Job Placement

Since 2005, roughly half of Emory Ph.D. graduates have secured tenure-track academic positions at the institutions listed below. Of those who conduct national job searches, the figure is a bit higher.

Versatility in Job Searches

Many of our students also find rewarding careers in administrative, archival, or writing center positions at four-year colleges and universities. We are equally pleased to see the ingenuity of our students finding work in the business, nonprofit, and art worlds. One recent alum is a successful novelist; one is a researcher for the Council of Graduate Schools; one teaches at a private high school, and one works for a marketing firm. 

Each year, the department appoints two faculty members to serve as job placement officers; we have also begun a program of alternative career advising for those who wish to find university positions outside of conventional disciplinary appointments (in archives, administration, advising, etc). These faculty members guide students seeking academic positions by holding workshops, reviewing materials, and staging mock interviews.

Professional Development Support

Students traveling to the Modern Language Association conference and other venues for interviews receive financial support through the Laney Graduate School's Professional Development Support Funds. Our students find positions in departments across the country, in a variety of institutions, from large research universities to small liberal arts colleges.

The department also prepares students professionally long before they are ready to begin looking for positions. A brown-bag luncheon series on topics related to professionalization provides a forum for understanding how academic careers (as well as non-academic careers in which the PhD is relevant) take shape. There are also pedagogical seminars on composition and literature to prepare the teaching materials required for academic employment.

The lists below reflect positions secured by our recent graduates. Years listed are years of the degree, not necessarily years of appointment. The appointments listed are the most recent positions unless otherwise noted.

Jenny Bledsoe -- Associate Professor, Northeastern State University 

Rachel A. Bowser -- Vice President for Academic Affairs, Agnes Scott College

Brenton Boyd -- Assistant Professor of Black Studies, Department of English & Writing, University of Tampa  

Tesla Cariani --  Lecturer in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, BostonUniversity

Sumita Chakraborty -- Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, University of Virginia

Bryan Chitwood -- Director, Data Enablement, Collegis Education

Amy Chen -- Program Director, American Indian Higher Education Consortium        

Josh Cohen -- Lecturer in English, University of Georgia

Derrick Cohens -- Assistant Professor of English, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff

Kathryn Crowther--  Associate Professor of English, Georgia State University

Brian Croxall -- Associate Research Professor of Digital Humanities, Brigham Young University    

Brent Dawson -- Assistant Professor of English, University of Oregon 

Jessie Dunbar -- Associate Professor of English, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Amy E. Elkins -- Associate Professor of English, Macalester College     

Yoshiaki Furui -- Professor of English, Rikkyo University

Maggie Greaves -- Associate Professor of English, Skidmore College       

Hannah Griggs -- Visiting Subject Librarian, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University       

Lindsey Grubbs -- Assistant Professor of Bioethics, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University      

John Gulledge --  Assistant Professor of English, Wittenberg University 

Wenwen Guo -- Assistant Professor English, Brenau University       

Olivia Hendricks -- Resident Associate, National Humanities Center

Stephanie Iasiello -- Assistant Public Defender, Flint Judicial Circuit Office

Nicole M. Johnson -- Assistant Professor of English at the University at Buffalo

Rebecca Kumar -- Assistant Professor of English, Spelman College        

Stephanie Larson -- Lecturer in English, Case Western Reserve University

Diana Louis -- Assistant Professor of Women’s & Gender Studies and Assistant Professor of American Culture, University of Michigan

Emily Leithauser -- Assistant Professor of English, Centenary College of Louisiana  

Jess Libow -- Interim Director of Writing Program, Haverford College      

Amy Sijing Li -- External Relations Specialist, Cornell University      

Aruni Mahapatra -- Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee

Hannah Markley --  Assistant Professor of English, Stetson University

Guirdex Masse -- Assistant Professor of English and Foreign Language, Augusta University

Dominic Mastroianni -- Associate Professor of English, Clemson University    

Lynn Maxwell -- Associate Professor of English, Spelman College        

Nicole Morris Johnson -- Assistant Professor of English, University at Buffalo        

Marc Muneal -- Professor of English, Averett University

Roopika Risam -- Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies & Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College     

Mixon Robinson --Assistant Director for Institutional Giving, National Museum of the American Indian

Ishanika Sharma -- Assistant Professor of English, University of North Texas

Justin Shaw -- Assistant Professor of English, Clark University

Kayla Shipp -- Digital Humanities Program Manager, Yale University

Molly Slavin -- Assistant Professor of English, Clark Atlanta University        

Alyssa Stalsberg Canelli -- Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs, Brandeis University    

Palak Taneja -- Faculty, College of The Atlantic

Julian Whitney -- BKT Assistant Professor of English, Wabash College