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)

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)

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)

Discusses mission statements from various English departments. Finds that the most successful mission statements move credibly and convincingly between three kinds of rhetoric, using the specialized rhetoric of disciplinary insiders, the rhetoric of academic inquiry that can function across disciplines, and the general public rhetoric that serves…

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

Discusses the problems of being a department head and how best to deal with them. (SRT)

Encourages professional dialogue to establish correspondent interests among college English faculty who have taken positions in defense of the teaching of either rhetoric or literature. (AEA)

Argues that graduate schools are overproducing literary scholars and underproducing composition and rhetoric scholars, who carry the increasingly bulk of the work in English departments, and examines, in detail, this split between rhetoric and literary scholars. (SRT)