A department merger without sense

Author: MATTHEW HALE '93

Although the merger of the English and American Literature majors was recently changed to include one required course in nineteenth-century American Literature and one required American Literature elective, this last-minute adjustment does not substantively alter the fact that the teaching of American Literature at Middlebury will be diminished if the proposal passes. Nor does it change the fact that the proposal lacks coherence. If anything, the recent addition of one nineteenth-century American literature requirement exposes the haphazard approach undergirding the "merger." For if a nineteenth-century American Literature course is now deemed sufficiently important to make it a required part of the curriculum, why not take the next logical step and make the study of twentieth-century American Literature a requirement? Indeed, if this is to be a real "English and American Literatures" Department rather than an English Department with a quaint rhetorical nod to American Literature, why not require three to four courses in English Literature and three to four courses in American Literature?

The answer to that last question is obvious. Those who proposed the "merger" never intended to provide a balanced curriculum in English and American literature, despite the title offered for the new department. With that unavoidable conclusion in mind, the recent addition of the nineteenth-century American literature requirement can be seen for what it really is - an attempt to gain more votes among the faculty at large and a patronizing, but ultimately insufficient, response to cogent criticism.

Speaking of patronizing and insufficient responses, I recently reviewed the letter Vice President for Academic Affairs Alison Byerly sent to me on behalf of President Liebowitz in response to my June 2004 letter. In her letter, Professor Byerly quotes, with permission, comments made by [Reginald L. Cook} Professor of American Literature Brett Millier. "The problem is indeed that American literature is almost never taught as literature HERE," Millier asserts. This is an astonishing - and patently false - statement, and one that I am particularly well qualified to refute since I took numerous American literature courses at Middlebury. When I read James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans" for Professor McWilliams' AL 201, I am certain we discussed universally recognized literary elements like plot, symbol and character development. Similar items were explored when I read William Faulkner's "Go Down, Moses" for Professor Timothy Spears' "Telling about the South" class. Finally, Professor Millier did an excellent job of teaching American literature "as literature" when I read classic texts by Emerson and Dickinson for her AL 202 class. Yet somehow Professor Millier now states that "American literature is almost never taught as literature" at Middlebury. How can she possibly make that claim? What exactly is going on here?

My sense of things is that disingenuous statements are being put forth to appease individuals who have legitimate objections regarding the "merger." This is deeply troubling, but unfortunately, it appears to reflect a pattern, rather than an exception. I will not go into detail here, but my understanding is that the process by which the proposed "merger" has been ushered through various stages of Middlebury's administrative bureaucracy has been flawed at best and shady at worst, and this despite the fact that one of the values I internalized while at Middlebury was the fundamental importance of open discussion, procedural fairness and intellectual integrity.

The sham legitimacy of the process associated with the proposed "merger" is sad, but what is equally disheartening is that the "merger" is not necessary in the first place. For if a particular professor wants to teach a course studying the connections between American and non-American literature, why not propose a course that facilitates that type of inquiry? That type of class could be cross-listed and thus simultaneously serve the scholarly interests of the professor and the curricular interests of students in the existing English and American Literature majors. This type of arrangement makes practical sense, and I can attest, as both a former Middlebury student and a scholar-teacher, that it works. While a senior at Middlebury, I enrolled in Professor McWilliams' class "The Historical Novel" and thoroughly enjoyed our examination of various French, Russian, British and American texts. Meanwhile, at my previous institution, I taught a course on the "Atlantic Revolutions," despite the fact that I was hired as an "Americanist."

Such courses demonstrate that a professor's evolving interests can flourish within a pre-existing departmental framework; scholarly and pedagogical growth do not require the destruction of well-established, intellectually coherent curricular programs.