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Started: 11/3/2008 8:23 AM | |
|  | Response - What Are English Majors For? Miller and Jackson argue for a "fuller" set of courses in Rhetoric and Composition to fill the gap between first year writing and graduate programs. They may well be right in their argument, but I would like to see more about what these intermediate courses would teach, and why students would benefit from these courses. What, really, should be taught about "deppening changes in literacy," and for what reasons?
So much of the analysis in this paper appears to be market driven. Of course there was a major dropoff in the number of English majors in the 70s and 80s when a whole host of new majors -- such as Criminal Justice, Women's Studies, Cultural Studies, and Communications emerged -- and siphoned off students that would previously have been English majors. The authors suggestion that academic English studies should have expanded and adopted to compete with these new majors appears to me to be illjudged. To "save" English by making it something other than English is akin to bombing a village in order to save it. The goal of English should not just be to get the greatest possible number of majors -- if it were, we could place titles such as "sexual deviancy" in all our courses! Or make every course about Tolkien or Harry Potter. | |
Posted: 11/3/2008 1:09 PM | |
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There is a tendency in English departments to regard high-minded literature as the only subject suitable for study. While I understand the pitfalls of opening up the field to nontraditional studies, I cannot help but agree with Miller and Jackson that there needs to be some expansion.
Of the topics discussed, creative nonfiction for popular audiences particularly interested me. Literature professors have seen the decline of students reading classics texts as a sign of the cultural apocalypse. Whether this is true or not, we cannot be blind to the fact that culture, and particularly what it means to be literate, is changing. True, the young are not reading the classics as much, but they are spending much more time reading online texts, and even writing some. Some English courses should be designed to address this shift. Writing for a non-literary audience is an important skill that students will need in the future job market. With businesses increasingly putting their corporate information on-line, students need to learn how to write for a consumer audience. | |
Posted: 11/3/2008 3:44 PM | |
| | I agree that there definitely needs to be a refined position in how we as grad students, faculty, and staff approach literature in composition studies. As the article and appendix at the conclusion convey, numbers of 18-24 year olds (our students) who read literature are plummeting. I commend USF's FYC program for acknowledging this shift (disheartening as it may be for us Lit MAs!) in projects such as Google Generation and remediation. We are very progressive in this respect, as USF is noticing that the internet and technology are slowly changing our interests and rhetorical/cognitive skills.
There is a definite importance in adhering to changes in the times, and to be conducive to such a shifting discipline is seminal to the survival of the English Dept. and Composition. What is needed is for more attention to be directed towards the growing presence of the internet and technology regarding communication and literature. While we may not read novels anymore, my students pointed out to me today that we probably spend MORE time reading today than we used to, for we'll spend hours reading different blogs, articles, and briefs on the internet. Hopefully, we can utilize this increase in general reading to help our students develop those critical, contextual, and rhetorical perspectives that are crucial to the development of their careers after college. | |
Posted: 11/3/2008 3:49 PM | |
| | I would like to see more projects that really bridge that divide between "classic" texts and newer, contemporary literature or new media. For example, I had my students write the Analyzing Ads project, and some of them were having the hardest time wrapping their minds around what I wanted. They just didn't believe it was a legitimate thing to "analyze" an ad. In conference, I told one student that it was not unlike looking at the symbol of the green light in The Great Gatsby. Bam! That struck a chord, and I used the same comparison with the rest of my students. They'd all read the book in high school, and discussed ad nauseum the symbolism, themes, motifs, etc., but failed to recognize that analyzing ads used the same skills.
I wouldn't want to see classics like The Great Gatsby, for example, cease to be taught. But perhaps an idea would be to focus on contemporary literature with similar themes, or in how the need to impress is still a very large part of our culture today, and look at modern ways that might manifest. I don't know -- something to tie that classic text with what kids are experiencing and living with today. | |
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