placement rate for professorships is actually much better than it looks on the spreadsheet, probably similar to Columbia's.

 

Berkeley's placement rate will be lower in the future because many top profs retired, such as TJ Clark and Anne Wagner. It's still a good PhD program but not what it was like 10-15 years ago.

 

BU is a pretty good school but its placement rate seems a bit high on the spreadsheet.

 

Please delete SCAD from your list of "good" placements, because it really isn't.

 

 

Overall results are not surprising. The same 5 programs that have been the "top" programs for the past 50 years (Columbia, NYU, Harvard, Princeton, Yale) are still there at the top, with the same 5 programs that have always been just behind them (Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, Penn, Michigan) still right there behind them.

 

The lesson is that if you want to be a professor, go to one of those 10 programs (which one is a personal choice depending on your field, $$, so on), or possibly MIT for modern architecture, or else don't go at all.

 

Maybe the list is different for curators and someone can crunch the numbers for that???

 

Exactly.

[Seeking]

Yes, exactly.

 

And when you become a Selection Committee member later in life, change this system, so that brilliant candidates from other schools get their fair due and the mediocre ones from these so-called Top 10 are weaned out and don't get placed just because they have a gold-plated degree.

 

Of course, there are good candidates coming out of the top-10 too, who should get placed.

 

Wow, thanks for doing this research.  A few remarks.

 

NYU obviously has an "in" with the Met and that is why many people go there, so the fact they placed 22 in the Met internship is not very surprising. Also, the number of NYU PhDs per year is not 22, and a lot of people go to NYU to become curators, not professors. So NYU's placement rate for professorships is actually much better than it looks on the spreadsheet, probably similar to Columbia's.

 

Berkeley's placement rate will be lower in the future because many top profs retired, such as TJ Clark and Anne Wagner. It's still a good PhD program but not what it was like 10-15 years ago.

 

BU is a pretty good school but its placement rate seems a bit high on the spreadsheet.

 

Please delete SCAD from your list of "good" placements, because it really isn't.

 

 

Overall results are not surprising. The same 5 programs that have been the "top" programs for the past 50 years (Columbia, NYU, Harvard, Princeton, Yale) are still there at the top, with the same 5 programs that have always been just behind them (Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, Penn, Michigan) still right there behind them.

 

The lesson is that if you want to be a professor, go to one of those 10 programs (which one is a personal choice depending on your field, $$, so on), or possibly MIT for modern architecture, or else don't go at all.

 

Maybe the list is different for curators and someone can crunch the numbers for that???

[poliscar]

In terms of MIT placements you can add a second for Berkeley (they have recent PhDs in Art History and Rhetoric). They also have someone at Concordia University in Montreal: http://art-history.concordia.ca/people/faculty/pezolet_nicola.php. 

On that not, though I understand sticking with American schools in terms of Assistant Prof jobs, I'd take a look at Canadian schools at well. UBC has recent PhDs from Columbia and Rochester, McGill has two from the University of Chicago and one from Harvard, and Toronto has one from Harvard, one from Brown, and one from Columbia. 

[ameshu205]

Poliscar -- my apologies for overlooking Canadian schools! Certainly no offense was intended towards our fabulous northern neighbors, but just lack of thoughtfulness. I've added your list to the spreadsheet. Can you think of anything else it's missing? I also removed SCAD from the listings (while I'm hoping this list includes more than just the "top" jobs, I do certainly realize that it has its issues).

 

 

I also agree that the NYU number seemed high, so I went back to the ProQuest/UMI dissertation database (the source of these numbers) to double-check. And yes, according to this source, they indeed did issue a total of 174 doctorates from 2006-2013, or an average of 22 per year. A few specific examples: in 2013, they issued 20; in 2012, they issued 26. And I agree that if the numbers of curatorial jobs were included, this figure would look very different. But so would most other ratios on this list. 

 

I wonder what the most efficient way to gather info on assistant curators would be. Anyone have an active AAMC membership and the time/interest?

[poliscar]

Ah sorry I think my initial post was confusing—I meant to say that MIT has placed two PhDs at Berkeley, and one at Concordia. 

In terms of other schools in Canada, Queen's has an Assistant Prof from Chicago, UWO has one from SUNY-Binghampton, Alberta has one from Ohio State and one from UC-Santa Cruz (History of Consciousness). 

 

I'll keep looking, but most of the other universities in Canada are fairly minor. 

[Atlantis]

Some shameless self-promotion: While Darby English has left Chicago for Williams, the department is recruiting a replacement this year. It is also hiring a new contemporary Latin American scholar. The university has also hired contemporary art curators and practitioners in other places on campus, such as Jacob Proctor from the Aspen Contemporary Museum of Art, and Monika Szewczyk from the Witte de With, both of whom are offering classes too. The department should therefore go into next year as a very interesting candidate for people considering graduate school, in particular in the modern and contemporary field. 

[poliscar]

Some shameless self-promotion: While Darby English has left Chicago for Williams, the department is recruiting a replacement this year. It is also hiring a new contemporary Latin American scholar. The university has also hired contemporary art curators and practitioners in other places on campus, such as Jacob Proctor from the Aspen Contemporary Museum of Art, and Monika Szewczyk from the Witte de With, both of whom are offering classes too. The department should therefore go into next year as a very interesting candidate for people considering graduate school, in particular in the modern and contemporary field. 

 

Out of curiosity then, is the North American Art Since 1945 search the replacement search for Darby English, or is that an additional search? They're not trying to hire a tenured replacement outside of an open search are they?

[anonymousbequest]

Chicago's loss is Williamstown's gain with Darby for sure; however, his position at the Clark is not as faculty. I guess Rochester just lost a point on the google doc. A couple of other things to note, a) I'm not sure what your methodology is excatly, but you have missed a few appointments & fellowships that I know about in my small-ish field, so I'm guessing there are others b ) the school list for placements is narrow. Mid-tier state schools should probably also be taken into account, they are about as desirable as LACs where the teaching load is the same and no grad students, although well-endowed LACs may pay a bit more.

 

Curatorial placements are not taken into account for the NRC or any other ranking, which is a shame and I think helps skew the data toward the ossified top 10.  I did an rough experiment with an NRC top 20, UCSB, which has a 5% placement rate for assistant profs accordng to this thread. In museums though, grads from past decade seem to have mid or senior level curatorial appointments at Stanford, UT Austin, Williams, RISD, Getty, SLAM, O'Keeffe Museum, Huntington Library, and Peabody Essex. College museum curators often teach undergraduate and graduate courses, but I don't know how you would put that kind of variable into the algorithm. Yale and the Institute might have similar curatorial placements.

 

This thread has been useful but also divisive of the typical esprit de corps I have experienced on grad cafe. By all means, it's great (& wise) to encourage people to go to schools with full funding but we are all chasing dreams here and rationality has sometimes little to do with it. So not sure how helpful it is to create a have/have nots as I think has been implied. There are a lot of variables, and yes I do think it would be harder for the students at Missouri-Columbia to compete with those at Harvard but there are a lot of mid-size and small publics and private colleges in Missouri and the region, so those grads might do just fine if you expand your definition of successful placements past Ivies and Little Ivies.

Edited December 16, 2013 by anonymousbequest

[pedestal]

Chicago's loss is Williamstown's gain with Darby for sure; however, his position at the Clark is not as faculty. I guess Rochester just lost a point on the google doc. A couple of other things to note, a) I'm not sure what your methodology is excatly, but you have missed a few appointments & fellowships that I know about in my small-ish field, so I'm guessing there are others b ) the school list for placements is narrow. Mid-tier state schools should probably also be taken into account, they are about as desirable as LACs where the teaching load is the same and no grad students, although well-endowed LACs may pay a bit more.

 

Curatorial placements are not taken into account for the NRC or any other ranking, which is a shame and I think helps skew the data toward the ossified top 10.  I did an rough experiment with an NRC top 20, UCSB, which has a 5% placement rate for assistant profs accordng to this thread. In museums though, grads from past decade seem to have mid or senior level curatorial appointments at Stanford, UT Austin, Williams, RISD, Getty, SLAM, O'Keeffe Museum, Huntington Library, and Peabody Essex. College museum curators often teach undergraduate and graduate courses, but I don't know how you would put that kind of variable into the algorithm. Yale and the Institute might have similar curatorial placements.

 

This thread has been useful but also divisive of the typical esprit de corps I have experienced on grad cafe. By all means, it's great (& wise) to encourage people to go to schools with full funding but we are all chasing dreams here and rationality has sometimes little to do with it. So not sure how helpful it is to create a have/have nots as I think has been implied. There are a lot of variables, and yes I do think it would be harder for the students at Missouri-Columbia to compete with those at Harvard but there are a lot of mid-size and small publics and private colleges in Missouri and the region, so those grads might do just fine if you expand your definition of successful placements past Ivies and Little Ivies.

Just a small thing: I think Darby English is teaching courses at Williams (though maybe I'm wrong). He seems to be doing one next semester (and his assistant at the Clark's research program has done one this past semester.) His predecessor, Michael Ann Holly also had taught the required methods course for the last few years, so there seems to be a precedent. Either way, I think that Williams students have easy access to him.

[ameshu205]

Poliscar: No confusion in your initial post -- my fault entirely (too early and too little coffee when I made my first update). Thanks for the clarification, and for catching my mistake! I've corrected it now.

 

anonymousbequest: I agree with your points entirely, and really had hoped that these lists would demonstrate the range of possibilities that you describe. That they don't is more indicative of the methods used to collect them, I think. For an explanation of that methodology, see above/below. And in terms of the limited number of schools included (and the many I know I've missed) -- well, time plays a factor there. If people would like to continue adding to these lists, I'd be happy to make the spreadsheets editable to all. As I had also noted that the fellowship list is skewed towards my own subfield (despite my best attempts otherwise), I'd love to hear about those I missed!

 

Take-away point (TL;DR): These lists should NOT to be taken as the last or definitive word on anything, but rather, as springboards for further additions, reflections, and conversation. If anything, I hope they reinforce the points made by many others (above and in other threads) of the impossibility of ranking programs objectively, at least based on the metrics set out here.

 

Thoughts on methodologies of gathering info:

1. Pre-Doc fellowships: This list seemed fairly straightforward, although it certainly reflects the areas I know best. I tried to include fellowships with multiple recipients per year (the Frick doesn’t fit into this category, but it was mentioned in a list in another thread); and so much the better if they cut across multiple sub-fields (CASVA, the Met, etc.). What fellowships have I overlooked?
2. Assistant Prof. jobs: This list seems much more problematic to me, although it certainly does show interesting trends. I tried to follow the methodology laid out by the Art History Newsletter (AHN; http://arthistorynewsletter.com/blog/?p=476 and http://arthistorynewsletter.com/blog/?p=483) – surveying the top 25 schools from the US News and World Report lists for both national research universities and small liberal arts colleges. The job market being what it is right now, I expanded their categories slightly to include not just the top rankings in each category, but also schools with particularly strong art history departments or university museums. I surveyed about 75 schools in all, but obviously, this is the biggest issue with this (quite incomplete) survey – without looking at a far bigger sample size, I don’t think it’s truly possible to draw any definitive conclusions about placement rates.

Another problem with this list is the types of jobs it includes. Following the structure of the AHN survey, I looked at only tenure-track assistant professors at each school. While this makes comparisons between the two surveys possible, I don’t think it reflects the realities of today’s job market (vs. the job market in 2007, when the AHN list was compiled). The limitation to just TT assistant profs means that, even though it’s become standard practice to spend a few years as a visiting assistant professor (non-TT) or on a post-doc fellowship, these positions aren’t included on the list.

 

Further caveats:

1. I’m absolutely certain that art historians who have earned their PhDs from Indiana, Maryland, OSU, Penn State, WashU, and Case Western since 2006 are out there doing fantastic work, despite what this list says. They just happen not to be working at the places I researched.
2. These job numbers represent only a fraction of all possible jobs that are held by PhD graduates. Among those are many curators, many professors who earned tenure more quickly, and many scholars who teach at places not surveyed. (If the data for recent curatorial hires were easily available, I certainly would have included that info too!)

[anonymousbequest]

Just a small thing: I think Darby English is teaching courses at Williams (though maybe I'm wrong). He seems to be doing one next semester (and his assistant at the Clark's research program has done one this past semester.) His predecessor, Michael Ann Holly also had taught the required methods course for the last few years, so there seems to be a precedent. Either way, I think that Williams students have easy access to him.

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that Darby English wouldn't teach or advise students at Williams. He is just a convienent example of how ranking programs by TT assistant prof appointments isn't inclusive ennough to get a real picture. In the NRC-type ranking system, Rochester couldn't count him in their employment rate anymore as they could when he was at Chicago as faculty.

 

From the graduate program's website it seems like the teaching is done by regular Williams faculty plus Clark, Williams College Museum, and MassMOCA curators and administrators, post-docs, and visiting fellows.  Some of these people have degrees from Harvard, the Institute, and Penn while others have MAs (from Williams) or PhDs from Rutgers, Rochester, or the aforementioned UCSB.  So how to classify them?  What about curatorial appointments at leading museums? Is becoming an assistant curator at the Met or Getty really lesser than getting a TT job at eastern podunck state? I don't know if I have a better answer for tracking, but the Williams example suggests that success in the academy (or academic-museum hybrid) is more complex than simply a TT job at HYP.

[neongolden]

There is a reasonably acceptable list: http://arthistorynewsletter.com/blog/?p=5204

 

However that's from 2011, and there have been shake-ups since. Nemerov and soon Joselit aren't/won't be at Yale, so depending on who comes in, there will be some movement. Darby English left Chicago for Williams, but Chicago in general has made some big hires. The rest of your list seems acceptable, but I'm not sure I'd agree with Stanford's inclusion.

 

I'd kind of like to update this thread... especially since decision time will be upon us pretty soon.

I am also a Modern/Contemporary person and would argue that this field has been reshuffled in recent years and months.

Just for example:

 

David Joselit has moved from Yale to CUNY.

Stanford has hired Richard Meyer and Alexander Nemerov.

 

Even without the obvious transitions, some younger scholars who would not have been huge names in 2011 seem to be making a mark. Think of Huey Copeland and Hannah Feldman at Northwestern, for example.

Also, it seems that there might be some shaking up on the top end in the coming years, with much of the older OCTOBER guard approaching an age that some would consider to be retirement-appropraite... like Rosalind Krauss at Columbia, Benjamin Buchloh at Harvard and Douglas Crimp at Rochester.

[artlover26]

It will be an interesting next 10 years as program reputations change drastically depending upon retirements.  Berkeley saw a huge hit with retirements as well as UPenn in the last decade.  Will Berkeley really ever be the same place without T.J Clark?  IFA, Columbia, among others may see a change in environment as well.  I would not be surprised to see some programs like USC, Duke, Wisconsin, or Northwestern begin to give a place like IFA or Chapel Hill some rivalry in the next decade.  

[neongolden]

It will be an interesting next 10 years as program reputations change drastically depending upon retirements.  Berkeley saw a huge hit with retirements as well as UPenn in the last decade.  Will Berkeley really ever be the same place without T.J Clark?  IFA, Columbia, among others may see a change in environment as well.  I would not be surprised to see some programs like USC, Duke, Wisconsin, or Northwestern begin to give a place like IFA or Chapel Hill some rivalry in the next decade.  

 

Dear artlover26,

 

I'd love to hear specifics about the changes you foresee... also and perhaps in areas other than Modern and Contemporary. Who knows, maybe there's a thing or two I can learn by hearing about some up-and-coming academics.

I know that Columbia is very strong in the Modern/Contemporary Department even without people like Krauss. They have Branden Joseph, Alexander Alberro and also Kellie Jones and Noam Elcott. They also recently gained Avinoam Shalem from Munich in the Islamic Art Department, which I hear is a huge boost.

[anonymousbequest]

Ok, good experiment. What happened to their programs when Panofsky, Schapiro, Novak, Alpers, Nochlin, and Prown retired? Still in the top tier?

[artlover26]

Oh please, go find a "rating" list for art history programs that was more recent than 2010.  Nochlin and Alpers still had influence (and if I am right, Nochlin retired post-2010).  This is to not even mention severe budget cuts.  I got admitted to Berkeley plus another 10-20 school.   I am pretty sure I will be going to the 10-20 because the funding package is almost triple the amount.  I say if you want a "real ranking" based off the 2010 list, go to phds.org and rerank them in terms of job placement.  Fine U Chicago is at about 75%.  Then comes the acceptable - Berkeley 60%, Yale 63%, Penn 67%.  Then the downright ugly and embarrassing - IFA/ NYU - 43%, Columbia 54%.  

[c2670383]

Ok, good experiment. What happened to their programs when Panofsky, Schapiro, Novak, Alpers, Nochlin, and Prown retired? Still in the top tier?

 

Exactly. The "big five" programs will always remain at the top overall. There the movement is mostly tied to specific fields: which particular one(s) is/are at the momement better or worse for 20th century or Renaissance or Chinese or what have you.

 

IMHO there have been some actual changes in quality in the next 5-10 programs. For example, Berkeley definitely pales to what it was 10-15 years ago, UCLA is also weaker, but Chicago is stronger overall and Stanford seems to be on an upward trajectory. But whether or not this matters in terms of placement is debatable. I suspect Berkeley will still place well enough on its famous name, solid training, and good incoming students, at least for another decade or so. The real change is the tier below that, at places like CUNY, Indiana, Rutgers, Bryn Mawr, BU, Delaware, or Santa Barbara. A generation ago they had stronger faculties and used to place decently enough (often quite well in certain subfields), but now even their very best students working with high profile scholars are extremely lucky to get any tenure line job anywhere.

 

So to whoever asked: no, the rankings haven't really changed. Which PARTICULAR program of the top 10 is right for you might be different now than it was before (Prof. X is now at Y instead of Z, Prof. A retired from B and wasn't replaced, so forth), but the list of top programs is basically set in stone, at least for Western art. As someone has already pointed out, non-Western fields work a bit differently, possibly because there's still new hiring going on in those areas, esp. for contemporary.

[kinderbueno90]

As someone has already pointed out, non-Western fields work a bit differently, possibly because there's still new hiring going on in those areas, esp. for contemporary.

Can anyone offer insight into the rankings for Asian art--East Asian art to be specific? Thanks.

Edited February 28, 2015 by kinderbueno90

[anonymousbequest]

This is a useful topic for the applicants, they are getting a taste for just how internecine it all is. The Clark Art Institute had a conference on Art History and Emergency last year, and that's really what I think we are talking around. The discipline is in crisis, not as in the 80s or 90s a methodological crisis, but a crisis for relevancy and leadership. The greats are gone, their heir apparents are not doing a great job at placements. I do think that many of the 10-20 are still good bets, but there has been movement. BU and Bryn Mawr are two venerable programs that have fallen far, but I'd put Santa Barbara and UNC over Michigan and maybe Stanford right now. Rutgers, Maryland, and CUNY are still safeties but are what you make of them. 

 

There are a lot of profs in their 30s and 40s who replaced people like Prown and Nochlin. The discipline is in flux. It'll take time for us to sort them all out. Right now in one subfield a younger Harvard prof, with tenure and 10 years there, has not placed a single advisee into a TT job. It's grim out there.