Yale English majors say: don't make us read so many white men! (skills, school)
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The "Major English Poets" sequence, a mandatory two-course commitment for English majors, is particularly problematic, according to the students. These classes cover Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, and T.S. Eliot. It's not the most diverse line up, to be sure, but it's the one that best reflects history the way it actually happened. Inarguably, these are the most influential poets in the English language.
But students think this sequence "creates a culture that is hostile to students of color."
Gee, I wonder why the early English literature canon is so dominated by white males? How do you "decolonize" English literature by eliminating the major English writers who have shaped it? Did the English colonize their own culture?
The academic left has a lot to answer for.
I don't even know what to say about this sort of thing any more. I'm just dumbfounded.
Last edited by toobusytoday; 06-05-2016 at 02:26 PM..
Reason: please don't quote whole paragraphs. The link is enough
Those Yale students need to take a few more history classes. You can take diversified literature classes - - they just have to be from the 1800s forward.
Some of the best English literature I've read was written by women, but because of extreme sexism in the past, most of their literary works will be from the 1800s forward as mentioned above. There are many English, literary works written by non-white people; but, again, most of them were written more recently. I think there is a disconnect between the title of "English" and what's actually offered by English departments. English departments usually house all literature courses, even the ones that cover non-English literature. And, some of the required readings in English courses were not originally written in English. With all of that taken into account, it no longer sounds ridiculous that English students at Yale want more diversity in their courses because English programs are more general literature programs.
It IS English. Is it THAT surprising that that particular section is dominated by white males?
This is nothing new. When I was in grad school English education in the mid-90s, there were calls to "diversify the canon," and that certainly happened. The number of required books in secondary school by female writers as well as writers from other cultures has skyrocketed.
Education is about broadening your horizons. If these so-called scholars are actually so fed up that they are walking out of class, then they should get on the stick and research what, if anything, "people of color" were writing in John Donne's day. And if they seriously don't think they have anything to learn from the writers named in that course, they should not be English majors. It's a field based on interpretation and imagination, and it looks like these students don't have the required skills in either.
If they're going to be studying the history of English literature, they're just going to have to accept that not many non-whites were literate in English until the mid- to late-1800s. And the white women who wrote literature were not numerous before then, either.
They can't spend all of their time reading world literature translated into English either, because translations rarely due any justice to an original work.
"Major Poets" is a historical survey course. So most of it would be stuff written before the 20th century. Thus mostly white male authors. If they want to study 20C literature to get exposed to more diversity, I'm sure Yale would offer plenty of 20C literature courses to pick from... This sounds like they want to actually purge white male authors from the English courses and from history, like Stalinist-inspired gender/ethnic despots. How ignorant are Yale's undergrads?
Gee, I wonder why the early English literature canon is so dominated by white males? How do you "decolonize" English literature by eliminating the major English writers who have shaped it? Did the English colonize their own culture?
The academic left has a lot to answer for.
I don't even know what to say about this sort of thing any more. I'm just dumbfounded.
Wow. It's just absurd. Has it occurred to anyone that maybe students are leaving the room because that crap is boring as hell?
So study world lit from a variety of eras. If you are taking a class on British poetry from a particular time period, that's always going to be limiting.
I think what they are asking for is known as "World Literature before 1600".
As things go, I've done a lot of reading from around the world. Had to read Aeneid when I was taking Roman History, Things Fall Apart when I took Politics of Africa, and the Koran when I was taking Islamic Law.
See the pattern? In the courses of particular subjects, one reads literature particular to that subject.
Last edited by TamaraSavannah; 06-06-2016 at 01:24 AM..
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