[PDF] The Formation Of College English eBook

Author : Thomas P. Miller
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre
Page : 358 pages
File Size : 24,62 MB
Release : 1997
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780822956235

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In the middle of the eighteenth century, English literature, composition, and rhetoric were introduced almost simultaneously into colleges throughout the British cultural provinces. Professorships of rhetoric and belles lettres were established just as print was reaching a growing reading public and efforts were being made to standardize educated taste and usage. The provinces saw English studies as a means to upward social mobility through cultural assimilation. In the educational centers of England, however, the introduction of English represented a literacy crisis brought on by provincial institutions that had failed to maintain classical texts and learned languages. Today, as rhetoric and composition have become reestablished in the humanities in American colleges, English studies are being broadly transformed by cultural studies, community literacies, and political controversies. Once again, English departments that are primarily departments of literature see these basic writing courses as a sign of a literacy crisis that is undermining the classics of literature. The Formation of College English reexamines the civic concerns of rhetoric and the politics that have shaped and continue to shape college English.

Author : Assistant Professor Thomas P Miller, B.A., PH.D.
Publisher :
Page : 358 pages
File Size : 40,56 MB
Release : 2014-08-21
Category :
ISBN : 9780585068152

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In the middle of the eighteenth century, English literature, composition, and rhetoric were introduced almost simultaneously into colleges throughout the British cultural provinces. Professorships of rhetoric and belles lettres were established just as print was expanding the reading public and efforts were being made to standardize educated taste and usage. The provinces saw English studies as a means to upward social mobility through cultural assimilation. In the educational centers of England, however, the introduction of English represented a literacy crisis brought on by provincial institutions that had failed to maintain classical texts and learned languages. In The Formation of College English, Thomas P. Miller examines the teaching of introductory English courses in the broadly based colleges rather than as an object of scholarship as taught in the elite institutions. The need to assimilate broad classes of readers shaped how these subjects were first taught in colleges in Ireland, Scotland, America, and academies formed by dissenters forced out of Oxford and Cambridge during the Restoration. This modern equation of English studies with literary studies marked a historical departure from rhetoric's connection to moral philosophy. Within the civic humanist tradition, rhetoric and moral philosophy shared a concern for political discourse and popular values. Adam Smith and other professors of moral philosophy were among the first to teach courses on rhetoric and belles lettres that advanced two basic trends: a belletristic tendency to conflate ethics and aesthetics as matters of personal sentiment, and the scientistic project of applying Newtonian method to the human psyche andbody politic to establish "the science of man". Today, rhetoric and composition have become reestablished in the humanities in American colleges. English studies are being broadly transformed by work with cultural studies, community literacies, and political controversies. Once again, English departments that are defined as departments of literature see these basic writing courses as a sign of a literacy crisis that is undermining the classics of literature. The Formation of College English in its reexamination of the civic concerns of rhetoric and the politics that have shaped college English will shed new light on this process.

Author : Thomas P. Miller
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre
Page : 346 pages
File Size : 24,41 MB
Release : 2014-03-18
Category : Education
ISBN : 082297777X

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Thomas P. Miller defines college English studies as literacy studies and examines how it has evolved in tandem with broader developments in literacy and the literate. He maps out "four corners" of English departments: literature, language studies, teacher education, and writing studies. Miller identifies their development with broader changes in the technologies and economies of literacy that have redefined what students write and read, which careers they enter, and how literature represents their experiences and aspirations. Miller locates the origins of college English studies in the colonial transition from a religious to an oratorical conception of literature. A belletristic model of literature emerged in the nineteenth century in response to the spread of the "penny" press and state-mandated schooling. Since literary studies became a common school subject, professors of literature have distanced themselves from teachers of literacy. In the Progressive era, that distinction came to structure scholarly organizations such as the MLA, while NCTE was established to develop more broadly based teacher coalitions. In the twentieth century New Criticism came to provide the operating assumptions for the rise of English departments, until those assumptions became critically overloaded with the crash of majors and jobs that began in 1970s and continues today. For models that will help the discipline respond to such challenges, Miller looks to comprehensive departments of English that value studies of teaching, writing, and language as well as literature. According to Miller, departments in more broadly based institutions have the potential to redress the historical alienation of English departments from their institutional base in work with literacy. Such departments have a potentially quite expansive articulation apparatus. Many are engaged with writing at work in public life, with schools and public agencies, with access issues, and with media, ethnic, and cultural studies. With the privatization of higher education, such pragmatic engagements become vital to sustaining a civic vision of English studies and the humanities generally.

Author : W. Ross Winterowd
Publisher : SIU Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 47,16 MB
Release : 1998
Category : Education
ISBN : 9780809321698

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To understand the history of "English", Ross Winterowd insists, one must understand how literary studies, composition-rhetoric studies, and influential textbooks interrelate. Stressing the interrelationship among these three forces, Winterowd presents a history of English studies in the university since the Enlightenment.

Author : Evan Carton
Publisher : Praeger
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 30,98 MB
Release : 1996-05-28
Category : Education
ISBN :

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Drawing on contemporary critical theories, learning technologies, classroom experience, and personal self-reflection, the contributors examine the issues that proceed from our simultaneous occupation of pedagogical and political spaces, institutional and larger sociocultural positions, and differently constructed, empowered, and constrained identities.