MU Honors Program: Student Blog: Constructing the English major

During my introduction to theory class last week, we were working on a unit on cultural studies when the professor asked us how we would create an advertisement to attract new English majors.

A lot of the suggestions were pretty standard: write about what English majors can do after graduation (no, working at Starbucks and, “Hi, welcome to McDonald’s! weren’t on the list), take a picture with students sitting on books, take a picture of students holding spirited conversations while holding mugs of coffee… well, you know the drill. My favorite comment was when another student said that the students in the pictures should be looking at something like they’re performing a critique (as Matthew Arnold would say, “to see the object as in itself it really is”). Isn’t that we really do as English majors?

This conversation led me to reflect on what it actually means to be an English major, and how you can identify English majors on campus.

We read a lot. I read about 800 pages/week, which actually kind of surprised me when I calculated that. We write a lot, too. I’ve written about 80 pages this semester, which is surprising in the opposite way; I thought I was closer to 100. (Okay, let’s move beyond the obvious).

We have favorite (and least favorite) authors, genres, time periods, and theorists, and these change constantly. Being an English major doesn’t mean that you have an all-encompassing love of every cultural text. We also have our fall-back topics, which we draw upon when it’s 10 PM and we haven’t started the paper that is due the next day.

It really is true that a lot of English majors are never seen without a cup of coffee or a mug of tea. We probably keep Starbucks in business. I prefer Naked juice, but that’s just me. (Is this commodity fetishism? I think it is).

Someone claimed that we’re one of the least J. Crew U-ish majors on campus, which may or may not be true. To be perfectly honest, none of the departments that I have spent a great deal of time in (Chemistry, English, German, Zoology) are especially preppy. We are more liberal than other majors… although all of the “oh my gosh, Miami is soooo conservative” propaganda ran into a bit of a problem when the majority of campus voted for Obama. (And why doesn’t my spell check recognize Obama yet? Gotta fix that now!)

Another person said that we try to look for deeper meanings in things. While I agree with that statement to an extent, I’m a little hesitant to say that English majors always look deeper than others into movies and other cultural texts to try to find hidden meanings. Let’s be honest—I’m a shameless consumer of pop culture, and I watch a lot of films for entertainment. Of course I’m always glad to switch to an academic gaze, but I don’t always actively look for deeper meaning. Sometimes I’m tired and want brain candy. In any case, Althusser would probably say that I’m trapped in ideology, which would make it a bit difficult to reflect on my own culture. Plus, saying that English majors look at things more closely than other majors strikes me as being a bit narcissistic and self-congratulatory. (Does narcissism define English majors? Hmmm… I may be onto something here… just kidding…)

I can tell you one thing that English is not: a “fluff” or “soft” major (theory: I created a kind of weak binary opposition with “hard” majors as the privileged term... well, that may be pushing it a bit). Seriously, I easily have 2-3x times more work now as an English major than I ever did while I was a Zoology/pre-med person, and I love it!

So there you have it—I’m an English (and German) major, and I don’t know what we’re all about. For the most part, we’re people who love to read, write, and debate. Some of us are addicted to caffeine. We have desks with scary piles of books. (And most of us secretly take pride in it!) I really like theory, if you couldn’t tell. A lot of people don’t. Some people like analyzing films. Others prefer creative writing. Many of us dabble in journalism, and some of us are journalism majors. We’re a diverse group of people with at least one thing in common: a general love of literature.

The current state of my desk:

Please leave a comment if you have any questions about life at Miami or if you have ideas for a future topic!

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Posted by: RX-order | November 21, 2010 at 01:24 AM