Barthelme’s Departure Leaves the ‘Mississippi Review’ in Limbo

There is much more here than meets the eyes. Barthelme was axed by the administration because he ran the magazine and the creative writing program in the best way possible, too professionally and productively for the department and the dean. Moser, the interim chair, was installed after the dean put the department into receivership, a move made with the approval of a small minority of faculty unhappy with the developing majority and the direction of the department. Dean and minority of faculty seem to want the writing program smaller and subordinate to the literature program, which has been unimpressive for several decades. Two thirds of all grad hours are taken by creative writing students, and 60-70% of grads are creative writing. The program has become too successful, drawing students from much better universities who travel to Mississippi to study with Barthelme and others in the creative writing program. It would appear that administrators there, particularly the dean of liberal arts, are well out of their depth.

True dat, Mr. Moo. It is even harder to believe when it’s happening to you. I have been “a fully engaged citizen” of this English Dept for 24 years, Angela Ball for 30 years, my brother Frederick, 33 years. We did not start this.And it is not a “conflict between the literature faculty and the creative writing faculty.” We have strong, mutually admiring relations with much of the lit faculty. This is a conflict between us and the Dean, who is allied with three or four unhappy literature professors. The major departmental quarrel this past year was an attempt by these same three or four people to deny tenure–effectively, fire–one of the most valuable junior faculty members, a literature professor in multiethnic and postcolonial literature whose contributions in a number of areas far outstrip those of many of our senior faculty. She’s also roundly regarded as a wonderful teacher; graduate students literally glow in talking about her classes. The creative writing faculty felt this bright young woman was being done a grave injustice, and did not want to lose her. We, alongside other lit faculty and many others, fought on this, successfully I’m happy to report. It didn’t make those three or four people happy, though.As to prestige, who can say? In the last survey on graduate programs where ours was included (1997), we ranked 30th out of 94 listed–the 10% figure came from our understanding that there were about 300 programs total, with only 94 being ranked (the AWP says that there are currently 334, and that in 1994 there were 232; using 232 would make it 12.9%). In that survey, USM’s Center for Writers was ranked tied with the University of Texas-Austin and ahead of Ohio State, Rutgers, USC, Illinois Urbana-Champaign and some sixty other schools. USM is a fine, fine university, but only a few of our programs are tied with those at Texas or ahead of Urbana-Champaign. Thus we have been proud of it.Basically what has happened here is that they had, as Julia Johnson said, “a nationally recognized program.” They had a guy leading it who could legitimately command a salary in the $100-150,000 area, working very hard, for about $ 45,000. He wanted to continue. They fired him, said it was a economy move. Then they fired the program’s enormously effective half-time administrative assistant who had been making about 20, perhaps because she was allied with him. Now they are talking about trying to replace these two folk, with three people, at a cost this year of about $ 75,000 and next year about $ 135,000. It’s an economy move, you see. Forgive us if after years of bringing to Hattiesburg, MS, first-rate graduate students from Hopkins, Hollins, Madison, Columbia, Cornell, St. Johns and similar, we cast around, bewildered, trying to fathom the motivation for these hugely destructive actions by a few people in power, and if when one of them suggests in conversation with one of us that we are a “parasite,” we think that’s a clue. Perhaps we’re wrong.I’d be curious to know why Mr. Moo is so interested in all this and for that matter, who he is.

RE: #3 Above: “it’s creative writers, who want a job teaching in a university but don’t want to have to do any scholarship” I’m afraid it’s the other way around. While graduate students in CrW are required to take the same types of courses as traditional literary theory students and produce the same level of of academic scholarship (though most often evaluated more critically due to instructor bias), we ALSO produce original works of literature of our own. Some of us, whole novels and more in the course of our graduate study. We, essentially, do twice the work of most lit students. With all due respect to my lit friends at the University of Florida (and the handful of you I know at USM), it has become more and more taxing dealing with this prejudice against creativity. While at Florida, I completed 48 hours of coursework in graduate level English seminars while my literature counterparts only 30 hours (for the MA) and 21 hours (for the PhD). Additionally, I completed one novel (my graduating thesis), and roughly one-third of a second (still underway). All of this, and I finished with a 4.0 GPA from a top-tier major research university ranked recently #11 in the nation for my particular field of study. Many of us also have an affection for scholarly pursuits as well. Many of my colleagues at Florida matriculated on toward PhD’s in literary theory there. I, myself, was asked to stay on for the PhD by two different literature professors with whom I studied there. Each, in turn, wanted to personally work with me through ideas I had for book-length scholarly projects. This, I declined, for reasons so utterly foolish I am embarrassed to even think of such an idiotic atrocity. I have considered returning, but have already received an offer of full time employ. I was only allowed to accomplish any and all of these things because I attended the Center for Writers program under Frederick and Steven Barthelme. They guided me through the process of graduate study and pointed me forward. Through their instruction and recommendations, and in spite of a deliberate attempt to sabotage my matriculation (by one of the few unhappy professors mentioned above), I moved forward. For this, I thank and praise the efforts of Steven and Frederick Barthelme and the Center for Writers they built. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you for everything.

“But sometimes it’s creative writers, who want a job teaching in a university but don’t want to have to do any scholarship…who are the ones who start these conflicts.”Maybe sometimes it is, though personally I can’t imagine it being true. I can’t imagine any publishing writer being able to write without profound knowledge of literature written by, of course, creative writers. Which is really what all literature is. Additionally, creative writers are held to the same publish-or-perish reality as their literature counterparts. Just because they’re creating literature most of the time doesn’t mean they aren’t studying it. Indeed, they must study literature extensively to understand where today’s writers of literature fit. The Center for Writers PRIDED itself on having readings classes next to the writing classes, and as a former student, I can say these were among the most difficult, interesting, and relevant classes that I took in the English Department. This isn’t to say my literature classes weren’t interesting and relevant — they were — but to make some kind of distinction as to which is REAL seems ridiculous to me and indicative of a poorly-informed attitude.While I was a student at the Center for Writers, I had the great fortune of studying with Rick & Steve Barthelme and with Julia Johnson. All three of them were the most knowledgeable teachers I’d ever had. Period. They knew the history of literature, they knew what had been said about the literature, and they contributed to that literature.I know this is a little beside the point of what’s happening at USM, but I felt the need to defend professors that are arguably the most scholarly I’ve ever had.

Hi Steve,I just wanted to weigh in briefly, as my name was mentioned by another poster, and then you picked up this question of CW rankings in your own post. I have little substantive opinion on the larger question of how the Center is being treated/treated with by the USM brass, as I haven’t tracked the details across the many media reports and contentious comment-fields addressing the issue. I think I was mentioned here solely as to the entirely ancillary issue of USM’s national reputation in the field of creative writing. I’d noted, on another website, that it seemed the media was hanging its hat — as to this story being newsworthy, but also as to this story being a particularly tragic one — in part on USM’s own representations re: being among the top 10% of creative writing programs in the United States.In the interest of goodwill, I’d note — and suggest to you — an even better (but also far more accurate) way for USM to market itself to prospective applicants: As far as I can tell, in 1996 U.S. News and World Report ranked USM first (literally number one) nationally among those programs with a CW MA/PhD track but no MFA. JHU (#2 in 1996) had an MA but no CW Ph.D. at the time; Utah (#16) had an MFA and a Ph.D.; and UC Davis (t-#30) had an MA but no CW Ph.D. The other programs inside the top 30 were (to my knowledge) all MFA programs at the time.Besides the fact that it is based on data collected nearly a decade and a half ago, but is worded as though it is based on current consensus (USNWR simply reprinted its collected-in-1996 data in 2001 and 2003), the problem with USM’s present representation regarding its national standing — which I care about, despite it being such an esoteric matter, because I’ve tried to be an activist for CW applicants in ensuring that they get the most accurate information possible from both the media and programs themselves — is that in 1994 AWP acknowledged 232 CW programs (MA, MFA, and Ph.D. combined), but 60% of these (139) were actually in the first of these three categories, non-terminal academic Master’s degrees in English with the mere option of a creative dissertation. Putting aside whether these are actually “creative writing” degrees or “English” degrees — the diplomas suggest the latter, as does the lack of terminality (a CW Master’s would by definition be a terminal degree) — the real problem is that it does not appear USNWR included anything like 139 academic MA programs in its survey (i.e. the questionnaire it sent to graduate creative writing faculties around the country). While it’s true some programs (like JHU and Temple) have evolved from an MA to an MFA since 1994, looking at the 1996 rankings now (and USM is certainly advertising itself now based on the options applicants actually have now) only 4 of the 94, or 4.25%, of the programs ranked by USNWR 16 years ago (specifically: UC-Davis, Kansas State, Michigan State, and Miami [OH]) are of that category of programs that in fact made up 60% of the pool in 1994 — universities with so-called “CW MA” programs but no MFA or Ph.D. in Creative Writing (one program, New College of California, appears to no longer exist). That such programs were 1400% (1400%, not 140%) more likely to exist in 1994 than to appear in the USNWR rankings of that year suggests that USNWR did what the current Poets & Writers MFA rankings do — admit into the national rankings only that small subset of “CW MA” programs which are treated, by applicants, as being on par with MFA programs in popularity and reputation if not terminality and curriculum. Presently there are only two programs in this category: UC-Davis (same as in 1994) and Western Washington University. Kansas State, a holdover from 1994, falls just below the threshold for inclusion in the current “official” rankings for the field. (There’s currently no formal ranking of doctoral CW programs like USM because there’s been no growth in the popularity of this degree — as AWP’s 2009 annual report attests — in the past 15 years; consequently, there’s too little data to work with at present to identify and publish an identifiable consensus.)Rankings are in no way a final or determinative statement on program quality — I mention all this only in the interest of furthering truth-in-advertising in the field, not because I have a personal opinion on USM or in any way doubt, whatsoever, all the glowing things current and recent students and current and recent faculty have been saying about it lately. But the one thing we cannot say in good faith is that the program is ranked in the top 10% of creative writing programs nationally — much else can be said, but not that. Not unless you want (and I know you do not) aspiring poets and writers to come to Hattiesburg only to discover, one or two years into their five-year CW MA/Ph.D. program, that at least one important factor in their matriculation decision (prompted by the program’s own promotional materials) turned out to be based on bad (not to mention extremely old) information.I expect the next formal ranking of CW Ph.D. programs to appear in print in 2011 — I’ve had no formal assurance of this whatsoever from anyone, it’s simply what I expect will likely happen, based on the status of data-gathering regarding these programs. At present, the still-incomplete data on my website, The Suburban Ecstasies, would put USM in the bottom 50% of CW doctoral programs in the U.S. (as noted on TSE, which offers the most comprehensive listing of CW doctoral programs of any website in the world, there are 94 such doctorates in the U.S., Canada, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Republic of Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand; however, the current rankings project really only looks at U.S. programs, so USM’s present #19 ranking [in a five-way tie] out of 35 programs is representative of what can be expected in any formal 2011 ranking, whether or not this exact figure holds steady in the next twelve months). It’s worth noting that the current rankings, however incomplete they may be, are based on applicant opinions, not my own opinions. The same is true for all of the current P&W rankings — none of them are “mine.”Again, I haven’t followed the real issue here — the fate of creative writing at USM in light of recent developments — but for me the longer-term cause of transparency, comprehensiveness, and accuracy in graduate creative writing program promotional materials (again, however esoteric an issue for non-applicants) remains important whatever the ephemera of the day may be.Best wishes,Seth Abramson

Hi Jason,Thanks for the comment. I don’t want to hijack this thread too much — as the thread is ultimately about an important subject I know many people, including myself, care deeply about (the future health of graduate creative writing programs specifically and generally) — so I’ll just say that the rankings published in Poets & Writers both last year and this year explicitly identified themselves as “unscientific but probative.” This year I also used the word “imperfect.” And of course they are — scientific rankings of creative writing programs are impossible, not even (necessarily) for the reasons you’d think, but because well over half of the nation’s full-residency MFA programs have thus far refused to release internal funding and admissions data to the public. This is data the programs have at their fingertips at all times — you can only imagine how inaccessible the sort of data you’re referring to, which is even more esoteric and labor-intensive, would be to an industry nonprofit like AWP, let alone an independent nonprofit like Poets & Writers. So we’re in agreement 100% — in an ideal world, i.e. in a world of little relevance to us because it cannot and will not exist in our lifetimes, currently non-extant and/or unavailable data wouldbe used to rank programs.This is only the briefest answer to your question — the full answer would run pages. For instance, there seems to be some confusion, in your post, about the difference between the current rankings of full-residency MFA programs (which are by definition non-marketable, non-professional degrees where “placement” as to full-time employment is not necessarily a probative assessment measure) and rankings of doctoral programs, which are professional degrees often measured (for instance by the NRC) partly on the basis of their job placement stats. As to gathering data on alumni publication — Lord, where to start. The data doesn’t exist presently, there’s no mechanism to gather it, the programs would refuse to release it if it existed (like everything else they worry might reflect poorly on them), there’s no effective way to adjust for program size, there’s no conceivable methodology which would allow us to distinguish between, say, the Cornell fiction grad who publishes a novel with Knopf seven years after graduation and the Irvine poetry grad who publishes a poetry chapbook with a small independent press six months after graduation. Again, in a fanciful world of absolute perfection, we’d have a way to do this. We don’t. So instead programs are ranked and catalogued on the basis of the data we do have: total funding, annual funding, selectivity, fellowship/residency placement, teaching load, cost of living, curriculum type, CGSR compliance, duration, cohort size, popularity-in-genre, overall popularity, &c &c. It’s the best we can do — and to the extent all this data collection prompts programs to be more honest about who they are and what they offer (and it does), it’s probably one reason hundreds if not thousands of applicants have expressed their delight in having this sort of information available to them since 2007. But you’re right — the doctoral rankings, when released, will have to be slightly more complex than they are now, and if job placement can be taken into account (likely department-wide, as most programs won’t release CW-specific data), it will be. But I don’t think anyone here or elsewhere is disagreeing that — as we speak this very instant — USM’s reputation is not accurately reflected by its 1996 ranking, nor by USM’s 2010 recitation of where it stood in the field 14 years ago.But I agree — this has nothing (directly) to do with USM’s actual program on a substantive level. I haven’t made one substantive comment about the program itself and don’t plan to; I’ve only heard good things, in any case. My point had only to do with how programs advertise themselves. As to the current scandal, I can only say that my heart is with all current and former USM students, who I know have been deeply saddened by all this.Best of luck to you, Jason,Be well,Seth

Reading news about Rick made me feel sad about my alma mater. In Hattiesburg American, one administrator said said she didn’t understand what Center for Writers was. With this understanding, no wonder the CW had to be ruined. Center for Writers means a place to nurture writers who will someday write a significant literary work. In fact, all literature professors teach literature produced by creative writers.The USM Center for Writers has been a wonderful place for creative writers, and I feel proud to be a PhD grad over there. Though I never studied with Rick, but I highly respected him. Let him go means let the CW go. If using the budget cut as a reason to terminate Rick’s contract, that is too harsh a decision. For a long run, this decision will finally hurt USM.With the info I got from nespaper reports, I feel Rick has already helped USM to move forward through his phased retirment under the persuasion of the former dean, but now the present dean wanted to turn all this around and said Rick voluntarily went to phased retirement. This kind of administration style will finally catch her.Best wishes for Rick and Rie and all professors I know there.Itta

This is a sad situation.–Seth, I like your points, but got a little lost about Kansas State.I graduated from their MA program (officially, English: creative writing track) a couple of years ago. What subset were they in? Or still assessed as part of?

Hi Clinfor,One structural element of the current ranking system is assessment of the frequency with which an individual program shows up on current applicants’ application lists. In the terminal-degree (i.e. MFA/CW Ph.D.) applicant community, most MA programs do not appear on applicants’ lists, likely because these applicants are looking for terminal degree programs. A couple MA programs (Davis and WWU) are popular enough even in the MFA applicant community that they “register” on that portion of the current rankings system that measures how frequently a program shows up on application lists (e.g., we’ll sometimes run across an MFA applicant with an application list containing 9 MFA programs and Davis). Kansas State shows up regularly on lists drawn up by non-terminal MA applicants, to the point where we would expect it to “bleed over” (at least slightly) onto lists drawn up in a separate community, the MFA/CW Ph.D. applicant community. That doesn’t seem to have happened yet — so for now, only the two MA programs (Davis and WWU) are showing up in the full-residency MFA rankings (though a warning, of sorts, is appended to their entry, lest applicants seeking a terminal degree think that these programs are terminal just like the other 140+ programs in the MFA rankings).Be well,Seth

“Ranked ahead of Rutgers!” You mean to tell me that it was possible to develop skills as a writer, right there at home, in Mississippi, instead of being forced to relocate to NJ!It is truly unfortunate that the state would lose such caring and competent professors/people as those described and being praised here. Sadly, the phenomenon is prevalent throughout the state in areas besides academia. It seems that some folks, in my beloved state, have an aversion to good, highly-competent people living and working there.Creative-writers, when they choose to do so, help to shed new and different light on matters that divide us. If there is any people, anywhere, who could benefit from more light being shed on our past, and present situation, it is us. Thus, for me, at least, the news that the professors, who are the subjects of this piece, are being forced out, is terrible news, indeed. How in the world can a state as destitute as ours replace such persons, given the state of our national and state economies? We already spend but a fraction of all revenue on education. What now?