Currently, many college and university English departments are reviewing the purpose of their departments. Are they still departments of literature? A writing program is best served by staying in an English department, with the caveat that the department move towards a cultural studies curriculum--the writing program within an English cultural studies program can take a central place in the university curriculum. Cultural studies is the glue that can hold the study of literature and the study of writing together. One of the main theoretical underpinnings of cultural studies is the breakdown of the binary between the production and consumption of texts. A writing program fostering political agency through the use of discourse analysis and critique would be right at home in an English department whose mission was to study language's uses in the service of power. Trimbur believes that cultural studies has sought to shift the focus from the history of the text to the history of readers. The writing program should stand in the center of English/cultural studies curriculum because the emphasis upon critique of discourse is foregrounded. It should stand at the center of the university because, notes Edward White, it has a double role as a socializing discipline (enforcing and confirming student membership in an educated community) and as an individualizing discipline (demanding critical thinking and an active relation of the self to material under study)." (Contains 21 references.) (TB)