English Studies versus the Humanities? Cultural Studies and Institutional Power

Abstract

The short paper which follows was originally delivered at a 1994 ACCUTE (Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English) panel on `Cultural Studies versus English Studies?' The title of the panel evokes and interrogates the threat that a politically informed, interdisciplinary `cultural studies' paradigm may pose to traditional `English studies' programs. The title of my paper redirects that question to consider the long-term effects, in a period of government cutbacks to university funding, of expanding the already elastic mandate of English departments to include `cultural studies' in their curricula. One of the long-term effects may be the loss of smaller departments within the humanities (e.g., art history, film studies, classics) and the concurrent loss of discipline-specific training these departments offer. This is not to say that English departments should observe a `hands off' policy in relation to new interdisciplinary imperatives; nor is it to say that the only appropriate response to cutbacks is disciplinary entrenchment. The very modest proposal of this paper is that we must all—“but especially those of us in large, `protected' departments (that is, departments which by virtue of their size and, often, their `service' mandate are perceived, by smaller, more vulnerable departments and programs, as `protected')— attempt to anticipate some of the long-term effects of institutional restructuring in response to funding cutbacks.