Week 1 Eng 609
In Susan Romano’s, “Tracking Composition Research on the World Wide Web,” she explains how the research curriculum should be studied more thoroughly to include utilizing the internet and technology. She mentions, “What research activities currently are underway among compositionists? What alterations in topic, procedure, and presentation are in progress? How does one go about locating on the World Wide Web a body of research on writing instruction?” (182) Romano also discusses the purpose of using the internet for not only producing textual research, but also as a research topic. Again she examines the transition from completely textual materials to using what could possibly be a more complete mechanism and strategy for the purpose of researching. The call to action is to encourage growth within the educational institutions to research how the world wide web can contribute and build upon all of the texts that we might find on the library bookshelf. Now that researchers and scholars have become more used to using the internet, Susan Romano also encourages research and new approaches in the classroom environment.
In the “Epilogue: The Scholar in Society,” by Bruce Robbins, we see what he calls an upcoming and progressive crisis within the humanities department of upper division learning. He comments that the funding from these programs, the ones that have only enabled the variety of other departments and professions, has been drastically and unconventionally cut. Critics have begun to try to “legitimize” the humanities and what they do. Many say that English doesn’t work to change the environment; but think about the cultural literature that is represented in our libraries and all through the internet. It seems that no one debates that English is necessary for communication, but doesn’t fulfill the needs of the students who wish to be inspired and intrigued, as a disciplinary study.
