The Strategy of Faculty of Letters: Advocating Eighteenth-Century Studies Curriculum on a Budget

Like most faculty in eighteenth-century studies, I am the sole practitioner in our English department. This is hardly surprising: of the twenty eighteenth-century-related tenure-track jobs to begin in Fall 2017 discussed on the "Restoration and Eighteenth Century" Academic Jobs Wiki, the bulk of them sought candidates able to teach "transatlantic" or "postcolonial" material and to cover the entirety of the long eighteenth century, across genres, often throwing in Milton, Shakespeare, or Romanticism for good measure.¹ That trend didn't change in jobs that will begin in Fall 2018—of nineteen jobs, the majority explicitly requested interdisciplinary interests. We are teaching in the age of the historical generalist, the pre–1800 literature job opening.

There is a strong case to be made that such a generalist approach actually suits eighteenth-century studies. After all, the figures whom we study did not consider themselves bound by narrow disciplinary divisions and might in fact have mocked narrowly focused "virtuosi."² Adam Smith lectured on belle lettres and jurisprudence as well as advancing moral philosophy and establishing the field of economics. Dramatists like John Dryden and William Davenant made it clear that texts could be endlessly refashioned across generic modes like tragedy and comedy and, indeed, across genres, like turning William Shakespeare's Tempest into an opera. The practice of active, engaged relationships with respected texts is equally instructive to us today. If we combine our love of the eighteenth century with the interdisciplinary models that characterize it, we can find surprising ways to infiltrate multiple areas of our curricula, perhaps especially at small schools with smaller budgets. Taking seriously the intellectual and artistic practices that cross genres in our period—such as adaptation or embracing innovations in textual dissemination—has led me to questions that transcend my department and strategies for promoting my field as part of the humanities.

Interdisciplinary connections are gaining prominence as a response to the crisis in the humanities as universities come up with innovative ways to collaborate. Many of these initiatives, however, are associated with institutions that have substantial resources the rest of us may lack. Schools like Stanford University, Rice University, the University of California-Davis, the University of Florida, or Arizona State University boast humanities institutes or centers for the humanities that run a range of innovative programming supporting faculty research, collaboration between students and faculty, speaker series, and other community outreach programs. Just down the road from my home institution, Pomona College is kicking off a Humanities Studio this fall, with support from a Mellon Grant, that will also focus on student-faculty research, speakers, and programming.³ But splashy events like this aren't possible at my cash-strapped university. In the absence of deep pockets, what can we accomplish?

The University of Redlands, where I have taught for eighteen years, is a small, private comprehensive university, with approximately 2,250 students in the College of Arts and Sciences. We are tuition-dependent, with a very small endowment. In 2008–2009, I was chair of the English Department. Prompted by the recession budget crisis and anxieties about coming cuts, I began what I called simply a "Humanities Chat," inviting my colleagues who studied or taught the humanities to gather.⁴ It was clear after the first meeting that the feeling that we were in this together improved morale. At subsequent meetings, I pushed for pragmatic steps like coordinating our department teaching schedules so that we no longer offered eighteenth-century philosophy at the same time as eighteenth-century literature. To promote our fields, we needed to make it easier for students to delve into them, after all.

Thanks to colleagues who took on leadership roles, that conversation has grown into the Humanities Advisory Council. Council members are elected at the departmental level by English, History, Art History, Philosophy, Modern Languages, Religious Studies, and interdisciplinary programs with humanities cores. We then elect a chair, who attends monthly chairs' and directors' meetings with the Dean, reviews teaching schedules to look for energizing connections and avoid conflicts, and helps...