I posted to FB yesterday about the MLA’s proposed ‘redistricting,’ to be found at An Open Discussion of MLA Group Structure, observing that the tactical nature of my relationship to MLA made it impossible for me to comment there. Partly because the discussion was picked up in a number of other places, and partly because it’s hard for me to snark without putting at least equal effort into more constructive ends, I’ll say a few words here, and post it for MLA folk to see.
The title for this post came to me as I thinking about the viability of MLA as an “umbrella organization,” which of course sent me to song lyrics about umbrellas. While we might indeed say that it’s raining now more than ever, I eventually settled on a classic, from ‘Every Little Thing She Does is Magic’ by the Police:
Do I have to tell the story
Of a thousand rainy days since we first met
It’s a big enough umbrella
But it’s always me that ends up getting wet
I always liked that song. Anyway, the TLDR here is that the proposed change to group structure for MLA has not gone as far as it might to “reflect changes in curricula and scholarly commitments among our members.” Despite a disproportionate number of jobs, some 90+ PhD programs, and dozens of journals, rhetoric and composition (not to mention a range of other areas both coordinate and subordinate) remains buried at the lower levels of the redesigned groups, a sub-speciality among many (smaller) others, without any acknowledgment of its own conceptual breadth. It is tucked there under “Language Studies,” a category that could easily cover the entire rest of the groups, alongside several categories of linguistics work.
The problem is something of a chicken-egg situation: does MLA valuation of R/C reflect its membership? Or does the tactical membership of R/C folk (many of whom, like myself, only member up when we absolutely must) produce or result in that valuation? Perhaps a little of both. We can say for certain, though, that this map sorely underestimates the “scholarly commitments” represented annually in the job list. Over the past decade, according to the MLA reports on the job list, some 50% of the available positions every year come in Rhetoric and Composition, Business and Technical Writing, and Creative Writing. R/C floats at around 30%, give or take. And the number of panels relevant to those fields at MLA probably runs at about 1-2%. As a consequence, as someone in R/C, MLA is where I must go to interview but little else. We might also cite the percentage of MLA books about R/C, or the number of articles appearing in PMLA on R/C topics, etc.
For some of us, I suspect that this doesn’t matter much. And really, for the most part, it has little effect on my day-to-day life. For our last search, we bypassed MLA altogether, moving from Skype interviews to campus visits–it will not shock me if that soon becomes the norm. I’ve been interested in and grateful for the MLA’s embrace of digital humanities lately, but we’re rapidly reaching the end of the “captive audience” era for MLA. Once R/C job applicants and faculty no longer have to attend for job-related functions, MLA will slide off a lot of people’s radar. As someone in a freestanding writing program, that doesn’t really affect me. But I do understand the frustration of those who are effectively required to attend a conference, at great personal expense, that is willing to charge them money without making any sort of effort to represent their scholarly commitments. It’s a big enough umbrella.
If MLA still has those umbrella aspirations, then when stuff like this comes up, they need to range a bit. It’s hard not to look at the members of that committee that “redesigned” the groups and see the continued neglect of R/C as anything other than self-fulfilling prophecy. Here are the where’s and when’s: Cornell ’91, Yale ’90, Yale ’74, Yale ’84, Brown ’75, Stanford ’75, Columbia ’09, and Yale ’80. I’m sure that the task was daunting, and the work thankless, but really, most of us could have predicted what a “map” drawn by this committee was going to look like. And in putting that kind of committee together, MLA should not be surprised at the many, many of us who don’t see ourselves on it.
Margaret Ferguson
September 16, 2013 1:14 amThanks for this critique; you’re right that the new map doesn’t do justice to Composition and Rhetoric Studies and we’d welcome your further thoughts on how the MLA umbrella could leave you less wet. As a long time student of literacy, I’d be grateful to hear whether there should be a separate category called “Composition and Rhetoric”; we would like to keep “Writing Studies” as a separate group under the teaching & the profession category (along with literature and language), but if that seems wrong to you, please say so! Taxonomic schemes lead us into Borgesian and Kafkaesque moments, and they don’t accurately represent evaluations of fields; but names are crucially important in any so called “map,” Margie Ferguson, co-chair of the MLA Working Group
Steve Krause
September 16, 2013 9:27 amFrom my point of view, the opportunity for MLA to serve as an umbrella organization where comp/rhet folks can feel remotely “covered” (let alone welcomed) has long since past. As Collin points out, there are few presentations at the conference about comp/rhet, there is almost nothing in PMLA about comp/rhet, there is almost nothing published by MLA elsewhere about comp/rhet, etc., etc. That would be understandable if comp/rhet were a tiny field– Scottish studies, for example. But given that about a third of the jobs advertised in the JIL are looking for comp/rhet specialists and given that many of the people getting PhDs in some flavor of literature will end up in non-tenure-track roles teaching first year writing, it’s not.
So for me, this is just another example of the MLA ignoring/not understanding comp/rhet generally. To be kind, I don’t think it’s completely intentional; it’s just that the non-status of comp/rhet is so baked into the system of MLA that it’s impossible for them to change.
But hey, so what? Let the “L” in MLA be “Literature” and let’s just be done with it. We’ll still have some people in comp/rhet interested in literature because there are still some folks who are connected to both disciplines/fields, much in the same way that there are still some people in literary studies who pop up at the CCCCs or NCTE once in a while. But since there’s a trend for writing studies (or comp/rhet, whatever you want to call it) to move out of English departments and/or otherwise not have much to do with literary studies anyway, why should comp/rhet people need a spot at the MLA table anyway?
anne mcgrail @annemcgrail
September 16, 2013 12:34 pmSteve’s comment: “given that many of the people getting PhDs in some flavor of literature will end up in non-tenure-track roles teaching first year writing, it’s not.” Whereas C/R folks consider first-year writing the focus of their research, many in MLA consider such a classroom something to be avoided at all costs. In my community college department currently, there is a notable turn: I suspect literature PhDs are very less likely to “end up” teaching FYC in future: C/R departments are churning out enough MAs and PhDs to staff those positions. The longer the MLA continues to ignore the essential role that C/R plays in its own topical ecosystem–the use of graduate teaching assistants to teach first-year writing while lit faculty teach special topics lit classes–the less they will see jobs in their own field drying up. For the first time ever in my own department, only those with C/R degrees will be lucky enough to “end up” teaching FYC.
Margaret Ferguson
September 16, 2013 5:36 pmMy first try at responding to the important question in your last sentence is that all humanities educators need to make common cause as advocates for better working conditions for the more than 73% of college faculty not in tenure-track positions now. The percentage is likely to be higher in the future, as you suggest. Though there are more TT jobs right now for students with doctorates in Writing and Rhetoric than for students trained in the fields of literature, film, and media & cultural studies, I would argue that all of us in fields connected to the “English language arts”– as the new Common Core Standards categorize a set of teaching practices and theories that is en route to being implemented in 45 states–should be thinking together about lobbying for better working conditions for humanities teachers at all levels of instruction and in many different kinds of institution (public, private, for profit, not-for profit, and in the gray areas in between what those labels oversimplify). I know that there is a long and complex history of separation and rivalry between comp/rhet and eng/lit faculty in many post-secondary institutions (though not in some, like the University of Pittsburgh English Department!). But I feel that the contingent labor/tenure track division compels our joint attention and offers us an incentive for thinking hard about how we can make common cause–both strategically and intellectually–through active membership in one or–better– more than one professional organization. Even if it’s hard to pay dues to two groups and the MLA is not your primary intellectual organization (as it’s not for many current MLA members), it might be worth keeping (or increasing) your space at the MLA table because the association has developed a larger national presence as an advocate for language and literature teachers and, increasingly, for “the humanities” broadly construed, than have most humanities professional organizations in the U.S. And while the MLA’s size makes it slow to change in some ways, its size and the quality of its professional staff have enabled it to collect and analyze changing data about college teachers’ working conditions that new advocacy groups, such as the Coalition for the Academic Workforce, build on as they work to influence educational policies at the national level. CAW, to which the MLA belongs, calls for “one faculty to serve all students” in its 2010 “Issue Brief” (http://www.academicworkforce.org/CAW_Issue_Brief_Feb_2010.pdf).
My second line of response to your question would be that teachers of writing, rhetoric, literature, cultural studies, and language(s) have shared intellectual and professional interests that could be better explored–and acknowledged by the MLA–in the future than they have been in the past. From what I’ve learned recently, for instance, in part by chairing a new MLA Executive Council committee on K-16 education, a number of primary and secondary level teachers–along with some college teachers in MLA, NCTE, and in CCCC–have shared interests in influencing the Common Core Standards at the “implementation” stage. In particular, some of us would like to complicate the Standards’ current assumption that “informational” texts can & should be clearly divided from “fictional” texts. Some of us also still hope to make a case for why the teaching of “English language arts” should be linked from kindergarten on with the teaching of “foreign” languages (some of them spoken in the students’ U.S. homes).
Speaking just for myself, I believe that the “L” in MLA signals an inclusive and potentially innovative conception of “language (studies)”; but I see why you and Collin Gifford Brooke (along with some thoughtful comp/rhet faculty who’ve commented already on the MLA’s proposal for a new “map”) don’t see that phrase as a satisfactory “umbrella” for Composition,Rhetoric, Writing, Literacy fields that have a history of being under-acknowledged in and by the MLA. Would a “stand-alone” category be better, and if so, what should it be called?
I hope that some readers of these posts will contribute to the discussions now occurring on the MLA site that Collin mentions in the first sentence of “Getting Wet.” Thanks to Collin for providing this space for discussion.
Martin Webb
September 18, 2013 5:09 amSteve asked: “But since there’s a trend for writing studies (or comp/rhet, whatever you want to call it) to move out of English departments and/or otherwise not have much to do with literary studies anyway, why should comp/rhet people need a spot at the MLA table anyway?”
I want to put some pressure on whether and at what type of institutions this may be a trend and whether it’s always a “good” thing for the writing program to be located outside of the English department. Two things I’ll try to note briefly:
1) My recent (albeit anecdotal ) experience on the job market has revealed that while this may be the case at some doctoral granting universities (and perhaps some Masters universities), this is definitely not the case at SLAC or even necessarily regional comprehensive institutions. Tracking the job listings over the past several years, I have noted that many SLACs are only now recruiting their first writing studies scholars. And you know what: they don’t even know what department to “put” us in (one search committee even suggested I would be a department of one – sounds reassuring for tenure and promotion, eh?). Sitting through several awkward Skype and in-person interviews, it was clear many (if not all) of the members of the search committee didn’t know how to value the type of research we conduct (cue awkward moment where I remind a search committee that rhetoric was the “first discipline”). I fear a move to our own table may very well exacerbate this issue – I suppose I am in the “bigger chair” camp (or “more chairs camp”?). The position I started this year is in a department at a regional comprehensive university that explicitly hired a writing studies scholar to reinvigorate their “Intro to English Studies” gateway course for majors to reflect the multiple disciplines and purposely shift it from a literary genres class. I’ve felt respected and valued here – again, I know this is radically anecdotal – but the genuine interest in my research and what I can contribute to the department has heartened me to the possibility of a “shared table.”
2) Will the severance from English lead to increased respect for the discipline and research opportunities in every case? I suspect the answer is only in the cases where that severance means the establishment of an autonomous undergraduate or graduate degree program. Otherwise I fear we will just see the UC model of “writing studies” – “our” scholars conducting research in departments of education (such as Mike Rose at UCLA or Karen Lunsford at UCSB) and/or serving as WPAs for a large group of lecturers and TAs who may have little to no research expectations.