A New Cast Of Characters

Four years ago, Lawrence A. Buell was an English professor at Oberlin College. He was comfortable, established, and involved at Oberlin; he had served there as chair of the English department and dean of a admissions.

But a tenure offer from Harvard's English Department a few years ago tore Buell away from his Ohio home.

That probably wouldn't have happened 10years ago. What lured Buell was a relatively recent characteristic of the English Department: change.

While Buell says he respected Harvard's older English scholars, he saw a new commitment in the department to attract fresh faculty and to experiment with a once-stagnant model.

"The cast of characters was both shifting rapidly and it was diversifying in terms of the approaches--the mental universe--of people in the faculty," says Buell, now Harvard's associate dean for undergraduate education. "You're moving from one era to the next, so to speak."

Buell, a scholar of American transcendentalism, is a part of that new era--as are a host of new professors that have joined the Department of English and American Literature and Language over the past five years.

In a feature article this summer, The Chronicle of Higher Education described Harvard's English Department as "intellectually crackling," and noted some of its newest stars, including Leo Damrosch, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Barbara Johnson, D.A. Miller and Elaine Scarry.

The English Department, once so fragmented that its members couldn't agree on new appointments, now receives praise from scholars inside and outside the University.

But some question whether the department's renewal has also benefited students.

It's perennial issue for Harvard's star-studded departments. When choosing faculty, should they aim for research and prestige, or should they focus on educational benefits? Or do the two conflict at all?

THE ENGLISH DEPART-ment's rapid transformation makes these issues even more immediate. And that shift has attracted attention at rival universities.

"Even since the University of California was founded, it looked over its shoulder at Harvard in all respects," says Frederick C. Crews, chair of the English department at the University of California at Berkeley.

But in recent decades, Crews says, "we felt that Harvard wasn't as much of a threat as it ought to be.

"This has definitely changed now," says Crews, who describes Harvard's department as "enormously strengthened."

The department's rejuvenation began in 1987, when then-President Derek C. Bok decided to intervene and reverse the department's increasingly poor reputation.

Bok took away the department's control over its own tenure process, and appointed an outside committee to oversee all faculty appointments.

Patrick O'Malley '92, a graduate student in the department, says he has noticed the change.

"When I came to Harvard, I thought about majoring in English and I decided against it," he says. "I wouldn't have wanted to have been an English major in my sophomore year."

O'Malley ended up majoring in chemistry. "My impression was that the [English] department was a little stodgy," he says.

Over his undergraduate career, O'Malley's opinion of the English Department changed. And last year, O'Malley decided to join the department as a graduate student.

"I applied to Harvard a little reluctantly," he says, "but it was during that year that I really decided that...Harvard looked very good. I liked the faculty. I'm very excited about the faculty here."

But some students and faculty aren't sure whether the new roster of professors will cure all of their department's past problems.

"You can't say, by knowing somebody has a national reputation, whether that will be any advantage to students or not," says Lydia A. Fillingham '80, an assistant professor and the department's head tutor.

Fillingham said she wishes the appointments committee had different priorities--"asking in addition, is this someone who will really concretely benefit students."

After all, Harvard English professors are notorious for being busy. Being a star takes time, and being a star at Harvard takes even more time.

Porter University Professor Helen Vendler--who was working in her office after 10 p.m. last Sunday night--says the time commitment is often mind-boggling.

"You're very much engaged," Vendler says. "You're not apathetic and you're not unconcerned."

Harvard English professors are often asked to serve on juries for fellowships and grants. They are advisors to the Harvard University Press and to other departments. Several have joint appointments. Some head other entire departments.

Professor of English Marjorie Garber, for example, is the director of the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies and associate dean of the Faculty for affirmative action. She also finds time to teach a popular Core class.

Vendler says a colleague once lugged a hung suitcase to work. When Vendler inquired about her travel plans, the professor said she wasn't away. She was just carrying the things she needed for the day's work.

Multiple commitments mean multiple offices, and English faculty are scattered across campus: from 45 Dunster St. to Warren House by the Harvard Union to 34 Kirkland St. to 8 Prescott St. There is also Cabot Professor of American Literature Alan C. Heimert's office in Bur Hall, and Gates' office on Mass. Ave.

The arrangement is less than ideal. Department members are separated physically, and also psychologically. Junior faculty are housed in a single building, and senior faculty don't often cross paths.

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles hopes the new humanities center, to be housed in the Union, will improve the department.

"There will be less time spent running from one place to another," Knowles says. The center will make it "easier for our faculty to fulfill all the many functions that they do."

"It will let us be friends," says Vendler. "We'll be bumping into each other in the corridors."

FRIENDSHIP AMONG ENGLISH faculty isn't always the norm. Many say the department remains fragmented.

Junior faculty members do not expect to stay past their three-to-seven-year appointments. Berkeley's Crews says the policy leaves Harvard with a staff of "brilliant young people who have a sense of possessing no future within the institution."

The "social and intellectual segregation" that results, Crews says, "has to have educational consequences for the student."

Other disputes within the department are academic, Fillingham says. Many faculty members "are people with real disagreements about what the study of English literature should be."

A new influx of faculty has led to a diversity of viewpoints within the department. It is now more cross-disciplinary, less traditional. Women's studies and Afro-American studies are much better represented in the curriculum.

New viewpoints are leading to changes in the department's structure. The faculty members, coming from different schools, are changing the department's longstanding tutorial system.

Many new professors considered Harvard's honors program too large. Half of Harvard's English concentrators are in the honors program, compared to only 20 percent at Stanford University.

English was one of the last big departments at Harvard to hold year-long, one-on-one junior tutorials. Now, individual junior tutorials for honors students last only a semester. A small-group seminar fills the other semester.

Fuculty members say the new system gives students more contract with professors. Most seminars are taught by faculty members, while graduate students and other instructors led the tutorials.

But Fillingham says professors don't necessarily make better advisor s than graduate students.

"I objected to that [change] completely, and so did the other members of the senior faculty who have been associated with Harvard for a very long time," Fillingham says. "You have to be experienced with a tutorial situation and how it can operate to really want to do it."

Many students said they enjoyed the freedom of a do-it-yourself tutorial.

"I thought that the year-long experience was really fun," says graduate student Lisa Clayton '92, an English concentrator as an undergraduate. "It's a really individual experience."

Seminar material is based on professor's interests, so students have less freedom to study exactly what they want.

"If you are in a specific field and want someone in that field, there may not be something in the junior seminars, and that has upset people." Fillingham says.

English honors concentrators who hope to write theses have also met with more resistance lately.

Some English professors believe students shouldn't write these for the wrong reasons. The department sent seniors writing theses a letter this fall listing a number of reasons to abandon their research plans.

"It was pretty discouraging," says Anne R. Clark '93, who still intends to write a thesis.

ITHERS APPROVE OF THE adjustments encouraged by the new professors. The department has 'only changed for the better," says Scott Gordon '83, a sixth-year graduate student.

"The group of professors who are 'in charge' now are sort of much more responsive to graduate students than they seemed to be about five years ago," Gordon says.

But some are more skeptical about new faculty member's receptiveness to standard English department practices. One source says that some of the biggest names in the department are often often the least flexible.

"When you hire people when they are famous, you are not asking the question--and Harvard absolutely does not ask the question--are they good teachers, will they make much contact with students? Fillingham asks.

But famous professor help attract other famous professors. Regardless of what questions Harvard asks, star scholars are likely to keep joining the department.

"I was having a conversation last semester with one of the most distinguished Shakespeareans in the country, who said to me that there was no English department in the world where he would rather be than Harvard," Knowles says.