how an english department works

I've created a new category called "English Departments." I'm guessing that most people who do not work in an academic environment (and many people who do) have no idea how English departments at colleges and universities work. By "work" I don't mean what time we clock in and out (wait, we get to clock out?), but rather how we are organized, what our responsibilities are, how we get hired, how we are evaluated, etc. This might not make for fascinating reading, but it will provide a good background for helping people understand what it is we do. Why is this background necessary? Because there seem to be many people in the popular media and in the blogosphere who have a vested interest in misrepresenting us. Unless we make an effort to define ourselves accurately, these distorted representations will be the only ones people see. And these distortions can have a serious negative effect when state budgets are negotiated and when the time comes for decisions to be made about the future of, say, the NEA and the NEH.

Now, if you are part of an English department and you want to take part, write your own entry and link back to this one. Topics I've thought of that need covering:

1. Divisions of specializations. (e.g. Rhet/Comp, American Lit, British Lit ... Medieval, Renaissance, Restoration and 18th Century, etc...).
2. The balance of teaching/research/service responsibilities.
3. Promotion and tenure.
4. Academic publishing and peer review.
5. Academic conferences.
6. Course assignments.
7. Graduate student labor.
8. Adjunct labor.
9. Graduate education and preparation for the academic job market.
10. The state of the academic job market.
11. The hiring process.

What I have in mind is a basic, "Here's what you need to know about this" kind of entry for each topic. I'm not going to write about this every day, and I welcome contributions from anyone who wants to take on one of these topics or suggest a new one. I do plan on posting something on the first topic in the next week or so.

they grow up so fast

Well, our boy turns 18 in a little less than a month. Born in a small town in Georgia, he has weathered every one of our family moves (to Atlanta, to D.C., to KC) with admirable aplomb. It's tough when you're a youngster and your parents make all the decisions, especially when those decisions mean leaving behind everything you've known and relocating to new places. I know because that's what my childhood was like. Other 18-year-olds are heading off to college right about now, but not him. He's a cat. We went to the vet today, and it turns out he's lost about a sixth of his body weight. He's also drinking and peeing all the time, but we don't know what's wrong with him. He's not in any pain, and his behavior is otherwise the same. He purrs when you pet him. On Wednesday we should learn the results of the blood test. Fingers crossed. According to a poster at the vet, 18 cat years is equivalent to 88 human years.

american dialogues: be careful with that loaded verb

This is a simple post with a simple point. It's worth highlighting to students that news reports of who said what might appear to be objective, but the words used to describe conversations and disagreements carry a lot of baggage. Consider the nuances of these different verbs:

• acknowledged
• added
• advised
• agreed
• alleged
• answered
• argued
• asserted
• assumed
• assured
• attributed
• believed
• claimed
• confirmed
• contended
• conveyed
• counseled
• denied
• derided
• disagreed
• joked
• lamented
• leaked
• muttered
• noted
• pointed out
• promised
• proved
• purported
• quipped
• reassured
• recounted
• refused
• refuted
• rejected
• responded
• said
• shouted
• stated
• suggested
• theorized
• wrote

metallica: some kind of monster

I recently saw the documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (IMDB). Regular readers of my blog (hello, you two) should know that I have pretty ecumenical music tastes. I used to be a huge fan of heavy metal: Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, the Scorpions, Judas Priest, and a whole bunch of bands you've probably never heard of. However, around the time Metallica first attracted attention in the early 1980s, my tastes had already started moving in other directions. It wasn't until the 1989 song "One" became a hit that I actually heard anything by them. Given the seven-and-a-half minute song's loud/quiet dynamics (I was digging the Pixies at the time) and anti-war stance, I thought they were interesting. I'd listen to subsequent songs that came across my car radio, but I have never bought any of their albums.

Ann Hornaday's review in the Washington Post convinced me that this was a movie I needed to see. I'm a sucker for documentaries, and Monster filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky are known for two previous, critically well-received works: Brother's Keeper (1992) and Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996). I disagree with Hornaday's contention that this is a movie about a band struggling to remain relevant, although this theme is a thread. Rather, in Monster, the filmmakers focus on interpersonal relationships and the frustrations of the creative process. Yes, there are some Spinal Tap moments, but not many, in my opinion.

Like the HBO series The Sopranos, in which the viewer is let in on the thought processes of gangster Tony Soprano through his therapy sessions, Monster allows us to sit in on the sessions that the band, as a group, has with Kansas City therapist and performance coach Phil Towle. The documentary begins in 2001, when the band is about to record a new album. They've just fired their longtime bass player, Jason Newsted because he refused to quit his side project band, Echobrain, saying he needed it as an alternative creative outlet. This kind of clash becomes apparent in other developments in the band's history. Drummer Lars Ulrich and guitarist James Hetfield - both of them dominant personalities, in sharp contrast to the mellow Buddhism of lead guitarist Kirk Hammett - argue in the studio over each other's playing style. At one point, Hetfield expresses unease with the idea of the other band members working on songs while he is out of the studio, saying that he doesn't want to feel like he's just being added to a finished product as an afterthought. Hammett responds with "That's what I've felt like. [pause] For the last twenty years." Years-old conflicts are revisited as former lead guitarist Dave Mustaine (he went on to form Megadeth), kicked out in 1983, comes to a session with Ulrich to discuss what the past two decades have been like for him. "Do I wish you guys had said, 'Dave, you need to go to Alcoholics Anonymous?" he asks. "Yeah, I do."

This kind of candor, and (however unlikely it sounds) the increasing fluency with which these heavy metal musicians are able to discuss how they feel towards each other and work through their disagreements without ultimatums make for a pretty compelling film. A lengthy portion of the film features Ulrich and his gnome-like father, and it's clear that although he's sold about 100 million records by this point, Ulrich still worries about what his father thinks of their new material. Upon hearing a new track, Ulrich senior gives it a thumbs down, and his son looks like he's about to cry. When the band performs at a prison, Hetfield gives a brief, informal talk to the prisoners about anger (the new album will be called St. Anger) and the productive ways of channeling it before admitting that he's nervous and doesn't know what to say; the prisoners in the audience show their support by giving him the classic heavy metal hand gesture. The crew and his fellow bandmembers give him hugs as he comes offstage.

Hetfield goes into rehab to deal with his alcohol abuse, and the other band members (now just Ulrich and Hammett) don't see him for a year and are unclear if he'll still want to be in the band when he comes back. Upon his return, they create music according to a new work ethic: Hetfield needs to leave at 4:00 every day so he can be with his children. Although previously, individual band members were not allowed to comment on each other's role in the band (the drummer couldn't criticize the lyrics, for example, and the singer couldn't criticize the drumming), they now decide that anything goes and each member throws out ideas for song lyrics. Hammett offers "My life style determines my death style," and everyone laughs at what sounds like an odd sentiment. But they listen as Hammett explains some of his Buddhist beliefs, and by the end of the movie we see Hetfield singing that exact line on stage as the camera cuts to Hammett in a pretty subtle edit.

The new album debuts at #1 on the charts when it's released, and Ulrich argues that this proves you can make a harsh, aggressive album through a process that doesn't involve constant conflict and anger. For a musical genre known for its cartoon-like masculine posturing, this is all pretty remarkable stuff. The movie's not perfect - it presents an unrelentingly positive view of the band - but it's definitely interesting, whether you're a fan of heavy metal or not.

new kids on the block

"When the devil came, he was not red. He was chrome, and he said, Come with me." - Wilco, "Hell is Chrome" [listen online]

Wow. While I wasn't paying attention, a bunch of new academic blogs sprang up over the summer months:

• This Academic Life: "Academia als Beruf," or, an occasional record of the various aspects of my life as an academic.
• Bitch Ph.D.
• The Chronicles of Dr. Crazy: Thinking for a living is serious business.
• The Cul de Sac: Living the Burbs, Where the Margin is the Center The Center, the Margin and Everyone wants to live on a road going nowhere.
• Professor Dyke: A Writer and Professor Talks Smack About Writing, Publishing, Teaching, Misadventures on the Tenure Track, and the Perils of Being the Only Single, Non-Student Dyke in Smalltown-Collegeville
• Eudaemonia's Horizon: A light-hearted romp through life, love & philosophy at the bottom of the atmosphere...
• In Favor of Thinking: life in academia, yoga, movies, books, ideas, general rants ...
• Just Tenured: A recently tenured associate professor at Little-Known U rediscovers life in academia and beyond. Is there light at the end of the tenure-tunnel? Where am I going and what am I doing?
• New Kid on the Hallway: Negotiating a new job and a long distance marriage, while trying to avoid the bullies and hang out with the cool kids on the academic playground.
• No Fancy Name: No fancy description. I'm really quite boring, not creative at all. I also can't match my socks.
• Playing School, Irreverently:

I'm not caffeinated enough to have anything to say about all this, yet, but you might find interesting the recent (and perhaps unfinished) conversation about identity and blogging. As Chuck speculates, maybe this time of year encourages such reflections.

american dialogues: i think i have a syllabus

Here you go. Man, it takes longer than you'd think. My course is based mostly on the freshman writing program at the University of Maryland. Further details to follow, as I have time.

american dialogues: let's take it from the top

The first thing I'm going to do, after basic introductions, is introduce them to the concept of rhetoric as the study and practice of the art of persuasion, not the common definition of "empty or insincere speech." [See, for example, the intro to Andy Cline's online Rhetoric Primer, or Jack Lynch's much more brief definition.] We'll go over the importance of audience: writers write for readers. I'll discuss the three divisions of rhetoric identified by Aritostotle, sometimes referred to as deliberative, forensic, and epideictic. [See this section of Aristotle's On Rhetoric.] Our first focus will be on epideictic rhetoric: the rhetoric of praise or blame. [See this section of On Rhetoric.] Praise or blame is something we'll be hearing a lot in the months leading up to the 2004 election, so I figure this is a good place to start. Students will choose a candidate, a campaign proposal, or an event and write (probably as an in-class essay) an encomium, a vituperation, or an apologia for a specific audience of their choice.

not really a good day

Nope. Can't say that it was. Nothing that some single-malt scotch won't fix. I'm sure some readers are pretty glassy-eyed in the face of my posts on teaching composition. I've been thinking of some other, more personal topics about which I might write:

• Catching you up on my trip to Europe and posting the remainder of my digitial photos.
• Sharing with you my unironic love of the criminally under-rated Lynyrd Skynyrd.
• Writing my thoughts about my impending trip to visit family in Georgia.
• Commenting on the genuinely entertaining Some Kind of Monster.

But not right now. Time for comfort food and television...

american dialogues: composition course description

I'm considering using two quotes as epigraphs for the course:

• "Democracy begins in conversation." -philosopher John Dewey
• "Go f--- yourself." -Vice President Dick Cheney

Course Description

The theme of this course is "American Dialogues," and we will focus our attention on political discourse in the contemporary American public sphere. Some fear that American citizens are not well served by the prevailing political discourse, that it is more focused upon butting heads and scoring quick points with the media than it is with thoughtful consideration of the issues. We will use a variety of critical tools to consider the messages of political campaigns, the information published by news outlets, and the commentary provided by a wide range of individuals.

In this course, you will develop your skills as a careful, thoughtful, and effective reader and writer. You will become better at the kinds of reading and writing expected of you as a college student, in your professional career, and as an American citizen. You will learn what it means to identify or construct an issue to write about, to consider and reconsider that issue as you investigate it further, and to craft the best available means of support and expression given your audience and your purpose. You will learn a set of language- and logic-based concepts and a vocabulary of language analysis and rhetorical strategy. As you learn more about how language and persuasion work, and as you learn to recognize and use more features of style and argument, you have a greater range of choices to make in crafting your own writing.

september: national preparedness month?

Hot on the heels of their "most liberal senator" strategy, the Republicans have a new tactic in the wings. I haven't seen many references to this in the blogosphere, (although it looks like they're out there) but Bob Harris, on the This Modern World blog, points out that September will be "National Preparedness Month," and asks some important questions as to the timing. It does seem suspiciously like a Bush-Cheney re-election campaign ploy, funded at taxpayer expense. As he puts it, "It's three years after 9/11, and less than three months before an election, and now we get a National Preparedness Month." So what were the previous 35 months for?

american dialogues

I think I have a name/theme for the composition course: "American Dialogues." In browsing through various political blogs to list for my students this fall, I discovered that Katherine Allen will be contributing to Blog for America, "posting commentary on the politics of language." This might prove interesting, but no details of Allen's background are easily accessible, aside from the explanation that she works for the Rockridge Institute. Anyone know?

In her first post, Allen references two potentially useful sources: both Deborah Tannen's article "Let Them Eat Words" and the book Moral Politics by George Lakoff. (Update: Excerpt from Lakoff's book.)

The following is a preliminary list of blogs in no particular order (I'm sure it will grow). Thanks to everyone who has made suggestions. Keep 'em coming, if you have more.

• Rachel Lucas
• Daily Kos
• Fafblog
• Political Animal
• The Gadflyer
• This Modern World
• Outside the Beltway
• Official Kerry-Edward Blog
• Bush-Cheney Official Blog
• Little Green Footballs
• Crooked Timber
• Blog for America
• Instapundit
• Andrew Sullivan
• Talking Points Memo
• Wonkette
• Brad DeLong
• Noam Chomsky
• Aaron Schwartz
• The Volokh Conspiracy
• Lawrence Lessig
• Media Matters
• Atrios

More on media critique sites and sources in a later post. I'll certainly point students to Andy Cline.

fall 2004 composition: request for suggestions

Because I have to put this course together rather quickly, I could use your help, gentle reader:

• What readings on blogs and blogging should I assign?
• What political blogs (of all stripes) should students be encouraged to read?
• What critiques of the media should they read and/or view?
• What online archives of campaign rhetoric (in word or image, still or moving) should they visit?

I am after sources of information that reflect a range of political positions.

And while I'm discussing rhetoric and composition, check out today's post from Calamity Jane on using episodes from Law and Order in the classroom to help students understand argumentation.

tannen on "argument culture"

I started reading Deborah Tannen's Argument Culture (Booksense) today because I am considering using it for my election-themed composition course this fall. Tannen's view of the contemporary state of argument and debate is strikingly different than that of Gerald Graff, who basically advocates acknowledging and even embracing conflict. (Granted, these are pretty different projects: one on academia and the other on public discourse.) Tannen, by contrast, questions the prevalence of argumentative conflict to begin with, asking if it sometimes gets in the way of real understanding and, importantly for my purposes, the democratic process. At the end of her first chapter, she writes

Philospher John Dewey said, on his ninetieth birthday, 'Democracy begins in conversation.' I fear that it gets derailed in polarized debate.

In conversation we form the interpersonal ties that bind individuals together in personal relationships; in public discourse, we form similar ties on a larger scale, binding individuals into a community. In conversation, we exchange the many types of information we need to live our lives as members of a community. In public discourse, we exchange the information that citizens in a democracy need in order to decide how to vote. If public discourse provides entertainment first and foremost - and if entertainment is first and foremost watching fights - then citizens do not get the information they need to make meaningful use of their right to vote.

Of course it is the responsibility of intellectuals to explore potential weaknesses in others' arguments, and of journalists to represent serious opposition when it exists. But when opposition becomes the overwhelming avenue of inquiry - a formula that requires another side to be found or a criticism to be voiced; when the lust for opposition privileges extreme views and obscures complexity; when our eagerness to find weaknesses blinds us to strengths; when the atmosphere of animosity precludes respect and poisons our relations with one another; then the argument culture is doing more damage than good.

I offer this book not as a frontal assault on the argument culture. That would be in the spirit of attack that I am questioning. It is an attempt to examine the argument culture - our use of attack, opposition, and debate in public discourse - to ask, What are its limits as well as its strengths? How has it served us well, but also how has it failed us? How is it related to culture and gender? What other options do we have?

...There are times when we need to disagree, criticize, oppose, and attack - to hold debates and view issues as polarized battles. Even cooperation, after all, is not the absence of conflict but a means of managing conflict. My goal is not a make-nice false veneer of agreement or a dangerous ignoring of true opposition. I'm questioning the automatic use of adversarial formats - the assumption that it's always best to address problems and issues by fighting over them. I'm hoping for a broader repertoire of ways to talk to each other and address issues vital to us (25-26).

I hope to finish this book in the next day or so, but I'm already leaning towards using it.

how to disagree

Hey, you! Yes, you! Non-academic reader. This post is for you as well as my academic readers. What are your thoughts? Apropos of my previous post (and future ones), I like these paragraphs on the gap between scholars in academia and the general public from Gerald Graff's Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education:

Part of the problem lies ... in the peculiar difficulty of representing intellectual developments in the press. A vulgarized version of a theory or critical approach is inevitably easier to describe in the confines of a brief news article than the best, most sophisticated version of the theory or approach. A doctrinaire assault on 'dead white males' can be easily summearized in a column inch or two, whereas it would take many pages to describe intellectual movements that are complex, diverse, and rife with internal conflicts. Glib falsifications can always be produced at a faster rate than their refutations.

Then, too, few readers of the popular press are in a position to recognize misrepresentations of academic practices, a fact that relieves anyone who wants to debunk these practices of the responsibility to do their homework. So feminism, multiculturalism, and deconstructionism are understood not as a complicated and internally conflicted set of inquiries and arguments about the cultural role of gender, ethnicity, language, and thought but as a monolithic doctrine that insists, as D'Souza formulates it, 'that texts be selected primarily or exclusively according to the author's race, gender, or sexual preference and that the Western tradition be exposed in the classroom as hopelessly bigoted and oppressive in every way' ['Illiberal Education,' Atlantic 267.3 (March 1991): 52] ... [A]nyone who takes these views to be typical of academic revisionist thinking simply knows nothing of the reality...

There is still another reason why myths about the academy have flourished, however, and this is one for which the academy has itself to blame. Academics have given journalists and others little help in understanding the more difficult forms of academic work. As this work has become increasingly complex and as it increasingly challenges conventionally accepted forms of thinking, the university acquires an obligation to do a more efective job of popularization. Yet the university has been disastrously inept in this crucial popularizing task and often disdains it as beneath its dignity. If the university has become easy prey for ignorant or malicious misrepresentations, it has asked for them. Having treated mere image making as beneath its dignity, the academy has left it to its detractors to construct its public image for it. (34-35)

Well, I'm not sure I agree with the characterization of the academy as arrogant in those last few lines, but it's true that if we largely ignore the image that the public has of what we do, we allow those who don't like what they think we do to take control of that image.

fall 2004 courses, revisited

Posting in a hurry: Okay, I'm not teaching a course on the eighteenth-century novel. Rather, I'm teaching the second of our composition courses. Like Chuck, I'd like to design an election-themed course, and I would also like to incorporate some student blogging. I'm thinking of using linguist Deborah Tannen's book Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue. (Booksense) My training in teaching composition is mostly in rhetoric with a smidgen of linguistics (thanks to Linda Coleman and Jeanne Fahnestock). Thus, I do not intend to offer expertise on politics or policy issues because my knowledge of these things is no greater than the average citizen's. Instead I will focus students' attention on the discourse of the campaigns, the news outlets, and the various commentators, and I will provide students with a variety of critical tools for analyzing that discourse. My own take (not particularly original or especiallly insightful, I'll admit) is that American citizens are not well served by the prevailing political discourse, which is more focused upon scoring quick points with the media than it is with thoughtful consideration of the issues.

• Does it have to be this way?
• Can we understand how this situation came to pass?
• What might we do to remedy the situation?

I welcome all input for planning this course. And, although I'm still not sure about this idea, can anyone suggest some election-themed fiction? Works do not have to be contemporary.

open letter to stephen metcalf

Dear Stephen,

Well, I just read your hatchet job thought provoking essay on Wilco, and I have an uncanny coincidence to report.

You write, "To a listener accustomed to the Minutemen, Wilco sounds like Hootie and the Blowfish." Wow, I was going to write something very similar, but with a few slight differences: "Listeners accustomed to the Minutemen should try listening to some music that has come out since the Minutemen stopped recording music twenty years ago." See? Uncanny, I tell you.

Your essay is the most brilliant thing I've read since that 1984 piece complaining that the Minutemen's Double Nickles on the Dime didn't measure up to the Beatles' 1964 album Meet the Beatles. Or that article that appeared in 1964 complaining that the Beatles didn't sound enough like Sinatra.

Keep up the good work of staying two decades behind the times! Oh, and you might want to send a memo to guitarist Nels Cline: you see, recently he's worked with both Wilco and the Minutemen's Mike Watt. He probably doesn't know that rock critics like you would frown on actual musicians failing to recognize the distinctions of cool that you work so hard to establish. Just a thought.

Sincerely,

George Williams