Content area
Full Text
A "turf war between literature and composition" has been waged for decades now in English departments across the country, reflecting academe's broader reprioritization of professional skills over the liberal arts.1 On one side, we typically see traditionally trained Ph.D.s in literature who continue to teach close reading and theoretical approaches to literary texts from neatly demarcated eras (such as the Middle Ages for British Lit folks, or modernism for Americanists), to a dwindling number of English majors.2 On the other side are scholars of Rhetoric and Composition ("rhet-comp"), along with a contingent of adjunct instructors, who teach primarily First-Year Writing and other so-called service courses that sharpen the writing and critical thinking skills of the university's diverse population. Thanks to a declining interest in literary studies, along with rhet-comp's embrace of new writing technologies and multi-modal pedagogy, the latter camp appears to be "winning," while some in the former camp have dug in their heels, fearful or bitter about the evident trajectory of this battle. An English major is a harder sell, with more and more students choosing to major in business or STEM fields rather than risk a career as a Starbucks barista (a myth that refuses to go away).3 Those students who do major in English increasingly shun more traditional literature or "generalist" tracks, instead choosing to specialize in creative writing or become certified in secondary education. They aspire to be writers or teachers but have been taught to believe that reading does not pay.
Is this "turf war" a valid one? In many ways, the distinction between these camps is arbitrary and artificial. After all, careful reading and clear writing are ineluctably linked: one must listen carefully to a conversation before weighing in. And good writers begin as close readers, who learn to recognize and imitate (accidentally or deliberately) the stylistic tools that make good writing "flow." The two skillsets thus complement and require each other. Yet in other ways, the distinction between writing and reading (and between the English sub-disciplines of rhet-comp and literary studies) is understandable and worthwhile. At a moment in higher education when students' (and their parents') "return-on-investment" (ROI) is of utmost importance-when they are paying a higher and higher price for degrees they hope and need to...