In the previous post on the MLA/Teagle report, Amanda Huggenkiss has a comment that opens an issue wide enough to merit a separate post. (Nice pseudonym, Amanda, and ambiguous: Should we place “I am” or “I want” in front of it?) In addressing the loss of “degree share” by English over the years, she notes blankly that there are now “a LOT” more majors to choose from today than 30 years ago.

Yes, indeed, she’s right, and it pushes the issue ahead to the ways in which English professors and administrators have responded to the change. In marketplace terms, English now occupies a more populous and competitive environment. Forty years ago, we might say, English was the flagship department of the liberal arts. No college could claim excellence without an excellent English department to shore it up. Today, English departments have only one serious college-wide standing: freshman composition.

Now, when we look at the most prominent declarations about English departments over the years, the terms that stand out are not the old groundings of “literary history” and “literary criticism” and “literary language.” Instead, they are “theory and interpretation,” various “studies” (cultural, gender, postcolonial, ethnic, sexual, etc.), and, most recently, “media literacy.”

These trends and turns have been cast as important breakthroughs and innovations, an intellectual advance. But think for a moment about what those endeavors entail in the campus marketplace in which resources are more or less scarce, departments must compete for personnel and funds, and student interest has declined (see the MLA/Teagle document).

What might a dean say when an English department chairman meets to discuss next year’s needs?

“So, what’s been doing?” the dean opens.

“Well,” English replies, “we’ve got some fantastic scholarship and research coming out this year by our faculty.” Descriptions of cutting-edge labors in precisely those areas listed above (sexualities, race, media . . .) follow.

“Sounds great,” says the dean, “but how about enrollments?”

“Well, we’re down, and that’s why it’s important for English to replace our two losses this year, one retirement and one colleague taking another job, with a tenured line and a tenure-track line.”

“I don’t get it. If you don’t have packed classrooms, why do you need more faculty?”

“Because,” the chair explains, “if you want the English department at Campus U to remain strong and reputable, we need productive scholars.”

“But,” the dean smiles — and here comes the kicker — “the scholarship you’ve just described sounds to me to be pretty interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary, and much of it seems like it belongs more in the social sciences or in the many studies programs we have on campus.”

“My faculty are experts in these fields, Dean X,” the chair assures.

“Of course, of course,” he nods. “But it’s a relative thing, right? I’ve got women’s studies, political science, sociology, and 10 other departments asking me for lines in similar topic areas, and I’ve only got so many to give. I can’t give you a line for a gender-and-sexuality expert and then tell women’s studies that they can’t have one. I can’t give you a media theorist and tell Film/TV/Media studies that they’re out of luck.”

The question goes unanswered: Why should English get support for expertises that are equally or more relevant to other departments? One can see foreign languages branching out into broader culture categories grounded in foreign societies and nations with some success, but not English.

Maybe the chair leaves with one entry-level post to fill, or maybe a one-year visiting position.

Is this a realistic scenario? For some, probably, and not for others. But I think it points out an unfortunate divergence in the intradisciplinary and the cross-campus import of trends in English over the years. What has been favored within the fields as innovative and broadening and mind-opening, has turned out to hurt the standing of those fields in other parts of the campus, including the administration building where decisions are made and rival demands adjudicated. In not foregrounding literary history, literary language, and literary interpretation in its representations of what it does, English lost its distinctiveness, and hence its claim upon resources.

This is one context in which the MLA/Teagle insistence upon literature as the center of English should be understood. It does not exclude non-literary materials and approaches, but only places them in a secondary position. In the primary position stands an activity that no other departments carry out, namely, the slow reading of great works of English-language literature.