Areas of (In)competence

Brian Leiter has an interesting discussion thread going on "areas of competence"--that is, those fields a would-be academic claims to profess, um, competently.  Several years ago, at an MLA panel on the trials and travails of job interviewing, one speaker ruefully recounted a youthful mistake: he had claimed competence in nearly every American lit field known to mankind, believing that his wide-ranging expertise would lead hiring committees to swoon at his feet.  Apparently, swooning did indeed take place--but it involved interviewers rolling on the floor, laughing (this was decades before we invented ROTFL), not interviewers rolling out the dough, hiring. 

English CVs don't follow the APA's specialization/competence format, although I'm sure the equivalent might clarify matters somewhat.  As a couple of commenters point out, we can all probably whip up an undergraduate course on just about anything in our discipline; if pressed (by a herd of onrushing elephants, for example), I'm sure that I could do the American Literature II survey.  Granted, I probably would be calling my parents every evening, complaining loudly and threatening to engage in acts of self-defenestration, but I could still teach the course.  (Unfortunately, I would a) be flattened by elephants, and b) faced with snickers from Dad the Emeritus Historian of Graeco-Roman Egypt, who spent many years teaching US History to the Civil War.  Needless to say, US History to the Civil War has a much more tangential relationship to Graeco-Roman Egypt than American Literature II has to nineteenth-century British literature.)  Most search committees, however, are not seeking a Victorianist to teach American Literature II, but a Victorianist to teach Victorian literature and its immediate neighbors.  (Of course, if you're me, you get your first job as a sabbatical replacement for a specialist in eighteenth-century British lit--one of my areas of competence, but certainly not my specialization.)