Composition and Rhetoric -- Really a Growing Field?

[Origin=Goal]

Anyone who thinks that the vanishing job market, disappearance of funding, shrinking graduate cohort, and so forth are in any way exclusive to literature is terribly mistaken; the crisis of the humanities is exsanguinating the languages (ever ask anyone how the job market is in French these days?), ethnic studies, cultural studies, film, theater, busking--hell, its even begun to affect the social sciences considerably (especially its critical wing: history, anthropology, etc).

Don't be so assured that the enfeebled, shrinking field of literary studies does not reflect your own situation. Despite the moderate growth we've heard so much in Composition (a discipline I by no means am degrading here), we're all fighting to board and effectively sinking ship here. But we do so to avoid what is many ways an even worse economic situation, to say nothing of the social/cultural one outside of the academy.

[marlowe]

It just comes down to the fact that lit people often don't want to teach comp, and comp/rhet people find fulfillment in exactly that.

[Two Espressos]

Anyone who thinks that the vanishing job market, disappearance of funding, shrinking graduate cohort, and so forth are in any way exclusive to literature is terribly mistaken; the crisis of the humanities is exsanguinating the languages (ever ask anyone how the job market is in French these days?), ethnic studies, cultural studies, film, theater, busking--hell, its even begun to affect the social sciences considerably (especially its critical wing: history, anthropology, etc).

Don't be so assured that the enfeebled, shrinking field of literary studies does not reflect your own situation. Despite the moderate growth we've heard so much in Composition (a discipline I by no means am degrading here), we're all fighting to board and effectively sinking ship here. But we do so to avoid what is many ways an even worse economic situation, to say nothing of the social/cultural one outside of the academy.

Good points, and great word usage ("exsanguinating")! I had never seen it before, but knowing "sanguine," I figured out what the meaning was. I'm totally using it now.

[ComeBackZinc]

Don't be so assured that the enfeebled, shrinking field of literary studies does not reflect your own situation. Despite the moderate growth we've heard so much in Composition (a discipline I by no means am degrading here), we're all fighting to board and effectively sinking ship here. But we do so to avoid what is many ways an even worse economic situation, to say nothing of the social/cultural one outside of the academy.

Right. It's bad news all around. Which is exactly why there's no sense in turning on each other.

Edited January 24, 2012 by ComeBackZinc

[thestage]

none of this should really be surprising. we live in a time in which knowledge is not valued for its own sake. the humanities have nothing else to offer. if the propogation of knowledge without a direct economic object (technology, managerial know-how, etc) is to have any economic benefit, it is in the extremely long term, which may as well not exist. I hate to say it, but our fields have always been propped up by an upper class that doesn't really exist in the western world anymore

[Phil Sparrow]

we live in a time in which knowledge is not valued for its own sake. the humanities have nothing else to offer.

Forgive me, for I don't want to attack you, but this is dead wrong. And this attitude is one of the reasons why the humanities have been dying. The humanities disciplines offer MUCH more than "knowledge…for its own sake" and engender in students many more useful and--dare I say it--profitable skills than they are given credit for. Yet, so many humanities scholars, students and teachers alike, seem perfectly content to lament a culture where knowledge and education are not valued as much as they should be without doing anything about it. I find the American culture of ignorance as troubling as the next scholar, but part of the problem is that we have allowed those ignorance-mongers to define the conversation for far too long and have, as a result, allowed our disciplines to die. The humanities provide an education that is incredibly useful many different kinds of disciplines, workplaces, and fields (up to and including business, science—though of course not the actual research and technical-skills-requiring parts, and new technologies). Humanists really need to learn to market themselves better both to employers and to the general public. Honestly, this kind of marketing is not hard to do—I did it once upon a time with my humanities major before I decided to go to grad school and managed to do fairly well in the business arena despite my total lack of know-how in that field. As with almost any job, 95% of it is learned as you go, and humanities backgrounds actually prepare a person better, in many ways, for that on-the-fly manner of acquiring skills than do the disciplines (such as business) that are directly related to those fields. It’s not only on the job market, however, though change begins at the micro level, and more employers being shown and told how great humanities students are as employees would help shape general public opinion. But we also need to be more vocal in the public arena about how valuable the humanities are. We need to learn to articulate our own value in comprehensible ways, and we need to DO it instead of moaning about how no one appreciates us. Of course no one appreciates us if we don’t make it clear in every way and space that we can that the humanities are good for our communities and profit margins alike. If we simply cry to each other about how crappy it is, that does nothing. Take back the conversation in the public sphere. Learn how to craft a compelling resume for the worlds of business and industry. And do not keep repeating the LIE that the humanities have nothing to offer but abstract, highbrow knowledge. While there is nothing wrong with knowledge for its own sake—lord knows I would love to see our country appreciate it more—we need to learn how to show all the other things we can do. Which is a LOT. We have just been told and taught by so many people that we cannot do anything but think. So, let’s THINK about ways to motherfucking fix it. Market, spin, and have results to show for it. Honestly—these things are what the humanities teach us to do in the first place. Let’s do it.

Sorry, thestage. Didn't mean to sound like I was going after you specifically. I am just sick of these kinds of comments. What you say is not all wrong--the class issues and absurd emphasis on bottom-line results are real, significant problems. But so is the defeatist attitude that too many humanities students, teachers, and grads cultivate like gangbusters.

Edit: Also, did not realize how long this was until I posted. Sorry! I've been lesson planning for hours, which always includes me having to justify why learning about literature is important to my students, so I'm a bit touchy and, apparently, long-winded at the moment.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Phil Sparrow

[thestage]

I agree to the extent that competent and motivated humanities students should be able to translate and articulate that competence in a wide variety of settings--but what does that really mean? If I did not think it were possible to apply a PhD outside of the academy, I would not be trying to earn one. Not because I want to study literature and theory for 7 years in order to take a job outside of literature and theory, but because the realites of the job market are such that we cannot 100% rely on sustainable university positions any longer. So yes, we're only as useless (in the utilitarian sense) as we want to be. But is that because of things specifically learned and taught in humanities programs, or is it because your average humanities PhD holder is simply more intelligent and more dedicated than the average job seeker? I <i>should</i> be able to differentiate myself from the crowd, but perhaps it is only because I actually am differentiated from the crowd, you know what I mean?

You are right, marketing ones' self in this sense is not that hard. Employer A asks what you've been doing, you should be able to articulate the value in analyzing and synthesizing huge amounts of data in order to imagine, plan, create, polish, defend, and share a substaintial piece of professional work. But is that enough? Is it really ok that the content involved in that work, and the thought and the research behind it hold no social value? Beyond event that, it is entirely possible that the employers whose whims you are at the mercy of will entirely frown upon extended schooling and the stigma of academia. You can't out argue someone that doesn't value or understand reasoning, and you can't present yourself favorably to someone that has already made up his or her mind on your defining characteristic. And we live in a world that generally views someone with a PhD as an abnormality rather than an expert or professional. It is presumed that there is something wrong. Ask your friends and family members.

Apart from that, why should we have to throw away the entire content, environment, and belief systems behind our substantial education in order to take random job X in myopic field Y? You may be right that we are just as capable of taking shitty business jobs as broham mcbrah who slept through a business management BA before learning the fine arts of psychopathy and obsequiousness on the golf course and airport terminal, but we clearly don't want those jobs. If we did, we wouldn't take the decade long detour. True devotion to the humanities can only be valued if the humanities themselves are valued. The intellectual tradition we follow is one that was developed for people to be leaders and thinkers; to work in and barter with knowledge itself. If you take that away from us, and then belittle the process of attempting to obtain it, just so we can luck into careers in marketing and administration--well, it'll keep us alive, no doubt, but I remain unconvinced it will keep the disciplines themselves alive. This is not to say the academy is some bastion of intellectual rigor and expressive freedom and Big Issues and all that. Far from it. But the way back is to try, and right now we've largely been divested of that ability.

I don't think we're particularly arguing different points, but I do find your approach somewhat defeatist and definitely reductive.

Edited January 25, 2012 by thestage

[Phil Sparrow]

I agree to the extent that competent and motivated humanities students

[....]

defeatist and definitely reductive.

I wasn't actually talking about humanities PhDs in the general workforce, but general humanities education (usually undergraduate). Of course, I'm not unaware of the realities of the job market within and without the context of academia. I'm a PhD student with a non-PhD partner. I hear all about how awful the job market is for me all day and come home to hear how awful the job market is for everyone else. However, the sweeping generalization that the humanities have "nothing else to offer" but "knowledge for its own sake" is what hit a nerve with me, because it seemed to condemn the whole of the humanities and humanities education, not just the niche of advanced humanities academics (that is, PhD students and holders)--who, yes, have all made the choice to fracture themselves from the general workforce and populace in a way that probably codes them as undesirable job candidates, at least as far as most employers would be concerned. And it should go without saying that I understand that most PhDs and PhD students have separated themselves off from the general workforce on purpose, because they want to do their own thing. That's what I have conscientiously done. I know I've chosen a narrow career path for myself by entering a PhD program. But it doesn't mean that my path, as an academic, defines that of anyone who studies the humanities at any level.

I should have been more specific in my rant that I was not talking about PhDs. But please, all of you, don't contribute to this persistent and self-defeating fallacy that humanities educations, broadly speaking, are useless outside of themselves. What we humanities PhD students and PhDs do offer outside of our own kind is education to the younger generations, who can take the valuable skills they develop in our disciplines to the rest of the world. We need to make sure that our students know that the educations they are getting are valuable and worthwhile so that the people they go on to work with and influence understand it as well, and this starts with us acknowledging the wide-reaching value of what we do and the kinds of skills we cultivate.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Phil Sparrow

[ComeBackZinc]

I echo most of what Phil Savage has said above. I'd put it simply like this: when knowledge has to be practical to be worth being made, the project of the university has ended. Knowledge is its own excuse for being.

[Two Espressos]

Great posts, Phil Sparrow!

Also, the pink elephant in the room of academia, I think, is that an uncomfortable percentage of students in more "pragmatic" majors--business, secondary education, etc--are really quite incompetent. At least, that's been my experience. There's a big problem when a roomful of largely business and economics majors completely bomb an economics class (2 A's in a class of 40 students, in this age of egregious grade inflation, is not a good thing), but probably the only English major in the room gets an A.

On-the-job training is easily acquired; what's more beneficial, in the long run, is the kind of high-order thinking and writing skills (not to mention foreign language skills) that a solid humanities education provides. Anyone can be a corporate lackey, but it takes real effort to engage in serious critical thinking skills.

The self-defeating attitude of many students and professors in the humanities isn't helping anyone. We need to move past that.

[ComeBackZinc]

*Phil Sparrow