ABSTRACT
The 2002 symposium was a response to two specific problems confronting literary studies. The first is the declining number of literature majors and the resulting probability of declining institutional resources. A second disciplinary change revolves around the place of literature itself in the discipline. Logically, although there are of course exceptions, literary SoTL tends to focus on issues of reading, whereas composition SoTL focuses on writing. Ultimately, most SoTL scholars would argue that a discipline isn’t defined by its journals or other scholarly publications or in its institutional history; instead, it’s defined in classrooms, in the narrative arcs of departmental curricula and individual syllabi, and in the day-to-day routines of “doing literary studies”. In fact, because it’s simply “naturalized,” pedagogical narcissism glosses over concerns for research, evidence, and any sense of audience other than oneself. Unpacking a text connotes opening up something, sifting out what’s inside, and exploring the contents.
