Two oddly paired articles on Inside HigherEd, Soltan’s No Field, No Future and Jaschik’s Don’t Know Much About History. The former laments English’s potential, post-disciplinary future; the latter reports a private, for-profit university’s recent decision to eliminate its majors in English and history. In the latter, it’s noted that the "problem" with liberal arts is that it does not directly prepare students for jobs. A familiar lament and one not without merit while simultaneously overlooking the potential value of an English degree.

Soltan’s argument is also familiar. She essentially defines English as the study of the aesthetic qualities of literary texts. She emphasizes the importance of a "direct experience" with the text as a means for encountering "the complex truths literature discloses." Along the way, she asserts that historical and cultural analysis muddy the primary task of aesthetic investigation and weaken disciplinary identity.  She also contends that a focus on politics and materiality leads the discipline away from "great" literary works, which may not deal with such issues, to works of lesser aesthetic but more political-cultural relevance. Finally, she notes that while the discipline is willing to settle for analysis of more simplistic (even popular) culture, it settles on unnecessarily dense theory that only serves to obfuscate the direct experience she values.

In short, this is the New Critical argument redux and fifty years later. It is interesting though for the basic argument here. In order for English to have a future, it must have a clearly defined field. What has followed on New Criticism in English has been the emergence of theories and methods that do not come distincly and solely from literary studies: "theory," cultural studies, rhetoric and composition, etc. In the anxiety of a disappearing discipline, heightened by news such as that in the paired article, Soltan turns to the only available existing model for a strictly disciplinary literary identity, New Criticism.
 

Soltan’s argument is a reactionary response to the fears of post-disciplinary weightlessness. She argues that a lack of a field makes English prey for downsizing. So what happens if you have a field? As I understand her position, you can say a medievalist historian is different from a medievalist art historian who is different from a medievalist literary critic: the positions cannot be collapsed. Ok, fair enough. I just don’t think anyone (in Administration) cares. Maybe at a research university, but not a comprehensive college like mine.

It’s not enough to have a "field." You need more. Most people will agree that an "experience" with literature is an important part of college education. No one, not even the president of Pace University, which is shutting down its English major, is getting rid of general education courses. Even a school like DeVry requires courses in humanities. However, a discipline requires majors to survive. And in order to have majors, students have to be able to imagine how their studies will propel them into some future.

Now in our department, the preponderance of students are preparing to be high school teachers, so they can imagine a relationship between studying literature and a career. However, that’s a very narrowly defined career path. It’s actually much like the kind of professionalizing degree programs that often cause concern among humanists.

I have no issue with studying aesthetics. I think its a good idea. I also think it would be fairly naive to imagine that aesthetics are simply a "natural" experience without cultural, historical, and ideological dimensions. It would be downright ignorant to not recognize that reading is a mediated experience. However I do think that the brand of English Soltan values lacks the critical tools to study aesthetics in this manner.

I also agree that contemporary literary studies has made a mess with theory, that it became a means for asserting disciplinary elitism. I don’t think that a reason to drop the whole matter. Instead it’s a reason to return with more care to these matters. We have to give more thought to how we want to engage the political. Whatever our commitments or concerns, without students in the classroom, nothing is happening.

No answers. However, as some commenters on Soltan’s post already noted, there’s no mention of rhetoric in her essay. Her notion of disciplinary history is myopic in its failure to recognize English’s rhetorical past. My idea of a disciplinary future with a field is one that combines rhetoric, aesthetic analysis, and cultural theory. I think the result could be a field that would continue the traditions of English literary criticism while connecting those traditions to understanding culture more broadly and figuring out how these lessons contribute to achieving rhetorical purposes.

Of course, doing so would mean redefining roles in the department: faculty size isn’t getting any bigger so faculty’s jobs would change.

And I think that’s what we’re really talking about.