Moving from English to Cultural Studies

[Homeless]

I posted this in the interdisciplinary studies forum, but thought I would try here since things are livelier.

I'm looking into Cultural Studies PhD programs in the fall and trying to get a better sense of what's out there. I know it's a relatively small field, but I'm wondering what people have heard about the programs that are out there and what might be the best fit for me. I recently got my MA in English and WGS, and wrote a thesis on Virginia Woolf and the public sphere. However, while I was in the program (I actually started out in the English phd program) I realized that I wasn't a great fit for a traditional literature degree. My current research involves looking at how counter-publics challenge and interact with the larger public sphere (specifically around the issues of race and gender. I'm happy to say more, but I'm wondering what programs people think might be good to look at.

So far I'm looking at UC-Davis, Carnegie Mellon, GMU, Pittsburgh, and a few others (maybe MTL at Stanford, maybe Rhetoric at Berkeley) but like I said, I don't have much sense of how these programs are thought of, so any thoughts would help.

[poliscar]

Don't do it. 

Or I should say, be super, super wary of "Cultural Studies" programs. If you can get into a top-notch interdisciplinary program like Berkeley/Stanford, or Brown's Modern Culture and Media, you'll be in good hands. However, you'll put yourself at a significant disadvantage otherwise. Cultural Studies is not something departments hire for, it's not a flourishing field, and it won't provide you with the disciplinary grounding required for employment. 

You would be much better off finding English/Literature programs where you would be able to do the work you want to do. That, or look at Media Studies, Art History, Film, etc. Really, really research programs and faculty, and you will likely be better off than if you were to attach yourself to as nebulous a field as Cultural Studies. 

[Dr. Old Bill]

I completely agree with Poliscar.

One other sub-point to his is to check out what kind of degrees your favorite / ideal Cultural Studies professors / POIs have received. Dollars to donuts most of their Ph.D.'s were not in Cultural Studies, but in a broader field like English etc.

[WildeThing]

Could you elaborate on the issues with cultural studies? I am a Lit major who received an offer to study an MA in intercultural communication and I am not particularly familiar with the field as a whole.

[ExponentialDecay]

Students in interdisciplinary programs are perceived as lacking depth and focus in the disciplines they study compared to students in traditional programs. Academic hiring committees are looking for employees who can teach the curriculum, and having an interdisciplinary degree communicates that you may not know the curriculum well enough to teach it, unless you are able to demonstrate otherwise. Ergo, an interdisciplinary department is ceteris paribus a suboptimal choice compared to a traditional department that allows you to do interdisciplinary work.

I have no idea what intercultural communication is. I would advise you to look at whether the course requirements will prepare you for a literature PhD.

[poliscar]

ExponentialDecay is right, for sure. Speaking more broadly as well, I'd argue that Cultural Studies—as a field/approach/paradigm—is pretty deeply rooted in work done in the 80s-90s, specifically around Birmingham (Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Angela McRobbie, etc) & the general "Cultural Turn". This is still very important work, but it doesn't have the same status as an ascendant paradigm (insert Raymond Williams emergent/dominant/residual joke here). The methods have been absorbed by various other fields, but Cultural Studies hasn't really come to constitute its own discipline. There was a point in time during which new departments & programs were emerging in the area, and hires were being made, but that's pretty far in the past now. Between new scholarly developments (German Media Theory & Media Archaeologies , reactions against Cultural Marxism, Latour & networks, "post-critical" reading practices, etc) and the subsumption of Cultural Studies by other disciplines, it has lost a fair amount of its initial impact. 

To be a little more blunt, when someone tells me their primary interest/field is Cultural Studies, my initial thought is somewhere along the lines of "how quaint." Now don't get me wrong, I really like some work that could be considered Cultural Studies (though I also have some theoretical/political bones to pick with a lot of it), but in general it doesn't exactly signify "cutting-edge" or "exciting" or even particularly relevant anymore. You can see that reflected in job postings, publications & journal issues, etc. Some of this comes down to fashion and trends, some of it to economic and political contractions, and a lot to legitimate academic debate and change. However you want to understand it though, it no longer signifies the way it might have in the past, so I'd be wary about hitching my cart. 

[bhr]

I would also heavily suggest looking at Cultural Rhetorics programs (Syracuse, UT, MSU, ect.). Comp Rhet is one of the few humanities fields that is not (yet) bleeding jobs, and you can do cultural studies work from a rhetorical perspective.

[Homeless]

Thanks for the feedback, even if some of it contradicts previous advice I've been given. One question that remains is if the problems with cultural studies are there for other interdisciplinary programs (I'm also interested in American Studies, for example) or if that poses similar problems. And does anyone have advice on English/lit departments that are amenable to interdisciplinary work? 

Also, isn't Brown's Modern Culture department essentially a communications department? 

[ratanegra19]

I've also been looking into interdisciplinary-friendly programs based in Literature. My interest is in Cognitive Literary Studies (Cognitive Science +Literature), but that field is still new enough to make folks suspicious. Basically, I've been combing the Internet for the last few weeks to find programs that will give me a safety net (i.e. staying within the English department) with the option to cross-pollinate with other disciplines. Stanford's MTL looks awesome, but it is super selective. Princeton also has an "interdisciplinary program in the humanities" option with the English PhD, but you need to wait until your third year to apply. Boston College actually seems really amenable to cross-discipline work, as well as Rutgers, Pittsburgh, and WUSTL. Caveat: I am not associated with any of these colleges--I just know what I read on the websites, and some of what I learned here.

I'm still actively doing research, trying to find other departments that seem to be on the same wavelength. I plan to apply to 6-8 programs in the fall.

[ExponentialDecay]

@Homeless what do you want to do? Unless your work straddles two disciplines in a way that you need to be expert in both, such as if you were to do poetics in a way that synthesizes advanced knowledge in, like, computer science or neuroscience, I don't see why you need to be outside an English department. Most (all?) English departments allow for crossdisciplinary work. Pay attention to whether you can find an advisor who is interested in your approach, and that you can build a committee that is prestigious and qualified in all your areas, just as you would in Comp Lit, and make sure the program is okay with you taking classes outside the department in the first 2 years, and you should be peachy.

If you can, get a PhD in the discipline you want to teach in. That said, the job market is shitty wherever you go, so if you're particularly enamored of whatever fruity loops interdisciplinary program and you have a hundred bucks, dropping them an app isn't gonna make the weather.

[erosanddust]

10 hours ago, ratanegra19 said:

Boston College actually seems really amenable to cross-discipline work

As someone currently at Boston College, I can affirm that this is true. This is something that the English department emphasizes to incoming graduate students. Also, for those interested in lit & cognitive science, Alan Richardson in the English department does a lot of important work in that field.

[echo449]

On 6/20/2016 at 12:06 AM, ratanegra19 said:

Princeton also has an "interdisciplinary program in the humanities" option with the English PhD, but you need to wait until your third year to apply. Boston College actually seems really amenable to cross-discipline work, as well as Rutgers, Pittsburgh, and WUSTL.

Hurm. Is Rutgers amenable to cross-disciplinary work? As a student here currently, I would say "yes," but I would add that we restrict coursework outside of the department in ways that other programs do not (for the better, IMO). If you'd like to talk about this sort of work more, and the possibilities that are open to prospective students, feel free to PM me. This is not to say that inter-disciplinary work is not done at Rutgers (Josh Gang, who you were referred to in another thread, is actually a Rutgers grad), but I think you have to approach that sort of work differently here than in other departments. 

[unræd]

19 hours ago, Homeless said:

One question that remains is if the problems with cultural studies are there for other interdisciplinary programs (I'm also interested in American Studies, for example) or if that poses similar problems. And does anyone have advice on English/lit departments that are amenable to interdisciplinary work? 

I can't speak for other fields like American Studies that would seem to be closer to what you're interested in, but the idea that interdisciplinary programs come with severe job market downsides unless you're at a certain sort of institution (insert obligatory "bleh" for the concept of ranks and tiers here) certainly holds true for the interdisciplinary fields I know about.

Berkeley is definitely amenable to interdisciplinary work; of the the twelve grad classes required for coursework, only seven need to be in English and students are encouraged to take classes outside of the department.

[ratanegra19]

3 hours ago, erosanddust said:

As someone currently at Boston College, I can affirm that this is true. This is something that the English department emphasizes to incoming graduate students. Also, for those interested in lit & cognitive science, Alan Richardson in the English department does a lot of important work in that field.

That's really great to know for sure! I've been talking with someone else on this forum associated with BC, and he said pretty much the same thing, though he wasn't part of the English dept. I didn't realize Richardson was part of that department--he's like, THE guy, along with Elaine Scarry and Lisa Zunshine, for this work. It's settled, I'm for sure going to apply in the fall. 

Thanks  

[lyonessrampant]

You might also look at University of Minnesota.  For the cognitive studies/lit person, check out Andrew Elfenbein's work.  For interdisciplinary work, it's a very supportive department, and the university as a whole invests in interdisciplinary work.  There is an Interdisciplinary Fellowship, which I was on this past year.  It tends to go more to people in the sciences than humanities, but there are always a few of us who get it.  There are also research grants through the grad school to do research, and we have many well-established centers that support interdisciplinary work.

[ratanegra19]

That's great to know, Lyones--I'll definitely check it out!