Presents axioms about scholarship, learning, English scholarship, and English teaching and examines a little recognized intellectual crisis in current English scholarship. (GW)

States that interdisciplinary studies have a long history in North American universities, but that those who teach in American and English literature departments have been accused of colonizing in the name of cultural studies. Distinguishes between interdisciplinary "tourism" and interdiscursivity. (PA)

Examines the administrative and organizational implications that Cleanth Brooks methods of criticism hold for modern English departments. (RB)

Argues that literary history and estimations of literary value are inseparable and that their connection has import for debate on the contents of the literary canon. Suggests possible requirements for developing a feminist theory and practice of evaluation. (SR)

Addresses the question of what graduate students should know about fields of English in which they are not specializing. Finds the best answer is to teach "the classics." Illustrates with the example of a course on "The Faerie Queene" and "Paradise Lost," to show students how to work with texts and what can be…

Notes that the hopeful threads binding Herman Melville's book "The Confidence-Man" also weave a valuable lesson for literature PhDs considering their career options. Suggests that the values crucial to a teacher or scholar are also crucial to those who work outside the university: willingness to entertain other points of view and an…

Argues that (1) even the most radical critics of departmental structures are committed to the perpetuation of English departments and, therefore, will adopt, regardless of potential contradictions, the professional discourse that validates them and (2) that this will be done even though the Babel of contemporary critical discourse makes a…

Offers examples of ways that college and university departments of English can broaden students' capabilities as readers and critics. (AEA)

Discusses the findings of an extensive research study of the authors and writing most frequently assigned in college-level English survey courses. Finds that similar historical periods and authors are considered in the survey courses offered by college and university English departments. Finds that traditional authors continue to be taught in…

Identifies the ideas of the good that organize the professional lives of English college faculty. Discusses how these ideas should help faculty to constitute their departments, colleagues, and students. Applies insights from Aristotle's "Rhetoric" to departmental discussions. (HB)

Considers how students are represented in institutional discourse and how students are viewed by their teachers. Outlines historical and current examples of the way students are represented. Calls for a closer examination of the relationship between rhetorical representations of students and reality. (HB)

Explores and describes (from the standpoint of a retired department chair) the paradigm change, one of Copernican proportions, that has occurred in English departments from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Compares Modern Language Association bulletins from 1978 and from 1994. (TB)

Examines the typical curriculum in an English department and the place of literary and critical theory within it. (SRT)

Responds to Richard Ekman's criticism of poststructuralism and discusses three strands of a poststructuralist English curriculum. (EL)

Discusses the teaching of literature in an instrumentalist or bureaucratic culture. Gives examples of instrumentalist influence in the English department at the University of Iowa: changes in department offerings, the emergence of a new departmental coherence, and the concentration of literary theory in the program of comparative literature. (EL)