(a response to a grad student lamenting the fact that ISU's English department doesn't prescribe a specific methodology for English Studies)
My experience of the department faculty was that they were very committed to developing their personal and professional interests and then participating in communal events whereby they could share or link their interests/specialties across areas/disciplines. In fact, collectively, they were the most curious, helpful, intelligent and interdisciplinary that I have experienced as a student and instructor.
For me the English Studies program requires the student to actively pursue links and develop connections, not passively receive mc-knowledge packages of pre-chewed information specified as English Studies methods in specially designed courses designed to make life easy. It is in the transmission, interaction, and translation, between/across disciplinary (area) borders where the new meanings are possible, the epiphanic moments of discovery are when we recognize the connections that allow us to engage with the world beyond our intellectual sandbox.
In our English department I experienced extracurricular lectures on English Studies, pedagogy, experimental poetry, posthuman theory, postcolonial film theory, classic literature, technology/writing, rhetoric/comp; conferences on campus (supported by our dept) on history/rhetoric, postmodern culture, Shakespeare, Global culture, Border culture; participated in department affiliated organizations such as the ISU film society (Adam and William), the independent publication L'Bourgeozine (Adam and Joseph), poetry readings, working as an editor for the various independent publications at the Unit For Contemporary Literature; teaching composition classes and a literature course (IDS 121: Terror in Contemporary American Literature); editing an organizational theory journal in the business department; developing alliances with young scholars/faculty in our department who introduced us to other activist scholars/faculty in the political science and sociology department as well as developing relationships with scholars from U of Illinois and U of Chicago; road trips to events on other campuses; grad courses outside the department in History and Communications; Charlie Harris' amazing Postmodern Literature course in which he had five leading scholars/practitioners of contemporary literature guest-lecture, or, Ronald Strickland's online Marxist course where we interacted with leading Marxist scholars; or Curtis White's "narrative theory" course that culminated as a mini-conference that included one of the leading scholars of globalization, Saaskia Sassen.
Also, very important was the interaction with the international students that were my neighbors in Cardinal Court... Not to mention the regular pub meetings on wednesdays at Killarneys and the writing departments gatherings on friday afternoons--places to blow off steam, but also arenas of collaboration.
Why do you want your English Studies experience wrapped up neatly in a little package and handed to you? Get up off your ass and develop this perspective, don't stop there, share/link it to others' experiences. At least, at the very least, instead of complaining, start by developing a manifesto, a declaration, a perspective or your vision of English Studies. Meet with others and ask for their understanding of English Studies--develop, interact, fight, laugh, get pissed (mentally and physically), wake-up and begin again. I would enjoy very much hearing your definitions and the new meanings that are produced in your interaction.
