The 1011 Pivot | ECE English

I’ve been teaching literature again lately. It sounds, I know, like the admission of a vice (e.g., “I’ve been gambling on horses again.”) But, after so much time dedicated to First-Year Writing and writing-intensive courses, I am teaching my very first UConn undergraduate course without a “W” somewhere in its name. That doesn’t mean that writing isn’t important in this class, but it does mean that, for a change, I must prioritize content coverage and literary analysis. And yet I find that my many years of swimming upstream in promoting the 1011 mindset, writing through not just about literature, have greatly influenced my teaching of literature. I find myself teaching 1011-style even in upper-level courses. In honor of the recent passing of Charlie Murphy, I will describe myself, in this way, as a “habitual line stepper.”

Steven Roberge, Fulcrum (Creative Commons)

When I’m describing how literary texts function in an ENGL 1011 course, I often mention something I call the “1011 pivot.” I use this phrase because I see the course as necessitating a shift in purpose from serving the text (writing to assert a reading of an established authoritative text) to making use of the text (writing to pursue a question or problem that extends beyond the text). Let me be clear about this: much or most powerful literary analysis at least implicitly conjures this use, this extension. But because ENGL 1011 is both cross-disciplinary in purpose and an introduction to habits of mind of academic work, its equally rigorous engagements with literary texts put more emphasis on implications, new sites, and student-driven exploration. The “pivot” moves the center of gravity of the work over toward student goals.

Here’s how I recently described it to my students:

Although it can seem that your performance in an English course hinges on what you can say about something you’ve read, consider inverting this relationship. What can a literary text help you say about something else? That is, how does the literature crystallize complex forces in ways that become useful and illuminating to you? You might review the texts we’ve read in this course. Notice how each serves as a resource for things we still think about today. Each offers expressions and demonstrations of complex social phenomena, and, as time passes, each sheds light on historical processes and transformations, sometimes unwittingly. The goal in writing with literary texts, then, is not merely to offer a “reading” of the text (although interpretation is important). The goal is more purposeful and urgent: how can you make use of this text as an instrument for engaging with the world?

I don’t suppose that FYW pedagogy will have much influence with the English courses on campus, as the faculty teaching these courses are almost wholly distinct from FYW instructors. But in ECE classes, the debate is more active and fluid, as so many teach literary studies concurrently with ECE/FYW. Those teachers who merge AP Lit and ENGL 1011 are especially familiar with these questions. Even so, it’s fair to say that all of us need to be engaged in exploring and working out our own understanding of the literature/composition relationship at the heart of “English.” How have you come to terms with the literary within composition?