How do you see your discipline within the general institution of English Studies? What is its street identity, its institutional identity, its self identity? Any current issues, conflicts, or developments in terms of how your discipline relates to the whole? Where's your discipline headed and where would you like it to go? Any thoughts you'd like to share on English Studies here at NDSU? On English Studies generally?
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Faculty Views of English Studies and The Disciplines
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Creative Writing as a discipline is, variously, an academic outlaw; a nonscholarly, soft and silly course of study on a subject which can't be taught; a spiritual endeavor; an underling of Literature Studies; and an overling of all English disciplines (my view). It was originally instituted after WWII as a way to make literature more accessible to the guy on the street, but has grown well beyond that. Composition Studies has recently been forging interesting links to Creative Writing, and Creative Writing Studies and pedagogy are now areas of study in their own right. I tend to see Creative Writing as a fabulous mediator of Literary Studies and Writing Studies (two sometimes feuding camps). Creative Writing is at the center of all ES disciplines...but that's pretty egocentric and monomaniacal, given that I'm into CW, isn't it? Arrogance. It is a bitch. Anyway. English Studies: it's a mess. But an interesting mess. Like the contemporary university generally, it is made up of specialized areas which sometimes have trouble communicating with each other and may or may not share the same values. On the other hand, fused curricula, inter-disciplinarity, writing-across-the disciplines etc. have all begun to make this large and contested "department" more coherent. Maybe.
ReplyDeleteComposition is often seen as secondary to literature, and when students chose to study it rather than literature, people often joke that they are going over to the dark side. However, after studying composition, I believe that composition is highly flexible and borrows concepts and strategies from many other disciplines within English studies and other disciplines as well such as linguistics, media studies, gender studies, rhetoric, and even to some extent literature.
ReplyDeleteComposition is an exciting discipline to study because there are so many possibilities for research within the discipline and because there are so many practical applications for employment. I think composition will continue to grow as a discipline in the future.
Composition studies is the study of the writing, the teaching of writing (mostly at the college level), and the administering of writing programs. Compositionists are also interested in studying how different environments and technologies impact the writing process. I see the discipline of composition studies becoming more interested in new technologies (blogs, glogs, wikis, content management systems, etc) and social media. To give you an idea of where the discipline has been and where the discipline is going: there used to be compositionists who identified as computers and writing specialists, but I do not believe one can be a compositionist without also being a computers and writing specialist anymore.
ReplyDeleteThe English program here at NDSU allows students to study a variety of disciplines with English studies. I am interested, for example, in collaboration and the writing process, social media, and online and reading education. My study at NDSU has allowed me to explore each of these areas.
Literary studies have been part of the academy since the dawn of times, it seems. Dead Poets Society showed us some of the ways in which it used to be taught and experience--formulaic, static, rule-ridden. We've come a long way since then. We no longer need to tear pages out of books in order to help our students think critically, independently. Textbook editors today, in general, have already done that for us. By the same token, our students have come a long way. They are the "I am" "I want" "I think" generation--carpe diem is what they do. As a result, I think that our focus in literary studies has shifted considerably over the past few, say decades--even, actually, since I did my UG. Our focus now, I would argue, lies with culture, with understanding otherness, learning from people different from ourselves, analyzing ways of thinking, acting, reading, learning. When we read, when we study literature now, we look for ways in which he world has changed, how people have and continue to respond to that change. We are interested in the ways in which people seek and explore ways to express themselves, their culture, their world, their stories. As a discipline then, literary studies has very much merged with cultural studies, even as we draw on anthropology, history, religious studies, sociology, etc. It's an interdisciplinary field that opens one's eyes to the world and invites people to partake in a world in flux.
ReplyDeleteEnglish Education is somewhat marginalized within the general institution of English Studies, and our larger society. There's a disdain for the profession expressed through common sayings like, "Those who can't do, teach." The reality is quite different, however. English Education majors must be able to "do" everything in English Studies and do it well enough to teach others. Consider Anderson’s recent revision of Bloom's taxonomy of learning, with the lowest level starting with remembering and moving upward to understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and finally creating. When we are remembering facts about the field of literature or understanding a rhetorical strategy, we are operating at a relatively low level, but if we have to create a lesson plan to help a diversity of learners understand that literary work or strategy, we are operating at the highest level. English Educators have to work at a very high level. Countries like Japan understand this and they recruit their best and brightest to the profession of teaching, rewarding them with salaries and prestige to match that honored profession. I’m afraid the opposite is true in the U.S. My challenge as an English educator is to prepare future teachers to operate at a high level in an environment with few extrinsic rewards. English teachers need to cultivate inner strength, faith in the value of what they do, and continually work on keeping up with all the branches of English studies to make sure they are delivering the most current instruction. I think one of the big changes that is beginning and will continue in English Studies is a move away from a literature-focused curriculum and toward composition and technology. The No Child Left Behind Legislation has revealed low scores in writing compared to reading, and I think one reason might be that high school English departments are a few decades behind college English departments in incorporating stronger composition studies.
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