From the New York Times–bestselling author of Legends of the Fall: “Harrison spins the common chaff of a road trip into gold” (Tim McNulty, The Seattle Times). “It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn’t.” With these words, Jim Harrison begins a riotous, moving novel that sends a sixty-something man, divorced and robbed of his farm by a late-blooming real estate shark of an ex-wife, on a road trip across America. Cliff is armed with a childhood puzzle of the United States and a mission to rename all the states and state birds, the latter of which have been unjustly saddled with white men’s banal monikers up until now. His adventures take him through a whirlwind affair with a former student from his high-school-teacher days twenty-some years before, to a “snake farm” in Arizona owned by an old classmate, and to the high-octane existence of his son, a big-time movie producer who has just bought an apartment over the Presidio in San Francisco. Jim Harrison’s riotous and moving cross-country novel, The English Major, is the map of a man’s journey into, and out of, himself. It is vintage Harrison—reflective, big-picture American, and replete with wicked wit. “The English Major is to midlife crisis what The Catcher in the Rye is to adolescence.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

Find a Job You Love With Your English Degree What do Steven Spielberg, Alan Alda, Barbara Walters, Clarence Thomas, Diane Sawyer, and Stephen King have in common? That's right–they were English majors who now have successful careers. I'm an English Major - Now What? helps English majors and graduates understand their skills and talents so they can find satisfying jobs across a diversity of fields and dispels common fears and misconceptions that English majors will never make good money. In this book, you'll learn: • How an English major background can be very marketable • How an English major's skills can be applied to an array of jobs and careers (beyond teaching and writing) • How an English major can develop valuable skills and experience through school and extracurricular activities You'll also find answers to common questions such as: • Should I go to graduate school? Should I wait? • How do I begin a freelancing career? • Would I do well in a corporate setting? Authored by a former English major with professional experience across many areas, including corporate communications, journalism, publishing, teaching, and writing, this guide also features more than a dozen interviews with English majors who were able to translate their skills into satisfying careers.

Thoroughly embedded in postmodern theory, this book offers a critique of traditional conceptions of the liberal arts, exploring the challenges posed by cultural diversity to the aims and methods of a humanist education. Janet M. Atwill investigates a neglected tradition of rhetoric, exemplified by Protagoras and Isocorates, and preserved in Aristotle's Rhetoric. This tradition was rooted in the ancient sophistic and platonic conceptions of techn , or productive knowledge, that appears both in literary texts from the seventh century B.C.E. and in medical and technical treatises from the fifth century B.C.E. Atwill examines these traditions, together with sophistic and platonic conceptions, and considers the commentaries on Aristotle's Rhetoric by E. M. Cope and William S. J. Grimaldi, where the concepts of techn and productive knowledge disappear in the modern opposition between theory and practice. Since models of knowledge are closely tied to models of subjectivity, Atwill's examination of techn also explores the role of political, economic, and educational institutions in standardizing a specific model for subjectivity. She argues that the liberal arts traditions largely eclipsed the social and political functions of rhetoric, transforming it from an art of disrupting and reinventing lines of power to a discipline of producing a normative subject, defined by virtue but modeled on a specific gender and class type.

Your guide to glide from campus to career You've probably never seen a help wanted ad seeking an "English major." But if you're considering majoring in English or have an English degree, don't let that discourage you. Many interesting and exciting positions are available for people with your skills--including some that will surprise you. This book gives you what you need to seize those opportunities. It goes beyond basic, generic job primers to include: * Advice on college and curriculum choices--courses, internships, and more * Tips to energize your job search * Profiles of real graduates, their jobs, and how they got them * Up-close and professional input from a publisher, journalist, speech writer, librarian, and literary agent * Overviews of typical salary levels, hours, and work environments * Extensive additional resources including Web sites, professional organizations, periodicals, and more With practical information plus enlightening perspectives from professionals who have already put their English degrees to work, What Can You Do with a Major in English? helps you determine the type of job you really want. Then, whether you're just starting college, close to graduation, or already in the workforce and looking for a more rewarding position, you can make decisions that will speed you toward your career goals.

Answers your question: What can I do with a major in English? This work helps you explore the possibilities your major creates. It provides: guidance on how to present an English major as a workplace asset during an interview; a primer on how to conduct a job search; and ways to use your major in the real world.

Literary Learning explores the nature of literary knowledge and offers guidance for effective teaching of literature at the college level. What do English majors need to learn? How can we help them develop the skills and knowledge they need? By identifying the habits of mind that literary scholars use in their own research and writing, Sherry Lee Linkon articulates the strategic knowledge that lies at the heart of the discipline, offering important insights and models for beginning and experienced teachers.

Are homecoming games and freshman composition, Twitter feeds and scholarly monographs really mortal enemies? Media U presents a provocative rethinking of the development of American higher education centered on the insight that universities are media institutions. Tracing over a century of media history and the academy, Mark Garrett Cooper and John Marx argue that the fundamental goal of the American research university has been to cultivate audiences and convince them of its value. Media U shows how universities have appropriated new media technologies to convey their message about higher education, the aims of research, and campus life. The need to create an audience stamps each of the university’s steadily proliferating disciplines, shapes its structure, and determines its division of labor. Cooper and Marx examine how the research university has sought to inform publics and convince them of its value to American society, from the rise of football and Great Books programs in the early twentieth century through a midcentury communications complex linking big science, New Criticism, and design, from the co-option of 1960s student activist media through the early-twenty-first-century reception of MOOCs and the latest promises of technological disruption. The book considers the ways in which universities have used media platforms to reconcile national commitments to equal opportunity with corporate capitalism as well as the vexed relationship of democracy and hierarchy. By exploring how media engagement brought the American university into being and continues to shape academic labor, Media U presents essential questions and resources for reimagining the university and confronting its future.