Why We Love to Hate English Professors: They think they’re the center of the university. They’re not

Michael Clune, of Case Western University, echoes this point in "The Bizarro World of Literary Studies," extending it to indict English departments specifically. [...]both scholars defend a well-staked-out position in the century-spanning controversy over interdisciplinarity (a running argument ably chronicled by Julie Thompson Klein). In 1985 undergraduates could major in English at 91 percent of Ph.D.-granting institutions, but English claimed only 2 percent of those baccalaureates, according to our analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data. Universities, meanwhile, accomplished a subdivision of labor that created new relationships among tenure-line faculty members, graduate students, term-contract instructors, and student-services professionals. Exerting a compelling pull on the intellectual life of humanities scholars in the period, centers like those at Wesleyan University and the University of California supported grand agenda-setting projects, but they addressed niche audiences habituated to the academic star system.