Disciplinary Form: Introduction to Literary Studies

This chapter imagines literary studies and the English major as forms and arrangements that provide the space for reflective and careful readings of texts, contexts and lives. Using as its case study a ‘gateway’ introductory course that teaches literature, writing and vocational exploration, this chapter moves through the ways literary studies as a disciplinary form – and specific classroom texts and strategies in particular – can help students shape their college pathways and future decisions. A sense of the changing discipline empowers students to think more broadly about texts as they examine canon-(trans)formation to understand how the discipline has changed in response to new theories, new demands and new ways of seeing the world. Thus, the role of vocational pedagogy in a course focused on the study of English as a discipline can help students understand their callings within and beyond the discipline and to develop the habits of mind for the successful navigation of both.