In Which I Give One Reason Why I am Such A Dang Snob About Academic Disciplines
Because I totally am. A big, fat, unapologetic snob who is of the opinion that any humanities-focused niche discipline created after 1940 is just a huge load of crap.
Example? The whole University of Delaware kerfluffle would probably have been avoided if no one could get a Ph.D. in student affairs (read the comments thread on the linked article for a good time!).
Hyperbole? Not much. I worked in the student life area of the university for a while after completing my MA (in English, a broad, real by-God discipline, she says snootily), venturing briefly into the first dot com bust and finally retreating to academia, and I was consistently horrified by the sloppy writing and slipshod logic that passed for "research" in the area of student affairs and higher ed. Sure, the folks involved were all earnest and bright-eyed, but they were always one small step away from crossing the line between, "We should tell students about this," and "We should convince students of this," and that's how the concept of individuality tends to get eroded.
This is not to say that the intentions behind creating the discipline were bad, or stupid, or slipshod, or any of the above; rather, I think the failure of this discipline is mostly due to the fact that there was never enough "meat" to sustain it as a discipline in the first place. Student affairs is a narrow field, which concerns itself with a fairly narrow goal - or at least it did at first - helping students adjust to the university and university living, so that they might focus on getting their education, and offering opportunities for students to enhance their education outside of class.
So how did we end up with "dorm curricula" and the inevitable slide toward indoctrination? I'm thinking it's simple mission creep brought on by attempts to fill the research vacuum created by making a small area of concentration big enough to allow folks to matriculate with a degree in student affairs.
If you get your niche elevated to the level of discipline, you've gotta keep convincing folks of the need for that discipline, and you do that by constantly producing new research, and round and round we go.....makes you dizzy, frankly, and in a niche, your opportunities for "discovering the new" are somewhat limited, as is your circle of peers, and - well, I think you can see where this ends up, with the "Insert argument about isolated, out of touch academics stuck in an intellectual circle-jerk" here.
In other words, the normal progression of specialization that takes place as a student moves from BA to PhD within a discipline is occurring earlier, and the focus now can be much narrower, which leads to intellectual myopia, sweaty palms, and madness of the RA - led "treatment" variety.
I'm not arguing that no one should be able to take courses in these areas, but I do think that quite a bit of fat could be trimmed by demoting some of these niche PhD's to "concentrations," and letting a little more of the "big picture" filter through.
Yes, I know. I've just suggested syllabus and canon wars, and things that eliminate grant money - in short, Academic End Times. Sorry. Not my job to fix it, just to point out that sometimes, more isn't always better.
Not that I'm bitter. But I am a snob.
Example? The whole University of Delaware kerfluffle would probably have been avoided if no one could get a Ph.D. in student affairs (read the comments thread on the linked article for a good time!).
Hyperbole? Not much. I worked in the student life area of the university for a while after completing my MA (in English, a broad, real by-God discipline, she says snootily), venturing briefly into the first dot com bust and finally retreating to academia, and I was consistently horrified by the sloppy writing and slipshod logic that passed for "research" in the area of student affairs and higher ed. Sure, the folks involved were all earnest and bright-eyed, but they were always one small step away from crossing the line between, "We should tell students about this," and "We should convince students of this," and that's how the concept of individuality tends to get eroded.
This is not to say that the intentions behind creating the discipline were bad, or stupid, or slipshod, or any of the above; rather, I think the failure of this discipline is mostly due to the fact that there was never enough "meat" to sustain it as a discipline in the first place. Student affairs is a narrow field, which concerns itself with a fairly narrow goal - or at least it did at first - helping students adjust to the university and university living, so that they might focus on getting their education, and offering opportunities for students to enhance their education outside of class.
So how did we end up with "dorm curricula" and the inevitable slide toward indoctrination? I'm thinking it's simple mission creep brought on by attempts to fill the research vacuum created by making a small area of concentration big enough to allow folks to matriculate with a degree in student affairs.
If you get your niche elevated to the level of discipline, you've gotta keep convincing folks of the need for that discipline, and you do that by constantly producing new research, and round and round we go.....makes you dizzy, frankly, and in a niche, your opportunities for "discovering the new" are somewhat limited, as is your circle of peers, and - well, I think you can see where this ends up, with the "Insert argument about isolated, out of touch academics stuck in an intellectual circle-jerk" here.
In other words, the normal progression of specialization that takes place as a student moves from BA to PhD within a discipline is occurring earlier, and the focus now can be much narrower, which leads to intellectual myopia, sweaty palms, and madness of the RA - led "treatment" variety.
I'm not arguing that no one should be able to take courses in these areas, but I do think that quite a bit of fat could be trimmed by demoting some of these niche PhD's to "concentrations," and letting a little more of the "big picture" filter through.
Yes, I know. I've just suggested syllabus and canon wars, and things that eliminate grant money - in short, Academic End Times. Sorry. Not my job to fix it, just to point out that sometimes, more isn't always better.
Not that I'm bitter. But I am a snob.
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Wm. Kerrigan on life in the English Department in 1991.
Actually from a review of Camille Paglia Sexual Personae, saying it needs an editor ; and wondering what happened at Yale University Press that it snuck through.
``The reason there's no female Mozart is that there's no female Jack the Ripper'' was an exemplary sentence in pondering this, he thought. Where else do you see sentences like that these days? he wondered.
The remarks linked above lead up to introducing the contrast.
We engineers with no "life of the mind" look better and better don't we?
:)
And it occurs to me to ask if most English Dept. faculty are not now living the "life of the mindless"?