Finding hope in the humanities

College Literature, Fall 2001 by McCormick, Kathleen

Berube, Michael. 1997. The Employment of English: Theory, Jobs, and the Future of Literary Study. New York: New York University Press. $55.00 hc. $19.50 sc. x 259 pp.

Kernan, Alvin, ed. 1997. What's Happened to the Humanities? Princeton: Princeton University Press. $35.00 hc. viii 267 pp.

Scholes, Robert. 1998. The Rise and Fall of English. New Haven: Yale University Press. $25.00 hc. $10.95 sc. xiv 203 pp.

Reading these three books juxtaposed with each other-rather than reading any one of them alone-can help us to envision what the profession of English could do to redefine itself to a public with varying degrees of hostility, nostalgia, misinformation, disinterest, and hope. All the books are united in their desire to redefine, not only for the academy, but for the larger public, the content, methods, and boundaries of the discipline of English. It would be expected that they would differ somewhat markedly in their understanding of the problems within the discipline and their sense of possible solutions. But what is perhaps most revealing of the tensions within the humanities today are the differences in the ways these three books represent both the discipline and their proposals for it. It is, therefore, on the rhetoric of their representations that much of this review will focus since, I believe, such a form of textual analysis will help to render most vividly the power struggles and the politics of the profession that are inhibiting it from taking a stronger leadership role in both higher education and in the schools.

Michael Berube's The Employment of English: Theory,Jobs, and the Future of Literary Studies brings together some loosely connected essays: he argues passionately, though not particularly originally, for ending the tensions between literary and cultural studies; he analyzes employment in the academy, from the exploitation of graduate and part time teachers to the self-destructive excess of Ph.D.s the profession is producing; in the second half of the book he explores various potential relationships that could develop between the literary and the political sphere, including advocacy in the classroom, and the role of the "public intellectual" both writing and speaking in academic and non-academic forums.

While The Employment of English has been highly touted for its wit and passion, I have to admit to finding somewhat glib its asserting, particularly in the first half, a variety of undeveloped suggestions on such admittedly important topics as making cultural studies central in introductory courses and in non-elite institutions (21), proposing that the MLA "investigate deceptive hiring practices" (71), and advocating that faculty create "meaningful forms of internal faculty review" in order to "prune departments of genuine deadwood" (77). All of these ideas address significant issues, but for any of them to work seriously would require a significant overhauling of many institutional relationships, including those among elite and non-elite institutions, the MLA and English departments across the country, and relationships between department members, chairs, and deans. That Berube addresses none of the necessary particulars of implementation is disappointing, because it is only in material details that change can genuinely occur. And I would have liked to see this book more directly work to inspire the changes it so obviously wants to occur.

But beyond the glibness, there is another more serious problem in The Employment of English which Berube does not resolve, or perhaps even acknowledge. The book moves in two contradictory directions. On the one hand, Berube is willing to envisage fairly radical revisions of the way English is practiced today, particularly in prestigious research institutions. The example I will use to illustrate this is what I think is his book's most important idea: his suggestion that English faculty at the university level develop a much closer relationship with teachers in the schools and that they encourage their students to become school teachers. On the other hand, Berube frequently speaks from a position of elitism, as one struggling to hold on to the dominant ways of the profession as he has known them. This can be seen most consistently in his disparaging representation of the teaching of writing.

Berube argues that one way of solving the glut of Ph.D.s on the market and also "dramatically expanding our potential public constituency" is to strengthen the connections between the M.A. in English and high school teaching. He understands that for this to happen, the academy will have to change its representation of teaching in the schools-"in my experience, suggesting to students that they might teach in secondary schools has been a little like nominating one's colleagues for early retirement" (84). Berube argues convincingly to his readers and his students that "some opportunities in high school teaching can offer greater professional autonomy, more substantial intellectual rewards, and better pay than teaching at the college level" (85). Later in the book, he expands this suggestion to include developing relations with the K-12 system (167).