{"id":15796,"date":"2019-02-26T15:31:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T20:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bsu.edu\/english\/?p=15796"},"modified":"2019-02-19T16:40:27","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T21:40:27","slug":"100-years-of-bsuenglish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bsu.edu\/english\/blog\/2019\/02\/26\/100-years-of-bsuenglish\/","title":{"rendered":"100 Years of #BSUEnglish"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Cathy Day<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Ball State is celebrating its 100th birthday, then so is the English department. We’ve been here from the beginning.<\/p>\n

The story of #bsuenglish is a microcosm of the story of the humanities in higher education. To tell that story, I spent a day digging around the Digital Media Repository<\/a> at the Ball State Library.<\/p>\n

To start, let’s remind ourselves what Ball State University looks like today–structurally–and where the English department resides in that structure.<\/p>\n

Eight colleges<\/a> with multiple departments in each college<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. CAP: College of Architecture and Planning<\/li>\n
  2. CFA: College of Fine Arts<\/li>\n
  3. CCIM: College of Communication, Information, and Media<\/li>\n
  4. CSH: College of Sciences and Humanities<\/li>\n
  5. COH: College of Health<\/li>\n
  6. TC: Teachers College<\/li>\n
  7. MCOB: Miller College of Business<\/li>\n
  8. HC: Honors College<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And let’s look at the structure of the English department<\/a> itself: five disciplines or “areas”<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. creative writing<\/li>\n
    2. literature<\/li>\n
    3. rhetoric and composition<\/li>\n
    4. English education<\/li>\n
    5. languages and linguistics<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      1920s<\/span><\/h2>\n

      Once upon a time, Ball State was just these 11 departments:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Art<\/li>\n
      2. Commerce<\/li>\n
      3. English<\/span><\/li>\n
      4. Foreign language (just Latin and French)<\/span><\/li>\n
      5. Home Economics<\/li>\n
      6. Industrial Arts<\/li>\n
      7. Math<\/span><\/li>\n
      8. Music<\/li>\n
      9. PE<\/li>\n
      10. Science\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
      11. Social Science<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        We were, after all, a “normal school,” dedicated to producing public school teachers. And five of the 11 departments (in blue)<\/span> were part of what would become the present-day College of Sciences and Humanities.<\/p>\n

        These days, students flock to highly specific majors whose names imply exactly what you can “do” with it. The majors in which “professional identity” is baked into the curriculum.<\/p>\n

        But once upon a time, “going to college” meant (mostly) studying the sciences and humanities.<\/p>\n

        Once upon a time, Ball State was<\/em> the College of Sciences and Humanities.<\/p>\n

        1930s<\/span><\/h2>\n

        By 1938, there were still no “colleges.”<\/p>\n

        The department of “Commerce” had become “Business Education.” And there were two new departments: education and library science.<\/p>\n

        In essence, Ball State’s organizational structure mirrored the structure of a typical high school at that time. An academic department for every school subject.<\/p>\n

        \"\"<\/p>\n

        And in the English department,<\/a> the focus was exclusively teacher preparation, which is what determined our course offerings.<\/p>\n

        What might a middle school or high school English teacher be expected to teach? The English department had a class for that.<\/p>\n