The two cultures of English: literature, composition, and the moment of rhetoric

'The Two Cultures of English' examines the academic discipline of English in the final decades of the 20th century and the first years of the new millennium.

During this period, longstanding organisational patterns within the discipline were disrupted.

With the introduction of French theory into the American academy in the 1960s and 1970s, both literary studies and composition studies experienced a significant reorientation.

The introduction of theory into English studies not only intensified existing tensions between those in literature and those in composition but also produced commonalities among colleagues that had not previously existed.

As a result, the various fields within English began to share an increasing number of investments at the same time that institutional conflicts between them became more intense than ever before.