This article explores the question of where literary study happens through reflection on two case studies. The article examines projects within two UK English departments, which were designed to allow students of literature to engage with local communities as part of their studies. The implications of this work are considered for curriculum…

This essay argues that a trend in histories of literary and writing studies is to bifurcate the origins of the fields and so engage in those modernist narrative fallacies described by Jean-Francois Lyotard. Such works limit our understanding of past practices and the longstanding connections between disciplinarity and labor. (Contains 2 notes.)

Discussions of English department identity and mission more often center on the undergraduate major curriculum than on classes for general-studies and other non-major students. In such courses, though, educators have an opportunity to touch the intellectual lives of far more people than they do in courses for majors. The author argues in this…

In a response to the Minnesota Conference on the Future of Doctoral Study in English, argues that literary theory has redirected attention to the medieval liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. (JK)

Offers a utopian vision of what the place of rhetoric should be in a department that thinks of itself as literary. Argues that a Ph.D. in English that encompasses both literature and rhetoric works because it is really a degree in rhetoric. (TB)

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

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)

Contrasts the need for more extensive and effective composition programs with faculty training almost exclusively focused on literature. (AA)

Describes the organization and aims of the English curriculum at the University of Iowa. (AA)

Describes instructional and departmental forces creating the following problems for undergraduate creative writing teachers: (1) they hold an uneasy position in the English department hierarchy; (2) courses are radically different from creative writing courses in either high school or graduate school; and (3) instruction has lagged behind…

Contends that rhetorical study is the key to the integration of reading and writing in the college English department and discusses problems created by pigeonholing literature by periods and genres. (DD)

In a response to the Minnesota Conference on the Future of Doctoral Study in English, argues that English departments can define future study in English by focusing on the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Claims that, taken together, the three disciplines are potentially concerned with all issues involved in how we use words to make, do, and…

Asserts that exploring convergences between composition and literature can bridge the gap between the two fields. (MM)