Subfields?

[strokeofmidnight]

Yeah, actually I think that is more common. I was thinking Berkeley....but that's what I get for thinking that my little corner of experience represents the rest of the world!

I think that it really depends on the program. None of the ten that I applied to have a Rhetoric/Comp sector at all--either within the English program, or as a separate entity. Well, Berkeley has a separate Rhetoric department, but it seems to be something of a misnomer...it definitely isn't Rhetoric/Comp program, but more along the lines of an interdisciplinary theory program (Stanford's Modern Language and Thought, Brown's Modern Culture and Media, Duke Lit, etc).

[durkin65]

I think my subfield may put me off from getting accepted. I'm interested in African and Caribbean literature as well as science fiction. However, maybe it'll work in my favor. Didn't work out with Buffalo (even though I just completed my MA there).

[Philomel]

I don't know about most competitive but where I did my Master's (UK), everybody on the PhD programme seemed to be either a Medievalist or a Modernist. But rather than feeling delighted that fewer people were in my subfield (British C19 novel) my fellow Romanticists/Victorianists and I just developed a complex about how English departments love to fund Medievalists because they feel like all of the language-learning gives the subject a kind of academic weight which just reading lots of lovely novels apparently lacks... i.e. a hangover from the invention of English as an academic subject at the start of the C20. This is probably rubbish (if true, why do they also let in a bajillion people to study Virginia Woolf?!) but I definitely felt that the Victorians were a lesser-funded subfield. And in the UK, funding is what really matters: it is relatively easy to be admitted to programmes but funding is extremely scarce and it is this which generally decides whether the PhD is actually a realistic prospect or not. Anyway not sure how relevant this is to the US system (into which I am blindly attempting to launch myself) but just my two cents!

[minnares]

It's also worth noting...some programs shift out "theory" (poco, pomo, feminism, ethnicity studies, gender studies, etc) as a separate category. Depending on the schools, THIS can be the most competitive field. The "slot system" is also going to vary drastically from program to program. Some programs don't work with slots at all, and simply accept the best (however many) applications regardless of field. Some (many, I suspect) will tweak their slots to balance out numbers from previous cohorts, and/or based on their recent faculty hires.

@SOM: Thank you for bringing up critical theory as a subfield. So far I've seen many Victorians on the boards, but it seems like very few folks going into theory or having that as their subfield. I identified theory as my subfield with all the schools, specifically gender and religion. While the gender might be a bit more common, religious theory is just emerging in many departments. The professors I've spoken with at various schools find this combination really interesting. I'm hoping the fact that my bent goes this route will be in my favor, but who knows . It's just where my interests lie. I found that no matter what time period or culture I was reading from, my readings were New Historicist and went to the gender and the belief systems. So I figured I should just stick with what I am good at and enjoy. We'll see if it's interesting to any of the programs I've applied to.

~ m

Edited February 17, 2010 by minnares

[lady_coffee]

I'm actually interested in looking at 19th century British & American literature together - transatlantic in the sense of examining cross-the-pond discourse (though the term "transatlantic" is more traditionally associated with literature coming out of/relating to the Triangle Trade). I have a special interest in gender & sexuality studies as well as political theory. My favorite period to work with is late 18th/early 19th cen. - the writings on civil rights, women's rights, and revolution are so rich. Burke, Wollstonecraft, Paine... *tries to contain inner nerd*

(On that note, the UCLA rejection hit a bit hard - Anne Mellor is the person to work with if anyone is interested in women's political writings in the late 18th/early 19th centuries.)

Even though there are a lot of Victorianists, it seems that there's a really rich range of interests on this board. Very interesting to read!

Edited February 17, 2010 by lady_coffee

[callmelilyb]

I think that it really depends on the program. None of the ten that I applied to have a Rhetoric/Comp sector at all--either within the English program, or as a separate entity. Well, Berkeley has a separate Rhetoric department, but it seems to be something of a misnomer...it definitely isn't Rhetoric/Comp program, but more along the lines of an interdisciplinary theory program (Stanford's Modern Language and Thought, Brown's Modern Culture and Media, Duke Lit, etc).

I have heard that Berkeley's Rhet/Comp program was unique...now I know why!