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Refiguring the Ph.D. in English Studies: Writing, Doctoral Education, and Suny-Albany's Fusion-Based Curriculum
North (English, SUNY, Albany) reconsiders assumptions about how English Ph.D. programs came to be, what purposes they serve, and what they ought to become namely, more grounded in writing. The first part traces English doctoral education in the American university from its German origins to a 1987 crisis of disciplinary and professional identity. Part two examines one response to the the launching by SUNY, Albany's English department of a curriculum titled "Writing, Teaching, and Criticism." A final section argues that a fusion-based curriculum represents the best available option for doctoral education. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
319 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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April 28, 2016
M'okay, maybe it's a little outdated (all of the talk about feminist rhetorics seems a little "well, d'uh" now), but North is totally prescient for 2000 to be talking about training grad students to be less like their instructors. Although, though, this is a perennial problem.
Describes Albany’s experimental DA program where writing studies is broadly conceived--people write poems about composition history, etc. argues that “every clasroom might be a ‘nexus of discourses’ (163) as response to crisis in the discipline “Consider the cumulative reason: if the graduate faculty are not to replicate themselves, and if the students are not only to be encouraged to prepare thesmelves for a wide range of postdoctoral employment opportuites, but ot be actively aided by the fac (251)ulty in subsequently making good on such opportunities, is ti really possible or plaucable to expect taht he curriculum can remain unaffected” (252). This focuses on writing because “writing is the work most curical to their earning the degree; the work that most powerfully determines who they are and/or can be in disciplianry and processional terms” (261)
“It was for all practical purposes a brotherhood based on race, citizenship, and class” (22)
Doctorate stuff: in the 1920-40 period it took 7-8 years to get a PhD and english was on the long end --3 years dissertating (38)
The subfeild of english studies “simply gets addes to the list of requirements students need to fulfill. To become ‘one of us,’ students would now also need to demonstrate that they knew how nonunitary that ‘us’ was, and why” (73). “In other words, it would direct them further and further into rhetoric and composition, literary theoyr or early American literatures, but rarely outward toward any broader construction of English Studies as a larger, let along coherent, whole” (88). “Each course followed a particular discursive trajectory, and student writers were expected to conform to it: to run not only parallel to by essential coterminous with it, match up not only formaly but topically and methodologically, too” (129). Calls it the Magisterial tradition.
Rhetoric and composition wasn’t just a 1970s-80s development by even in turn of last century (101). By the end of 1980s around 24 rhetoric programs created a job market for the Phd (54). In 1986 the survey of english doctoral programs Bettina Huber necessitated specifying rhetoric and writing prgrams (N 42) as opposed to literature (N 103).Since teh 1970s for tt jobs decrease in favor of adjuncts--the great Contraction after a great Expansion (58). In 1950s there was a “shortage of fully trained teachers of English...In 1953-1954 only 29 percent of all new teachers had a doctorate; ten years later, this surprising percentage had follen to littl more than 12 percent” ( [a contemporary] Allen qtd 44). “Interest in English peaked in the middle of the 1960s” as share of majors dropped from 7.6% in the 1967-8 year to 3.4 in 1984 (48). Between 1875-1950 the ratio of graduates to positions “never [increased] at a rate that substantially improved the odds that hte new PhDs of any given year could hope to hold one [a graduate faculty position] before the end of their careers” (16)
Describes Albany’s experimental DA program where writing studies is broadly conceived--people write poems about composition history, etc. argues that “every clasroom might be a ‘nexus of discourses’ (163) as response to crisis in the discipline “Consider the cumulative reason: if the graduate faculty are not to replicate themselves, and if the students are not only to be encouraged to prepare thesmelves for a wide range of postdoctoral employment opportuites, but ot be actively aided by the fac (251)ulty in subsequently making good on such opportunities, is ti really possible or plaucable to expect taht he curriculum can remain unaffected” (252). This focuses on writing because “writing is the work most curical to their earning the degree; the work that most powerfully determines who they are and/or can be in disciplianry and processional terms” (261)
“It was for all practical purposes a brotherhood based on race, citizenship, and class” (22)
Doctorate stuff: in the 1920-40 period it took 7-8 years to get a PhD and english was on the long end --3 years dissertating (38)
The subfeild of english studies “simply gets addes to the list of requirements students need to fulfill. To become ‘one of us,’ students would now also need to demonstrate that they knew how nonunitary that ‘us’ was, and why” (73). “In other words, it would direct them further and further into rhetoric and composition, literary theoyr or early American literatures, but rarely outward toward any broader construction of English Studies as a larger, let along coherent, whole” (88). “Each course followed a particular discursive trajectory, and student writers were expected to conform to it: to run not only parallel to by essential coterminous with it, match up not only formaly but topically and methodologically, too” (129). Calls it the Magisterial tradition.
Rhetoric and composition wasn’t just a 1970s-80s development by even in turn of last century (101). By the end of 1980s around 24 rhetoric programs created a job market for the Phd (54). In 1986 the survey of english doctoral programs Bettina Huber necessitated specifying rhetoric and writing prgrams (N 42) as opposed to literature (N 103).Since teh 1970s for tt jobs decrease in favor of adjuncts--the great Contraction after a great Expansion (58). In 1950s there was a “shortage of fully trained teachers of English...In 1953-1954 only 29 percent of all new teachers had a doctorate; ten years later, this surprising percentage had follen to littl more than 12 percent” ( [a contemporary] Allen qtd 44). “Interest in English peaked in the middle of the 1960s” as share of majors dropped from 7.6% in the 1967-8 year to 3.4 in 1984 (48). Between 1875-1950 the ratio of graduates to positions “never [increased] at a rate that substantially improved the odds that hte new PhDs of any given year could hope to hold one [a graduate faculty position] before the end of their careers” (16)
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