some thoughts on a host institution

As someone who got her degrees at open admissions land grant Us, I admire the spirit behind Juliana’s suggestion of host institutions, but I think it is important to know that community colleges notoriously exploit labor. When I taught at a CC I received pay that came to less than minimum wage, no benefits, no office space, and a scarcity of resources (staplers, staples, paper, computers) which caused a great deal of in-fighting among workers. Adjuncts, for example, were required to pay a special rate to drink departmental coffee. This was a large, prosperous community college system, so I can’t imagine something like a poetics academy flourishing in these conditions.

If the academy were hosted in a larger, state university, I think it would be best to have it separate from the English department.

Though art schools often have outrageous tuition costs, I like the model and spirit of the art school and think an art school could provide both the technological resources and the kind of invigorating dialogue to make a poetics academy work.

Even if the academy were not to be hosted by an art school, I think a study of how art schools emerged in the early part of the twentieth century (and how alternative art spaces emerged in the latter half of the century) might give us some clues on how to make this academy happen independently, if we choose to go that route.

Anne

hectic but

it's been hectic for me here at the end of the semester (and being laid off by these vacuous drones at highly rated university x), but i wanted to restart thinking about how to start thinking about a program. 1st presumption, that we should have a sense of shared trajectory, but that 2) that trajectory is drawn by practical situations. so, list of gripes doesn't seem to me a bad place to begin. for instance, i love many of juliana's suggestions. the course-title stipulation is brilliant and common sensical to the point of being anathema to places like, say, university x.

but, 3) looking at what students come in with and can do with what they're given (given they're given some space to do something, which is relatively rare at, say, university x), what do they not have? again, i don't know anything about workshops, plus or minus, but what does a student need to have coming in to one? what would it help them to have, functionally, that our undergrad program could offer as a core program? i'm thinking about what my peers in gradskool seemed to be missing and what my current undergrads definitely are.

get back to ya ... hope to hear from more of y'all soon. integrated lists will be compiled along the way, and then we can argue over those too.

A few beginning notes on what I would do if I could start a program:

1. That it be located in a state university or community college system. I'm toying with the idea that it not be located in a university or college, but I feel like any program needs resources that are hard to get otherwise. It will need access to a library, a lunch room, a building, mail boxes, a photocopy machine, student loans, health insurance for students, etc.

2. That it not be located in a private school unless the school agrees to set tuition at levels equivalent to area community college tuition for students who can't afford it otherwise.

3. That the thesis and/or dissertation could take many different forms. It could be a film. Or a website. Or a bibliography. Or a series of interviews. Or a reading series. Or an edited collection. Or...

4. While the school sets a curriculum for different degrees, students can self declare whether they want to be in PhD or MA or MFA or BA or BFA program.

5. Cultural biases are admitted in course titles, syllabi, etc., so as to encourage more culturally located discussion. So a course that only teaches Anglo-American-European modernism cannot be called Modernism but must be called something like Anglo-American-European Modernism. A course that teaches only American literature in English will be American Literature in English not American Literature.

6. Final projects for all seminars can be in any genre, medium, form, etc.

7. BA not required for admission to graduate program. Standardized test scores not considered. No letters of recommendation for admission. Only work sample and statement of purpose required for admission. Grades submitted if applicant desires but not required.

8. Something about internationalism seems crucial. Not sure how to set it up. Should certainly be a huge part of the curriculum and the reading series should bring in a lot of writers from other places.

9. Some sort of public service, I hate that phrase, community work?, requirement that is very flexible but still points outside of the program. How to make this so it isn't so, so, you know...

I've got to run. Will try to work on this more later. This isn't right. Just a list I think of things that frustrate me about my education and also current job. Perhaps not the best way to begin thinking.

On the workshop question quickly: nothing wrong with a bunch of people getting together and talking about shit around a table. I sort of feel as if "workshop" has become a whipping post or the complaints about it are just a reason not to rethink what to do when 10 people are around a table.

mark is coming

word has it he'll be joining us in a month or so. he's on the road and also getting the big, new double issue of xcp out the door. meanwhile, anne and juliana ... let's hear from ya.

response to ksm's a's to q's

Point for point, some replies, working back toward perceived need. We needn't always directly isolate perceived needs, of course, but one reason I'm interested in forming a group to develop this imaginary program is to see if my values are shared beside some sort of consensus re: current, actual shortcomings in academia.

1. Categorizing curriculum along lines of national literatures is tricky, especially since one might assume that North American will be an obvious need (given the Pinsky effect, et al). Diversity is an issue, a real issue, but has a tendency to reproduce the kind of liberal humanist doctrine this program posits as so deeply problematic. Perhaps we should explore the translation thing. Do engaged yet theoretically informed translation programs exist? And by "engaged," I mean with respect to close-at-hand, USAmerican and other North American contexts? Who, among us, can answer this question? If no one can, maybe our newest recruit should be able to?

2. The deal with K's "doctrinaire lineage" is that I don't think that doing that material justice allows it to emerge as a "doctrine" at all. Methodology needs to be fleshed out. An MFA Poetics program has to be about fucking with genre-distinctions, disciplinary constraints, etc. I'd like to widen the scope of what counts as relevant when we say "critical theory." Why not Liz Grosz and other worthwhile theorists who seem to adamantly distance themselves from literary study per se? The core lineage must stand, and be done with some traction beyond its status as "core" -- then juxtaposed with a "lineage" based on unusual circuits of contemporary influence as yet untried: such as, selfishly speaking, my own attempts to bring poetics and disability studies into conversation. You'd be amazed at the resistance I'm encountering.

3. I don't know enough about standard workshop methodology -- Juliana and Kasey (and Mark, if he shows up), and Anne maybe, can deal more fruitfully with this? But it's not clear to me what's being workshopped. What would a thesis look like in this program?

Some (Tentative) Basic A's to Basic Q's

I like the idea of an MFA in Poetics. That opens the door to a world beyond just workshops, including, say lit courses (but perhaps structured less around the conventional lit dept. model where everything builds up to a formal final essay, and more around ongoing investigation of texts). I'm not so hot on the Creative Writing PhD, partly because I'm still uncertain what that is besides a way for institutions to attempt to confer more authority on themselves and students without really stepping outside the parameters of the typical MFA program. Maybe I'm being unfair. I should learn more about what actually goes on in such programs besides just what I've heard grumbled about.

As Patrick says, the articulation of a core curriculum is essential. I think that's one of the first things we have to work out. I would suggest at base a tripartite emphasis:

1. Acquaint students with an extensive survey of influential texts from the past hundred or so years. In addition, prospective students should be sought from within a group with some prior exposure to a wide range of literary models (e.g., students with a BA in literature, or comparable experience). One key thing we'd have to decide is what kind of national focus to have: American? North American? And British? Other world literatures in translation? How much of each?
2. Offer substantive seminars in theory (obviously, since we're using poetics as our working keyword). Again, what kind of theory? I have in mind a pretty familiar trajectory of approaches starting roughly with the Russian Formalists and contemporaneous artistic movements; through Stein, Pound, the Objectivists, et al.; continuing on to the New Americans; and culminating in Language and post-Language poetics. I suspect others might legitimately want to challenge that rather doctrinaire lineage, within which I have admittedly a little too comfortably nestled my own pedagogy.
3. Conduct some kind of ongoing workshop-like activities in which students gradually develop individual projects. I say "workshop-like" because another thing I'd like to see happen is some sort of reimagining of the traditional workshop, but I don't have an immediate sense of what that would be offhand. Maybe less emphasis on "workshopping" each other's work per se, and more on encouraging students to contextualize their own work articulately in relation to some more or less rigorous notion of process, technique, influences, etc.

I assume the best way to go about this is just to throw stuff out like this and let others add on?

some basic Qs (now that Kasey is on board)

Are we teaching only graduate students? What would admissions look like?

What organs do we provide and what kind of intellectual / pedagogical infrastructure is needed?

Is a host institution to be sought?

Is this a degree program--if so, what degree(s) are we hoping to offer?

I think a PhD in Creative Writing is an odd choice, but maybe not. These programs exist, but I think they are still sort of unformed.

MFA in Poetics would be interesting--the designation allows us to integrate various basic methodologies surrounding critical / creative work in several modes: workshop, seminar, and "service learning" -- the latter is something I'd expect Mark could speak to really well.

I think the complete freedom given to faculty to teach whatever is essential (in part, the raison d'etre, non?). But I equally believe that a core curriculum is essential. For my part, a critical theory survey (which is directed toward writing, rather than summary indoctrination into "the profession") seems essential -- to do it right, it seems like it'd have to be a year-long sequence.

statement of purpose

This blog exists as a space to brainstorm--collaboratively--a proposed academic program in modern and contemporary poetry and poetics. The notion of creating a such an academic program has been casually bandied about, whether based on perceived shortcomings of comparable programs such as SUNY-Buffalo's Poetics Program or Naropa University's MFA, or based on their success in creating and / or furthering an accurately historical, process-driven approach to poetics as well as a body of trained academics and interested students who, persistently, lack institutional sanction and support for their work. Here we should discuss everything from accreditation to theoretical underpinnings of a mission statement (including coursework, etc). We could, at least, debate the need for such a program.