Choosing Specialization?

[allplaideverything]

Hey GradCafe! I'm finishing up my first year of the PhD (ahh!!), and wanted to start a conversation with you brilliant folks about choosing our area(s) of specialization.

The specialization I proposed in my SOP & writing sample, which was pretty specific in terms of periodization and methodology, is no longer especially thrilling to me. Coursework, and more generally hanging out with my awesome cohort and being around great faculty, has gotten me excited about stuff I had no idea I'd be into! (For example, I came in as a 19th Century Americanist, and have somehow fallen in love with a few 18th Century British poets! Weird.) (Also, note to future applicants: Don't feel like your proposed area of specialization is a binding contract! You'll have freedom and flexibility in your program to adapt your interests.)

So, I'm wondering how you all are going about choosing your areas of specialization! I can imagine beginning with specific authors or literary texts and building an interpretive methodology from there; I can also imagine beginning with a specific theoretical framework or conceptual problem and looking for texts that might help think through the questions. Other approaches?

[Dr. Old Bill]

I was -- no joke -- totally planning on starting this exact same thread, so I'm thrilled that you've done so. I'm going to get out my notepad in the hopes that there will be some more nuggets of wisdom dropping soon. Thanks for starting this!

[silenus_thescribe]

I am also about to finish my first year! 

I'm in the odd place of having known what I want to specialize in since undergrad (modern/contemporary theatre), and I am still vindicated by that a year into my program. I'm also interested in the intersections of theatre and philosophy, so I do come at the topic from two different angles (playwriting + philosophy).

I don't have too much advice from my own experience, given that I've just "had this feeling" for so long now, but I had a realization recently that helps make sense of why I study drama. While I love the subject, and I love reading plays, I'm not out-and-out a theatre person; I was only in one high school play, and while I love going to plays, I'm not religious about it. I have a distance from it that makes it easy to approach the texts I work with critically. A prof of mine wrote his dissertation on one of Shakespeare's lesser plays, and he said by the end he didn't like the play very much, but that in turn made it easier to write about it, since he was removed in it.

In short: the texts you love the most might not be the texts that are the best for your doctoral specialization. Novels are what I've read for the longest time -- I'm also writing one myself (as if I need more to do) -- and I realized that novels would be more difficult to approach critically than plays would, especially novels in the time period I'm most interested in (20th/21st). I get too into them for their own sake, and in many cases the "enjoyment" part of my mind overtakes the "critical" part of my mind (not to endorse a strict birfucation between the two.) So if there's a field you find interest in but aren't necessarily head-over-heels for, that might be a good place to start.

I've also found that discovering areas of inquiry within a given field that are pretty untouched is also a good place to start. Where there's a gap in the scholarship, there's room for you to make your name known in a really appealing way. Contemporary drama has that appeal for me, as there's a lot that's untouched in the genre.

Edited May 13, 2016 by silenus_thescribe

[Tybalt]

In my undergrad nerd-herd, I was the Chaucerian.  That was my thing.  I was the one our friends went to for questions on the Tales.  Then I graduated and taught high school for a few years, and I realized something.  While I still loved Chaucer, I wasn't particularly driven by it.  But I lived for the Shakespeare unit.  I couldn't get enough of it--teaching it, talking about it, thinking about it, etc.  So when I eventually went to grad school, I specialized in Renaissance drama.

 

So as far as advice, I would suggest you think about what you might be interested in for a span of 30+ years.  What area/field could you NEVER fully explore in one professional life time, and yet still want to try?  Which batch of literature would you be REALLY bummed to never really get to teach?  The answers to those questions should really filter out the areas that seem interesting because you wrote a really good seminar paper on something (which is great) from the ones where you might be able to write several books.

[xolo]

On 14/5/2016 at 5:05 PM, Tybalt said:

So as far as advice, I would suggest you think about what you might be interested in for a span of 30+ years.  What area/field could you NEVER fully explore in one professional life time, and yet still want to try?  Which batch of literature would you be REALLY bummed to never really get to teach?  The answers to those questions should really filter out the areas that seem interesting because you wrote a really good seminar paper on something (which is great) from the ones where you might be able to write several books.

This is good food for thought. I'm so glad someone started this thread. I don't really have any good advice, it seems there is somewhat of a random order to these things.  I've been thinking about my quals that are due next year (next year equates to "tomorrow" in my mind) and I need to write about 40 - 50 pages.

Hey AllPlaid, I remember your great posts from last year when I was still dreaming and before I had to start working like a dog!

I'm finishing my first year too and my advisor has advised me to be flexible as I would be getting new ideas. However, I have given a couple of presentations on my originally planned area and it continues to be well received. My area is language contact in Mexico and a visiting prof was enamored of the topic - that was a nice ego boost. 

 

[unræd]

I am also someone who went in to the PhD knowing at least my narrow chronological specialization, as well as what sort of arguments I generally like to make. But at the same time, there's a lot of leeway in there, and I've been thinking a lot about it lately, about who I want to be as a scholar and about how I'm beginning to make that take shape. The big medieval conference was this past weekend, and a friend asked me idly as we walked to the next panel if I was more a poetry guy or a prose guy. In answering that question--which was just casual, between-panel BS--I actually learned a lot about what I value in literature, and what I don't, and what sort of person I want to be in the field.

As for the above, they're all excellent ideas for how to go about specializing! And those sorts of things--that is, your actual interests--should obviously be at the fore. But in addition to text, methodology, distance/closeness to the material, and gaps in existing scholarship, let me add another possible discrimen, albeit one that is maybe less popular to talk about: cold, hard cash.

No, I'm not advocating chasing every job market trend, or doing stuff you don't like just because it's hot or because you can get paid to do it; I'm as resentful of the neoliberal commodification of humanistic knowledge based on its ostensible utility as the next guy. But at the same time, a boy's gotta eat, and that can sometimes inflect your work in interesting and unexpected ways that are worth at least being open to. For example, I got a religious studies grant next year, and while I certainly have worked on religious texts and the grant made sense in the context of my current interests/scholarship (otherwise I wouldn't have applied for it!), I wouldn't have thought to frame that as a primary interest or specialization. Now, though, it will begin to become a part of my identity and how I present myself as a scholar, how I talk about and situate my work, if only because it'll be both part of my cv and a thing that will influence some of the conversations I have and the thinking I do.

This is in some ways as much an argument for a certain openness to serendipitous discovery as it is for following the money, I suppose, since there are a lot of other things that can push you in unexpected directions or towards projects you might not have otherwise considered--available archival resources, your colleagues at your institution and their work, professors, what courses happen to be offered when you're in coursework, etc etc etc. That, then, would be what I'd say: be open-minded and flexible!

[Dr. Old Bill]

Half the time I log in here, I do so in anticipation of the ever-amazing nuggets of wisdom imparted by our dear friend unraed. Always such great insight.

 

[MargeryUnkempet]

I am an undergrad, but the notion of specializing in a specific research field still makes me a little nervous (which is a tad irrational because I have years to figure out what I want to specialize in lol). I am sure I will gain more clarity on what I should specialize in farther down the road, but it seems, at least to me, that it would be more convenient to know what I want to specialize in for picking out which programs I should apply to. My main issue with picking out something to really hone in on is the fact that I tend to like pretty much any literature that I study/read. Has anyone else ever ran into an issue to similar to this? How did you narrow down your research interests?

[echo449]

So, a couple things, MargeryUnkempet: First, graduate programs view the specialization that they accept you in as a fiction, to some degree. They expect that someone in every cohort will switch their field, especially in departments with multiple strengths. And that's okay! I've actually drifted forward in time by a couple decades for my focus, and that's okay. In short, the specialization you apply in is not the research project you will have to follow for your entire graduate career.

Secondly, one thing you can do is to go read a bunch of secondary literature in different periods. While reading, ask yourself: Who are the faculty members doing projects that I find the most exciting? What themes do I find myself drawn to? What period would allow to work on those themes in ways that I would find interesting? I bet once you start asking yourself those questions, you'll figure it out. 

[MargeryUnkempet]

4 hours ago, echo449 said:

So, a couple things, MargeryUnkempet: First, graduate programs view the specialization that they accept you in as a fiction, to some degree. They expect that someone in every cohort will switch their field, especially in departments with multiple strengths. And that's okay! I've actually drifted forward in time by a couple decades for my focus, and that's okay. In short, the specialization you apply in is not the research project you will have to follow for your entire graduate career.

Secondly, one thing you can do is to go read a bunch of secondary literature in different periods. While reading, ask yourself: Who are the faculty members doing projects that I find the most exciting? What themes do I find myself drawn to? What period would allow to work on those themes in ways that I would find interesting? I bet once you start asking yourself those questions, you'll figure it out. 

echo449, this is great advice! I have been reading a good bit of secondary literature lately, particularly texts dealing with gender and psychoanalysis, and I suppose, for the most part, I am drawn to exploring themes in that realm. Thanks!

[__________________________]

So I'm late to the boat on all this. I'm only just finishing my "first year" and about to start a summer language session... ugh...

On 6/12/2016 at 5:12 PM, echo449 said:

First, graduate programs view the specialization that they accept you in as a fiction, to some degree. 

I would emphasize the "to some degree" in this statement, realizing that this can vary so much and can be easier/more felicitous with different periods of interest. As much as I was told on this forum and by members of my department when I was visiting that I would get to "explore" and be able to change my research interest, toying with other fields/theoretical approaches/time periods over this last year made me realize how much I had already anchored myself in my own period (late medieval Britain), which was much more so than I had realized. In the sense that it was terrifying when I had a moment or two of existential doubt about the field I had come here to study and the prospect of doing something else felt like it would be starting over. This has turned out alright for me: that doubt transforms into new confidence. But it can also be very nerve wracking to think you have a field and then get to a program that urges you to explore a bunch of things outside of that field while also, simultaneously, pressuring you to become an expert: did anyone else experience something like this this year?

On 5/17/2016 at 8:25 AM, unræd said:

This is in some ways as much an argument for a certain openness to serendipitous discovery as it is for following the money, I suppose, since there are a lot of other things that can push you in unexpected directions or towards projects you might not have otherwise considered--available archival resources, your colleagues at your institution and their work, professors, what courses happen to be offered when you're in coursework, etc etc etc. That, then, would be what I'd say: be open-minded and flexible!

Unræd's point is excellent (as always), and, I think, quite related to this issue specialization. I think this sort of openness is something that is afforded by figuring out what sorts of methodologies and scholarly praxes that really click with you in your first year or so: "specialization" is very much a process of opening, not of enclosure and imposing blinders, I've found (contrary to all the common anxieties -- that I've had and know others have had -- that specializing is a narrowing, an enclosure that is terrifying and limiting). Interdisciplinary work is more fruitful when you have a set of founding principles, and I've found that my process of specifying a field for myself has actually been strengthened from trying things and figuring out what I definitely *don't* want to dedicate my energy towards as a scholar (as well as figuring out which other disciplines my work might talk to). This is related to the "money" issue, too. A decent amount of scholarship, maybe more explicitly in mine and unræd's fields (but I'm probably just looking through my pretentious medievalist goggles), is just finding new objects that people haven't written about or haven't written adequately about: there're a lot of "discoveries" to be made, which also means a lot of opportunities for publishing and getting travel/research grants and things of that nature. Figuring out your jam and the kind of language and research skills you work well with is how you get your little intellectual metal detector and find the shit to write about that turns into publications and grants and stuff that help form you as a scholar. I know that reeks of positivism, but it's also kind of basically what being a scholar is: finding shit to say new stuff about. 

[jrockford27]

I developed my specialization by just following my nose and writing seminar papers that seemed interesting to me, guided by some very broad concepts I wanted to develop when I came in.  My present work grew out of the papers I wrote in my first and second years, which arose out of a very broad set of interests I had coming out of undergrad.  In my third year, I put the seminar papers to work refining the interests the emerged my first two years in the program.  Since my specialization is in Film Studies via English this may be different from someone in a Lit concentration, but I realized it was much easier to find a fulfilling field of expertise when I decided on a sort of theoretical concept I wanted to refine, and started using the Films to drive my study of that set of issues, rather than picking an author/director/time period/geographic space and allowing it to raise the theoretical issues - but ultimately I suppose I'm more of a theory/cultural studies guy.  I find this allows me to write about a broad and fresh range of subjects and keep myself interested.  This was also at the urging of the people who are now on my committee, who slowly directed me toward this way of looking at things (there was a very specific period and kind of films I was eager to focus on when I first came in).

The advice I've been given again and again is to not think too much about where hiring trends are in relation to your specialization.  If you're a second year PhD student you may be 5-7 years (or more!) away from the market depending on your program, and by the time you hit the market the specialization you developed at the expense of something you found more interesting may be yesterday's news.  Obviously, you don't want to be specializing in ground that is already well-worn, but picking your specialty based on the market presumes that you can predict where the market is going to be when you defend half a decade or more from now.  That's a long time.  Do what interests you and what you think you can get mileage out of, you don't want to be stuck writing a 300-500 page book about something you don't feel all that strongly about.

Edited June 18, 2016 by jrockford27