Read on Twitter
I have to disagree with this one. Finishing up our F21 teaching schedule's first complete draft and struck by how aggressive I've gotten at offering upper-level writing courses to make up for drop in student interest in many (but not all) literature courses. https://twitter.com/2drdave3/status/1353137820198690817
Lit courses like Women Writers, American Identities, Mystery and Detective Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy Fiction fill easily here every semester, even as we've phased out the Gen Ed program many were cornerstones of and didn't bring them into the new one (only Am IDs).
Our new gen ed courses in the American History category are wildly popular with students, as are ones in the program's "global perspectives and diversity" theme. I can't offer enough sections of Intro to Creative Writing. So lit isn't dead here.
That said, our majors in both English and English Adolescence Education have been declining scarily since the Great Recession. Less so than national trends in English, but still precipitously so. And the interest in our courses isn't translating into growth in our majors.
So we're putting the finishing touches on a new Writing BA. The program announcement will be heading to the system very soon. Once approved (fingers crossed), we'll have three majors in one department.
We're already starting to have difficult but necessary conversations about where we go from there. So many assumptions about the centrality of literature baked into our departmental processes and systems will have to be examined, discussed, revised/transformed....
As I am term-limited out and about to start the last semester of my 2nd 3-yr term, my top priority this spring is planning with our chair-elect and the department how to work through this process and to get us started on it by revising our English major.
The English major can't stay the same while a new and likely popular Writing major is taxiing to the runway. What we call it and what we require in it will need to be rethought. As will our hiring priorities in our next strategic plan.
We've worked with the administration to position the department as key to the university's stability and growth. But this can't just be about numbers, whether of students or the dollars they bring to campus. It has to be about learning, relationships, opportunities.
What is a public regional university for? Why should the state see it--and fund it--as an essential public good? Why should its students graduate with little to no debt? These are questions English departments should be answering. And acting on their answers.
