[mercadia]

My first course as a graduate student was a theoretical survey--every grad students had to take it at the MA level and it covered everything from the formalists to lacan to race, queer, and gender theory, etc. etc--so you'll definitely have some fun with theory, I'm assuming in any department you end up at. Most of the students coming into the Masters had already had some experience with theory, but I'm just saying that it is a definite requirement for every grad student in my department in their first semester and that some didn't have much experience with it--but they definitely do now and are expected to employ or allude to the appropriate theorists and schools of though whenever applicable to their project (which is all of the time).

However, I'm not dissuading you at all, I'm just saying that to say Comp Lit is more theoretically based doesn't seem to fit in at all with my experience in an English lit program, and if you're thinking English will be an easier type program because it's not as theoretically based, you might be surprised.

However, I have a friend who is studying Post-colonial lit, specifically texts that come out of the middle east, and she's having some issues with her dissertation as it's being judged "too comp lit" for the English department. It's a complicated argument however, so if your project is going to end up obscure or about other cultures that don't have something to do with merry old England...you might want to go Comp Lit and not worry about not having enough theory or language.