English Majors

I am an English major, so I should take the debate about the relevance of this particular major seriously.

In an age of technological hegemony, the relevance of much that doesn't have a direct bearing on technology, or isn't deemed useful/productive in crudely quantitative terms, is questioned.

The relevance of the English Department is under scrutiny, and ex-English majors occupying plum posts within the universities, The NY Times, the New Yorker, The Atlantic and other institutions of elite occupancies are coming out of the woodwork, as it were, to chime in in defense of the English major, or more broadly, the Humanities.

Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker won't be left behind. The illustrious writer who weighs in on every issue ranging from books to poverty and the state of the American prison, makes a point that an English major's preoccupation is books. The English professor teaches students how to read books in a structured and authoritative ways. Gopnik implies that as long as texts, written, visual or oral, are important in our culture, so will be the English major, or the Bachelor's degree in English. Since we can't do without books, we should never dispense with the relevance of the English major.

But is the study of English in institutions of higher education, a mere study of books?

I think that's just one aspect of the immensely rangy spectrum of what is "English" studies in the 21st century American University. The old world English departments used to teach folks how to "read" and have meaningful discussions about books. But would the Gopniks and the Verlyn Klinkenborgs please look at the complex changes and morphings the newer, more zeitgeist-friendly English departments have undergone? English is no longer English in the sense that the discipline focuses on cultivating taste and a sense of critical aesthetics.

English is more interdisciplinary than it ever has been. So a study of Dickens, is not just a study of Dickens, but a study of Dickens in the context of urban poverty and public policy. Dickens can be taught in conjunction with govermentalism, as much as poetry can be taught in intersection with physics.

Those who are defending the relevance of the English departments are not doing a good job of it, as I feel they are themselves out of touch with the transformations that the discipline itself has undergone.

Indeed, one of the major transformations is manifested in the emergence of the field of the Digital Humanities. It could be argued that the hegemony of technology has coerced this transformation into being, but then English being a minority discipline since the 80s, has to adapt and adjust to the demands of the majority disciplines which are business and technology.

There is so much that the debate on the relevance of the English major is neglecting to rope in.