> 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
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