I meant to update this blog with an addendum to my previous post talking about some of the changing personnel rules in the State of Colorado, (Namely that adjunct and temporary faculty will no longer be able to teach more than two classes without being offered a benefits package,) but the other issues which I briefly touched on have gained national media attention, thus making my limited contribution on the issues puerile at best.
An issue which I have been looking at with great interest as of late comes from input I have received from friends and family: "What do you do with an advanced English degree?"
My admittedly canned response to that question always points in the same directions: Working with traditional texts (writing, editing, etc,) teaching, government functionary. A Master's in English, is 'still a Master's,' after all. In parsing the question and subsequent answer in such a way, I steal from my own education the most important essence.
I'm reminded of a 90s advertisement campaign by the international chemical manufacturing group BASF- "We don't make the ______ you buy, we make the _______ you buy better." In a similar fashion, 'English' doesn't create a lot of the texts you parse, it creates a context and meaning for a lot of the texts you parse. Put simply The force behind "English Folk," isn't the generation of texts, the writing of books, the production of movies, the writing and performance of music, making paintings and so on. The force behind English is to accept those things as input and make a case for their interpretation as output.
... In the coming week I will produce an example of such with an artifact of current events.
No comments:
Post a Comment