Graduate Program Placement

Northwestern's English Ph.D. program enjoys a strong record of placement in tenure-track positions. In the last six years, the department placed recent or finishing Ph.D.s in twenty-six first-time tenure-track positions in the U.S. and Canada, including such institutions as Boston University, Columbia University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Tennessee, and Cornell University.

A distinctive feature of Northwestern's recent Ph.D.s is often cross-disciplinary work undertaken from within the English program, in such related fields and disciplines as African-American studies, Asian-American studies, diaspora studies, film, gender studies, history, history of the book, history of science, music, and photography/ visual culture. Our Ph.D.s have secured some of the best tenure-track positions in their respective fields, including the following recent examples:

Name	Institution
Blackwood, Sarah	Pace University Field: Literary and visual portraiture, history of photography
Chiles, Katy	University of Tennessee Field: African-American Literature
Culligan, Leah	Marquette University Field: Comparative Modernism (American, Russian, Irish), Literature and National Identity, Poetics
Dinius, Marcy	University of Delaware Field: American lit. and culture, early photography
Dujardin, Gwynn	Queens University - Ontario, Canada Field: Renaissance/early modern lit., poetics, pedagogy, gender
Friedman, Ryan	Ohio State University Field: Film studies, African-American and American lit., jazz
Hager, Chris	Trinity College Field: American literature 1865-1945
Howell, Hunt	Boston University Field: American Literature and Culture to 1900
Hutchison, Coleman	University Texas, Austin Field: American lit. and culture, history of the book, print culture, music
Jaros, Peter	Franklin & Marshall College Field: Early and Antebellum American literature and culture, transatlantic 18th-c literature and culture, critical theory
Jin, Wen	Columbia University Field: Asian-American lit. and culture, gender, economic theory
Kim, Heidi	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Field: 20th- c. U.S. literature, Asian/other ethnic American literature and studies, science and literature, American Francophony
Knight, Jeff	University of Washington, Seattle Field: Early modern lit., History of the book and reading, Media studies
Kreisel, Deanna	University of British Columbia Field: Victorian lit. and culture, gender, economic theory
Lewis, Janaka	University of North Carolina, Charlotte Field: 19th and 20th-c. American and African-American lit.
Mann, Jenny	Cornell University Field: Renaissance/early modern lit., rhetoric, gender
Martin, John	Louisiana Tech University Field: American lit., romanticism, & poetry
Proudfit, Scott	Elon University Field: Drama/Performance, 20th-c. American literature and culture
Rogers, Gayle	University of Pittsburgh Field: European, Spanish, & American modernisms
Smith, Joshua	University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Field: Multilingualism and literary exchange between Wales and England in the Middle Ages
Van Engen, Abram	Trinity University, San Antonio Field: Early American Literature, Puritanism, Religion and Literature, Sentimentalism

Between 2000 and 2010, Northwestern English Ph.D.s have moved to tenure-track jobs or postdoctoral fellowships at a wide variety of other institutions, including but not limited to: Agnes Scott College (Renaissance/early modern), Arcadia University (African-American literature), University of California at Davis (medieval), Boston University (early American literature), California State University at Northridge (Renaissance/early modern), Eastern Connecticut State University (eighteenth century), Cornell University (Renaissance/early modern), Southern Methodist University (Renaissance/early modern), University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (early modern lit), University of Pennsylvania (American), the University of Rhode Island (American), and St. Mary's College of Maryland (Renaissance/early modern). Other students have obtained full-time multi-year positions at institutions such as Harvard University, Wake Forest University, and Oberlin College.

Several of our students have turned down tenure track appointments or decided against a career in academics at the university level and have taken jobs instead in editing, library science, secondary education, the non-profit sector, and with organizations such as the Modern Language Association.