Beyond English, Inc.: Curricular Reform in a Global Economy » (1st Edition)

David Downing is a professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Claude Mark Hurlbert is a professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Paula Mathieu is an assistant professor of English at Boston College, where she directs the First-Year Writing Program. For the past seven years she has also worked with the international movement of street newspapers, local publications that provide income and a public voice for people who are homeless or living in poverty. She has been both a writer and board member at Spare Change News in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has served on the Executive Committee of the International Network of Street Papers. With David Downing and Claude Mark Hurlbert she co-edited Beyond English Inc: Curricular Reform in a Global Economy (Boynton/Cook, 2001). In 2007 she received the CCCC's Rachel Corrie Courage in the Teaching of Writing Award.

This book intervenes dramatically in current debates about the future of English studies as business interests reach deeper into the domains of higher education. By recognizing that economic pressures keenly manifest themselves in curricula, writers in this book explore possibilities for curricular reform in English in order to serve the interests of students, teachers, and local communities.

"The editors have done a superb job. They have thoroughly surveyed the literature in the raucous debate they are entering, and I believe they are quite right to assert that no previous discussant has taken quite the global view represented in this volume, attending to large issues of international complications and future consequences as well as helpful specifics of curriculum design." Patricia Bizzell, Department of English, College of the Holy Cross

"This book has a very good chance of capturing the attention of far more than the typical audience of concerned English teachers, occasional administrators, alarmed graduate students, and professional educators that such books normally reach. Anyone interested in the fate of the humanities or involved in language and literature education, whether at the secondary school or the collegiate level, should find this book challenging and instructive, and with some luck, it might also find its way on the shelves of policy makers at the local and perhaps even the national level." Giles Gunn, Professor of English and of Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

Editors David B. Downing, Claude Mark Hurlbert, and Paula Mathieu have titled this collection Beyond English, Inc. to suggest that "whatever curricular innovations we imagine, we must negotiate our visions within specific institutions and against specific constraints of powerful corporate-management models commanding our educational system." As one writer notes, corporatization cannot be stopped, but it can be shaped and resisted. This book explores how.

The essays in this volume address historical and theoretical questions about the relationships among management pressures, disciplinarity, and curricular reform, including the changing role of writing, and the curricular impact of new university-wide initiatives, such as distance learning, service-learning, and vocational demands.

Booknews

Objecting to the increasing pressure to model and adapt postsecondary education to business interests and corporate needs, 16 contributions explore theoretical and practical questions of curriculum development in English departments faced with the onslaught of corporate globalization. They explore possibilities of disciplinary revision that challenge accountability discourses serving conservative interests; discuss how economic, managerial, and technological effects of globalization effect local institutions; look at the business pressures to push composition over literature; and examine the missions of English studies as they incorporate changes such as distance and online learning initiatives, service learning projects, and vocational programs in higher education. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)