November 16, 2009, 06:00 PM ET

The MLA Job List

The MLA Newsletter has a helpful but depressing count of jobs listed this year in languages and literature. According to the numbers, the drop in job opportunities from 07-08 to 08-09 was 24.4 percent in English and 27 percent in foreign languages.

In total numbers, the MLA Job Information List this year had 1,380 jobs in English and 1,227 in foreign languages. A full analysis of the figures appears in this MLA report by David Laurence, research director at the MLA.

Traditionally defined jobs in English literature (not American or Anglophone lit, or drama) look especially meager. The MLA report lists 362 ads in all fields of "British Literature," down from 499 in 2000-01. I went through the print copy of the October MLA Job List several days ago and did a quick informal and unscientific count. I came up with this tally of jobs that explcitly foreground historical definitions:

-----Old English 1 position

-----Medieval 8 positions

-----Renaissance (or Early Modern or Shakespeare) 14 positions

-----17th Century 1 position

-----18th Century 7 positions

-----Romanticism 6 positions

-----19th Century 7 positions

-----20th Century 11 positions

One wonders if graduate students are looking at these prospects and deciding to avoid the single-digit fields.

E-mail

Comments

1. 22137478 - November 17, 2009 at 02:31 pm

These numbers are depressing, and I'm sure the job market is depressed. But anyone on the market is combining the job ads from MLA with those from The Chronicle and Higher Ed Jobs. Researching wikiscratchpad's jobs in English Literature might give slightly more exhaustive count of the jobs available in these fields.

2. willynilly - November 18, 2009 at 10:09 am

Mr. Bauerlein does much better when he simply repeats (copies verbatim) information that is readily available from other highly tranparent sources. Where he gets into very serious trouble is when he tries to interpret whatever data he is reporting upon. That exercise usually turns out to be a very funny circus act.

3. gtkarn - November 18, 2009 at 04:04 pm

Interesting,is it not, that one of the most crucial aspects of education in "English" is the area of composition and rhetoric, and yet there's no tabulation about "needs" in this area. The total here tabulated is 55 for these"tradiltional" English lit positions, out of 1380 overall, leaving one to wonder what the remaining "needs" are.

4. markbauerlein - November 19, 2009 at 08:05 am

Yes, gtkarn, that's the point.