interesting article asks: is literature and lit crit dying

[MissingVandyCandy]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080324/deresiewicz

[jewelbomb]

"This is a profession that is losing its will to live.": Not exactly the kind of thing I wanted to wake up and read this morning as a sift through my (few) PhD offers. While I went into this thing with open eyes, I must admit that every article that is even tangentially about trying to build a career in the humanities bums me the f**k out. Whatever, the economy is currently tanking anyway; we could do worse than have a contract for five more years of study, right?

Thanks for the link!

[engguy]

agreed -- didn't read the whole article, it was too depressing. :twisted:

clearly the rhet com focus is a current trend that's pretty sweeping. at the school where i'm finishing my master's, they recently installed a rhet dept. and it's really taken off. i like how the article mentions the "service" aspect of rhet within eng. dept's; that seems to be the norm, and it's part of what makes it so appealing, i think. there's a practical component to it that was missing previously. however, i have a friend who's doing a phd in rhet at a larger school, and his degree is much more traditional -- yet still, he's anticipating that he'll get better job offers because of that focus. and he's probably right.

but who knows what might happen five years from now? i anticipate that more and more comp pedagogy will trend towards online classes, which cost the university practically nothing and are appealing to slacker students who hate showing up for class. perhaps there will be some sort of backlash when that fails -- as it's bound to do -- and students will become interested in literature and scholarship again.

we can hope. :wink:

[MissingVandyCandy]

Admittedly not my field... I'm political science, but I am interested in academe most broadly so I came accross it while reading The Chronicle's aggregator, Arts&Letters Daily. My take isn't entirely negative, and it's not as if this stuff is all that new of a revelation. If anything, I think it suggests that those who want to continue to do Lit Crit select a private university if possible over public postsecondary which state policymakers have more control over and where they are attempting to infuse more rote training for obvious and in some ways fair purposes - to graduate literate students who can write...

[commoner]

Every generation decries the new school. That's all Deresiewicz is doing. What he thinks is important to study is no longer what the next generation thinks is important to study. That's why we need to read Graff's Clueless in Academe rather than Professing Literature. It's the now. That was the then.

[MissingVandyCandy]

Tis true... however as someone who works directly with governors and commissioners of higher education on public postsecondary, state higher education systems are pushing an emphasis on more rote English Language and Composition skills in state universities which must in some way impact Literature/English departments on the public side of the equation in terms of hiring patterns, course offerings, and departmental needs aligning with undergrad course requirements.

[commoner]

Agreed. Still, it has been my experience teaching undergrads that they need to be taught to write, which ultimately is teaching them how to think through given situations in writing. I wonder, sometimes, how some of my students make their day-to-day decisions. That said, students who cannot think/write clearly enough to present simple essays are going to suffer in literature classes. I am of the mind that composition and literature walk hand in hand. Aesthetic criticism cannot ignore its function as a means to teach thinking/writing skills. If all we do as scholars is write to each other about how great the list of writers mentioned in the article are, then we are not doing any good for our students. But, if we are teaching them how to think/write about the artists, we are teaching them a skill that will be used in all of life's daily negotiations.

I agree that the field is changing. High time for a change, I say. But it is definitely not dying.

[Phedre]

Cool! I took a class with Bill Deresiewicz @Yale!

I think he's correct that there hasn't been any major "school" to come out since Judy B's book... but then again, perhaps it's OUR generation to take over? Or maybe I'm being optimistic. But looking realistically, every great "school" took about 20 years to latch on, to imbue the university setting. We've only really known our university education through the lenses of Butler and the other "cultural critics." In the 90's it was Butler and the queer theorists, the 70's was Bloom & deconstructionists, the 50's were the New Critics. Is it wrong of me to think that Deresiewicz only is seeing a "trough" in the rise of theory? Maybe our time is now?

Or maybe I'm being optimistic...

What would the future "school" look like, do you guys think?

I feel like there are a lot of trends towards ecology theory (biopolitics, justice as related to viability and resources, etc.) But you're right-- who goes to school for 7 years just to ride the wave of a trend?

J

[jewelbomb]

I really don't think the process of teaching students to think and teaching them to write can even be separated. My experience dictates that they are basically one in the same. That is, my students who argue convincingly in class discussions also happen to be some of my best writers. Writing teaches us how to think and vice-versa.

The next new field in the humanities must certainly must have to do with emerging technologies and their use in research and pedagogy, right? Digital bibliography, textual history, and the evolution of print culture seem like useful things to know. I think it might be a little reckless to enter the field at this time and not strive to be technologically relevant. I don't want to be a dinosaur straight out of my PhD. :twisted:

[snagsby52]

In some ways I am a little old-fashioned, so I agreed that all this new stuff is getting a little crazy...what is "digital humanities"?

However, I don't think that literary criticism is about the schools; it is about the literature. We don't need new schools to come up with new ideas and get people excited about literature. I refuse to believe that literary criticism is dying. It is too bleak, and fatalistic. Thousands upon thousands of people still apply to grad programs in English. When each university in the United States is getting 200-600 applications, the suggestion is that Literary Criticism is very much alive and well. Perhaps the job market isn't looking good, but hope is necessary in this profession. People still care. We obviously care, and we can change things.

[Minnesotan]

I'm starting the school of masculinist criticism. You all can feel free to climb on board. We'll steer our profession out of the Doldrums, back into the lively, thriving intellectual enterprise it once was.

No new schools, my butt!

[workinginnyc]

Maybe the issue is not what we study but how we study it. When I visited programs, I had many conversations with other prospective feeling uncomfortable for this reason. what we witnessed and question was an endless parade of historicism, representations of X and Y in such and such school of literature. While this work is not really bad work, there was something disheartening about its dominance in the thoughts of grad students, as it seemed a sign of a profound lack of confidence of the prospects of the profession. It is safe to follow in Foucault's (or Greenblatt's) footsteps because, well, good rigorous historicism is hard to find a problem with. People can always respond with that is an interesting viewpoint and it can come from any number of new subjective/political positions, like the Simpsons, its an endless well of commentary, its accessible, and its only about skin deep (most of the time). Many prospectives I had spoken with were modernists or postmodernists obsessed and driven by formal and philosophical questions, looking for the shape of literature and ethics (or anti-ethics) in the coming age. So some of those questions where as old as the 60's if not older, but it was certainly a different orientation, from the impressions gathered at some programs of the work being done. Is this a case of careerism? The suggestion I got on attending Grad School was to go because that is where you wanted to be for the next few years, I can think of nothing better to do with my time than study these things in a small intense intellectually community, (one school I visited did seem to offer this), for the sake of literature itself, and my own interest in the possibility of ethics under postmodern/poststructuralist conditions. I have no stance here, and am fascinated by the question. Will this give me a career in the academe, I hope so. But thats up to the winds of intellectual/economic fashion. Maybe the problem here is fear? But what's to be afraid of? Get a good PhD. and if that doesn't get you a job, find something else to pay the bills. I have a few skills to fall back on. Perhaps I am able to be blithe about this because I have no responsibilities except an undergraduate loan payment, but aren't we all driven to devote our lives to this stuff because of a passionate interest in the material under consideration? Or is it just another job? Maybe I have unreal expectations, so be it.

[Minnesotan]

I'm just in it for the chicks.

(In the interest of avoiding another "flame the mod" festival, I will point out that the comment above was merely a joke.)

[snagsby52]

I'm interested in this masculinist criticism. What would you write about using this masculinist criticism?? Phallic symbols in literature? The importance of male characters' clothing as a way of showing dominance over other men?? Truly interested.

[jewelbomb]

Sorry Minnesotan but you're a little late to the party; people have, of course, already been doing this stuff. See Robert A. Nye's "Locating Masculinity: Some Recent Work on Men"

http://polforsk1.dk:8080/portaler/asian ... 202005.pdf

Back to the drawing board sucker!

[snagsby52]

Thanks Jewelbomb for the article; however, I don't think anyone doubted that there were studies of masculinity in literature out there--at least I hope not.

[jewelbomb]

Thanks Jewelbomb for the article; however, I don't think anyone doubted that there were studies of masculinity in literature out there--at least I hope not.

Ha...I guess I forget that most people in this forum are in the field. I forgot where I was posting!

[snagsby52]

*

[grifter]

I'm starting the school of masculinist criticism. You all can feel free to climb on board.

I thought Robert Bly was already all over that.

[Minnesotan]

I thought Robert Bly was already all over that.

Play nice.