For instructors in college writing centers, doing research is crucial, both for understanding what they do and authorizing who they are. A dialogic relationship between the research undertaken and current theory is particularly crucial. The goal of this research needs to be understanding the relationship between the writing center and the larger…

If there is to be communication and mutual assistance between community colleges and universities, three myths about community colleges need to be dispelled: that they teach almost nothing but basic or remedial English, that no research is possible for those university people who study community college English programs or for community college…

Presents a monologue by a writing laboratory director aimed at English department chairs in order to familiarize the "boss" with the writing laboratory, to explain what the laboratory can offer the English department, and to describe how the laboratory works with students. (RS)

Describes the English program and the role it plays at Doane College, Nebraska. (JK)

In a response to the Minnesota Conference on the Future of Doctoral Study in English, states that the consensus to embrace rhetoric as a unifying focus would undercut small colleges. (MM)

Discusses several developing trends that limit the effectiveness of English teachers and departments and that must be taken into account when planning for the future of English education. (FL)

Based on his department's experience with curriculum change, the head of the English department at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) concluded that curriculum change must be local, incremental, and unending. A consequence of the claim that curriculum change should be local is that proposed changes must be consistent with local realities--and…

English is the second-largest major at the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, Washington). Students may choose one of three emphases within their major: literature, creative writing, or professional writing. Puget Sound's professional writing program has grown gradually and slowly over the last 11-year period to include an array of 10 professional…

In a response to the Minnesota Conference on the Future of Doctoral Study in English, discusses how to guide English graduate students through both their graduate study and their professional careers. Emphasizes the need to reinforce the connection between graduate and undergraduate study. (MM)

This scripted dialogue is a fully documented story about the history and conditions of one group of post-secondary teachers of English. The narrative focuses on the proposal of this group of "permanent" temporary writing instructors from Western Illinois University to convince administrators to change their status to tenure track by…

The violence of any literacy acquisition in the contact zone between the powered, the disempowered, and the empowered is never clearcut. But, nevertheless, calls to theory literacy from the late 70s and early 80s have been answered with a rush. Michael Berube writes that "graduate school in English seems to have a very bad effect on people…

By the late 19th century, the new universities in the United States had become so closely intertwined with the research imperative that their future depended on their position at the center of knowledge creation. The tension between the liberal arts college and the "modern" research university initiated a process of differentiation that…

Film is not often taught for itself and by itself; it is too often viewed as the handmaiden of literature. More often than not it is taught in English departments because: (1) like novels, poems, plays and philosophical arguments, it is a humanistic text; (2) film writers and directors have historically turned to literary texts as their source…

Many English handbooks and "grammars" fail to offer sound advice to writers about matters of exactness in diction and precision in sentence structure. A gap between linguists and English teachers, the literary bias of most graduate departments of English, and a national obsession with the all-powerful capabilities of common sense, have…

Within the academy the commonly held definition of plagiarism--using another's words, ideas, or stylistic individuality without attribution--is widespread, appearing on most English course syllabi. Judicial guidelines are followed: neither stealing nor ignorance of the law is to be sanctioned. Furthermore, penalties for students can be severe: a…