from the age of Chaucer through Donne and Shakespeare and Pope and even Wordsworth which was written by disabled Kenyan lesbians speaking from a post colonialist third wave feminist ethnic identity point of view.

Because nothing tells us of the intellectual history of a centuries-long patriarchal racially hierarchical empire keen to impose orthodoxy and orthopraxy better than minimizing the old, male, white imperialist voices who were part of it.

When we want to understand the 6th - 4th Century BCE Persian Empire, it is vitally important to listen to Sufi exiles from modern Iran. Their insights into the Elamite question are very informative.

of, well, English lit.

I'm sure the Canon can be expanded to include some lost voices, but I don't see taking out any of the names mentioned in the article's list in favor of an obscure figure.

We have this debate constantly in my own discipline of Art History. Fortunately, we can afford to be a little more flexible, but some dead white guys will always be in there: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Titian, Van Gogh, Picasso.....

It was considered radical in Mary Wollstonecraft's day for even a rich white woman to publish, and she lived at the very end of the 18th Century. Her social and philosophical works are capable enough but her novels are not exactly stellar either. I mean sure there are a few earlier ones like Breve and Montagu but they are pretty much uniformly white, upper crust and mediocre at best, adding nothing to quality and little to viewpoints beyond limited rich female concerns. Back from that? A couple of possible medieval curiosities perhaps but the sad truth is there simply are no female Shakespeares or Popes or Donnes, let alone racial, sexuality and ethnic minority or underclass versions in English Lit pre 19th C. Education was a privilege of wealth and hierarchy. Publication was expensive and limited. It's no more sexism/racism to admit this than it is sexist/racist to note that few leaders of the American Revolution or the 30 Years War were aught but white wealthy men. It may well be argued in modern sensibilities at any rate that sexism/racism made it that way, but that's nothing that we can remedy in retrospect. We cannot teach the glorious 16th Century epic poetry of poor black disabled scullery maids when none was recorded even if it was ever created

Than today's sexism and racism. The voices of women and people of color have been silenced forever.

I think they should look for more ways to include voices which have largely been historically silenced, and I hope they do, but I also don't think there's any way to get a degree in English (which I have) without studying English poets at some point. It would be like getting a degree in math but refusing to take a course in Geometry.

Edit: Maybe they could make the course incorporate other poets as well? They might be able to have fewer English poets and include other poets as well. There are other courses available - for instance I took a course on African American literature - but that was not a required course, where the English Poetry course was. I understand the call to have more diversity in the core classes.

Who would you include to help broaden the field?

But my immediate thought was Rumi. There are tons of poets of color, and women poets, in more recent times. The earlier the time period, the more those voices were silenced, and the harder it is to include them.

which, especially for poetry, means you're studying the translator, from whatever period, as well as the original poet. I'm not sure that should be a compulsory part of an English course.

You have to take into account the translator, but that can be interesting. I've seen various translations of a poem presented with discussion about how they differ and what we can infer about the original poem and the translators based on those differences. It's different, but it is also valuable. And if we want to make diversity a priority, which I at least do, then we might have to be open to that.

Also, English departments don't have to make Development of English Verse (which is what it was called at my university) a required course for people perusing an English degree. A more general course on poetry could be required instead. It's very easy to find recent poetry by women and people of color.

then you get inclusion.

If you want a degree in world literature, you get inclusion.

But if you want a degree in English literature, you're stuck with two things: (1) The literature of England, which until recently was male dominated and really pretty much white until 1600. Not a lot of African English speakers back in the 1300s. (2) Literature originally written in English, not in Persian or Russian or Chinese or Hindi.

Kafka was not a major English writer. Neither was Rumi.

In other words, they want a degree in English literature, but they want to redefine the term to make it about themselves because the goal of literature is to see yourself in the printed page and understand more about yourself. Or more about people with your same viewpoints and ideology. Far too narcissistic. It's not about the "human condition," it's about politics and being reflected in ways that make you important and make you feel validated. Basically, selfies in print.

Which is not the same as a degree in English literature.

If the degree they're talking about is specifically in English literature, then I agree with you. English literature is made up largely of white men, and almost exclusively so before WWI. If it's a degree in English, which is a degree on literature and writing in general and is called "English" because that's the specific language we speak, then I don't agree with you.

My studies of Old and Middle English didn't include a great deal of material written by women or minorities, alas. Similarly, we shouldn't omit Chaucer or Shakespeare simply because they had the misfortune of being white and are now dead.

One of my best English profs at PSU was, incidentally, a living black woman, and I took five courses with her because she was excellent (she could, for instance, read/speak fourteen languages with passable fluency). It was in one of her courses that I first heard the term "dead white men," because she rejected the phrase as reactionary. It was also in her classes that I learned of the wealth of material from other "non-traditional" authors, and she embraced the value of studying these in addition to the conventional canon.

We still have a surprising amount of Elizabethan-era literature written by women, though I was wholly unaware of it until college. No reason that this shouldn't be taught in high school level English classes covering that time period.

but it's so much more than totally gross. She does begrudgingly admit that but it's still a very flawed critique.


A clear line from Milton to Katniss Everdeen? Give me a break.

Euler, Euclid and so on. We need a movement to boycott "white math" like calculus and geometry in favor of math with more ethnic and gender diversity.

Today's students view Orwell's 1984 as a textbook. NewSpeak is a goal for them.


This is what happens when education becomes a consumer product. The teachers are afraid to truly educate, because to educate is to challenge and to challenge is to go against the consumer.

Burger King redux.

"I want it my way, and I want it to be all about me and my interests. No, I'm not going to pick a major that interests me because of what it is, I want to pick the major and remake it in my own image because I need to feel empowered. And there's nothing to make me feel empowered like coercing others to do my bidding."

Pricks, one and all.

We had lunch together, and he related a funny story to me about a small group of students who formally complained about the curriculum in one of his courses. This particular course covered early European history, ranging from the paleolithic to the Congress of Vienna.

One of the students apparently went through the textbook and calculated that all but three of the people named in the book were white, and the group objected to the courses focus on white Europeans.

It's a course that focuses on European history prior to 1815. And it was "too white and represented a Eurocentric view of history". SMH. While I can sympathize with the desire to improve the representation of minority groups in various topics of study, some of these campaigners seem to lack common sense.