Scholarly disciplines are historical reservoirs riven with contradictions. Often unaware of their own history, the humanities lead in complications, with English departments outpacing other fields of study. Both writing and English language and literature studies exhibit long-standing omissions and conflicts. This essay explores their similarities…

A unique line of WPA scholarship highlights the bodily, mental, and emotional toll of administering writing programs, which has prompted analysis of the institutional mechanisms that produce frustration in WPA work. Writing programs are comprised of a wide range of (non)human institutional forces in often incoherent and unsustainable ways, which…

As online education expands, cultivating a sense of belonging becomes increasingly complex, especially for students who may never set foot on a physical campus. In this article, we explore the nuanced nature of fostering a sense of belonging and mattering among distance learners on our own campus, Indiana University (IU) East. To address these…

In this essay, authors Todd Reynolds, Leslie S. Rush, Jodi P. Lampi, and Jodi Patrick Holschuh provide a disciplinary heuristic that bridges literary and literacy theories. The secondary English language arts (ELA) classroom is situated at the intersection between literary theory and literacy theory, where too often literary theory does not…

Creative Writing programmes in universities now offer both an education for and employment to literary writers. This papers asks how literary writers apprehend their relatively recently institutionalised position, as university staff and students. The concept of 'patronage', it is argued, offers a useful way into reflecting upon such academic…

Since the adoption and subsequent fade of the Wyoming Resolution, we have seen the political economy of writing instruction change remarkably. Certainly, composition studies' disciplinary viability seems more solid, but the proportion of contingent writing teachers has increased to almost 70 percent. The authors of this article attribute these…

The #MeToo and Time's Up movements have each cast light on the prevalence of sexual harassment in a variety of media industries. In this piece, I reflect on a college YAL seminar in which my students read Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." The class discussion quickly became focused on Alexie himself and…

A high school English department collaboratively addressed the issue of college-readiness in writing while utilizing a focused four-phase leadership model to guide their efforts. Although this discussion highlights the strategic use of writing rubrics, it is the intention to share the benefits of using the four phases of collaborative teacher…

Henry W. Sams served on the editorial boards of "College English," "College Composition and Communication," and the "Journal of General Education." He was able to influence the kinds of articles on composition and rhetoric being published throughout this period, and he and his colleagues increased broad awareness of…

This program profile examines efforts by WPAs at York College, a senior college in the CUNY system, to adapt to externally imposed changes and develop a locally meaningful writing program. 1999 marked the end of remediation at four-year (senior) colleges in The City University of New York. The elimination of developmental writing at CUNY's senior…

In this article Sutherland surveys over the period of the last 40 years (the length of an average full academic career) the changes which have occurred to the departmental structures and procedures in the teaching of and research into English Literature in British universities. He perceives a marginalization of the English department in the…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate online dictionaries from faculty prospective. The study tried to obtain in depth information about various forms of dictionaries the faculty used; degree of awareness and accessing online dictionaries; types of online dictionaries accessed; basic features of information provided; major benefits gained…

University websites serve as sharing information with students whether prospective or enrolled. Often, before entering their departments, students visit them to have an idea as to what it would be like to be a part of that university and/or department. In that sense, websites help students in deciding whether the university matches their…

The degree specification project is a simple, yet pragmatic process of crystallizing the "identity" of the degrees offered in each discipline. In other words, what should students expect to have in the way of skills, knowledge, and abilities once they complete a degree in a specific discipline? Faculty first articulate three to five…

This paper addresses the observations of two administrators in a university English department in Tokyo, Japan concerning the university's online class evaluation system. The evaluation system has students answer questions concerning their performance and their instructors performance after each class. It also allows students to leave feedback for…