To add my own two cents, I earned my doctorate in American Lit back in 1990. 
I have taught precious little Am Lit ever since. None at all for 10 years. 
Reason Number One is that I came out just as the reliance on part-time 
adjuncts began and that situation has snowballed to the point I'd advise no 
future student to pursue this profession, unless they plan on marrying well. 
In the article that inspired this discussion, the figure of 1 in 6 positions 
is taught by part-timers. Well, if he means teaching literature, that's 
possible-full-timers tend to take all the lit courses, leaving adjuncts all 
the bread-and-butter courses. In the community college district where I 
teach, we have whole campuses of nothing but adjuncts.



Over the past 10 years, I've observed a few matters no doubt getting out to 
prospective English majors. First, there's a huge division between the haves 
and have-nots in Central Pennsylvania-that is, full-timers fight like tigers 
to prevent adjuncts from having any say in or benefits from their college 
service. The major reason is that we're so numerous we might vote down 
something full-timers might like, whatever that might be. Never did figure 
that one out. So large segments of the English faculty are completely 
disconnected from what's going on. We come, we leave, we are not part of the 
community. The point is that the English faculty won't take care of its own, 
much less the administration.



Still, I've been around long enough to know that full-timers here spend next 
to no time dealing with discussing or debating any literary theory that 
doesn't have multi-cultural resonances. In the past 10 years, I can think of 
precious few conversations in hallways, offices, or division meetings that 
didn't deal with how to avoid statistical assessments of what we do, debate 
the "shared governance" doctrine here, or how to use new technological 
tools. In short, if there's any vitality to present literature, you wouldn't 
pick it up from the English faculty. In fact, I've asked about certain 
authors and have heard-"Read a novel! I have too much committee work to read 
a novel cover to cover!" More than once.



Which leads to my final point. To establish "relevance," you'd think we'd 
need to demonstrate literature is still a vital part of American culture, 
not a collection of artifacts that ended with Toni Morrison. Book sales, 
especially those in fiction, are abysmal, especially among males who like 
certain genres, you can guess what they might be. Book publishers seek 
tricks to pull in readers like publishing print text connected with online 
chapters or Google maps to make reading more "interactive."  I do know when 
my full-time colleagues look for literature to use in comp classes-we have 
but a handful of out-and-out lit classes-the major factor is the page count.



This semester, while students introduced themselves on the first day, I 
heard the first student in many a year identify herself as an English major. 
"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that," I joked. "I know," she said, "that's what 
everyone says."  I admit, I am sorry for her, no joke.  Right now, there's 
beauty and majesty in the river she sees before her. It won't be long before 
she learns the real debates are whether or not the MLA citation style has 
improved or declined, whether online courses should be a separate division 
or controlled by the departments they represent, or how to appease the 
accreditation folks and limit the paperwork for the faculty at the same time 
. . .



Twain? Someone teaches him in the "Banned Books" class. I know my 
officemates have never read "The War Prayer." So I'll let lofty folks with 
lofty places debate the value of the humanities. My life is getting students 
to craft interesting thesis sentences, come up with smooth transitions, that 
sort of thing.





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kevin. Mac Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2009 1:31 PM
Subject: Re: "Decline of the English Department" article


>> Finally, in order to make this appropriate to the Mark Twain Forum,
>> Twain's work engages with the areas of cultural studies that Chace
>> criticizes.  Is it an accident that Mark Twain studies have flourished
>> as concerns with race, class, gender, nationalism, economics, and
>> politics have been embraced literary critics?
>> --Larry Howe
>>
>
> Twain has flourished because Twain is relevant, to use an over-used word.
> Are English Depts relevant? How do students measure relevance? It doesn't
> matter how we measure relevance; the students are the ones who make the
> decision whether or not to major in the humanities. Not us. I notice that 
> no
> students were questioned (nor dolphins harmed) in the writing of that
> article. For shame.
>
> Students (I must imagine, because nobody has asked them) may measure
> relevance by whether the content of the studies relates to their personal
> lives, their community, their heritage, their world, their future.  More
> particularly (again, I'm left no choice but to be imagining things), they
> measure relevance by whether the time they invest in study will pay off in
> the job market when they graduate.
>
> Twain certainly scores on the first count, but do English Depts? And 
> unless
> English Depts can connect the dots for students and explain --or better 
> yet
> demonstrate with solid data points-- how writing skills and a solid
> foundation in literature will enrich their future (and their ability to 
> get
> a job) then they will not be seen as relevant.
>
> My own experience might be instructive (after all, I was once a student 
> who
> was never asked about the relevance of the courses that I took, or why I
> took them). I earned my English degree in the early 70s, and quickly
> realized my only job prospects were low-paying teaching positions. I have
> nothing against teaching (my mother, wife, and daughter were/are teachers)
> but I have a distaste for low pay. I'd also taken classical piano in 
> college
> (my childhood teacher was a late student of Lechetizsky, the teacher of
> Clara Clemens, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Arthur Schnabel, et al) but I knew the
> competition was fierce and that prodigies were a dime a dozen. So I earned 
> a
> masters in library science (chasing the Big Bucks I was). While working in 
> a
> rare book library, I figured out that antiquarian booksellers who sold us
> books were having all the fun, traveling, handling a steady stream of
> different and interesting books, and making money all the while. This was
> nothing like my library job, so I went to the dark side and have never
> looked back. And although I never cared much for math, math problems are a
> lot more interesting when dollar signs lurk nearby. I still play piano and
> write.
>
> It took me a few years to figure all this out back in the 70s, but I think
> other students have figured it out faster than I did, like that student of
> Larry's who put his math skills to work on derivatives. Of course, if that
> student (and others like him) had spent more time in English Depts with
> Shakespeare, Twain, Dickens, Flannery O'Connor, etc., perhaps he would 
> have
> developed better reading and writing skills, study disciplines, and 
> critical
> thinking, and he and his ilk might not have led our economy into a 
> meltdown.
> Shakespeare has a quote about where the fault lies that seems relevant
> (there's that damn word again!) and Twain probably had something to say
> about it too.
>
> Kevin
> @
> Mac Donnell Rare Books
> 9307 Glenlake Drive
> Austin TX 78730
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