The Johns Hopkins English graduate program is well equipped to help students find satisfying jobs that put their talents to good use. Our small size allows us to support each of our students as they find work. We assist students with publication, applications, and interviews; we host visitors to talk with graduate students about careers inside and outside the academy; and we draw on the active Hopkins alumni network, which is committed to assisting current students.

Talk culture

The community of the  English Department is defined by its talk culture. Journal Club lectures, a long tradition at Hopkins, highlight graduate students’ research, and prepare them for job presentations of any sort. Tudor-Stuart lectures, the student-run ELH lectures, and talks by returning faculty make Hopkins a place of  vigorous and collective intellectual activity. Graduate students at Hopkins are principal partners in these exchanges. That culture, our rigorous research expectations, and the intellectual atmosphere of Hopkins generally, prepares students to enter a range of professions.

Academic and non-academic opportunities

Students going on the academic job market have years of experience with the sort of work that the profession demands. Those students applying for non-academic jobs have experience with workshops and presentations, often by Hopkins alumni, offered by the department and other units on campus, designed to prepare them for their chosen careers. All our students also have the resources of the university’s well-resourced Office of Integrative Learning and Life Design.

Of the students who have received their PhDs since 2009:

  • 17% have secured jobs in fields including publishing, speech-writing, the law, and professional editing.
  • The remaining 83% have gone on to academic jobs or post-doctoral fellowships in universities. This includes tenure-track positions at Stanford University, Cornell University, City College of New York, Case Western Reserve University, St. Mary’s College of Calgary, and University of Rochester.