Reading Matters, Vol. 15, Issue 4, November 5, 2009
“Where Have All the Students Gone?” That’s what a recent essay in The American Scholar asks and that’s what our department may well be starting to wonder. For years, as the numbers of undergraduate English majors fell at colleges and universities across the country, we here at Iowa were lucky to avoid the national migration of students of English towards seemingly more practical majors. William Chace, the author of that American Scholar essay, cites statistics showing that from 1970/71 to 2003/04, the number of English majors dropped from 7.6 percent to 3.9 percent, while Business majors grew from 13.7 percent to 21.9 percent; in one generation, humanities majors fell from 30 to 16 percent, as business rose from 14 to 22.
Our own more modestly declining numbers may to some extent be an illusion generated by the accounting systems used to track enrollments, a statistical fluke as much as a reality. Yet the evidence suggests that, at long last, we have come to share the fate of other English departments and of the humanities in general, even if far less drastically. The latest figures, which can be found on the Registrar’s website, show that we have 936 majors (including second majors) as of Fall 2009, slightly down from 940 the year before, and with 990 in Fall 2007, 992 in Fall 2006, and 1018 in Fall 2005. That makes us the fourth largest major at the university, behind Pre-Business (1798), Psychology (1337), and Open Major (1299), positioned, it seems, between student pragmatism and indecision. These figures by no means point to a precipitous drop nor do they signal a major in jeopardy, but they may suggest a trend towards fewer students who are interested in what we offer. We may not need to ask where all the students have gone, but we may want to know where some have, and why, and what we can do to get them back.
The department’s undergraduate team has begun thinking about just that. Under the leadership of Director of Undergraduate Studies, Lori Branch, the team has been devising plans to attract more and better majors and to enhance their educational and career opportunities. Those plans include drawing our majors together through clubs and reading groups, recruiting outstanding high school seniors, expanding English as a second major, and devising a new Literary Readings Attendance course to alert our majors to the many and wonderful scholarly talks and literary readings that are offered each semester, which can greatly enrich their classroom experiences if only they attend them.
You will be hearing more about all of these efforts, beginning with what I expect to be a lively discussion of proposed new undergraduate initiatives at this afternoon’s English Department faculty meeting in Gerber Lounge. The initiatives promise to enhance what all of you already do so well in your individual classes and they will build on recent curricular innovations such as the new Introduction to the Major course and the even newer Creative Writing Track. With luck, they may also encourage our majors to become the kinds of students who, as Chaucer puts it, “gladly wolde lerne,” and may remind them—and others following in their footsteps--of the many advantages of an English major.
The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts adopted Huston Diehl’s memoir, Dream Not of Other Worlds: Teaching in a Segregated Elementary School, 1970, as a core reading for a large group of first-year students enrolled in its experimental Montserrat living-learning program. Instead of speaking at the college, as originally planned, Huston participated on an October 20 in a panel discussion about her book, via video-conferencing. Other members of the panel – all of whom were present in the auditorium at Holy Cross -- included a sociology professor, an education professor, and two alumnae of Teach for America who are currently teaching in charter schools
Loren Glass was featured in Monday's edition of The Daily Iowan. Click here to read "Naked Lunch Turns 50".
Mark Isham gave an all day Seminar in Workplace Writing on October 20, 2009 at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The seminar included topics like basic writing tools, writing for different audiences, choosing the best medium, note-taking, conveying a difficult message, choosing an appropriate style, and strong sentences as a basic tool. The audience included engineers, administrators, and marketing and human resources professionals.
In an online poll of more than 500 current and prospective MFA applicants between October 2008 and April 2009, conducted on two online communities for MFA applicants (Suburban Ecstasies and the MFA Weblog), the University of Iowa creative writing programs in fiction, poetry and nonfiction were individually and collectively ranked number one in the United States in the Master of Fine Arts "Top Fifty" list in Poets & Writers magazine. The full list can be found here.
If you would be interested in following up on the Peter Stallybrass lectures, please join the Early Modern Reading Group on Monday, November 7, 3:30-5, in EPB 331. We’re looking at two of his articles, with the titles and weblinks below—or you can access them through the database section of the library’s website. Anyone is welcome, and there should be good conversation and home-baked goodies.
"The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text"
Author: De Grazia, Margreta ; Stallybrass, Peter
Source : Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 3, pp. 255-83, Fall 1993
Resource Location: http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-3222%28199323%2944%3A3%3C255%3ATMOTST%3E2
“Hamlet's Tables and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England”
Author Stallybrass, Peter; Chartier, Roger; Mowery, J. Franklin ; Wolfe, Heather
Source Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 379-419, Winter 2004
Resource Location http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shakespeare_quarterly/v055/55.4stallybrass.html
Workshopping a conference paper
On Monday, December 7, the Early Modern Reading Group will meet to discuss Lindsey Row-Heyveld’s paper for MLA. Growing out of Lindsey’s dissertation, the paper will deal with disability issues and Troilus and Cressida. The paper will be available just after Thanksgiving break, and anyone who would like to participate in the discussion is welcome to attend. Please check with Miriam Gilbert to get the link for the paper. Our meeting will take place in EPB 331, 3:30-5 p.m.
Inside Higher Ed., "The Public Option", October 21
In this column, the writer reflects on his experiences at Platforms for Public Scholars, sponsored by the OBERMANN CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDIES at the University of Iowa. This was the latest round in an ongoing conversation within academe about how to bring work in the humanities into civic life, and vice versa. The presentations reported on a variety of public-scholarship initiatives -- local history projects, digital archives, a festival of lectures and discussions on Victorian literature, and much else besides. The writer notes that Teresa Magnum, a professor of English at the UI, who organized and directed the event, “presided over all three days with considerable charm -- intervening in the discussion in ways that were incisive while also tending to foster the collegiality that can be elusive when people come from such different disciplinary and professional backgrounds.” Click here to read the full article.
Collections:
Services:
Your liaisons from the UI Libraries to your department,
Marsha Forys (collections) marsha-forys@uiowa.edu
Kathy Magarrell (reference and instruction) kathy-magarrell@uiowa.edu
The English Department is now on Facebook! Go to http://www.facebook.com/IowaEnglish to become a "fan" of the Department.
The calendar is now housed on its own page, and both the calendar and Reading Matters are now available via links from the main English Department webpage, making them easier to access. You can find a full listing of upcoming events at the English Department Calendar.
UI Master Calendar | UI Academic Calendar | NonFiction Writing Program Calendar | The Writers Workshop Calendar | The International Writing Program Calendar
The English Honors Program Calendar
The next issue of Reading Matters will be on Thursday, December 3. Please send submissions for the next issue by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, December 2 to erin-hackathorn@uiowa.edu.