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AT THE undergraduate level, German enrollments are down. Departments of German are being downsized, subsumed into language centers, or eliminated altogether. Tied to these alarming facts is the drastic shrinkage in the market for new PhDs in German, even as the laundry list of demand in job announcement has grown ever longer, increasingly multidisciplinary, and unreservedly institution-specific. Buffeted by these exigencies, PhD programs find themselves in a protracted state of flux. These days it can be no surprise that the typical graduate student in German is a nervous wreck. let's call her Molly.
In blunt terms, Molly is adrift. Her already frazzled mental state is further vexed by frequent and frequently distressing reports—desperate-sounding initiatives, programs, and prognostications about the future of her field. None of these, however, attends to Molly's situation or helps her chart the course of her future, even though, collectively speaking, Molly is the future of her field. In those moments when the din subsides, Molly wonders, traitorously, if she chose to study the right subject, if she chose to study it in the right way, in the right place. More to the point, she wonders just how “German” to make her work as she nervously observes the rise of a new breed of academic animal: the multidisciplinarian. She listens intently, but Molly's concerns are left unconsidered in the cacophony of professional debate. What little advice Molly does receive comes from within her own department. She senses that, perhaps necessarily, this advice is informed by a certain dysfunctional parochialism, however well intentioned, but what can she do? As if by design, Molly is isolated from her future employers, and thus from any satisfying grasp of her future—our future.
In what follows, the assumption is made that there are many Mollys out there. If this premise is true, the article has accomplished two urgent tasks: Molly is aided in her search for reliable information beyond the confines of her own institution; and Molly's all-too-common, extremely difficult situation is made plain to those with voices in the current professional debate.
There is not sufficient space here to recount professional discussions of interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity in the field of German over the last decade. However, at the end of this article there is a list of sources that Molly should consult, most probably before she gets to the dissertation stage of her graduate program, but certainly before she goes on the job market (see the select bibliography). To cite just one source, current professional concerns about German at the college level are assessed succinctly in the fall 1996 Newsletter of the American Association of Teachers of German, the AATG. The report contained in this newsletter summarizes views aired during a recent series of forums entitled “The future of German in American Education.” These forums, sponsored by the AATG, were intended “to begin a focussed exploration of the underlying issues facing Germanistik in the United States, to start determining priorities, and to begin to create a consensus about actionable recommendations for dealing with these issues” (“Summary”). However laudable a goal it might be, achieving a consensus about the future of German seems to have eluded the participants of these forums. As a whole, the AATG's report suggests that the situation of German programs across the nation is less than secure. The newsletter's summation, in fact, reads like a printer on personal and professional unpredictability in an era of downsizing:
Anyone who cares about the future of German should read the report in its entirety. The report is refreshing in its pragmatic approach to an incredible array of unwieldy problems. Unlike the lion's share of recent professional debate, it avoids becoming a platform for any particular department's or professor's programmatic agenda. Nor does the report devolve into a paean to some lost, golden age of academic purity and ideological clarity. However, despite its salutary frankness and its value as a source of professional information, the report does not offer much help to Molly. It does not clarify for her how the troubled situation of many German departments might translate into their heightened expectations of job applicants from the new crop of PhDs, if and when such departments set out to hire assistant professor.
In an attempt to understand these multiplying expectations and to help Molly prepare herself for the demands both of the current job market and of her future career, I undertook a survey in spring 1996 of the German professoriat in the United States. The survey was meant to elicit, from currently employed PhDs in German, their descriptions of serviceable or desirable graduate preparation for careers in the field of German as it now exists. The survey opened with the following question:
I am undertaking a survey of current professional opinion about the status and scope of the “generalist” in Germanics. Specifically, I am concerned with answers to the following query: What is a “generalist”? None among us quite seems eager to embrace this elusive beast. Yet neither do we seem ready to deny that such a thing exists, or indeed ought to exist.
Recipients of the survey were PhDs, or the German equivalent, and were divided into four groups. Groups 1, 2, and 3 were assembled according to the institutional categories in the fall 1995 Personalia issue of Monatshefte , the most comprehensive listing of the German Professoriat. Following the Monatshefte categories, groups 1, 2, and 3 consisted of PhDs at institutions granting the PhD in German; only the bachelor's in German, or the bachelor's and beyond, but not the PhD; and the bachelor's in “concentrations other than German,” or at institutions where there is “no degree obtainable” in German. Group 4 consisted of PhDs in primarily small programs or departments not found in Monatshefte 's Personalia. Except for their absence from the Monatshefte listing, group 4 departments were identical to departments in groups 2 and 3 and will be discussed as such in this article.
Extended excerpts of survey responses, included in the appendix to this article, are grouped according to the four initial categories. The excerpts should serve as the background for my interpretations of the responses. Their reading is strongly encouraged.
In conducting this survey, I had hoped to put the “hard data” on (un)employment trends and shrinking enrollments in German into a broader, more professional context. On the one hand, inclusion of the overlooked, non-research-oriented institutions in groups 2 and 3 was crucial in addressing Molly's preparation for the job market. On the other hand, the debate about the shape of things to come in German studies had included few voices from midsize or small colleges and universities. This survey attempted to right that oversight and speak to Molly's concerns at the same time.
Surveying the professional community about generalism seemed an apt way to ask two queries: What to department want or need? How can Molly prepare to give them what they want or need? But the diverse and thought-provoking responses to the term generalism as presented in the survey constituted both more and less than the answers to my questions.
Perhaps it should not surprise us that respondents from group 1 seemed more concerned with the ideological dimensions of a considered opinion or departmental stance than with the practical implications of that opinion or stance on their students or on their student's future. They were genuinely worried about, if only vaguely attuned to the dimensions of, a disconnect between the professional skills that seem to get one a full-time position these days and the (different and highly variable) set of skills that are most needed by hiring departments: “Most graduate students are being trained to perform work which is unwanted, unneeded, and unappreciated, and, if they are lucky enough to find a job, will engage in work (basic language teaching) for which they have been inadequately trained at best.” Beyond basic language instruction, however, group 1 was relatively unconcerned with the kind of training that hiring institutions might expect or require a job candidate to have received.
On the whole, respondents in group 1 gave the impression that they, if not always their departments, would offer Molly the following picture of her future in German:
As a member of a small dept., the faculty member has to be able to teach three types of courses: 1) basic courses for students completing the FL requirement, 2) courses for majors, and 3) courses for the general college/univ. community, which are becoming increasingly more important as administrators look at shrinking student numbers in our classes.
In the context of all the survey responses, even this somewhat cautious description of Molly's future is a relatively rosy, German-centered one. Indeed, in its radical under-assessment of the wrenching move away from German reported by groups 2 and 3, this picture may rightly be described as dysfunctionally parochial.
The respondents from group 2 seemed more immediately concerned with the very survival of their programs as currently defined. Several held out little hope that their programs would survive the next decade at all.
The dean would like to do away with German altogether as a serious department with courses beyond the third year language level. If the situation continues he will achieve this de facto through retirements within three or four years. Meanwhile, we are urged to teach more and more in English, outside our strictly language courses. This chiefly to increase our numbers, though it really hasn't helped. There is nobody outside our department to take up the banner or give us support. Situation is probably duplicated all over the country.
The final claim is generally confirmed by the responses from groups 2 and 3. The writer's realization that there is no one in administration to whom one can turn is common among the respondents. To one respondent, this particular concern translates into yet greater expectations of job candidates in the area of administrative and managerial skills:
As [PhDs in German] enter the world of colleges/universities, we're expected to take an active role in their governance, and if you don't have the [English] language [skills] (plus an ability to read/write a budget and be familiar with more than just the basic concepts of personnel management), leadership positions will continue to elude foreign language faculty.
Perhaps because they viewed their apprehensions, however legitimate, as largely institution-specific, group 2 did not seem interested in defining the ideal job candidate or in suggesting alterations in the training of PhDs in German. Reluctance to make such suggestions could also stem from the fact that group 2 respondents expects new hires to publish, and it was generally accepted that PhD programs are already successful at producing candidates with such expertise.
Many group 3 institutions boasted well-established programs in which the professors seemed relatively sure of their future. But unlike their counterparts in group 2, group 3 respondents viewed the typical product of today's PhD programs in a rather critical light:
Considering the job market, I definitely think that generalists are in demand. Good ones are hard to find. We still see a lot of overqualification in narrow areas of literature and little experience beyond that [among] job applicants]. Individuals with such preparation, no matter how excellent they are in conducting research, would be of no use to a department like ours.
Alongside its strong programs, however, group 3 had an alarming number that are experiencing unabated enrollment losses and a resultant decline in resources. Furthermore, the “structural changes” mentioned in the AATG report “The Future of German in American Education” seem to be furthest advanced and most pronounced among the institutions in group 3.
As reported by group 3 respondents, these structural changes have put PhDs in German in at least three trying situations: professional uncertainly; certainly only of a German program's inexorable demise; and resignation to the fact that German will play only a diminished, largely supplementary role at a particular institution in the near future. The following responses give voice to these three situations, respectively:
Our college is going through a curricular reform and I find that I am at a crossroads in my own career at the same time. The demand for German, never strong, seems to be decreasing, and I am not sure how best to sustain the program and meet the legitimate needs of my institution. I hope to develop a German Studies minor, but even that may be too ambitious for me to be able to support over the long term.…
The department [should] be so lucky as to have several students (majors, minors) to fill a specific literature class.… I know, I sound pessimistic, but mine is the voice of experience and ongoing observation. Do I like it?—No. Is the “generalist” [in German] assigned a role of a “Lückenbüßer” [filler of holes] as German programs dwindle further or disappear altogether. That's the view from here.
Would I hire someone today who could only teach German course? No. Our undergraduate language majors must have at least a concentration in either a second language or a second discipline. Will there be any room for a German specialist anytime soon? Not [here].
As to the effect these imminent institutional changes will have on the careers of PhDs in German, group 3 voiced a conspicuous sense of doom for “Germanistik in any traditional sense.”
Although most respondents sensed that group 3's general estrangement from the PhD-granting institutions in group 1 would only worsen, one added, “Surely the elite institutions of higher education with their illustrious past in Germanistik will be the last to be affected by these changes. But even they will be at some point.”
Those of us in relatively large, research-oriented departments have been preoccupied with the intellectual thrill of interdisciplinary transgression and its esoteric, sexy discourses. While we have been theorizing and pontificating about the intellectual imperative of new, exciting forms of knowledge, our medium-size and small departments across the nation have been threatened with replacement by language centers, if not closed altogether. Our retiring professors have often not been replaced. Where replacement funds are allocated, the new position is often not tenure-track and even less often full-time German. In this second situation, hiring departments advertise for all manner of multidisciplinarians who will (or must) do the work that two or three professors would have done just ten or fifteen years ago.
In language programs nationwide, interdisciplinarity and its theoretical apparatus have been made the terminological cover for downsizing, and we ourselves have provided that cover. Interdisciplinarity has hastened the recent move toward multidisciplinarity, first in institutional reorganization, then in departmental redefinition, and finally in job descriptions for new hires. Although there is serious doubt as to whether such polymaths in fact exist, hiring departments increasingly voice the institutional desire or perceived need to find someone who can do everything.
Complicating matters for Molly, the overarching trend toward multidisciplinarity can be viewed either as the cancer or as the cure—depending on whom one consults. To those few of us still in strong departmental or other institutional positions, multidisciplinarity may be seen as a threat to our disciplinary security. This is why graduate programs are in chaos and why the advice Molly receives from her advisers is informed by a systematic, intractable parochialism. How can a solidly disciplinary program—precisely the kind of program from which most graduate students in German receive their PhDs—embrace interdisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity without also giving the administration a rationale to cut that program or several such programs? How can we produce the multidisciplinarity PhDs that hiring departments seem to need without appearing to undermine our increasingly precarious institutional position?
To those in nondepartmental, subdepartmental, or newly downsized departments, conversely, multidisciplinarity may buoy an institutionally precarious status. As the survey respondents made clear, this situation is increasingly familiar across the nation. But how long will multidisciplinary stopgaps remain in place? Will they be institutionalized? How? When? What impact will they have on the future health of German? At the moment, these are the open questions that make Molly's task extremely difficult. These are the open questions to which Molly's career and Molly's years of service to academe will provide answers. However, whether German as Molly has studied it will survive is not an open question. It will not.
Disabuse yourself of the notion that the academy is an intellectual meritocracy. Only the department that just made a hire, and the person who just got hired, would claim that the “best candidate” for the job was found. Well over one hundred candidates—with virtually identical qualifications—apply for every job out there. The “best candidate” Illusion blinds us to two related aspects of the current crisis: the chronic overproduction of PhDs, on the one hand, and the dissipation of demand wrought by years of institutional and departmental disintegration, on the other. The powerful, insidious lie of the “best candidate” makes a new PhD's un- or underemployment appear to be the result of a personal lack of fortitude, intelligence, or training rather than the upshot of years of inactivity and inattentiveness on the part of tenured faculties at institutions of all shapes and sizes.
The German profession does not know where it is headed. There is no apparent model, no paradigm. There is not even a consensus about what German studies is, much less what it should be, or should become. Do not wait for a consensus. It may never come, and, even if it does, it may not help you in your particular situation. Instead, put the professional values and the institutional ethos of your own graduate program into the broader context of German studies in the United State before you go on the job market. Become familiar with the disparate institutional exigencies of German's predicament in the academy and prepare yourself to defend, daily, your undying interest in German as if your academic life depended on it. Most likely, it will.
Chances are that you have internalized your graduate department's reward system for teaching, research, and service and their relative importance. That value system will in no way reflect the one to which you will be asked to pledge allegiance during your future career. Never suggest, in anything you write or say in public, that you prefer one of these three pursuits to the exclusion of another.
The president of the Council of Graduate Schools, Jules B. LaPidus, commented recently, “It is not a mistake to urge students to pursue the Ph.D. or to become intensely involved in scholarly research, but it is a dreadful mistake to convince them that doctoral education is a waste of their time if they don't become sholars—that it restrict, rather than expands, their options.” Probably your department has made such a “dreadful mistake.” And even if your department cannot be faulted, do not delude yourself into thinking that the nonacademic world is an abomination or that you could never be happy in the supposedly anti-intellectual society beyond the university gates.
Aggressively explore alternatives to academia before you get to the preliminary examination stage. Measure and value your abilities and talents from as many different, nonacademic perspectives as possible. The basic skills and affinities that made you suitable for graduate work in the first place will be taken for granted or ignored after you begin your professional work. These assets, though we may assess or prize them insufficiently, are coveted in the nonacademic sectors of the economy.
Take an internship in government, in business or industry, or in the not-for-profit sector. If possible, take two, in different kinds of organizations. You shouldn't idealize any career or type of employment, but the broader your work experience, the more accurately you can determine what comparative level of inhumane treatment you will tolerate from academia and at what point you are willing to tell academia to get lost. Becoming an academic by default is a disservice to yourself as well as to society, and it reduces your chances for happiness in the long run.
Nota bene, nonetheless. Like all institutions, academe does not care about your personal happiness. Do not fool yourself into believing that it does. Therefore, do not tell anyone in your department that you are considering the relative merits of a career outside academe. Your colleagues will be offended. Their own choices and values will be slighted, however elliptically. Moreover, in their eyes your worthiness of a cherished place in academe will diminish. Do not risk this demotion in others' eyes. As far as your mentors are concerned, you are absolutely committed to a life of endless personal sacrifice, just as they are.
Graduate students often believe that interdisciplinarity, or academic breadth, requires them to take official courses for credit or that departments must become interdisciplinary or at least accept more courses outside the department. Do not wait for this kind of departmental or institutional restructuring to materialize. Behind such decisions are personal, political, economic, and financial forces, of which you will never be made aware. In addition, however laudable your efforts to effect this kind of restructuring, any change resulting from graduate students' incentive will probably be superficial and will be dismantled or reworked by a new crop of enthusiastic graduate students within a matter of semesters.
At your university, immerse yourself in and become conversant in those subjects that will give you access to the largest number of academic subdisciplines available to you. Whatever you do in this area, you should not forget that fighting to be allowed to put errant courses, or courses outside your department, on your transcript should not be considered the end of your battle. If these courses appear only on your transcript, they are likely to go unnoticed by a hiring department. Instead, get this kind of hard-fought-for, possibly multidisciplinary exposure onto your CV in some way. You can and should learn to give a paper or host a conference session on a subject in which you have never taken a course anyway. Your department or school can fend for itself. Consider your own job prospects first.
If you cannot put a proposed activity on your CV, seriously consider not pursuing it at all. You have a period of only four to seven years in which to prepare yourself for a demanding, increasingly extra-German career path. Everything you do during those few years should either itself be a noteworthy entry on your CV or lay the groundwork for a project that will be a noteworthy entry.
8. Multidisciplinarity is not a theory, nor is it an option. If you cannot teach something besides German, you most probably will have to learn to, or you will neither receive nor keep a job. And if you cannot teach German language, literature, and culture as well as, or better than, the people who hire you, you will neither receive nor keep a job. Indeed, generalisms of both the synchronic and the diachronic kind are here to stay in the field of German. You must know this fact and accept the impact it will have both on your job search and on your future career.
As a profession, we should approach the new multidisciplinarities pragmatically—with all the skepticism and scrutiny that have characterized our professional use of the term generalism . Molly's understanding of, and her approach to, the rise of multidisciplinarities in the job market should be driven by institutional and economic realities and not by the opacities, or the political agendas, of the many theories of interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity. In important ways, multidisciplinarity is little more than a newly synchronic generalism. It cannot be said, however, that the rise of synchronic generalisms has replaced expectations that PhDs be old-fashioned diachronic generalists as well. In any case, Molly cannot afford the luxury of waxing philosophical about the relative merits of competing generalisms. Institutions can make unrealistically broad demands of new PhDs, and, because they can, they do. Molly must be prepared to sell herself as the answer to such expectations, or someone else will.
The author is a PhD candidate in German at Washington University and is currently employed by the United States Department of Agriculture Graduate School, Washington, DC.
AATG Newsletter 32.1 (1996).
LaPidus, Jules B. “Why Pursuing a Ph.D. Is a Risky Business.” Chronicle of Higher Education 14 Nov. 1997: A60.
“Summary of '95 AATG Annual Meeting Forum ‘The Future of German in American Education.’ Anaheim, CA, 19 Nov. 1995.” <http://www.stolaf.edu/stolaf/depts/german/aatg/future1.html>.
The following excerpts have been included because they voice prevalent, recurrent views; they highlight a systemic problem by outlining the particulars of one institution or department; they express concerns that have been underrepresented or absent in recent professional debate. Excerpts are listed according to the group to which the respondent belonged. Contradictions and differences of opinion, of course, could not be avoided.
Obscure and/or severely reductive critical fashions and theoretical fads have certainly had their share in taking the study and enjoyment of literature and academic literary criticism out of general circulation even among those who have had the benefit of a higher education.
Given the few jobs available for graduates in German, it is imperative that we train generalists, those who can fit a number of slots, especially in pedagogy, something which gets short shrift in many departments.
My experience with comparative literature Germanists is that they have a harder time being hired than a two-area Germanist.
“Generalist” used to mean: “willing to teach German language and literature at all levels.” Now, it needs to mean “teaching things German in the broad context of the humanistic disciplines” (which includes literary studies, in the sense of the “high canon”). That will mean embracing the whole scale of pedagogies available in literature departments (including English) and cultural studies (including history and interdisciplinary work). And it will mean teaching in both German and English; and teaching in ways that explicitly export German materials into the contexts of other disciplines, and import students' background knowledge in other majors in ways that mainstream them in Germanics via alternative routes.
In our hiring we stressed linguistics and the generalist concept of literature (German) and film, psychology, i.e., the generalist ready to serve the Faculty of Arts and Letters in a wider sense at any given moment. “German Studies” does not seem to be the answer to all of this!
I do think though that in the field of German literature, those who specialize in a narrow area are still the ones who get the grants, the promotions and the outside offers.
One teaches what necessity dictates.
I'm afraid that the generalist is here to stay, and this kind of position will be in ever greater demand as German enrollments continue to fall.
A generalist, in my opinion, means someone whose research/teaching interests lie in several areas of Germanics or cover a broad time period of German literary/cultural history. But someone who has such expertise plus a background in gender studies, film studies, multicultural issues, or computer-based instruction would have an edge over other candidates.
The one major fact militating against the pursuit of broadly based knowledge is the present reward system in academia, which doles out job security, prestige, and raises mainly on the basis of publication. A young faculty member out to attain tenure must limit him- or herself to a relatively narrow field in order to be able to produce a body of published work in five or six years.
I would certainly endorse any position which finds it more important that a PhD in German is familiar with Fichte, Schinkel, Jacob Grimm, Dilthey, Hannah Arendt, Bauhaus, Adorno, Faßbinder, to name but a few, than thorough knowledge of the poetry of Gryphius, Bürger, Eichendorff or Mörike.
Clearly, in terms of prestige within the university, it seems to me that Comparative Literature has higher prestige than Germanistik. In terms of actual job placement, on the other hand, of late the Comp Lit people have fallen on hard times.
It seems to me at least that the wave of comparative literature studies is over, and that people in this field are finding it more difficult to find employment than others who have dedicated their whole career to the study of German.
Specialization at this point in time seems to apply narrow focus on very specific topics, which can be deadly and destructive when one faces undergraduates. Furthermore, it seems to me that a decent command of English, no matter how acquired, is a SINE QUA NON for the profession, even if it means more than cursory exposure to programs in comparative literature.
As X College moves toward a reinstatement of a foreign language requirement in the fall of 1996, I foresee my role changing to meet the needs of a larger number of foreign language students. The department of Business Administration would like to see us add a Business German course—if this were to occur, this generalist would need some specialized training in a hurry to adequately meet such a need. The likelihood of another German instructor being hired to meet such a need is minimal for the foreseeable future. A foreign study component is also coming into being, and preparing students for studying/traveling abroad would require a somewhat different kind of class than I am now teaching. Again, until such a time as the program in German grows, I don't see any new faculty being hired.
“Generalist” … is a catch-all phrase, perhaps a defensive pseudo-classification employed by a less affluent institution who has permission to hire, or needs to fill a German opening, but can ill afford the luxury of advertising for a specific literary period for which most of us have prepared so painstakingly many years before assuming full-time academic service. A “generalist” often fills the bill of teaching survey courses, German Literature in English Translation, and the inevitable language/grammar courses—an obligation to round out one's contractual teaching load.
Perhaps I have been isolated too long in my particular environment to have a clear picture of the Germanist profession as a whole. But it is my impression that the generalist may become more the norm than the exception.
In my humble estimation, graduate institutions tend to denigrate job openings at small colleges where generalists are sought (in some cases, generalists in German who are also expected to teach Spanish, Russian or French!). This is a mistake when the majority of openings may well be in the generalist category. When graduate institutions ignore this area of the market, they do their students a disservice. I once interviewed a candidate who wanted to teach only 19th century lit—this individual would be unemployable at most colleges. I hope that graduate schools continue to prepare generalists—we need them badly.
As a faculty member in a state university system, I am distressed by some of the efforts of the stage legislature to make the system more cost effective. For example, there have been forceful efforts to penalize students for taking more courses than the number set as the minimum requirements needed to obtain a degree. At the same time the increasing cost of a college education puts tremendous pressure on students to finish their degree as soon as possible. In fact both students and legislators seem at times to regard the university as a kind of trade school, the main purpose of which is to provide commercially marketable skills as quickly as possible. At the same time there have been efforts by the state legislature to increase the course load of faculty and to divert faculty work time away from research and toward teaching. The result, or course, is that the system is able to get the faculty to do more teaching while undermining the quality of the teaching.
When we hire someone the first criterion would be the native or near-native quality of spoken and written German, second the teaching ability in language courses and only in third place area of special interest and research. It seems to me that so-called “flagship” universities would do well to emulate this model, because the quality of language courses and teacher training [is] often dismal.
A generalist (as I see it) is “Renaissance”-wo/man; a person of many talents and an inquisitive mind who has a love for work (continuing his/her education beyond the “terminal” degree), the necessary intellectual tools (capability to pursue a subject to its mastery without expert guidance), and the persistence to complete the process again and again in various different fields of expertise.
I think that the concept of “German Studies” is about a generalist pedagogy. This is the wave of the future.
In recent years, with German enrollment decreasing, I have shifted over for reasons of survival to World Literature in Translation. This course spans about 4,000 years in two semesters, and there are actually no German writers in the texts (Norton World Lit Anthology). Hence the most beneficial aspect of my training has become that which I can transfer to non-German texts: How to read carefully and critically.
With jobs being so scarce, I would assume that most Germanists entering the job market would be happy simply to get a job. I was not looking for a job as a generalist. I was hoping for a job that would eventually allow me to teach graduate courses in my area of specialization. That seems a far-off dream right now. I am also less certain that I would still want to struggle to get such a job. I took this job because it was the only offer I got that was entirely devoted to teaching German. Other offers would have required teaching English or Spanish as well.
In addition to literature, candidates should broaden their interests and show that they can offer a wide possibility of interdisciplinary courses, or that they can teach in interdisciplinary programs. Small schools look for breadth in a candidate. I would encourage candidates to have a very strong second field, much like candidates in the German university system. This could include art history, history, business, philosophy, music. I would also encourage candidates to be very strong in a second foreign language, enough so that they could teach first year.
More and more small departments are moving away from a literature major to German Studies, and new PhDs need to be able to fit in that program.
If I were Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, what would I do? I would stop hiring PhDs in English altogether. I would look instead for those with PhD degrees in Comparative Literature (whose undergraduate majors would be in an FL, including Greek of Latin as well as modern languages). The other pool of applicants I would draw on would be those with PhDs in Germanic Studies (or German Lit), Romance Literature, Asian Studies, etc. I would look for intellectually awake individuals with wide cultural knowledge in addition to a speciality with which they can go to market and publish.
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© 1998 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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