The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline

by Robert Scholes

Book Overview

In this lucid book an eminent scholar, teacher, and author takes a critical look at the nature and direction of English studies in America. Robert Scholes offers a thoughtful and witty intervention in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300071515
• ISBN13: 9780300071511
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 203 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.5" x 5.9" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Loved it

Tired of eggghead profs and "scholards" (scholar + dullard)? Does Barthes make you barf? Will you blow up your university libary if one more person mentions words like "discourse," "interpellaton," "the signified," or "technologies of self"? Ah, then you must be in "grad skool"! My deepest condolences.I found many of his insights to be refreshing and right on the mark. Some scholars will disagree with Scholes and criticize his strategies (that's why they're dull eggheads after all), but he identitifies a very real problem in English and humanities departments today (and academia in general). He attempts to address it in simple, highly readable prose--and with humor as well--while avoiding the jargon and the pretentiousness that plagues most scholary writing. I found myself staying up until the wee hours of the night to finish the book in one sitting. It was a wonderful respite for me during my first year in grad school, and it lifted my spirits considerably. As many of you already know, graduate school is an experience that basically chews you up and spits you out, destroying your self-esteem, dignity and health in the process. While it may not prevent you from throwing your Foucault and de Certeau books out the window, it may give you back your sanity--remember, it's not you, it's the system's power structure and its discursive effects!

Practical & inspiring proposals for lit studies

This book will probably never make the NYTimes Bestseller list, but for its intended audience of literature and English composition instructors, this is a thought-provoking text which provides a much-needed jab in the ribs to English departments everywhere. This is not a dry critical review, but a practical, specific and inspirational text regarding the declining status of English studies in the U.S. Scholes doesn't just whine about what's wrong, but shows readers some ways to make English a useful and necessary component of a university education.As an English graduate student, I was particularly intrigued by Scholes' ideas of making English composition courses more than just a dumping ground for underpaid instructors and unenthusiastic students. Scholes expanded my own conceptions about what English composition should do, and how it can be made more relevant to today's attention-challenged students. Scholes has renewed my faith in English studies. Anyone who has taken or taught a college-level English course and wondered what the hell they were doing should read this intelligent and challenging book (or text, if you prefer).