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The doctoral and master's degree graduate program in English at
Temple stands in the upper third of programs in the nation's universities and
is in the first rank of its urban universities. The program has emerged into
national prominence from the respectable regional role that it filled in the past.
Throughout its history, the program has enjoyed a high reputation for teaching
literary history, and especially for teaching modern and contemporary literature
and current movements in literary and cultural criticism. For students in creative
writing, the program has provided training by teacher-writers who represent a
range of current genres and styles and who are distinguished literary critics
as well as distinguished poets and novelists.
The mission of the English graduate program has been shaped by its
history among other programs in the region. There are two doctoral programs in
English in eastern Pennsylvania: Temple's and the University of Pennsylvania's.
Temple is the only public institution in the immediate area offering a doctoral
concentration in rhetoric and composition; its program is the only one granting
a master's degree in creative writing. In an area exceptionally rich in academic
institutions, Temple provides broad access to the traditional discipline for
students from all backgrounds, and a particular willingness to work at the
innovative edges of the discipline in its national context; and it does so in
the light of a public educational mission.
The English graduate program functions as a point of service and
exchange between educational institutions in the area and in the nation. It
provides graduate training for both area students and for students from a broader-based
pool. Once these students complete their degrees, they tend to find local placement,
in a way that shows the program continuing to serve and enrich the local area, as
it has traditionally done. But increasingly, the program's graduates have taken jobs
outside the region: California, Ohio, New York, and Wisconsin.
The Temple English graduate program supports an unusually productive
faculty composed of traditional and innovative scholars, all of whom are committed
to the renovation of English studies. To clarify: English departments, since their
inception at the end of the nineteenth century, have included in their mission the
recovery and interpretation of the central texts of English and American literature,
the teaching of writing, and the interpretation of literary texts in aid of the
formation of sensibility, of heightened perception, and of more rigorous thought.
By the late sixties, this traditional mission had become a mandate: departments
were to cover a canon of texts considered classic and were therefore to lead students
through a historically organized course of readings in the major periods of literary
study. In the last quarter century, this conception of literary study and of the
teaching of literature has come under question from two directions: the notion of
the canon has been criticized for excluding works by women, by African Americans,
and by a variety of "minority" cultures, and it has been criticized for segregating
literary texts from the work of contemporary writers. In addition, the ideal coverage
has been questioned in favor of an approach that focuses on the theoretical, cultural,
and political presuppositions of reading a literary text.
Both of these new directions in English studies are and have been
controversial; both are represented on our faculty. Scholars such as Professors
O'Hara, Singer, Venuti, and Wells have been active in examining practices of reading
and writing in ways that require interdisciplinary thought; Professors Orvell,
DuPlessis, David, and Mitchell have been in the forefront of the expansion of the
canon to include neglected or unknown writers. In accord with the latter expansion,
recruitment of faculty and graduate students has placed a premium on their cultural
and intellectual diversity, and on their willingness to bring together other
disciplines with their own. At Temple each of the just-named tendencies in
contemporary criticism are represented in a program which especially includes
investigations of Renaissance, Nineteenth Century, and especially Modern and
Contemporary literature. Three
nationally-recognized scholarly journals, whose focus is literary history, are
edited by English faculty. In the past decade, the Creative Writing Program has
foregrounded the department's corps of distinguished writers who have national
visibility (for example, Professors Singer, DuPlessis, Delany, and Mellen).
Most recently, the Department has committed itself, under the leadership of Professor
Wells and Goldblatt, to exploring theories of rhetoric and composition. It
must also be noted that the Department is committed to developing the research
profiles of junior hires who have been recruited for their potential strength
as graduate faculty (including Professors Lee, Henry, Salazar, Gauch, and Newman).
The English graduate program has, therefore, a dual mission: to educate
professionals, literary scholars and artists, including students from the Delaware
valley area and increasingly from a national pool; and to perform research in aid of
the renewal of English studies and literary culture nationally. Fulfillment of this
dual mission is paramount for the task of educating graduates and undergraduates
alike. The program is founded in the belief that the quality of undergraduate
teaching in a university environment is a function of its faculty's commitment to
distinguished research and to advanced forms of creativity.
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