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Will, >a three-stream major in English: historical focus, >contemporary literature focus, and a rhetoric & professional >writing focus. The RPW stream sounds to me like a great idea. I believe that if I had had the choice, I may have taken an honors BA in an RPW program. Does the program have writing courses for every year of study, in a more advanced level each year? (does your dept. have the info on a website yet?) Is there any cross-pollenation going on, so that students focusing in one of these streams need to take a few courses in the other two? >Second, in order for our department to understand/accept the >RPW concept, we needed to articulate it not in terms of >"writing," but in terms of expanding literary analysis into >cultural studies (which takes writing and language as its >subject). Thus half of the courses qualifying for >the RPW major are recognizable as cultural studies courses. Interesting. Does your university have a journalism program? I have always thought of journalism as a type of professional writing degree. I wonder if there will be some sort of tension or competition between Journalism programs and this type of program. >our department is debating seriously >the prospect of offering a rhetoric and professional writing >degree without a critical mass of area specialists doing the teaching. Who will do the teaching of the courses? Do the faculty feel that anyone among them can teach writing and rhetoric courses just as well? Tania.