A History of TWARC

As with any graduate program, IUP's doctoral programs in English reflect both idiosyncratic and paradigmatic features. Our emphasis on teh paradigmatic begins with the past thirty-year history in which two doctoral programs emerged, one in Literature and Criticism (LC) and one in Rhetoric and Linguistics (RL). In short, the profession-wide split between composition/rhetoric and literature/criticism has been deeply inscribed in our local institution. The two programs are linked in a minimal way (there is a Graduate Committee drawing on both programs, but it rarely meets and makes virtually no substantive decisions since they are all handled within the respective programs), but they also compete for resources, and some of those struggles have been, as might be expected, bitter and on-going, creating a level of tension lurking just below the surface of what appears to be a reasonably peaceable co-existence. The balance of power between the two programs in terms of resources and faculty has shifted, depending on the year and the circumstances, but both programs have been quite successful in terms of growing by significant increases in student populations since 1988 (the year LC revised its program), although this seems to have leveled off over the past three years.

Partly in response to this two-program dichotomy, Literature and Criticism and Rhetoric and Linguistics, TWARC is to be a doctoral program in which students would focus their graduate education in cultural and multicultural studies, hypertext/electronic teaching environments, literacy, rhetoric and poetics, critical theory, and pedagogy as it relates to all of these concerns.

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