On the recent and ongoing changes in the profession, and how my department
can evolve in response to them.
A few years back, our department was discussing a possible job listing in New Media, and one of the arguments that came up had to do with the frame and perspective provided by “a 1970s
image of an English Department.” Having grown up with a
Dad who received his PhD from one English Department in the 1970s and then
was immediately hired by another (where he’s taught ever since), I most
definitely knew and understood what the phrase meant. Of course there’s no one thing
that English studies has ever meant, and of course the discipline continued to
evolve throughout the 20th century; but I think the odds are good
that almost every class offered in each of these 1970s English departments
focused on, y’know, literature as traditionally defined: poems, fiction, plays,
nonfiction, literary criticism, and so on. Maybe one or two radical professors
were also teaching films, or using photographs or other visual media to
complement their literary focal points—and some were definitely incorporating European
theorists and their very distinct definitions of literature—but for the
most part, English remained a traditional, textual, literary discipline.
Fast forward four decades and the recent hires in our English Studies
department include that New
Media scholar, as well a Film
Studies specialist and a Romanticist
who, while teaching the traditional authors, has also created new courses
focused on zombies, the punk movement, and an introduction to Cultural Studies.
Of the many factors that have contributed to this expanded and still expanding definition
of the discipline of English Studies, none is more central than that latter
concept: Cultural Studies, the idea
that everything (from traditional literature to film and TV, comic books to
advertisements, material culture to MTV, shopping malls to social media, in our
present moment and into the distant past) is a text. Literary scholars have,
unsurprisingly, different perspectives on this addition to the discipline—you can
probably imagine how those 1970s-trained folks I mentioned above feel, and from
this blog’s varied focal points can probably get a good sense of my own take—but
the bottom line is that the image of a 2010s English Department most definitely
includes Cultural Studies alongside the more traditional focal points and
studies. The question that remains, then, is whether and how each individual department
develops that element, offers its possibilities and analytical frames to its
majors and students, practices this newer and still evolving part of our
discipline.
There’s no right, and certainly no one, answer to that question. But in the
case of my own department, one of my hopes for the spring is that we move
toward the creation of a new, fourth track in Cultural Studies. One of our
previous tracks has moved to another department on campus, so we have space and
opportunity to add a new such concentration. We have those new colleagues and
their courses, as well as the possibility to request a couple new hires to
replace the faculty who moved with the previous track. And I think as a whole
we have a department that recognizes the value, for our students and for
ourselves, of teaching and studying and learning and practicing ways to analyze
the variety of texts and contexts, media and modes, voices and communities that
constitute our 21st century moment and that have in many ways
comprised every era. Cultural Studies won’t mean the same thing for our Medievalist
as it would for the Film Studies guy, will have distinct applications for a
Shakespearean as it does for an AmericanStudier like me—but for all of us, it
can become a strong component to what we do and who we are as we move forward.
Final spring
hopes tomorrow,
Ben
PS. So what do
you think? Thoughts on these questions? Hopes of yours for the spring you’d share?
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