(Download) "Whither ACCUTE?" by English Studies in Canada * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Whither ACCUTE?
- Author : English Studies in Canada
- Release Date : January 01, 2008
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 49 KB
Description
An archive of the life of a professional organization that has been seminal to English scholars in Canada, Marjorie Garson's history of ACUTE'S first twenty-five years is a document that was due to be reprinted. A record of personal and collective memories, it is a narrative that brings into relief the theatre of English as a discipline in Canada--its development in fits and starts, by means of crises and challenges, via the diverse visions, determination, and commitment of a large number of colleagues. It illustrates, too, that ACCUTE has evolved, and continues to do so, out of the very tensions that characterize the different perspectives of what constitutes English literature and the critical act but also out of the need to address how to profess being academics in a continuously changing political and academic environment. If in the late 1950s the arguments were about whether literature belonged to the rhetorical tradition or not, and if criticism itself should be a legitimate object of study, today cultural studies and different kinds of interdisciplinary work have changed (forever?) what goes under the rubric of literary studies. And we can only read with a hefty sense of irony the late 1970s ACUTE'S one-man (!) commission's report (albeit written by two) that called for a steadfast adherence to "the traditional course of study" as opposed to embracing, let alone encouraging, what the report refers to as "the development of 'luxury' or 'gimmick' courses designed to compete for students in a marketplace atmosphere"; these days it is usually media reports on the ACCUTE conferences that tend to view with derision what represents major advances both in what constitutes the object of English studies--the concept and practice of culture--and the ways in which we approach it. As Annette Kolodny says, "In too many cases, unfamiliarity breeds contempt (or, even worse, suspicion and devaluation" (85). Not to mention (with a different sense of irony) that today it is the logic of the marketplace that influences institutional determinations. In some respects, reading Garson's history of acute today produces the uncanny feeling that very little has changed in the nature of the challenges that confront the profession. This is not to say that it has been going around in circles or reached a stalemate, although it is disheartening to see that the foci of much of ACUTE'S efforts in the past, for example, the role of sessionals and their work conditions, continue to demand solutions; rather, it is to acknowledge that much of what menaces the discipline of English, as well as the humanities at large, today revolves around our "public image" (1) as a community of academics, an image which, more often than not, operates as a summons to contest the relevance and value of pursuing literary studies, let alone the need to fund it.
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