Philology/textual criticism in US Classics Departments
Sorry for the rambling intro: I'm currently an MA student in Italy, and I've really enjoyed the courses I've taken in classical and medieval philology. Before starting on the rest of the assigned reading lists for these subjects, I read Tarrant's 2016 book: Texts, Editors, and Readers: Methods and Problems in Latin Textual Criticism, which I found both entertaining and certainly the most approachable intro to the discipline I've read so far. One thing stuck out to me though, which I haven't seen much discussion on - I'm paraphrasing from memory so I may be unintentionally misrepresenting what Tarrant wrote, but iirc according to him 'textual criticism' has become a bit of a 'dirty word' in US academia, with students being discouraged from pursuing it for their thesis/dissertation. So this leads me to ask anyone with experience studying or working in these departments, is this hyperbolic, or maybe no longer true 10 years later? Or have US departments moved away from textual criticism? If so, is this because it's viewed as unnecessary or unimportant, or because departments are content with how it is applied elsewhere? I'm curious to hear what your perspectives are.