Dear Professor Hintz,

My decision to attend the CUNY Graduate Center was based on three factors:

1)   an incredibly diverse range of faculty covering most time periods and genres

2)   a dedication to queer theory in particular and literary theory in general

3)   a collegial stance towards students that included a respect for experiment and innovation with regard to dissertations and inclusion in all aspects of departmental decision making

I was richly rewarded for my decision to attend.  I was not mistaken in any of my predictions.  I hope that the characteristics I laid out will continue to define the program.

With the increasingly dire rhetoric surrounding academia, I greatly appreciated that the program took a clear eyed (rather than a defeatist or a Panglossian) view of the possibilities and prospects for students pursuing graduate degrees in English.

Sincerely,

Jason Schneiderman, Ph.D. ‘13

Assistant Professor of English

Borough of Manhattan Community College

It would be good to see someone do the lesbian/ feminist part of sexuality studies.

It would be good to strengthen our postcolonial offerings and also have a way of relating post- colonial and American ethnic through the transnational lens ie set up a series of conversations.
How do the taxonomies work? eg Asian-American/ postcolonial/transnational etc.

And something which has been in my mind for awhile — What would a phd in theory and creative writing look like We have a number of students who come to us mfa degrees and this could be an exciting option

The GC has a dynamic intellectual life, with exciting cross-currents from other area institutions, frequent speakers and events. We have world-renowned faculty and brilliant, self-reliant students. As a place for intellectual growth it is unparalleled, and I am very grateful to be able to be here.

However, like other institutions in NYC, we are providing an incredibly rich resource with very little money, space, or time. We all have too much work. I’ve read the various reports Carrie posted, and I agree with the external review that college faculty are particularly victimized, teaching essentially an extra load at the GC (with extra students, office hours, and committees) on top of their already sizable loads at their home colleges. Both the external report and the response to it imagined a way to compensate college faculty for work on committees and exams other than directing the committee, perhaps a 1/10 credit, and I strongly endorse that.

I also very much like the idea that Carrie came up last year, capitalizing on our location in New York. It is, after all, a major reason why students come here, and if it can become a guiding principle that the Grad Center should enthusiastically take advantage of resources here and make itself a microcosm of the city’s rich, diverse culture , it can only benefit us. A New-York-centric identity (which we already have but have not fully articulated) will give us a better identity nationwide and provide a guiding sense of self as we make future decisions.

But I thought I’d use this opportunity to mention one aspect of life at the GC has come to loom bigger and bigger in my sense of the institution in recent years, and it’s one that I don’t see mentioned in any of the documents. I refer to its governance structure, which, it seems to me, could usefully be streamlined and standardized in order to keep pace with the growth of the institution. I’d be very interested to hear others’ ideas about the following issues:

1. Can we think creatively about another way of running the department, other than by a loose confederation of area groups? I understand that this works better than nothing, and that in an essentially egalitarian department, it is hard to come up with other structures. But I would love us to try to think of more imaginative ways. What has happened, in effect, is that professional fields have taken the place of governing structures, which stretches them in ways that are not necessarily viable.

The area group organization means that we are divided into little fiefdoms by period and region. Such an organization is out of sync with an increasingly interdisciplinary, global, and fluid way of understanding literary studies. It makes us look old-fashioned. It also means that we have built-in lobbying groups pushing for particular kinds of hiring and admissions, so that people are added to the program based on whether they suit the needs of a particular subfield, which risks losing people who are doing new fields or interesting interdisciplinary work, because they have no built-in group to advocate for them. It is true that we do have interdisciplinary or affinity groups, but I think my experience is typical in that I am active in my primary group (Victorian) and have little energy left for another bunch of meetings or activities for feminist studies, queer studies, etc.

I don’t really have another idea, but I’d suggest we talk to people in other departments at the GC and see what they do. Right now the membership groups push for hiring, set up Friday Forum speakers, and organize teaching rotations. Maybe we should move those functions to committees instead. Ie, the membership committee could poll the department for our needs and present plans for future hiring; a teaching committee could set up a teaching rotation for everyone.

Another idea: why not have faculty meetings? I know that many people wouldn’t show up, but it would be healthy to have monthly check-ins for those who could come. It would allow department members to be well-informed and track ongoing issues. There’s a reason most departments hold these things.

2. Can we streamline the appointment process? By this I mean: can we create a single universally-followed structure for appointing people, and also, bring college and central line appointments more into sync with each other? Problems with appointments have been a consistent source of dissension in the department over the past two years and this would be a great opportunity to fix the process.

Right now, college appointments take about three years and sometimes even longer (one year for the need to be identified and the ad to be posted; one year or longer for trial teaching; the following year for the actual visit). This takes far too long, especially when you consider that the people serving this lengthy apprenticeship are already our colleagues, whom we have known intimately, served with on committees, observed teaching, etc. The multi-year process makes it impossible to respond nimbly to departmental needs, and it means that by the time someone actually comes up for a vote, a whole new crop of faculty might be available who were not yet tenured when the original call went out. So, even when it works, it’s problematically sluggish. However, in the last few years, two or three college high-profile college faculty have undergone this process only to be rejected after the job talk, a highly humiliating result. So sometimes it’s sluggish and disastrous as well.

Not only is the college appointment process unwieldy, but it is also totally out of sync with the procedure for appointing central faculty, which is currently based on recruitment (based on murky personal ties) and on a single day’s visit (whose format may vary wildly).

We have not been allowed to recruit central line faculty with a national job ad, which would have created a level playing field. Without that, the door is open to all sorts of favoritism, rumor-mongering, old-boy networking, and back-room deals. (Even if those things are not actually happening, members of the department perceive them to be happening, which is toxic in itself.) What’s more, central faculty appointments don’t follow a recognized procedure and tend to get made up as we go along each time, creating hard feelings. We need a democratic, transparent hiring system with accountability at every step.

In my opinion both college and central line appointments should work the same way, and that way is not a mystery: send out an ad, bring the most promising candidates to campus, have them do a visit, have lunch and dinner with department members. Have the candidate teach a seminar (sit in on someone’s course, or set up the seminar as a specific teaching opportunity and thus something exclusively attended by graduate students). Then do the job talk. If the candidate does not seem viable, we need to make a strong effort to figure that out before the campus visit. The whole thing should be done, from ad to hiring, within a year. There is a structure for appointments that departments use nationwide; why do we need to reinvent it every time, or create our own idiosyncratic version of it?

I know many people like the trial teaching semester, and I do understand that it gives grad students a real sense of faculty that nothing else could give. I like that too. But my problem with it is that, if college faculty are good teachers, we should be appointing them already, and if they are bad teachers, we should not be forcing our students to spend an entire semester with them. Would we ask job candidates to teach for us for a whole semester normally before deciding whether or not to hire them? No, and the same reasons should apply for college faculty.

3. We absolutely need to continue pushing for diverse appointments and diverse admissions; monocultures are inherently unhealthy. But that also means we cannot turn into a monoculture of one field or one period. Part of diversity is historical and international (Anglophone) appointments. Anyone who works in feminism, queer theory, etc, is continually experiencing the situation of advocates and scholars who know very little about pre-20th century formulations of these issues, which means that such scholars lack an understanding of how and why contemporary formulations of race, culture, gender, and desire originally formed, and also lack a sense of what historical alternatives might once have existed to constructs we now take for granted. Having a historically diverse faculty also means a better student body, as we attract a richer variety of applicants who can then, as students, help inform each other’s research with their own expertise. Having strong faculty in British and other Anglophone fields prevents Americentrism. A field where everyone reinforces each other’s sense of what’s important is an unhealthily closed field. I don’t want us to end up there.

We are renowned for our strength in queer theory, and I would like to make sure that continues. We have major feminist scholars here (Jane Marcus, Nancy K. Miller) and I would like to ensure that we continue strong hires in contemporary feminist theory. But we desperately need more appointments in 17th and 18th century, since those fields are currently carried by David Richter and Carrie Hintz, both of whom have robust alternative fields that they often want to teach, as well as major administrative responsibilities. We need a Latino/a specialist. We might also talk about fields other than fiction – how is our representation in poetry, drama, graphic novels, film, etc? Can students who increasingly work in interdisciplinary genres find enough people to work with there?

Sorry for the length of this letter, but I have tried to give it serious consideration. I do think that what we need above all is a) a vision of ourselves as expressing the best of New York, and b) better governance structures: more communication, standardized hiring procedures, and a set of departmental hiring goals.

Talia Schaffer

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.

Each year our program is asked to complete a short assessment process and report on one aspect of our program requirements and activities. We have already looked at our first exam, and the dissertation process.

At the GC, assessment is refreshingly faculty-driven, and the Provost’s Office asks us to define our own process for completing assessment—and it has proved helpful in the past in helping us examine our policies and procedures.

This year, we have an opportunity to revisit our 2007 Self Study/ External Periodic review, to see how we are doing in terms of our own goals emerging from that study and the external reviewer’s recommendations (those reports were sent to students and faculty in the program earlier this week). Above all, we will be asked to answer the question: “What are the program’s primary goals for the next five years?”

That is clearly a question that requires a wide conversation involving all members of the program, and one that relies on engaged participation from everyone. I have been working with the ESA Co-chairs, Paul Fess and Justin Van Wormer, to start this conversation.

We’re excited to receive “Open Letters” on any aspect of the future direction of the program.   We are particularly interested in hearing thoughts about how to build on our common program culture while not eliding or glossing over differences of opinion and approach.  While we are all very committed to, and immersed in, our own methodologies and literary periods, this is a chance for us to think about common strands of inquiry across periods and methodologies, and to speak with each other about our collective identity and vision.   What are the current strengths of the program, and how should we build on them?    Can we envision ways to connect our program more fully to the life of the city, and ways of connecting our program to other CUNY schools, and embody CUNY’s historic mission of diversity and access?   How do we conceive the purpose the English Program as in conversation with 21st-century disciplinary trends and critical methods? Are there arguments to be made for foregrounding the distinctiveness of how we structure and practice “English” (i.e., periodization, national formation, formalism, literary history, etc.)? What are the qualities of our program and our collective scholarly work that will draw applicants to our program?  What are we (and what should we be) “known for” nationally?  Should the program develop around a single concentration of strength, or along multiple strands? How can our curriculum, program events, and mentorship best serve our students?

The deadline for contributing an “Open Letter” will be January 25^th.

From those “Open Letters” Mario, Paul, Justin and Carrie will bring members of the program into conversation on two panels, held on Feb 14^th at 2 PM and March 7th at 2 PM.  The concerns of those panels will be based on patters we see emerging from the “Open Letters.” We will be endeavoring to represent as many points of view as possible, and to place members of the program in conversation with each other.

The Open Letters can be found here:

https://openletters.commons.gc.cuny.edu/open-letters/

Justin Van Wormer

There are doubtless a great many factors that we might identify as contributing strengths to the English Program.  I think, though, that we might also trace many of those factors to a single ultimate source and might find that each factor arises in close relationship with New York City.  Rethinking the Program in relation to the City can be generative path toward identifying and intensifying desirable traits of the Program and refocusing on local sites of critical inquiry and action.  This focus helps define a critical space in which to be effective teachers and scholars.  As a Program we can engage in “cutting edge” projects and fulfill the historical mission of CUNY to be of service to the often underserved people of New York City.  I envision New York as an organizing principle for the Program in three different, but interlinked areas: resource, diversity, and what I am calling sites of critique.

I keep using spatial metaphors – the language of place, sites, spaces, paths, etc. – because the placeness of New York itself is the greatest resource the English Program has.  This is a practical matter or sorts.  Lots and lots of people would like to live and work in New York.  Lots and lots of people do live and work in New York.  We can add on to this all those institutions and places in New York that support our work as humanists and critics.  I want to make sure that by advocating the orientation of the program to more fully engage with New York City going forward I do not therefore advocate for a purely contemporary or Americanist vision of the English Program.  Part of the placeness of New York is the fact of multiple archives and the space to read them; the massive simultaneous reading of multiple texts is at the heart of the culture practice that New York projects as an identifying characteristic to the world.  This idea of place includes everything from archival collections like those at The Morgan Library and The Schomburg Center to the simple fact that no other city in the United States can boast the sheer density of poetry readings and black box theaters that New York has.  New York can, does, and ought to support committed scholars across disciplinary, periodization, and geographical boundaries.  Shakespeare has a home here, so does Milton, so does Toussaint Louverture, and so does Bayard Rustin.  We are the City University of New York; we are, as they say, in the thick of it.

What does it mean to be at CUNY?  It means serving a racially, intellectually, and socioeconomically diverse set of students that reflect and represent the city itself.  The geography of the CUNY system itself reflects the fragmented and compromised nature of the city’s past and present.  Our campuses, like subway stations and expressways, are one way to trace the contours of the City and its flow of bodies and information.  Our undergraduate students exhibit a diversity of an almost world historical scope for college students; and they move into and through the city on ancient lines of trade and migration.  They also move in the space constructed for them by neoliberal capitalism.  Uniting a consciousness of both historical circumstance and struggle with contemporary critical understanding of the political economy of the classroom and the city means having a clearer picture of CUNY.  The Program itself ought to reflect that, too.  We should concentrate on bringing CUNY undergraduates to the GC, attracting a diverse faculty, and enrolling a diverse student body from other sources.  New York, the people who live here, and the people who would like to, allows us to use the program to help the professoriate look a little more queer, non-white, and female and better represent the voices and views of the people who live here.  We should look like the City, we should look like CUNY, and we should be a place in which our academic projects engage with the diversity of the City.

New York City in its diversity provides several sites of critique, places in which to engage critically with culture and politics.  The necessary work of institutional critique of the university in America can find no more fruitful grounds than CUNY where militarization, neoliberalization, and corporatization vie with a long tradition of activism, engagement, open admissions, and a mission to serve all of New York.  Occupy Wall Street was an object lesson in the practice of different kinds of radical pedagogy, politics, and protest.  Both of these necessarily implicate the ongoing privatization of public space in New York; what does it mean to be a public person in a privatized realm and what kinds of citizenship are available to us when we negotiate these spaces.  There are not only site of critical contestation and struggle, but also sites in which to anchor projects of critique, advocacy, reading, and imagination.  There are multiple diaspora literatures with presences in the City, composition and rhetoric as practiced by both teachers and students in our constituent colleges, and large and vital queer communities and communities of color.  The history of New York also provides ample opportunities to read multiple literatures and histories, from Edgar Allan Poe’s magazine editing to W.E.B. DuBois’s influence on the Black Arts movement to the rise of queer activism and the GAA in the 1960s.  None of these are objects to be analyzed through a microscope or a telescope, but places and practices in which we can anchor critical inquiry and examine the possibilities, ambiguities, and contradictions of politics, identity, and representation.

This concatenation of characteristics represents a web of mutually supporting factors which points in the direction the Program ought to move.  We can focus student and faculty recruitment to increase diversity in the Program’s members, offer those faculty and students access to the cultural institutions of the City, and develop a strong focus on the kinds of critical inquiry that are vital to the future of the humanities and the academe.  To do this, we ought to commit to expanding diversity and being responsible to the CUNY-wide mission to educate the disparate communities of New York City.  This means creating an environment in which our program comes to look more like the city and responds to the conditions of the city.  We ought to expand our capacity in diaspora literatures from Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Global South generally.  The CUNY Pipeline is a wonderful program, but I believe that more faculty diversity – and diversity of areas of study – will beget more student diversity.  We ought to search out scholars whose work is also representative of and responsive to the critical questions that arise out of the milieu of the City.  This is not to make us an Urban Studies program, but to move toward those scholars in all areas and periods of literature who work with and within the resources of New York City, be they a physical archive, a performative practice, a diasporic literary tradition, the financialization of the university, or the problems and possibilities of composition in New York City’s classrooms.  Orienting this way will rely on existing strengths of the Program and CUNY, position the Program to move forward in fruitful and diverse ways, and fulfill the historic institutional mission of CUNY to educate and advocate for the people of New York City.