Profession 

Abstract: Networked and programmable media are part of a rapidly developing me diascape transforming how citizens of developed countries do business, conduct their social lives, communicate with one another, and?perhaps most significant?think. This essay explores the hypothesis that we are in the midst of a generational shift in cognitive styles that poses challenges to education at all levels, including colleges and universities. The younger the age group, the more pronounced the shift; it is already apparent in present-day college students, but its full effects are likely to be realized only when youngsters who are now twelve years old reach our institutions of higher education. To prepare, we need to become aware of the shift, understand its causes, and think creatively and innovatively about new educational strategies appropriate to the coming changes. The shift in cognitive styles can be seen in the contrast between deep attention and hyper attention. Deep attention, the cognitive style tradi tionally associated with the humanities, is characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods (say, a novel by Dickens), ignoring out side stimuli while so engaged, preferring a single information stream, and having a high tolerance for long focus times. Hyper attention is character ized by switching focus rapidly among different tasks, preferring multiple information streams, seeking a high level of stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom. The contrast in the two cognitive modes may be captured in an image: picture a college sophomore, deep in Pride and

Abstract: In September 2003 the MLA finished compiling the figures from its fall 2002 survey of foreign language enrollments in United States institutions of higher education. This latest survey is the twentieth in a series con ducted since 1958 with the support of grants from the United States De partment of Education (or from its predecessor, the United States Office of Education). The following report presents fall 2002 enrollments for indi vidual languages and examines trends through time. Using procedures developed for previous surveys, the MLA sent a questionnaire to the registrars of 2,781 twoand four-year institutions, soliciting information on credit-bearing enrollments for fall 2002 in all language courses other than English. Although the instructions on the questionnaire made it clear that the survey was seeking information on all language courses offered on the campuses of these institutions, the MLA has no way of knowing whether the registrars in all cases provided com plete information. The questionnaire was not mailed until mid-October 2002, to ensure that the figures provided would be final (or nearly so) rather than preliminary. A second mailing was sent in early December, a third in mid-February 2003, and a series of follow-up telephone calls was begun in April.

Abstract: A few years ago I, along with a few colleagues from my department, went to dinner with a candidate for a junior position in eighteenth-century British literature. In the course of the conversation, the job candidate de clared that it was impossible to get published without archival work. This was something I had never heard, and it stuck in my craw. Whether or not her assessment of things was accurate and despite the likelihood that it varies a lot by field, I recognized that this remark does in fact represent something about the direction of literary studies today. While not literally true, the remark bespeaks what, for those whose disci plinary formation is taking place in the United States in the early twenty first century, is an established norm. This norm diverges widely from those that governed my own professional formation three decades ago, and I want to say?at the risk of sounding like the aging curmudgeon I am becom ing?that I believe this direction literary studies has taken is misguided. It was about twenty years ago that English studies witnessed the rise of new historicism: this burgeoning movement was not only the site of brilliant critical performances but also a much needed corrective to the ahistoricism then predominant. The time was ripe for such a course cor rection: ahistoricism had been persuasively linked to sexism, racism, and elitism; attacks on the canon had called into question the notion of time less works; literary studies had been ahistorical for too long.

Abstract: Imagine that you are observing production in a widget factory and that your view toward the end of the process has been obstructed. As a result, you witness only partial assembly and then, somewhat miraculously, a string of finished products. Given the complexity of their design, you become curious: What occurred in between? In the production of PhDs, this blind spot is the dissertation process. Because it is decentralized and largely privatized, the process remains hidden to most graduate students, leaving them unprepared to negotiate the multifaceted challenges of the dissertation stage. At the MLA's first conference on doctoral education, in 1987, Susan Wolfson observed that graduate students are rarely taught how to become teacher-scholars, since the "implicit assumption that [graduate programs] teach subjects, not methods, marginaliz[es] discussion of pedagogy and of orientation to the profession" (61). Since then, many others have agreed that academe has been historically resistant to "professionalization in general and to professional training of graduate students" (MLA Ad Hoc Committee 191). In response, efforts by the MLA and other higher edu cation organizations have sought to improve teacher training, job market preparation, and the subsequent orientation of new faculty members to their institutional roles and responsibilities.1 But there has been corre spondingly little discussion of the dissertation?the foundation of a schol arly career; a significant criterion in academic hiring; and, for too many, an obstacle to degree completion or the primary factor in attrition.