When did Comp Rhet become mainstream?

[Dr. Old Bill]

Not to put words in his mouth, but I don't think CBZ was actually deriding literature -- he was just making a polemical argument against the suggestion of "Comp/Rhet bad, Literature good."

 

The two disciplines can and should co-exist, which is why I find the recent snark here against Comp/Rhet to be baffling. I'm a lit guy by nature, but there's a reason why I'm thrilled to be taking over much of the administrative function of UMD's writing center this summer: both sides of English need representation, and while the two can often work together (Penn State is a good example of a program that tries to blend the two), there's enough deviation in the mindset and the underlying theories that they can be comfortably separate. Seriously, that's not a bad thing. Stratification occurs in countless other elements of English...I'm not sure why there's so much angst toward it here.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Wyatt's Torch

[ComeBackZinc]

I understand your frustration.  And I understand you were responding to somebody else.  But you have to know that your cartoon version of Literature programs and professors fits neatly into the very rhetoric neoliberals (or whatever word one prefers to use) use to hack away at the entire humanities.  

 

Personally, even though I am in Literature, I take C/R very seriously and study C/R scholarship.  I considered a Ph.D. in Comp/Rhet. 

 

But what do you propose?  That they get rid of literature? Do you think for a second that if that happens, that rhet comp will thrive? The University will be more streamlined or complete? I'm seriously asking. 

 

Of course not. And like I said, literature is not solely or even primarily to blame for its own misfortunes. But when departments at elite SLACs and research universities largely gave teaching intro classes and low-level surveys over to grad students and adjuncts it was a terrible mistake, and one which has contributed to the economic and institutional realities of literature that no one here supports. And I wish more professors in every discipline were smarter about the perception of their interest in undergraduate teaching and teaching for non-majors.

[NowMoreSerious]

Of course not. And like I said, literature is not solely or even primarily to blame for its own misfortunes. But when departments at elite SLACs and research universities largely gave teaching intro classes and low-level surveys over to grad students and adjuncts it was a terrible mistake, and one which has contributed to the economic and institutional realities of literature that no one here supports. And I wish more professors in every discipline were smarter about the perception of their interest in undergraduate teaching and teaching for non-majors.

 

With all due respect, aren't you confusing causes and effects?  Weren't (more of) those intro classes given to grad students and adjuncts precisely because of larger economic and political forces which necessitated budget streamlining? Unless you are saying that the fight had to happen right then and that departments needed to draw a line in the sand with administrators and, by extension, state and federal governments.  In that case, you can't separate and single out Literature.  

 

You also have to admit that your characterization of literature's interest in undergraduate teaching is part and parcel of our current holy war.  It's just like how, at our worst, literature people blame rhet/comp for cow-towing to administrative and governmental appeals to pragmatism and streamlining, often using "college for job skills and nothing more" rhetoric.  I'm of the opinion that hardliners of that rhetoric are ushering in further standardization of humanities education that is in danger of censoring and eroding new forms of thinking and at worst, any forms of political dissent.  

 

One of my main mentors, who is a R/C Ph.D., said, "We need to save our discipline."  Yes, but we also need to think about what we are saving exactly and at what cost.    

[ComeBackZinc]

With all due respect, aren't you confusing causes and effects?  Weren't (more of) those intro classes given to grad students and adjuncts precisely because of larger economic and political forces which necessitated budget streamlining? 

 

No.

[NowMoreSerious]

No.

[ComeBackZinc]

Again: the deeper issue is the wide-scale demise of funding for the humanities and broad shrinking of the TT landscape that has little to do with English profs. But to say that grad studetns started teaching a majority of English classes because of the demise of TT lines initially is just historically inaccurate. It's hard to imagine now, but in the 70s English was one of the most valued, star-heavy fields in the academy, and that accelerated a process in which tenured English professors walked away from lower level undergraduate classes and took on more and more grad students to fill their graduate seminars. I disagree with the historical accuracy of your claim.

[NowMoreSerious]

Again: the deeper issue is the wide-scale demise of funding for the humanities and broad shrinking of the TT landscape that has little to do with English profs. But to say that grad studetns started teaching a majority of English classes because of the demise of TT lines initially is just historically inaccurate. It's hard to imagine now, but in the 70s English was one of the most valued, star-heavy fields in the academy, and that accelerated a process in which tenured English professors walked away from lower level undergraduate classes and took on more and more grad students to fill their graduate seminars. I disagree with the historical accuracy of your claim.

 

You may be right.  But it seems weird that certain tenured English professors had enough power alone to do this.  I can't help but feel there were other forces involved, such as the democratization of university education in the 60's.  

 

It would be a pretty incredible historical moment in academia if a relatively small group of tenured English professors were able to change the landscape of higher education by refusing to teach lower level undergraduate classes.  

 

Totally agree that the wide scale demise of funding is the heart of the issue though.  

Edited April 28, 2015 by NowMoreSerious

[kurayamino]

I have nothing useful to add to this discussion, but a professor at my school who was a radical in the 60's and 70's always asks about adjunctification: "how did this happen on our watch?" It seems to me if there was some complicity on the part of the professors he'd be asking a different question.

[bgt28]

This may be a completely useless addition, but I'm going to go ahead and make it anyway.

I've often been accused of being an idealist for pursuing graduate school and academic work in general, but here are my points:

1) I feel that our particular cohorts will enter the job market at a unique moment, relatively speaking. A lot of the big wigs are going to retire when we're ready to apply for TT jobs.

2) We all knew the harsh environment we were committing to prior to admission/application. I often don't like participating in the "what if" and "why" forums, not only because they're touchy, but because so many of us haven't started grad school yet, and I think we deserve to experience things firsthand and develop our own reservoir of opinions, regrets, and complaints. Ultimately, speaking for myself of course, I don't mind entering the job market at an impossibly competitive juncture, and here's why. My parents already remind me that I'm signing up for a life of penury and mediocrity, vis-a-vis capitalist norms, obviously. They tell me daily I should find something to do that will guarantee bread on the table tomorrow. I can do that right now, but I'd rather be forced to settle for that with a PhD in hand.

 

I know this sounds like a bs neoliberal "bootstraps" kind of comment, but it's the farthest thing from a derisive "stop complaining" post. I'm just trying to develop a perspective and a lot of time that's really hard with the dialogues that circulate in academia that are really very upsetting. 

[Romanista]

 

1) I feel that our particular cohorts will enter the job market at a unique moment, relatively speaking. A lot of the big wigs are going to retire when we're ready to apply for TT jobs.

 

 

How long has everyone been saying this? Decades.

[Romanista]

I think there's a little hypocrisy in each of us in wanting to change the system. We can all choose not to go to graduate school purely because of the inherent structural problems in academia. I remember reading a Thomas Benton article about this in CHE in 2010. Don't go to graduate school because (among other reasons) if you go then you end up being complicit in the the unfair hiring practices of academia. 

 

I don't think I can change the system. I'm certainly not going to tell my department that it's unfair to me and my students in having to teach while taking 3 classes, that the university should hire someone to teach full time instead. Is it hypocritical that I'm going along with this in pursuing my degree? Absolutely. I really think that only unionization or some kind of government intervention (like the way they are finally...FINALLY noticing that for profit universities tend to be scams) will end academia's dependence on NTT faculty. 

 

I just want a shot at making a living in academia. It probably won't work out but at least I'll emerge from my program a better writer.

[heliogabalus]

1) I feel that our particular cohorts will enter the job market at a unique moment, relatively speaking. A lot of the big wigs are going to retire when we're ready to apply for TT jobs.

Whose TT jobs will be eliminated and replaced with adjuncts and VAPs.

[Romanista]

Whose TT jobs will be eliminated and replaced with adjuncts and VAPs.

 

Exactly. The largest university in terms of enrollment in the US does not even have tenure. If all universities (or most at least) are run like corporations then the next logical step would be to eliminate tenure. Once the tenured professors of today retire, there will be no outrage because unfortunately we're used to being taught by NTT faculty. 

 

This is depressing stuff but I think it's better to not believe that naive retirement trope. It's going to take some serious outrage to change academia. Serious outrage cannot come from graduate students and adjuncts alone.

[heliogabalus]

This is depressing stuff but I think it's better to not believe that naive retirement trope.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure which professors are saying this. It would be really irresponsible for people to tell students that. My background is in a rarely taught language and literature, and I bumped into one of the more notable professors who teaches it (he's at Penn). He mentioned he was going to retire, and when I asked who they would bring in, he just said that they weren't planning on bringing in anyone. It'll just disappear there. Pretty sad.

[heliogabalus]

I wonder if graduate humanities in the US wouldn't be better served by adopting a model more similar to the British system, where there aren't so many teaching and course requirements. While ostensibly these requirements are to make the grad students better prepared to become professors (which fewer and fewer are actually becoming), they certainly provide a cheap labor force while also filling seats for small graduate seminars taught by the tenured and tenure-track professors.

 

If humanities grad students only spent 3-5 years getting their PhDs (as they do in Britain), instead of 7-10 (which is probably closer to the norm), I think they'd be less outraged about having to find work outside of academia. Doesn't it seem a bit silly that on average it takes more time for someone to become qualified to work in the field of Victorian literature at a university than it does to work in biochemistry? Or to practice law or medicine? And do Cambridge PhDs really seem less prepared to teach Jacobean drama than NYU PhDs because they weren't required to TA or teach intro comp courses (while being overwhelmed by their own coursework)?

[bgt28]

Alright guys, I guess I failed miserably with that last post. My goal was of course not to sound like I'm seeping with naïveté, but rather with a genuine desire to move beyond these discussions until at least one year in. I'm not sure about anybody else's position, but I'm tired of reading about rankings and the job market and I've not even started grad school yet.

[1Q84]

Alright guys, I guess I failed miserably with that last post. My goal was of course not to sound like I'm seeping with naïveté, but rather with a genuine desire to move beyond these discussions until at least one year in. I'm not sure about anybody else's position, but I'm tired of reading about rankings and the job market and I've not even started grad school yet.

 

No worries, I get what you're saying, bgt28! If I read you right, a measure of optimism and freshness is definitely necessary to the well-rounded development of any incoming cohort, if not just to ensure individual mental wellness. No one wants a bunch of bitter, jaded, robots spouting the same nihilistic dictums representing one's first encounter with graduate school.

 

On the other hand, I think being well-aware of the realities of academia the moment enters a program is super important too so that every step one takes contributes to the end goal of getting a job--TT, AA or otherwise.

 

I honestly think in this climate that letting the first year of the program be one's "discovery" year sadly can be detrimental to one's progress. I've heard as much from a bunch of ABDs I've talked to and that kind of advice is going to inform how I formulate my first year plan.

[bhr]

To be fair, this post was never about that until VirtualMessage came in with her weird grudge against WPAs and Comp/Rhet, and her bizarre lack of understanding about what's causing the increase in adjunct jobs.

Back to the discussion, however, I want to add that I think there needs to be a line clarified between adjunct/PT labor and NTT jobs. If tenure completely disappears, it doesn't mean that there won't be decent, full time, well paying (relatively) jobs in the academy. The truth is that there are incredibly few jobs in this country with the protections offered by tenure, but that doesn't mean that every job is low-paying and precarious. I have friends working in NTT, full time jobs that make a decent living, get travel and research support, and have reasonable job security. No, they aren't teaching 2/2 loads at R1s, (more like 4/4 at state schools) but they are doing fine. I'm not saying it wouldn't be a disappointment to wind up in one of those positions as a PhD, but there is a difference between being a full time lecturer and being an adjunct.

[VirtualMessage]

To be fair, this post was never about that until VirtualMessage came in with her weird grudge against WPAs and Comp/Rhet, and her bizarre lack of understanding about what's causing the increase in adjunct jobs.

Back to the discussion, however, I want to add that I think there needs to be a line clarified between adjunct/PT labor and NTT jobs. If tenure completely disappears, it doesn't mean that there won't be decent, full time, well paying (relatively) jobs in the academy. The truth is that there are incredibly few jobs in this country with the protections offered by tenure, but that doesn't mean that every job is low-paying and precarious. I have friends working in NTT, full time jobs that make a decent living, get travel and research support, and have reasonable job security. No, they aren't teaching 2/2 loads at R1s, (more like 4/4 at state schools) but they are doing fine. I'm not saying it wouldn't be a disappointment to wind up in one of those positions as a PhD, but there is a difference between being a full time lecturer and being an adjunct.

 

My "weird grudge" is the consequence of having been directly taken advantage of by the rhetoric of composition management that follows the best practices used to exploit adjunct labor across the country. Once you finish your master's degree and spend several more obtaining your doctorate, please do chime in about the virtues of NTT full-time positions. Tell me about the kinds of academic, curricular freedom those positions promote and the possibilities for advancing your career and having an influential role in University governance. It is exactly your style of deference that is undermining this profession--a deference that writing programs and their administrators tend to value and cultivate.  

Edited April 29, 2015 by VirtualMessage

[lifealive]

To be fair, this post was never about that until VirtualMessage came in with her weird grudge against WPAs and Comp/Rhet, and her bizarre lack of understanding about what's causing the increase in adjunct jobs.

Back to the discussion, however, I want to add that I think there needs to be a line clarified between adjunct/PT labor and NTT jobs. If tenure completely disappears, it doesn't mean that there won't be decent, full time, well paying (relatively) jobs in the academy. The truth is that there are incredibly few jobs in this country with the protections offered by tenure, but that doesn't mean that every job is low-paying and precarious. I have friends working in NTT, full time jobs that make a decent living, get travel and research support, and have reasonable job security. No, they aren't teaching 2/2 loads at R1s, (more like 4/4 at state schools) but they are doing fine. I'm not saying it wouldn't be a disappointment to wind up in one of those positions as a PhD, but there is a difference between being a full time lecturer and being an adjunct.

 

This is one of those times when I am reminded of what CBZ has said in other threads--that people at the beginning of this process, despite claiming to know about the job market, don't really grasp how bad it is.

 

There aren't that many NTT full-time jobs out there. Period. So, concluding things like, "I'll just dial back my expectations and get a NTT job instead!" is like ... yeah. I want a pony too. 

 

Unlike VirtualMessage, I'm not one of these people who sees myself above these positions. But they aren't as readily available as you would like to believe. 

Edited April 29, 2015 by lifealive

[ToldAgain]

To be fair, I think bhr is simply saying: TT isn't everything; there are good jobs to be had outside the TT. I don't think s/he is making a claim about how easy or hard it is to get those jobs. Just that those jobs exist. It is a reaction to a TT/non-TT dichotomy that can exist in discussions like this.

 

And I think that dichotomy is probably not a helpful one to possess going into grad school, which is why it is helpful to challenge. If you think TT good, non-TT bad, you are limiting your options. There are definitely a lot of bad non-TT options out there, but they aren't all desperate and soul-crushing.

 

I think this is closer to the actual argument than "I'll just be a VAP, there are more than enough of those jobs!" Which, I don't know, maybe somebody believes. They shouldn't though.

[bgt28]

I'm so tired. 

[ComeBackZinc]

My "weird grudge" is the consequence of having been directly taken advantage of by the rhetoric of composition management that follows the best practices used to exploit adjunct labor across the country. Once you finish your master's degree and spend several more obtaining your doctorate, please do chime in about the virtues of NTT full-time positions. Tell me about the kinds of academic, curricular freedom those positions promote and the possibilities for advancing your career and having an influential role in University governance. It is exactly your style of deference that is undermining this profession--a deference that writing programs and their administrators tend to value and cultivate.  

 

I applied for several NTT jobs in my job hunt this past year. All of the ones I applied to had the following characteristics: they provided a living wage that would enable me to live modestly but comfortably; that they had multi-year contracts; that the teaching load was no higher than a 3/3; that people currently in those positions reported privately to me that their work was respected and valued and that their research was taken seriously. A nice bonus was jobs where research funding was possible or jobs where NTT faculty had a voice in the faculty senate. Some of these jobs were quite well paying in great cities on great campuses, featuring summers off if you wanted them or some availability for summer teaching if you needed the money. 

 

If you think those jobs are inherently beneath you, you're nothing but a snob. 

[VirtualMessage]

I applied for several NTT jobs in my job hunt this past year. All of the ones I applied to had the following characteristics: they provided a living wage that would enable me to live modestly but comfortably; that they had multi-year contracts; that the teaching load was no higher than a 3/3; that people currently in those positions reported privately to me that their work was respected and valued and that their research was taken seriously. A nice bonus was jobs where research funding was possible or jobs where NTT faculty had a voice in the faculty senate. Some of these jobs were quite well paying in great cities on great campuses, featuring summers off if you wanted them or some availability for summer teaching if you needed the money. 

 

If you think those jobs are inherently beneath you, you're nothing but a snob. 

 

These jobs are actively destroying tenure lines and provide inadequate protections for academic freedom, among other things. But yes, I'm nothing but a snob for wanting to protect my profession. Just like how the OP is a troll for asking a question. Just like how anyone who disagrees with you provokes your unremitting condescension. Might I--(privately, of course)-- suggest a career in University administration? You might appoint "lifealive" as an Assistant Dean who manages the snobbish adjuncts; his/her disdain would be well-suited for the position. You could call your newfound kingdom a "Writing Program." 

[ComeBackZinc]

These jobs are actively destroying tenure lines and provide inadequate protections for academic freedom, among other things. But yes, I'm nothing but a snob for wanting to protect my profession. Just like how the OP is a troll for asking a question. Just like how anyone who disagrees with you provokes your unremitting condescension. Might I--(privately, of course)-- suggest a career in University administration? You might appoint "lifealive" as an Assistant Dean who manages the snobbish adjuncts; his/her disdain would be well-suited for the position. You could call your newfound kingdom a "Writing Program." 

 

If in any given employment situation the choice is between an adjunct making $3K a class with no contract, no benefits, no respect for research at all, no room for advancement and no hope, or a full-time, long-term, contracted lecturer making a living wage, earning benefits, and having the opportunity for promotion, which do you think is better? Making the perfect the enemy of the good does nobody any favors.

 

And I condescend to you because you have single-handedly hijacked this forum again and again, in a way that doesn't make it any easier for people like me to counsel others to consider a different path that grad school. I have been urging people here to consider forgoing grad school for years. I have been speaking out about the awful job market here for years. In my AFK life, I have been organizing and raising consciousness and fighting for better conditions with my fellow grad students for years. People like you do not help the situation at all. In fact, most people who hear your type of rhetoric become more emboldened to go to grad school and pursue their TT dreams, because you're so one-note, so didactic and patronizing, and so resistant to alternative opinions. You actually make the side minimizing the labor crisis appear more reasonable. Have you considered that?