By Robert Jensen
Here’s an interesting question for historians: Why do ideologues never seem to be aware of their own ideology?
Such is the case with the recent report from the Texas Association of Scholars and the National Association of Scholars’ Center for the Study of the Curriculum, “Recasting History: Are Race, Class, and Gender Dominating American History?”
The November-December issue of Academe looks at faculty service. It is perhaps the most ambiguous of the traditional triad along with teaching and research, and the articles in this issue seek to describe the different ways that faculty conceive of service, and the different ways that service is (or is not) recognized. Read the issue here.
When faculty teach introductory writing courses, should that count as “teaching,” in the traditional sense, or “service”? It seems absurd to suggest that teaching students is anything other than teaching, but consider: many of these classes are required for all students at a university, which means English departments need to scramble for instructors. Since everyone takes them, not all students will be as interested and involved as in a higher-level English class. Linda Adler-Kassner and Duane Roen discuss these and other issues in their new Academe article, “An Ethic of Service in Composition and Rhetoric.”
Three years before publication of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America in 1835, Frances Trollope, mother of Anthony (then not yet twenty), saw her Domestic Manners of the Americans reach print. It’s a delightful book, though not particularly kind to the people of the young republic. Nonetheless, Mrs. Trollope had quite the eye, and wit to match.
