readability. A different English professor points out, “Literary studies
can just get too fancy, too complicated. I really enjoy writing very
complicated new critical readings of things, but if people don’t un-
derstand them, then there’s not much point in publishing them.” The
emphasis on theory is also driven by a “star system” that may be the
discipline’s response to its loss of status.^33
The panelists I interviewed identify and comment on many of the
same aspects of their discipline’s internal debates—over standards,
the practical meaning and reality of excellence, the merits of theory,
the importance of disciplinary boundaries—but they do not neces-
sarily interpret the effects of this lack of consensus in the same way.
One, for instance, sees English as nearly paralyzed by its internal di-
visions and laissez-faire attitude toward evaluative criteria:
English is sort of separate as a discipline because it seems to be di-
vided among itself, but also because I don’t think it takes seriously
how other [panelists] actually evaluate work in their own field
and how important these other criteria are...English depart-
ments are also probably much more sensitive and responsive to
some of the sort of ideological demands that are made upon
teachers and on scholars to reflect on how literature does answer
to certain kinds of social goals or sort of political ideals. How
much should identity politics really enter into the way we
teach about literature? Is there a point where that becomes self-
insulated or self-segregating? Or is it a mode of empowerment?
There often is a kind of reluctance to just have a plain conversa-
tion about these issues because it is just so ideologically fraught.In the context of panelists’ evaluation of English proposals, these
disciplinary characteristics can be disadvantageous:
There are still fields that have prestige, no matter what the appar-
ent value of the project is. I suspect [that is true of ] history, art76 / On Disciplinary Cultures