On Quality of Thought

This weekend I presented at MMLA in Cleveland. The panel was great: four Rhet/Compers trying to press on some of the (new? new-er? new-ish?) tensions between theory and practice in Composition Studies. Given that our panel was at 8:30 Sunday morning, I was surprised to find three people in the audience—and awake and alert, to boot. (I’m actually not complaining about this; the discussion that followed was smart and thorough and pretty rewarding—probably because of the modest size (something I’ve posted about before)). I presented on a topic central to my dissertation (music-in-rhetoric) and felt, more than I have in the past, that I was actually presenting original work that had some bearing on the field. It was a moment of professionalization that I—oddly enough—hadn’t been expecting as I drafted the presentation. I had an idea I felt was “original.” People were interested. They had questions. Conversations spilled into the hallway. I felt like my work as a graduate student was finally, so to speak, getting the show on the road.

Another kind of professionalization followed my presentation. I went to a workshop on the MLA report on tenure and promotion in the field. As a graduate student currently on the market, I thought it’d be wise to at least go and listen to what the report found and what departments around the country might be doing in response. Perhaps unsurprisingly, MLA’s report found that most of the work that folks are hired to do in departments doesn’t accurately reflect how they are assessed when it comes time for tenure. Even more than this, a lot of research considered “nontraditional” has a hard time finding a home in recommendations for tenure. Pitching hybridized research, it seems, is difficult when those deciding on tenure don’t know what to make of your work.

Recommendations abounded. Departments should be clearer—from the beginning of the hiring process—about just what is expected for tenure. Perhaps provide something in writing. Yielding important new research often requires a new kind of scholarship—we should have new methods, then, for assessing such new scholarship and scholars. I sincerely believe that what the MLA is doing here is good and healthy not only for English Studies, but universities in general. What surprised me, though, was my personal reaction to the concluding question.

The discussion had leaned quite heavily (based on the MLA report) on the idea that large scale revisions were required in order to make the tenure process more fair, and even relevant, in today’s scholarly climate. The moderator asked the two presenters, in light of these progressive claims, what, they thought, were the most intelligent responses arguing for tenure processes to remain the same.

One of the presenters mentioned something that he called the “quality of mind” argument. Essentially, requiring folks coming up for tenure to be of a certain unnamable “quality of mind” is just nebulous enough to be a very sound argument against nontraditional scholarship. But that’s just what I want to cultivate as a graduate student! I’m trying to develop a certain quality of mind! None of this is to say that I think the MLA is right or wrong or that there is just one way to understand what it means for someone to have “a certain quality of mind.” But, perhaps because of its nebulous nature, the “quality of mind” argument could be an important ally for those interested in revising tenure processes. After all, it’s just nebulous enough to include several new ways of cultivating “quality.”