Actually, no, Tom.  We’ve tried common core courses and the freshman topics course ideas, and they haven’t worked for us—they are expensive, and we have found no evidence that they increase retention. So we are phasing that program out.

And no we aren’t changing our curriculum, we are just repackaging it for a new audience—so, for example, teaching risk management as a philosophy course, and leadership through literature. We are NOT adding professional writing courses.  Our Business colleagues say that the Humanities are wanted for the skills, depth of human understanding, empathy, and problem solving skills we teach. And I also think they want to add to their Business curriculum some of the joy that comes with engaging in art—they want to be lifted up by intellectual curiosity and delight that we all experience every day in our reading, teaching, and scholarship.  

Sounds strange, I know, but that’s what they are saying.  Maybe Baldwin Wallace is just an unusual place.

If anyone is interested in more detail, feel free to contact me off list.  I don’t want to derail the discussion of religious understanding.  I too suddenly found a couple of years ago that most of the students in my Brit Lit class didn’t know the crucifixion story or much about Christianity at all—that made it rather challenging to teach “The Dream of the Rood” and the York Crucifixion play, as you can imagine.

Yes, typing on my phone Tom—gotta keep up with the students!

Susan Oldrieve
Sent from my iPhone


On Jan 13, 2020, at 9:11 AM, Herron, Thomas <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


Dear Susan,

thank you for this ... (and did you type all that from your phone?  goodness!)

Let me only quickly add two things and I'll go away from this discussion:  

1) the Chronicle's recent pair of articles on ways to rescue English Dept's contrast two successful approaches: one at Purdue U that reinvigorates a "Great Books" approach  (spearheaded by Spenserian and Com Lit specialist Charles Ross) among incoming freshmen and that involves healthy ways for more senior faculty to teach lower-level courses in a single programmatic direction, and another (spearheaded by Shakespearean Gary Taylor down in Florida) that goes in the direction of transforming an English Dept towards "professional" editing and tech writing.  It looks like Baldwin Wallace is choosing the latter direction (my dept here at ECU is trying to do both at once, sadly and typically).

2) There may be cynical reasons behind current administrative promotion of "interdisciplinary" studies in the academy.  One basis of successful faculty governance and self-promotion created by (and creating) the rise of the modern university in the 19th and the 20th centuries was disciplinary divisions built into individual departments.  Formally blurring our dept's into interdisciplinary divisions, and those divisions into generalized "humanities" programs as well as into generally administered professional schools, threatens to weaken the # of self-determining faculty channels (including in the humanities) and hence our voice in governance.   Can study of English literature succeed by standing on its own two feet instead?

Regards, --Tom

Thomas Herron
Professor of English
Department of English
East Carolina University
(252) 328-6413

Writer/Director, Centering Spenser:  A Digital Resource for Kilcolman Castle
http://core.ecu.edu/umc/Munster/
From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Susan Oldrieve <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, January 13, 2020 8:46 AM
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: EXT: Re: "Crisis in English" continued (in today's NYT)... spot the Spenserian
 
This email originated from outside ECU.

I agree whole heartedly with Tom when he says,

“ Conclusion:  shouldn't we all teach more "great books" and composition courses and do more cultural community outreach at the same time that we research arcane subjects and complain about larger economic factors bleeding our dept's and profession?  This does good work, enriches lives, gives practical benefit to society in terms of teaching proper communication and "critical thinking", and bolsters the foundations of the "high humanities" among the tax-paying public, who reciprocate privately in our local communities and on campus once they're hired into the medical and engineering and other professions.”

This is exactly the direction that our School of Humanities is taking, along with the rest of the College of Liberal Arts, in our attempt to address the changing demographics and national drop in enrollments. 

In addition, our Business colleagues have come to us asking for a partnership to develop professional development opportunities for people in the workplace, and courses that we can teach in their graduate programs.  The Business world is apparently now aware of and desperately in need of both the content and skills that are taught in the Humanities in particular and the Liberal Arts in general.

It remains to be seen how successful these partnerships with colleagues and the community will be, but my experience so far is that the partnerships are very energizing all around.  

The transition may be easier for those of us who are more teaching focused than research focused, but the research is still needed. It is the deep thinking about human nature and society that the business world is craving from us, and hopefully the income that we bring in from these new partnerships will help to fund our research programs and advanced degrees. 

I think we might be facing not a demise of English/the Humanities/the Liberal Arts, but a paradigm shift in our relationship to the rest of the world.

Susan Oldrieve
Sent from my iPhone


On Jan 13, 2020, at 7:38 AM, Herron, Thomas <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Conclusion:  shouldn't we all teach more "great books" and composition courses and do more cultural community outreach at the same time that we research arcane subjects and complain about larger economic factors bleeding our dept's and profession?  This does good work, enriches lives, gives practical benefit to society in terms of teaching proper communication and "critical thinking", and bolsters the foundations of the "high humanities" among the tax-paying public, who reciprocate privately in our local communities and on campus once they're hired into the medical and engineering and other professions.

To unsubscribe from the SIDNEY-SPENSER list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=SIDNEY-SPENSER&A=1


To unsubscribe from the SIDNEY-SPENSER list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=SIDNEY-SPENSER&A=1