Not being an evangelist, i wasn't sure how to respond to the question “Why major in literature-what do we tell our students?” In over twenty years of teaching and advising, I have never sought to persuade students to major in any field. Occasionally, when a woman advisee who came to Brown to major in physics or engineering has decided to shift to literature, I have tried to talk about the difficulties women face in the sciences, the science classroom's chilly climate, and gender competition to persuade her to stick it out and become the engineer or physicist she wanted to be. But proselytize? Never.