English Literature Jobs AY 2010-2011

9/15/09 9 pm pacific --> JIL is up. (Questions about the JIL under the 'discussion' tab.)

Note: I'm finding postings in the Chronicle that aren't on the college's web pages yet. Just an FYI in case the posting you're interested in isn't up yet.

Query: Could people perhaps indicate where they found a particular listing, when they list a job? I'm finding a few jobs listed here that are neither on the college's website NOR in the Chronicle, and of course the MLA list isn't out yet, so it would help to find out where people are getting this information. Thanks!

Answer: Other good places to look: Higher Ed Jobs and H-Net

Note: Anyone looking ahead to the next job season and needing a good laugh might like to check out this MLA spoof. It's ongoing and borderline brilliant.

Request: Could someone savvier than I start a compensation page like last year's here: English Lit Salaries 2009-2010.

A: Here is a new page for this year's job cycle: English Lit Salaries 2010-2011

New Page for English Jobs starting Fall 2011: English Literature 2011-2012

Note: There's an interesting MLA assessment of the job market which projects that there are fewer advertised openings in the 2009-10 cycle than there have been in 35 years! The MLA midyear report is at http://www.mla.org/pdf/jil_midyear_update2009_lg.pdf . If you want the (kind of) shorter version of the report, I summarized the main points on my blog, postacademic.org .

Yes, it makes interesting, if not depressing, reading. There was also a good Chronicle of Higher Ed article out a few weeks ago about the depressed state of humanities, discussing the difficulty departments have balancing the need to have graduate students with a shrinking job market dictates the need to accept less students to PhD programs. It looks like there were less English PhDs granted last year (930, I think) than there have been in the past couple decades.