I posted my remarks from #MLA23 #s583 with nods to @kfitz & @sramsay

https://bit.ly/BigTentEET

.@eetempleton: As much as I love words, it's not words that will save us. Instead it's the guests to the tent/party. It's the people, and we need to take care of them. #s583 #mla23

.@eetempleton: Our institutions cannot love us (as @tressiemcphd wrote in the NYT). And of course they can't because they're systems and not people. #s583 #mla23

.@eetempleton: What about thinking of what we do as teachers/admin less with the corporate/business model but rather as a version of care? in other words, let's think in terms of a verb rather than a noun. #s583 #mla23

.@eetempleton: My most important resource has never been fiscal. Money has always been tight at our institution, and that means I can't do much with it.

My most important resource are my colleagues. #s583 #mla23

.@eetempleton: Being a Dean means being a steward of institutional resources. #s583 #mla23

.@eetempleton: Critical mass matters, as we have recently seen in the House of Representatives. #s583 #mla23

.@eetempleton: Sometimes bigger is better. There can be power in numbers. There's something that happens when we have 50 or 500 people that cannot happen when you have only five people. #s583 #mla23

.@eetempleton now calling back @kfitz's comments on crises in the humanities (which drew on Reitter and Wellmon). #s583 #mla23

.@eetempleton: Why do we need a big tent? What are we calling people in for? As much as I'd like it to be for a Gatsby carnivalesque party, but that never really seems to happen. #s583 #mla23

.@eetempleton: There's an assumption that bigger tents are better tents. Are they? #s583 #mla23

.@eetempleton: When "big tent" is applied to feminism, it's similarly vexed. What *is* feminism? #s583 #mla23

.@eetempleton: The metaphor of a big tent is curious. It's meant to be welcoming, but we are eventually forced to contend with the question of who's in and who's out (pace @sramsay at #mla11). #s583 #mla23

.@eetempleton: There are currently 7 of us in our department, and it will soon be 5. My tent is TINY and don't look a thing like where I was trained or the institutions that are too often held up as the standard. #s583 #mla23

.@eetempleton: I've spent my career at a small, tuition-driven, formerly single-gender institution. #s583 #mla23

Now up is @eetempleton. #s583 #mla23

Koehler: We've asked our students to design TED talks about the value of an English major, which we can then use to reach out to other potential students. #s583 #mla23

Koehler: This course was inspired by Stephen Knadler, Chair of English at Spelman who spoke about this topic at ADE virtual institute in 2020. #s583 #mla23

Koehler: I'm now teaching a course on "Designing your life as an English major." Alumni have been generously willing to become mentors. #s583 #mla23

Koehler: We have started having alumni career panels every semester, using both in-person and virtual modalities. #s583 #mla23