| Introduction
to the Department |
| What does it mean to study English
today? The English department at UC Santa Barbara engages this
question by offering its students the opportunity to explore
Old English manuscripts, Internet texts, American novels, Anglo-Irish
literature, queer textuality, science fiction, literature of
the body, modern poetry, Shakespeare etc.—all kinds of
"literatures" written in English. In the process, we study the
complex interactions between literature, culture, and history.
At the heart of literary study lies the simple yet striking
recognition that language constitutes both a technology of thought
and a constituent of human reality. We transform this recognition
into undergraduate and graduate programs of study that develop
the critical skills required to negotiate complicated literary
and cultural texts. Together, we spend time working on questions
like these: (1) how do historical and cultural contexts lend
written texts their intelligibility and convey their strange
power? (2) How do gender and minority discourses inform our
understanding of literature? (3) How d
oes the study of English engage the public
sphere? |
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Collaborative Research
Concerns
Activities within the following arenas
help organize distinctive kinds of collective intellectual activities
that weave together the many literary periods and methods studied
by our faculty. Specific projects within these arenas span both
research and teaching and help us to think about possible relations
to the public at large. We describe our areas of collaborative concern
as follows:
- Historicity and Historical Studies:
We understand this arena to include the theory of historical studies
as well as various historical practices. This topic is of particular
concern given the various forms of "presentism" that threaten
historical memory.
- Contemporary Theory and Culture:
We understand this topic to include issues related to both material
and literary culture and such matters as the study of theoretical
issues related to gender and minority discourses of various kinds.
To facilitate this work, we encourage research groups concerned
with various aspects of symbolic culture within both local and
global contexts.
- The Public Humanities: Undertakings
here focus on the place of the humanities in the public sphere
both now and in the future and might include the intersection
of literary studies with such other disciplinary areas as cognitive
science, information science, and social science. (See the events
organized by the Department's Public
Humanities Initiative.)
As these brief descriptions indicate,
we do not conceive these arenas as mutually exclusive. For example,
the study of the role of the humanities today naturally also involves
the consideration of the various roles that humanistic studies have
played in the past and plainly involves issues of theory and culture
as well. Rather, these are a triad of mutually complementary arenas
that define important concerns at this moment in history and that
can be used to help focus many of our collective interests.
(This description of collaborative concerns is based on a policy
developed by the faculty of the English Dept. in 1999.) |
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New Research and Teaching
Centers
As a way to implement its collaborative
research concerns, the English Dept. at UC Santa Barbara has started
three centers of research and teaching that allow faculty and students
to work together in innovative ways. These centers, each of which
has space and funding within the department, foster interdisciplinary
colloquia, lectures, and other events as well create new courses
and "specializations" within the undergraduate major. We see such centers as a way to
model a new paradigm for an English department—one that is
strong in individual historical fields and theoretical methods and
focused on encouraging collective thought about how literature contributes
to society and culture at large.
The three new centers in our department
are:
- Early
Modern Center: The Early Modern Center at UCSB mobilizes
the English Department's strength in sixteenth- through eighteenth-century
studies, which is maintained by eleven faculty
in the field. The Center provides a specially-constructed space
(consisting of a seminar area, resource library, and networked
computers) that promotes collaborative research and teaching.
State-of-the-art computing equipment is supported by the latest
databases in the field, including the Early
English Books Online (EEBO), consisting of all extant books
published in English from 1475-1700. The Center creates courses
around innovative annual
themes; supervises the department's undergraduate
specialization in Early Modern Studies; organizes colloquia
and conferences; produces an online
archive of textual and pictorial resources; and offers a number
of graduate-student
assistantships each year. (Early
Modern Center Web Site)
- American Cultures Center:
The American Cultures Center, which is the most recent of the
English Department's new research and teaching centers, builds
on the considerable strengths in American Studies at UC Santa
Barbara by offering an interdisciplinary setting for new research
and teaching initiatives. Equipped with a small library of key
resources in the field and computing equipment to support web-based
research, the Center provides a unique site for collaborations
among faculty and students. Coordinating its activities with the
English department's undergraduate specialization in American
Cultures, the Center provides a venue for conferences, lectures,
seminars and workshops. (American Cultures Center Web Site: under
construction)
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Transcriptions Project: The Transcriptions Project
(Literature and the Culture of Information) was started in 1998
with a seed grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Housed in a "studio"-like
computing environment, the Project creates courses,
online
resources, and research
events that focus on the relation between contemporary information
culture and literature, including the literatures of such previous
"information revolutions" as the ages of orality, writing,
print, and early electronic media. Staffed by faculty
specializing in fields ranging from medieval literature to contemporary
"new media" and "hypertext," Transcriptions
supervises the department's undergraduate specialization in Literature
and the Culture of Information and is closely associated with
the University of California Digital
Cultures Project, a multi-campus research initiative headquartered
at UC Santa Barbara in connection with Transcriptions. (Transcriptions
Web Site)
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