The big topic this week for literary scholars appears to be the perenial question of our purpose in life. Two separate articles seem to highlight a market shift--yes, I said "market shift" in a piece of writing about literary scholarship; you wanna make something of it?--from the lit to the comp side of the house, a shift reinforced by the job list.
In WaPo, Valerie Strauss reports on revamped core curricula and the forces driving the academy to shift focus to writing skills ("Balancing Academic Tradition and Skills Employers Demand"). In The Nation, William Deresiewicz looks at the profession of literature over the last 20 years, presenting a sort of State of the Union piece for literary study after Graff's Professing Literature's debut 20 years ago. ("Professing Literature in 2008").
What does it mean to shift our focus to writing and composition? Will the professorate disintegrate, relegating more and more lit PhD's to the academic underclass* of adjunct professing? Will tenure lines shift into rhet/comp spots, with the understanding that the teaching load will require teaching the first-year course? Will WAC/WID programs become the standard, moving comp out of English departments completely and drawing faculty from across the university?
As I type it all, I keep thinking of the 80's show Soap. Lots of questions at the end of the episode. When will we get any answers?
*Yes, I said "underclass" because, frankly, that's what it is. If we took a core sample from the geology of any large R1 English department's faculty we would find adjuncts toiling at the very bottom, below the graduate teaching assistants who generally at least have the guarantee of support for a specified time during their education.
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