English studies stands on the cusp of significant changes. For nearly two decades there has been talk of a “crisis” in the discipline. It begins, I suppose, with a questioning of the literary canon of “dead white guys,” moves through the implications of postmodern philosophy and the appearance of personal computing and onto the contemporary demand for “professionalizing” rather than humanistic education. Literary study as most of us experienced it in high school and/or college became part of the English discipline at the beginning of the twentieth century. As such, it was a response to industrialization. On the one hand, literary study was enabled by the publishing industry and answered the demand for a more literate workforce. On the other hand, literary study was viewed as a way of insulating humans from the often mechanistic culture of the industrial age. Of course now we are in the post-industrial, information age. And just as the industrial economy allowed for book publishing and demanded readers of texts, the information economy allows for new media production and requires users of multimedia. How will English Studies respond to this cultural change in literacy?

Perhaps this is the best way of understanding this disciplinary “crisis.” Many academics, being a generally conservative group (not politically but culturally), would prefer to do nothing. They might feel confident that reading literature will always be part of a college education. I’m sure that philosophers felt the same way about their discipline 50 years ago, and now philosophy departments are disappearing or significantly retooling, especially at smaller schools. The same is true of high school English teachers, or at least the ones that I deal with. At Cortland we have many prospective English teachers as undergrads and young teachers returning to get their graduate degrees. I teach these students about technology (which is now a required part of their program as mandated by the state). In general these students are often resistant and unhappy with the idea that the profession they seek to enter will likely change dramatically during their career. I don’t know what to do about such conservatism, though I do sympathize. Despite the fact that I teach new media, I am not a technophile, a technology standard-bearer. Instead, I chose this course because I believe it is important for English Studies to develop a critical engagement with new media, to meet it on its own terms, and help to shape new media literacy, just as we shaped print literacy in the 20th century. As such, one of the threads in this blog will record my thoughts about this issue. This issue forms an underlying context for my book project, though the book itself is examining more specific issues. I’ll be posting to the blog as a way of trying to account for my thinking of this big picture as a move through the writing of the book.

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