On the final page of James Seitz's thoughtful book, the closing paragraph begins with this sentence: "The time is ripe—the time for teachers of literature, composition, creative writing, critical theory, cultural studies, and all other instructional realms within `English' at large to reach beyond their disconnected classrooms in order to create a curriculum based not only on how these realms differ but also on what each has to educate the other." Although I may be incorrect, I believe this is the first and only instance in which Seitz places "English" in the quotation mark format now so readily used to highlight concepts or institutions that are fundamentally problematic. Of course, one might say that all of Motives for Metaphor puts English, at least metaphorically, in quotation marks and thereby exhibits the discipline's contradictions in sophisticated detail. The clumsiness of the sentence, however, stands out in an otherwise gracefully written book and, along with the quotation marks, indicates a symptomatic moment: "English" is not a concept that the book investigates at any length, nor is it a disciplinary metaphor that Seitz subjects to historical or analytic inquiry, despite its presence at the end of his volume's own subtitle. At best, it hangs around residually as an institutional moniker, the stubborn name for a department of higher education that has long since splintered into a variety of not always compatible enterprises. Seitz wants to make the case for reconnecting these enterprises in the English department. One might ask, however, "Why bother?" What intellectual, theoretical, or even practical justification exists any longer for this department, such that one would be wise to seek (one more time) to give it some coherence (much less a bigger budget)?

If I am beginning to sound like an associate dean, it is no accident. As I read Seitz's often compelling discussions of pedagogical practice and metaphorical theory, I kept imagining myself trying to present his proposals to an administrator keen on having the English department increase its enrollment numbers and majors and bring in more extra-mural funding: "We're going to reinvent the curriculum by placing metaphor at its center! We're going to stop insisting all the time that students express their true feelings or communicate information effectively! We're going to stop creating the specialized concentrations that attract students and instead force them to take classes in areas they would otherwise avoid! We're going to put inscrutable avant-garde literary texts and theorists into all our classes, even composition! And we're going to make faculty who currently have little in common teach together!" I apologize for bastardizing Seitz's proposals, many of which I would endorse, and which I am sure he could present more persuasively than I. My dramatization merely aims to show my sense of the distance between Seitz's theoretical inquiry and the administrative apparatus that governs English departments today. There has probably never been a larger gap than there is today between the intellectual assumptions of English professors and those of their administrative superiors. At the end of his prologue, Seitz acknowledges that the curriculum reform he advocates may require "more than a little ingenuity and courage" given "current political pressures to do the opposite." These "political pressures" remain vague and unanalyzed, however, so that the project of inquiry Seitz pursues so admirably begins to feel more and more disconnected from the possibility of action.

In Seitz's view, the primal Fall into disunity for the English department came with the split between the teaching of composition and the teaching of literature. Rather than present this tale in terms many of us have heard before—for example, as a result of the demographic extension and vocational mission of the public university systems that grew exponentially after World War II—Seitz presents a historical review of "the threat that metaphor has posed to the teaching of writing" by culling passages from two centuries worth of textbooks to demonstrate the pedagogical suppression of metaphor. "What may prove most instructive about metaphor," Seitz finds, "is the extent to which it refuses instruction." In a similarly acute account of literary pedagogy, Seitz discusses how the drive to discover what the text "means" so often creates a blindness to "what is happening" in the language of the text. In other words, composition pedagogy advocates the literal, either as self-expression or instrumental communication, while literary pedagogy advocates the literal as the result of the "right" interpretation. In both cases, metaphor—or, more generally, literary language—becomes subordinated to predetermined ends and constraints. Ironically, beneath the apparent split between the teaching of composition and the teaching of literature lies a common resistance to the literariness of language.

Now, those who have followed the "theory" wars of the past decades will not be surprised to find Seitz turning to figures such as Italo Calvino and Roland Barthes as resources for rethinking curricula in composition and literature. Seitz's approach to metaphor is firmly poststructuralist (if that's possible!), emphasizing how the "equivalences" postulated by metaphor demand that readers negotiate their ways between differences and relations whose identities remain uncertain. The postmodern and metacritical nonmethods of Calvino and Barthes demonstrate the values of fragmentation and the illusions of identification, their texts exploring at a larger structural level the kinds of difficulties that metaphor produces within single sentences. Seitz bravely advocates not only that such readings be adopted across curricula but also that students get some practice writing such postmodern and metacritical texts. Here Seitz needs to be heard in his own words:

As someone who teaches in the literature rather than the composition program, I cannot help but find Seitz's arguments attractive, since they boil down to advocating that we place some notion of the literary work of language at the heart of "English studies." In good conscience, however, I must return to the difference between "English studies" and the "English department" and question whether this approach offers a complete solution.

With one or two exceptions, the name "English department" has stuck like glue to programs across the country, no matter the depth of their adoption of critical theory or cultural studies or rhetoric and composition or feminist pedagogy or film and performance. Much ink and many pixels have been dedicated to the "crisis in English studies," but the crisis does not seem powerful enough to have caused a change in name. Seitz's casual slipping from "English" to "English studies" is symptomatic of the denial in which many of us live, its vagueness keeping open the space for productive dialogue and conflict as well as for avoiding fights. To sharpen our thinking, I believe it important to reiterate that the teaching of composition is not the teaching of English; nor is the teaching of literature the teaching of English. Neither composition nor literature are exclusive to English, nor are they taught solely in the English department. Late in his epilogue, Seitz appears to offer a definition when, in passing, he notes that "English studies investigates the reading and writing of texts." This definition, however, does not answer the question "Why English?" This question has become notoriously difficult once more, in large measure because analyses of globalization, imperialism, colonialism, and multiculturalism demonstrate that English as a cultural practice is thoroughly implicated in these developments. Save for the odd critique of tendencies toward identity politics, Seitz's book is completely silent on the implications of seeing English as a global language, or of how its global literary practice is transforming the teaching of literature, or of how the politics of English language instruction are unfolding in increasingly multilingual societies. "What is English?" is not a rhetorical question any longer.

Precisely because "English" defies any easy, literal definition, putting it back at the center of our work could present great opportunities for rethinking what we do. We ought at least to narrow Seitz's disciplinary definition to "the reading and writing of texts in English," although not because it will easily stabilize our departments or our intellectual work. Given the hybridity of English—its incorporation of words from many tongues and its use in many texts that mix English with other languages—pedagogies could develop that would resist "English only" ideologies by exposing the historical impurity of the language and the socially constructed character of its cultural practices. This specific focus on English would, I think, have the advantage of making the history of the language as a cultural practice a central concern, one that indeed cuts across all the subspecialties of the department.

I would propose, then, that departments undo some of the reform of the past by instituting "first-year English" as their core curriculum, not "first-year composition" or "introduction to literature." The curriculum for first-year English ought to make its focus of study English as a cultural practice. It ought to integrate the teaching of writing and the teaching of literature into a course that presents a historical overview of English and its many uses, including its present involvement in globalization and its adaptation to other media (such as film and music). The history of English as a cultural practice could not be studied meaningfully without encompassing both its aesthetic and political uses or without asking students to compose in a variety of forms and genres. This course would have the advantage of inviting participation from faculty and graduate students from every subspecialty in the department, since their various practices would by definition be included in the first-year course.

More specifically, first-year English should cover the origins of English in the contact of Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples and follow the way the language developed in response to a variety of social, technological, and historical changes over the centuries, including the contemporary globalization of English with all its attendant problems. Rather than accepting a fixed distinction between "literary" and "nonliterary" uses of English, first-year English should introduce students to the project of historicizing the advent of the concept and practice of "literature" in English and to how the invention of this category reflected other cultural developments in the period since the eighteenth century. Likewise, first-year English should examine the history of how writing has been taught in English, including the shift from rhetorical to compositional approaches and how schooling in writing functioned as part of specific social and educational ideologies. This work of historicizing English need not detract from the practical goals of improving student writing skills; on the contrary, the research and critical thinking demanded by such historicizing could provide exceptional occasions for learning, especially when connected to candid self-reflections on the current politics of English and on each student's individual cultural relation to the language's many contemporary forms and practices. The wide reading of texts from many centuries and locales might challenge students to develop more sophisticated skills in explication and interpretation, expand their linguistic and cultural vocabularies, provide a range of writing models, and offer numerous topics on which assignments might be based. Instructors would, I think, find such a syllabus both intellectually challenging and a fit vehicle for spurring excellence in writing.

Perhaps Seitz would criticize this proposal as taking "English" in the department's title too literally, rather than letting it continue to be a kind of floating signifier allowing for many possible courses of study. There is no reason, however, why this insistence on taking the "English" in the English department literally need exclude its metaphorical possibilities, as indeed Seitz shows elsewhere in his book that the literal and metaphorical engage dialogically with one another. Disciplinary dialogism may be enhanced by taking the "English" in the discipline's title literally, for then we might expose the actual contradictions of its significations and the various uses to which it has been put. Having the department collaborate on designing anew first-year English sequence along these lines could, with good will, motivate more rather than fewer metaphors for what "English" might mean and do. And to return to practical matters, the English department soon will be unable to defend its institutional position without this insistence on the autonomy of English as a field of study that requires unique historical knowledge, specific analytical skills, and the achievement of expertise in the actual practices of English—oral, written, hypertextual, and multimedia.

If defined as composition or writing instruction, the discipline of English can be separated from literary study, turned into another department, or farmed out to other disciplines or to increasingly ill-paid part-time teachers. If defined as cultural studies, the discipline of English may dissipate in the face of the legitimate claim that other departments also do cultural studies, thank you. If defined as literary study, the discipline of English could wither just as Classics departments did, shriveling into an enclave of ostracized or forgotten readers. The English department must be able to meet the challenge of the bottom-line university agenda with the strongest possible argument in favor of its discipline and its work. The traditional humanities justification helps, as does the newer critical pedagogy model and the various instrumental arguments for linguistic and technical literacy. None of these, however, is exclusive to the English department, and so none of them can answer the question "Why English?" Seitz's book helps us think our way into that question, but to think a way out of it will require that we take this rhetorical question literally as well as metaphorically.