scholarly journals The Value of the English Major Today

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Beal
Keyword(s):  
Graduate School ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Department Chair ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
English Department ◽  
English Departments ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
English Major

This essay explores the value of the undergraduate English major today in terms of the knowledge and skills it develops, graduate school and employment opportunities it provides, and self-actualization and social improvement it fosters. From the perspective of an English department chair, this essay stresses both the tangible and intangible benefits of the study of literature and writing, and it does so as a defense against those that seek to cut funding or devolve English departments. With reference to data from both a small, private, liberal arts college in southern California and national sources to give context, the essay shows how the English major is not only perennially valuable, but particularly valuable today in the midst of the world-wide coronavirus pandemic and the protests that aim to arrest police brutality against African Americans and their communities.

The English Department as Imperial Commonwealth, or The Global Past and Global Future of English Studies

boundary 2 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-176
Author(s):  
Joe Cleary
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
English Language ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
English Department ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Global English ◽  
English Departments ◽  
The World ◽  
Anglo American

Though canons and faculty have greatly diversified in recent decades, English departments around the world fundamentally prioritize English and American literatures. To this extent, they resemble the Anglo-American imperial commonwealths that some toward the end of the nineteenth century advocated for in order to stave off the decline of the British Empire and to shore up a permanent Anglo-American supremacy against all threats. Still, as the English language becomes “global,” English departments today founder for a variety of reasons and convey a persistent sense of crisis. Has the time come radically to decolonize the English department, not only at the level of curriculum but also in terms of its basic organizational structures to facilitate the study of anglophone literatures now planetary in reach? If so, how might this best be achieved in the British and American core countries and also in the more peripheral regions of Anglophonia?

In the Wake of Laurence Veysey: Re-examining the Liberal Arts College

2005 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 420-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
Keyword(s):  
Graduate School ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Experimental Methods ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
American University ◽  
Graduate School Training ◽  
The University ◽  
School Training

In The Emergence of the American University, Laurence R. Veysey enriched our understanding of the American university at its creation in the second half of the nineteenth century. He demonstrated how this new institution drew on German approaches and valued experimental, empirical methods of knowledge. The university introduced the lecture and seminar. It valued graduate school training above all; the doctoral dissertation required that its students become creators of new knowledge, preferably by experimental methods. Veysey helped us understand the emerging American university by creating a useful ideal type.

How Should Anthropologists Be Thinking About Volunteer Tourism?

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Garland
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Contextual Knowledge ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Volunteer Tourism ◽  
Water Project ◽  
The World ◽  
Environment And Development

Lately it seems as if students at the liberal arts college where I teach are always about to head off to build a library in Ghana, have just returned from volunteering at an orphanage in South Africa, or are busy raising money for a water project in Ethiopia. As an anthropologist specializing in African environment and development issues, I have been delighted to see young people interested in a part of the world that means so much to me, but I am also increasingly troubled by the sense that working first-hand on African poverty has become a kind of credential for these (mostly American, mostly privileged) students, a box to be checked off in their preparation for success within the global economy. My lack of generosity toward them perhaps derives from the fact that so few students involved with Africa turn up in my courses on African culture and history. Sometimes volunteering in Africa inspires students to go on to take courses in African studies, but often it does not; and few seem to regard the kind of broad-based, contextual knowledge that I consider crucial to my own understanding of poverty (and everything else) on the continent to be a prerequisite before undertaking work there.

scholarly journals Intelligence Correlates of Transcendent Beliefs: A Preliminary Study

2005 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-270
Author(s):  
Nicole Lukey ◽  
Imants Barušs
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Psychology Students ◽  
Rational Approach ◽  
Intellectual Curiosity ◽  
Personality Correlates ◽  
The World ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Undergraduate Psychology ◽  
Western Intellectual

In previous research, Barušs and Moore had identified a material-transcendent dimension of beliefs about consciousness and reality that underlies the Western intellectual tradition including the academic study of consciousness. At one pole, materialists believe that reality is entirely physical in nature, whereas those tending toward the transcendent pole believe that reality cannot exhaustively be captured in physical terms. More recently, Jewkes and Barušs had found a number of personality correlates of transcendent beliefs including a tendency toward curiosity and a rational approach to the world [1]. These previous results prompted the present study in which 39 undergraduate psychology students at a liberal arts college were given a measure of beliefs about consciousness and reality, a comprehensive intelligence test, and a personality subtest. Correlations were found among various facets of intelligence, aspects of beliefs, and intellectual curiosity. The results indicate that greater intelligence is associated with transcendent beliefs.

The Great Instauration: Restoring Professional and Technical Writing to the Humanities

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Di Renzo
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Training And Development ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Writing Programs ◽  
English Departments ◽  
New Learning

If you wish to start an undergraduate professional and technical writing program at a small liberal arts college, you will find good arguments for your project in the educational writings of Sir Francis Bacon. Unlike other Renaissance Humanists, Bacon located the New Learning (what we now call the humanities) within the related contexts of scientific discovery and invention and professional training and development. His treatise, The Advancement of Learning, proposes to draw knowledge from and apply knowledge to the natural and social world. Bacon's curricular ideas can benefit emerging PTW programs in the humanities in three ways: They make a convincing apologia for most English departments and writing programs, wed humanistic education to public service, and provide a rich but practical theoretical framework for program development and administration.

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