Discusses how the University of Chicago is one of the institutions clinging most tenaciously to the monastic ideal, and the new administration's "focus on budgets and bottom lines was a sign of unwelcome worldiness." Suggests that more leadership from humanists is needed. (SG)

Shares some things about the author's career in the English profession, in a confessional mode. Notes that as a profession in a highly competitive and commodified society, educators encourage "hypocriticism"--intellectual bluff and bluster, self-promotion and one-upmanship. Recounts some episodes from an academic life of "lazy idle little…

Even a quick tour through the professional literature of composition and rhetoric reveals that the profession has failed to bring about any real change in first-year college composition. The truth is that today the political and material conditions of first-year composition programs are not much different from that they were over a half century…

An outside evaluator can help an institution open up dialogue and bring about change by focusing the attention of top administrators, faculty, and students on goals seen as important by groups within the institution. Bringing in an outside evaluator to colleges and universities, English departments and writing programs, can be a touchy, often…

Discusses the process of external reviewing of faculty for tenure and promotion and lists the obligations of the institution requesting the review as follows: timeliness of notice, payment and working conditions, and protection following review. Mentions the reviewer's obligations. (AEA)

Questions whether literary study complements or enriches the teaching of writing. (HOD)

Discusses the role of literature in the English curriculum and the problems facing the English department at the University of Tennessee. (FL)

Suggests that genre and time-line college literature courses give way to thematic courses and cooperative courses within other departments. (FL)

Satirizes college English instruction, specifically "catchy" composition programs and the relevant grant awards and job placement of graduate students. (JM)

Examines a now common situation in which faculty members, in taking early retirement, create a pressing need for new faculty, which, in some cases, inflames long-standing disagreements among the department's current faculty. Explains how to negotiate the complexities of retirement in a way that minimizes tensions within a department. (TB)

States that although internships are routine components of technical communication programs, they can offer excellent professional opportunities to English majors who do not plan academic careers. Finds that internships can enhance enrollments and retention in the English program; build credibility of the English curriculum in the nonacademic…

Suggests that successful strategies for retaining faculty lines will vary widely according to local circumstances. Discusses the cases of the University of Oregon and the State University of New York Stony Brook, which suggest that English departments stand to gain if they can demonstrate that adding faculty lines will help overcome the split…

Argues that scholarship, broadly defined, is essential to effective teaching and to a satisfying professional life in the humanities. Defines good teaching, and discusses ways to evaluate and encourage good teaching as well as ways to integrate teaching and scholarship. (SG)

Argues that composition is at risk of losing its "disciplinarity." Grounds this argument in Jacques Derrida's notion that whatever counts as the condition for achieving certain identity becomes the very condition of its failure. Argues that in a Derridean reading, composition will cease to be as it is now known. (RS)

Discusses the state of English studies, focusing on the literary canon, literature and other disciplines, the function of theory, and the politics of literature. (MM)