Most/Least Crowed Time Periods

[Gl0rfindel]

Hi all!

The graduate schooIs I'm considering require you to apply to a specific program/century within the larger English Department. Since I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Shakespeare and was intending to use this for my writing sample, this would set me on a trajectory toward being a Shakespearian. However, I suspect this field is very, very crowded. Although I know there is a supply and demand problem with Humanities PhDs just in general, I was curious if there were any particular centuries that were less crowded/competitive. At the moment, I'm not aligned with one specific century, and would consider going into a less competitive field of study, if it meant better odds of admission and employment further down the road.

Thanks in advance.

[Dr. Old Bill]

Hello and welcome!

This isn't a bad question -- not at all -- but it's also a nearly impossible one to answer definitively for a variety of reasons. I can imagine writing a 1000+ word response (because I have a lot of thoughts on this topic), but I'll try to keep it brief.

First of all, you simply have to separate "odds of admission" and "employment further down the road" into two distinct categories. The academic landscape is constantly shifting, as is the job market. For the past few years, there has been a marked academic trend among applicants and in departments toward rhet-comp -- it currently seems to be the fastest growing, and most job-friendly field. But that's at the moment. Remember that a Ph.D. is going to take roughly five years minimum to complete, which means that an applicant right now is trying to forecast what the job market is going to look like in six or seven years. I personally think that's somewhere between a vain improbability and an outright impossibility. My gut feeling is that the job market for rhet-comp is going to be oversaturated within the next five years, simply because the advice-du-jour for the last few has been that it is the most employable field...which has prompted legions of new rhet-comp applicants (and acceptances). But how big can rhet-comp actually get in an otherwise shrinking discipline? I use rhet-comp as an example, just because it is the most distinct of the sub-disciplines within English.

Secondly, remember that (as I just mentioned) a Ph.D. program usually takes at least five years to complete. That's the same amount of time as your junior and senior high school years. It's long. While there is certainly some wiggle room in terms of era / field / genre once you get into a program, most of those years will be spent studying something fairly specific within a specific era or field...and because you have specialized, that's how you will be labeled when you go on the job market (i.e. 20th century Americanist, British Romanticist, Medievalist etc.). Moreover, you'll likely be tethered to that era / field / genre for the first several years that you are gainfully employed as a professor (in the slightly improbable event that that even happens). This leads to the all-important question of whether trying to choose a currently uncrowded field that will also be a future uncrowded field makes any sense from a personal interest standpoint. Again, things aren't quite as rigid as I'm making them out to be...but the core idea is correct.

Third, there are many reasons for why certain fields of study are "crowded" and "uncrowded." Take Restoration Drama, for instance. It's not at all a crowded field. If you happen to enjoy Etherege, Dryden, Congreve and others, you probably wouldn't have a lot of company in the application pool...but by that same token, there simply aren't many Restoration Drama scholars period, which means that you'd invariably need to narrow your list of programs considerably when you're applying, and if you're taking a long-term employability approach, you have to consider why there are so few working scholars in that field / era...and whether you have a decent shot at nabbing one of those few jobs when those scholars retire.

There are many more aspects I could detail (in my head, I have at least five other points...), but what it boils down to is that you should try to work on what interests you the most, with a slight bit of attention to what is available both now and in the future. I'm a Shakespearean myself (for the most part), and while there might be some "overcrowding" in terms of applicants interested in Shakespeare and his contemporaries, there are very few programs that don't have at least one or two Shakespearean scholars on faculty...and usually many more. A few eras / fields such as early modern drama (i.e. Shakespeare and co.) and 20th century British and American literature aren't going to go away anytime soon, nor are they likely to shrink any faster than the discipline in general. But that invariably means that they will be eras / fields with larger draws than others on the applicant end.

I hope this is at least somewhat helpful. It's a complicated industry, in a lot of ways, which means that there are very few easy answers to broad questions like this one...even if those questions certainly deserve to be asked!

[Gl0rfindel]

Hey Old Bill, I'm very new both to this forum and to the application process in general, so I really appreciate you taking the time to write such a detailed response. I'll also add that I'm aware my post is taking a questionable approach to the grad school process. If I was going for a safe job, guaranteed employment I wouldn't be pursuing a PhD in the Humanities! We do this for reasons other than the strictly financial, so trying to plan for employment in the field before even applying for grad school... isn't really a viable approach. But you've given me a lot to think about here! I was mainly debating between Shakespeare (my thesis) and Joyce (grant-funded research I did elsewhere in my college career), but you named Shakespeare and 20th Century British/American Lit as two fields that "aren't going to go away anytime soon," so I imagine I'll face similar issues with either route.

Thank you again for taking the time to write this answer.

[Tybalt]

Adding to Bill's excellent response:

You need to specialize in the field you are most passionate about.  It's not about improving your odds at a job five years from now.  It's about doing your best work in a field where you would then be spending 30+ years of a career.  I really like Chaucer.  I'm incredibly fond of Victorian novels.  I dig comics and graphic novels.  But I can't imagine spending 30 years working on any of those topics.  But Renaissance drama?  I LIVE for that.  When I teach it, I come alive and I never tire of seeing it, thinking about it, and writing about it.  Whichever field gives you that feeling, THAT'S the field you should specialize in, because the work you do in that field will stand out on the job market, whether you are up against 20 competitors or 200.

[cowgirlsdontcry]

Great posts! I would like say my little piece. While I was an undergrad and master's student, I saw new professors come into the department, hired for a specific area and while they never stopped teaching that area, as they gathered steam in their career they began to branch out into teaching sub areas that were of interest to them. The field is so open, even within certain time frames or periods, that it's possible to have quite a bit of diversity. My primary area is 20th-21st century American, but I also really get into Southern Lit, earlier American writers because of my research, and yes, even late 19th century early 20th century British authors (just because I like them). I agree with the others--do what you love. Your work will shine because of it.