Career Placement

The Department actively supports our students throughout their job search. The Director of Graduate Studies and the major advisors review all job market materials such as CVs, writing samples, and diversity and teaching statements.  In addition, the department arranges special informational sessions, “mock” interviews, and practice job talks to prepare students for the kinds of questions they will face from potential employers. This support complements other departmental activities designed to professionalize graduate students, including brown bag discussions about attending professional conferences, publishing opportunities, and seeking grant funding.

Graduates from our program primarily pursue academic careers with the goal of a tenure-track position at a college or university. In recent years, our students have been offered tenure track positions at leading research universities such as Princeton University, the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, Florida State University, University of Pittsburgh, Boston University, Texas A+M, SUNY-Buffalo, Australian National University, London School of Economics, and George Washington University, among others. Our students also do well in obtaining positions at selective liberal arts colleges, such as Amherst, Grinnell, Wesleyan, Macalaster, and the University of San Francisco, among others. Consistent with trends in the discipline, many students now receive a one or two-year post-doctoral fellowship after receiving their PhDs from our department, and in recent years our students have been awarded many of these, at Yale, Stanford, Brown, Northwestern, University of Pennsylvania, and Gottenburgh universities, among others. Beyond tenure track positions, many of our other students choose to enter the private sector, the non-profit world, or government.