If as a program we decide to emphasize one particular scholarly focus or methodology, we should think of this focus as a meeting place for debate and conversation rather than a fixed scholarly perspective we all expect to adopt. This focus, in other words, should be one that we rally around in the spirit of both consensus and disagreement, one that will serve as a useful critical lens to some, but perhaps also as a problematic orientation for others. Given my own experience in the program, one such perspective could be the problem of history. What I mean by this focus is the attention, even tacitly in some cases, to the theoretical implications of history that I see as part of many people’s work in the program; this observation includes scholars who historicize con gusto and those who are suspicious of this endeavor. My own view is that should we coalesce as a program around such a problematic we could raise questions that would enrich everyone’s individual critical viewpoint without leading the English Program in a direction that asks students and faculty to participate in conversations outside of their own interests.

I use the problem of history here only as an example for the way I’m advocating we should approach adopting a single focus for the program, should we even makes this collective choice. However, if we entertain an attention to the historical, along with its problems, as our hypothetical methodological meeting place, consider what our different theoretical and subject-based areas of study could say. What could affect theory or an attention to aesthetics say to those in our community who consider themselves new historicists or Marxists? How does a Medievalist approach the historical in ways that are different and distinct from those studying early-U.S. texts or 20^th-century European literature? And, how can all of these different perspectives enliven discourses about the historical and its role in literary scholarship?

 Thinking along these lines, of establishing an intellectual meeting place for our program, provides us the opportunity to unify around one conversation, or one set of conversations, while minimizing the risk of leaving members of our large and diverse program out of the vision we are outlining this year. Hopefully, this kind of meeting place would use the size an scope of our program to our advantage, but it is important to emphasize that this choice would embrace opposing views. Another permutation of this idea that may work would be to choose such a different perspective each academic year as an intellectual problem that we will all work on. This holds the possibility of maintaining fresh conversations that continually unify the program.