Close your eyes and try to remember what “precedented times” were like. That’s right: we all know how overused the phrase “unprecedented times” has become during this pandemic. But that implies that before COVID-19, things were more predictable, that we had precedents to rely upon to let us know what was coming next. In fact, cultural historians have argued that modernity is defined in part by humanity’s desire to “tame chance,” in Ian Hacking’s phrase—to amass data, develop scientific methods, apply rigorous evidentiary procedures, quantify everything we can, and ultimately, to develop all the precedents we can in order to know and control tomorrow’s unknown contingencies better than previous generations did.
We’ve just finished an election cycle in which pollsters, pundits, and everyone’s favorite new figures for mockery—forecasters—are defending themselves and their crafts all over again. Our desire to predict the future grows stronger and stronger the more bits of putatively predictive information we can gather about it. But like Jay Gatsby, we are stuck grasping at that endlessly elusive green light on a horizon. The nature of precedented times, it seems, said more about our desire to tame the future than about our actual control. These unprecedented times gave us more new data to compute, more puzzles to ponder, more languages to learn in order to adapt to a bewildering set of future expectations. It has felt overwhelming at times—who among us thought, back in January 2020, that we’d all know what N95s and contact tracing meant, or that we’d have to worry about exposure to respiratory droplets?—but it’s our reality.
This reality has meant big, big changes in the Department of English. Over the years, the core of our work, and much of our success, has been the intimacy of small classes in seminar rooms where face-to-face discussions have been enlightening and formative. In fall 2020, those classes moved to Zoom, like much of our lives did. Our colleagues handled this wonderfully, keeping students engaged even when this wasn’t the version of college they’d dreamed of (nor was this mode of teaching what faculty dreamed of; a lesson of 2020 seems to be coming to grips with imperfect choices). Assignments moved to digital formats and produced innovative results, like experiments with cloud-based, collaborative, live writing in class. A blend of synchronous and asynchronous work was measured in different environments across Composition, Film, Literature, and Writing to suit the needs of very diverse student populations.
How did all of this happen? I started writing this column by naming everyone who pulled off this miraculous feat. Because we’re such a large department and so many people made it possible, that became the column itself. So let me try to give the truncated version: first, it took the leadership and ingenuity of our directors of undergraduate studies, our program directors and Writing Institute admins, and our office staff, who gathered over the summer to create guides, tutorials, websites, documents, and much more to help faculty through the transition. More faculty from each program helped along the way and became designated go-to experts on Flex@Pitt, the university’s hybrid teaching system. And everyone retrained themselves in online pedagogies over the summer, whether they were seasoned veterans or entirely new to the game.
It was a herculean effort. From my own perspective, I have been constantly amazed and in admiration. I’m honored to work with such amazing teachers every day. Our students report that they have been pleased with the English department, where our instructors have gone the extra mile to check in on them in these rough times, and where they know they have a home waiting for them when we reach the other side of this.
This is also an appropriate moment to mention some of those amazing teachers who decided that this past year would be their final one with us. Jonathan Arac, Don Bialostosky, Laura Dice, Jean Carr, Nick Coles, Beth Matway, and Cindy Skrzycki all retired at the end of this past academic year. We will be a different department without them. Many of you reading this studied with them and benefited greatly from their wisdom, generosity, and care over the years. Our department is grateful to them, just as I know you are, too. I regret deeply that we can’t gather in person to celebrate them properly right now; like many things, that will have to wait until these unprecedented times relent and allow us to resume some precedents that we cherish, such as honoring those who have served our department so impeccably.
For now: Thank you, enduringly.
—Gayle Rogers