adpcl
Association of Departments and Programs of Comparative Literature

The Job Market

Most administrators of Comparative Literature programs or departments are involved, one way or another, in the postgraduation placement of their students, whether at the B.A., M.A., or Ph.D. level.

The ADPCL believes that it is in our collective interest to help comparative literature degree-holders obtain jobs. All of us are likely to assist our own students in their job search.  In the long run, our discipline will benefit if we assist one another's students as well.

In this spirit, the ADPCL holds an annual workshop on the job-market at the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) meeting. Panelists at this workshop have offered advice on the preparation of cv's, management of the interview process, etc.

On occasion, ADPCL members have volunteered to serve as reviewers of resumes and letters of application for graduate students in other departments, to help students present themselves as professionally as possible. Anyone willing to organize such a project on an ongoing basis is invited to get in touch with the ADPCL.

Extramural teaching near the end of a student's doctoral program, or just afterwards, is becoming increasingly common as a job-market credential. In some locations, such teaching opportunities are plentiful (if not always well-paid). In other locations, especially in non-urban settings, teaching opportunities outside the students' own graduate programs may not be readily available. It has been suggested that comparatists at those schools could assist one another's ABD doctoral students, or new Ph.D.'s, by exchanging them for a year. Each student would receive the professional seasoning that comes from teaching for a department other than the one granting the student's degree.  Each institution would pay what it normally does, for a given amount of teaching. Some graduate students, of course, would not want to relocate for a one-year extramural stint, but others might find the broadened teaching experience a useful complement to their doctoral programs. So far, this project remains in the thinking stages. Anyone interested in organizing it on a national scale is invited to get in touch with the ADPCL.

We hear too often that "you can't get a job with a Comp Lit degree." At the graduate level, national data collected by the Modern Language Association show that the marketability of a Ph.D.in Comparative Literature is, statistically, very similar to that of a degree in English or in foreign languages. Some years we're slightly up, other years slightly down, but the overall picture is that of approximate parity. MLA data are summarized periodically in the MLA Newsletter and are published in more detail about every two years, in the ADE Bulletin (for English-focused jobs) and the ADFL Bulletin (for foreign language-focused jobs). 

Given the fact that the Modern Language Association publishes a job information list and compiles extensive data on the job market in higher education within the U.S., including comparative literature as a field, the ADPCL does not publish such a comprehensive list or collect the same systematic data. Similarly, we do not duplicate the MLA's work of organizing a job-interview service at the annual meeting. However, notices about jobs can be posted on the News page of this website

With reference to undergraduate student placement, William Moebius (bmoebius@complit.umass.edu) at the University of Massachusetts has conducted a study of postgraduation outcomes that helps to document the varieties of job placement potentially available to undergraduates who major in comparative literature.