ERIC Number: ED419245
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1998-Apr-2
Pages: 9
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Reinventing Institutional Space: Remapping the Geography of Labor in English Studies.
Swilky, Jody; Mahala, Dan
Discussions of reform in English studies typically focus on ideology. The focus of this paper puts the spotlight on the intended effects of classroom practice on students, on whatever is integral and valuable about the instructors' work as it appears to them. But there is also a geographical context that makes the work mean differently as it circulates beyond classrooms and institutions. English studies functions in multiple spaces: the classroom, professional communities, the home institutions where programs are housed. The utility and growth of English relative to other humanities disciplines is based on its greater effectiveness in providing and assessing "transferable" skills and "basic" cultural knowledge to diverse groups of students. Most majors will work in settings in which their expertise in English has value only non-specifically as a transferable set of knowledges. In some sense, these transferred meanings are present only at a distance, often in spaces where instructors have little influence, namely in the workplaces toward or away from which students are being circulated. One way to address such questions is to theorize them in class, making geographical forces and relationships part of the content of critical pedagogy. The paper questions how many students have changed their choice of career because of new forms of political thinking made available through theory; or, how many have adapted critical theory to fashion new forms of resistance in their professions and workplaces. (NKA)
Publication Type: Opinion Papers; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A