CUSO Workshop
The Changing Value of English Studies
Guests:
Professor Laura Brown, Cornell University, USA
Professor Stefan Collini, University of Cambridge, UK
Description:
Organized in tandem with the SAUTE conference “Economies of English”, this workshop aims to make PhD students (and the rest of us) reflect on the value of individual and collective research projects in the context of the seemingly near-constant crisis of the universities and the humanities and the frequent “turns” and “paradigm shifts” of the discipline of English studies. Participants will be explicitly asked to state how they perceive the value of their individual field of research (and how to deal strategically with the money metaphor embedded in such reflections). But they will more importantly be encouraged to participate in a discussion of how their work relates to the current and historical state of their field of study. “Staking a claim” or “clearing the ground” is an essential part of a PhD, but there is little or no training or discussion in the general tactics and strategies of how to go about it. A little grounding in the history of the discipline will be indispensable as well as discussions of the forces that drive “turns” and “paradigm shifts” and how this relates to the underlying “ideas of the university”. The workshop (Sunday 26 April) will be in three stages: a seminar on pre-distributed texts relating to “the idea of the university” and the history of the discipline; a group work session on “clearing the ground” and “staking a claim”; and a session of individual presentations by the participating students in which they situate their individual projects in the relevant field.