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Ohio State English Faculty Weigh in on Landmark Book
The ways in which literature professors are evaluated has, for many years, been a subject of debate in academic circles. The pressure to publish was, and is, fierce, while the number of university presses willing and financially able to publish the resulting scholarly monographs continues to dwindle. The question many in academia continue to ask themselves: are publications really the best way to determine a scholar's worth?
The discussion continued at the Modern Language Association's recent annual meeting in Chicago. In a panel to mark the 20th anniversary of Gerald Graff's Professing Literature, Professors Francis J. Donoghue and Elizabeth M. Renker weighed in on the ongoing debate. Their conversation was one subject covered in Jennifer Ruark's January 11, 2008 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled "The MLA on Academic Freedom, Faculty Status, and the Value of Argument."
Graff's book, which chronicled the development of English Departments in the United States and the changes in ideas about what the mission of English studies should be, stimulated a great deal of reflection and debate about the nature and content of English studies in relation to the institutions that sponsored those studies.
Donoghue, who also served as chair of the panel, outlined the inherent difficulties in the current tenure system, and its effect on the research thus produced, while Renker noted the changes that had occurred since Graff's text was published, namely the increased role of undergraduate students in the discipline.
The panel, which also included remarks from Professor Paul Lauter of Trinity College, led Graff, who was in the audience, to remark that the solution to the problem might be to evaluate the validity of scholarly arguments produced, and not merely to count the number of publications.
Source: Ruark, Jennifer. "The MLA on Academic Freedom, Faculty Status, and the Value of Argument." The Chronicle of Higher Education. 11 January 2008: A16. The full text of the original article is available to subscribers.
