On "Cultural Studies and Composition"

I didn’t understand what the big deal was at first, but now, I think I am beginning to see.

I graduated, not so long ago, with a Bachelors degree in English—with a Literature emphasis. Just before graduation day, I went around the school to say so long to professors I felt had been particularly influential. One of those was an adjunct professor who taught World Literature, and proclaimed, at the beginning of her class, that she taught part-time because of her love for literature, and to fund the feed for her second love; horses. When I told her of my intention to continue on to graduate school and ultimately earn a PhD. she began this low, menacing grumble, something about the Rhet and Comp people, along with the new department head, was slowing trying to eliminate literature from freshmen English. She all but made me promise to always teach literature, and not be inoculated by “those people”.

And, perhaps I was being lured.

English was a new program at my college, which until a year or two before, had been a two-year community college. I was actually one of the first four-year students, and one of the first English majors. The English program began with mostly literature courses, and even English 1102 was taught with a literature emphasis. By the second year of the program there was decidedly a “Literature” emphasis and a “Writing” emphasis. Composition and Rhetoric instructors were being imported to open the writing center and highlight the whole “Writing Across the Curriculum” thing. The professors that I will call the, “Comp and Rhet Divas,” were suggesting in polite conversations with students about how there were more jobs to be had after graduation for those who came over to their side.

I had planned to write more about the essay on “Cultural Studies and Composition” by Diana George and John Trimbur; about extracting stuff from pop culture and the media in exchange for traditional literary text. And, about how I hate that some black students enter a African American Literature class expecting to read the popular black fiction that has become unfortunately, too popular, and not knowing nearly enough about the history and tradition of African American Literature and Writing. But, then I read “Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing” by Maxine Hairston; about how she, (I imagine, with a fist raised in the air), argued for the establishment of “psychological and intellectual independence from the literary critics who are at the center of power in most English departments”.

Then, I thought of my literature professor, and her horses, and how she told me that a Ph. D. would only zap the love of literature right out of me; which is the reason she never pursued one. Because she loved literature too much.