This book intervenes dramatically in current debates about the future of English studies as business interests reach deeper into the domains of higher education. By recognizing that economic pressures keenly manifest themselves in curricula, writers in this book explore possibilities for curricular reform in English in order to serve the interests of students, teachers, and local communities.

"The editors have done a superb job. They have thoroughly surveyed the literature in the raucous debate they are entering, and I believe they are quite right to assert that no previous discussant has taken quite the global view represented in this volume, attending to large issues of international complications and future consequences as well as helpful specifics of curriculum design." Patricia Bizzell, Department of English, College of the Holy Cross

"This book has a very good chance of capturing the attention of far more than the typical audience of concerned English teachers, occasional administrators, alarmed graduate students, and professional educators that such books normally reach. Anyone interested in the fate of the humanities or involved in language and literature education, whether at the secondary school or the collegiate level, should find this book challenging and instructive, and with some luck, it might also find its way on the shelves of policy makers at the local and perhaps even the national level." Giles Gunn, Professor of English and of Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

Editors David B. Downing, Claude Mark Hurlbert, and Paula Mathieu have titled this collection Beyond English, Inc. to suggest that "whatever curricular innovations we imagine, we must negotiate our visions within specific institutions and against specific constraints of powerful corporate-management models commanding our educational system." As one writer notes, corporatization cannot be stopped, but it can be shaped and resisted. This book explores how.

The essays in this volume address historical and theoretical questions about the relationships among management pressures, disciplinarity, and curricular reform, including the changing role of writing, and the curricular impact of new university-wide initiatives, such as distance learning, service-learning, and vocational demands.

Objecting to the increasing pressure to model and adapt postsecondary education to business interests and corporate needs, 16 contributions explore theoretical and practical questions of curriculum development in English departments faced with the onslaught of corporate globalization. They explore possibilities of disciplinary revision that challenge accountability discourses serving conservative interests; discuss how economic, managerial, and technological effects of globalization effect local institutions; look at the business pressures to push composition over literature; and examine the missions of English studies as they incorporate changes such as distance and online learning initiatives, service learning projects, and vocational programs in higher education.
Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

This book intervenes dramatically in current debates about the future of English studies as business interests reach deeper into the domains of higher education.

DAVID DOWNING is a professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.CLAUDE MARK HURLBERT is a professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.Paula A. Mathieu is an assistant professor of English at Boston College.

English Incorporated: An Introduction, David B. Downing, Claude Mark Hurlbert and Paula Mathieu

Disciplinary Revision and Curricular Reform for the 21st Century

Beyond Disciplinary English: Integrating Reading and Writing by Reforming Academic Labor, David B. Downing

"A Blow Is Like an Instrument:" The Poetic Imaginary and Curricular Practices, Charles Bernstein

Corporate Textbook Production, Electronic Resources, and the Responsible Curriculum, Deborah Holdstein

Accountability and the Conditions for Curricular Change, Richard Ohmann

The Curricular Politics of Local, Regional, and National Differences

Excavating the Ruins of Undergraduate English, Bruce Horner, Kelly Latchaw, Joseph Lenz, Jody Swilky and David Wolf

"No Chains Around My Feet, But I'm Not Free:" Race and the Western Classics in a Liberal Arts College, Pancho Savery

A Symposium on "What Will We Be Teaching?: International Revisions in University Level English Curricula," David Stacey, Claire Woods and Rob Pope

Curriculum for Seven Generations, Derek Owens

Places of Writing in the English Curriculum

Concentrating English: Disciplinarity, Institutional Histories, and Collective Identity, Amy Goodburn and Deborah Minter

Changing the Program(s): English Department Curricula in the Contemporary Research University, James Seitz

Composition and Rhetoric, Inc.: Life After the English Department at Syracuse University, James Zebroski

New Missions: The Impact of Technology, Service, and the Vocationalizing of Higher Education

Technological Imbalances: The English Curriculum and Distance Education, Joyce Neff and Juanita Comfort

The Great Work: Recomposing Vocationalism and the Community College English Curriculum, Daniel Collins

Service Learning as the New English Studies, Ellen Cushman

Collaborative Learning Networks: A Curriculum for the 21st Century, James Sosnoski, Patricia Harkin and Ann Feldman

Afterword , Paula Mathieu and Claude Mark Hurlbert