English studies no longer exists. That’s the conclusion I’ve drawn after half a semester of PhD coursework. Too bad I’m getting a PhD in English.

An English department may exist as a political or organizational unit on some campuses, but it’s unclear to me that, at the graduate or higher level, there needs to be an English discipline. We discussed during last night’s class that cultural studies may be able to subsume what was once “English studies,” but the concept of an English studies program that focuses on literary analysis and criticism is dead.

We have need for rhetoric and composition studies to address undergraduate-level argumentation and academic discourse. We have need for cultural studies to push against hegemony and privileged positions, and to address and critique cultural artifacts and material production. We have need for English education, especially at the secondary and post-secondary level, to be sure high school and college graduates are taught to write from qualified instructors.

But beyond that – do we need critical theory as a separate discipline? Does literary criticism have any real place in the undergraduate or graduate classroom? I really don’t know anymore, and that’s a sad admission for me. I mourn the passing of English studies, but perhaps its death frees me to find a real focus for my studies.