Yes, since the invention of writing, we "English Majors" have been about our evil business, corrupting minds with all that thinking garbage. Sure, we started out a little slow with Sumerian lists of crops and livestock, but we really gained immoral ground once Gilgamesh became the rage. These days, we've really reached a peak with what is termed "non-Western literature" and texts by "ethnic" people! Granted, as long as most people don't actually understand (or read) the texts, some of the depravity is lost. It seems too, that once a text is old enough, it somehow becomes sanitized. Poor Shakespeare and Chaucer, with all their dirty jokes and innuendos, what a tragic waste of perfectly naughty writing.
This entry is a response to the recent news of Phyllis Schlafly receiving an honorary degree-- which come on... don't hand those things out like candy! I'm all for speaking and writing whatever the hell one wants, but that doesn't mean you have to be awarded for it. After all, do we really want to place an official seal of approval on someone who argues the student who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech did so because he was an English major? Schlafly questions: "Did Cho get evil egotistical notions from Professor Shoshana Milgram Knapp's senior seminar called 'The Self-Justifying Criminal in Literature'?" If anything, if he were bright enough and actually took that class, he might have glimpsed the flimsy self-justification behind criminal acts. Then again, does someone willing to mass murder people really think about the nuances of his literature class? Is that really the issue here Schlafly, really?
Evidently the modern English major is the worst of all sorts. We'd only be saved if we just read more Chaucer. Bring on "The Merchant's Tale"; save our country and our souls with a story of sex in a tree! Lascivious old men and adulterous fornication, irony and Middle English are the backbone of the GOP! And while we're quoting lines from Hamlet, let us not forget: "That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs." Bring on endless jokes about jewel cases and what not!
The following text is from Schlafly's newsletter Vol. 41, No. 8, March 2008
http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/2008/mar08/psrmar08.html :
What's Happened to Shakespeare? The bad news is that Shakespeare has disappeared from required courses in English departments at more than three-fourths of the top 25 U.S. universities, but the good news is that only 1.6 % of America's 19 million undergraduates major in English (according to Department of Education figures). When I visit college campuses, students for years have been telling me that the English departments are the most radicalized of all departments, more so than sociology, psychology, anthropology, or even women's studies. In the decades before "progressive" education became the vogue, English majors were required to study Shakespeare, the preeminent author of English literature. The premise was that students should be introduced to the best that has been thought and said. What happened? To borrow words from Hamlet: "Though this be madness, yet there is method in it." Universities deliberately replaced courses in the great authors of English literature with what professors openly call "fresh concerns," "under-represented cultures," and "ethnic or non-Western literature."
3 comments:
As you are acutely aware, I am one of those working on the underrepresented int he lit. I had no idea that Shakespeare was being eliminated from English course requirements. I think it's just sad. Even if you want to work on/read/recover alternative (for lack of a better word) literatures, you still have to have a basis in the traditional canon, IMHO. The medievalist and Elizabethan people can get into the minutiae of those works, but I think we just need at least some Shakespeare. It's like you also need to know the Bible, even if you aren't religious--just to catch all of the nuances of the work.
I bet the reasoning behind this is the idea that students find Willie inaccessible--the strange language, etc. What they fail to realize is that he actually appealed to the common person then--I mean why else would you have the penny seats? I personally made it my mission to read all of Willie back in high school and I made it through a lot. However, it was not until I took the actual courses in college that I really began to appreciate all the humor, bawdy references, and lyricism of them. Thankfully, they taught by the amazing Todd Trubey, wherever he is. He was an adjunct who eventually left the profession because he just plain could not find a job, and when he did it paid so dismally, it was almost worse than grad school. He took a much higher paying job elsewhere. I also credit him with giving me the best advice about grad school. I wanted to just get an MA and move on to something else. He said, you should apply to PhD programs, because they fund you and if you leave, you can take your MA as a parting gift. He also told me realistically that grad school is a great way to spend your 20s, but don't expect to get a job at the end. Sobering, eh? Makes the prison job seem downright appealing. ;) However, I have to admit that part of the reason I do what I do is because it is potentially marketable. I mean how many jobs are there for medievalists/16/17th centuryists out there? Less and less, even less than I knew until I saw this. I think your specialty will be marketable too--I mean you cover a broad swath of the lit, but you do it in a unique way that is a really fresh approach, IMHO.
James Williams and I once had a discussion about why we do what we do. I mean, we are all obviously smart, intellectual people if we are doing the whole grad school thing. Why not go to law/medical/business school? Maybe it's because I didn't want to spend my life working as a drone in an office (law). I also had a lot of trouble with chemistry, so med school was a dim prospect. Now that Tony has completed B-school I know that his consulting job is kinda interesting, but involves a whole lot of boring meetings. I mean he works on things like working out systems of garbage handling for WalMart. However, I still don't quite know what it is he actually does on a daily basis. I think it's the meetings and he also makes a lot of Powerpoints that highlight his solutions to the client's problems. I also thought of ad agency work, but it seems like you have to have a certain kind of slick personality to do well there.
I mean, maybe we do what we do because we just love learning. That's why it seems so disappointing that the students coming in seem less and less interested in learning and more and more in getting the elite credential that will give them the certification for jobs that earn them lots and lots of money. I just read an article somewhere (I think it was the NY Times) that discussed getting your toddlers and grade schoolers into the 'right' activities to get them into the 'right' colleges. And don't get me started on the new concept/job of college admissions counselor--getting paid $100-200/hour to coach (perhaps less than qualified) students into more elite schools. And I am sooooo sick about hearing from you know where that the incoming classes are the smartest bestest ever because they scored even higher on the SATs. I'm sure they have had tons of tutoring/coaching--and, as you know, they get to take freaking graphic calculators into the test with them!!! I don't know about you, but I just showed up to take the ACT and the SATs. I didn't score too bad--a 31 or 32 overall I think. Not that it was a great strategy to take, but I didn't have my Mommy and Daddy coaching me and pressuring me to get a certain score.
I mean--not to sound like a curmudgeon, but whatever happened to letting kids be kids, allowing them to follow their own path. Instead it seems like they are just working out their parent's plans which are neuroses, really. One of my friends from HS (ex-friend now, circumstances, drifting apart, etc.) had her mother make her choose Northwestern over Vassar (where she really wanted to go and had a rather hefty scholarship). She also made her daughter repeatedly take--and fail--chemistry because she wanted Naomi to be a doctor. Well guess what, she ended up with an MA in Art History.
I guess I am getting tired, because I seem to have less energy to rant. Maybe it's the Gen-X thing--being told what losers and slackers we all were when we were going through the college experience. Or maybe it's my disgust of the later baby boom generation--the ones that supposedly--maybe actually--rule the world. Despite all their so-called protests against 'the man,' they all sold out.
I guess in a world where Paris Hilton is the coolest, students have less and less incentive to really delve into the learning process that occurs with college. Instead, they expect their education to be spoon fed to them, just like their parents have always done. And there are the very noticeable exceptions, as you are well aware. But IMO, they are few in numbers. I loved the student that wrote the thank you that you posted---it made me smile. I wish there were more of them out there.
Sorry for the superlong rant. I hope I don't sound too angry. I'll call you later!
Cather
More Shakespeare for all!!!!!
Down with stupidism!!!!!!
I think the schools also pick the so-called underrepresented because it is 'easier' to read/reach students with it. And the inevitable result is the proliferation of those irritatingly dull 'gender' papers that all have the thesis that the writer(s) are doing XYZ to subvert the dominant authority.
Cultural studies are valuable, but not at the expense of Willie. He is the uber-generator of so many of the plots that get put out even today in plays, movies, etc.
Also, I kinda knew this, but I just confirmed that Willie actually coined the name Olivia for Twelfth Night. So I like the name even more with the double literary reference. And not because it's popular!!!
Smiles,
C
Hey Catherine--
I don't know how accurate Schlafly's argument about Shakespeare is. I don't really trust her numbers or her argument about how it is or isn't taught. She just asserts it should be taught (which I agree with) but I get the distinct feeling she hasn't actually read much Willie, since she argues we need him for moral purification. She also just has a problem with any "ethnic" writing, as she puts it. I was making fun of her in my goofball way.
I should have block quoted her text, but when I block on here, it does really funky stuff.
On a tangential note, I just got out of class. I talked with Josh. He's still working on his dissertation, and it's 350 pages! He expects he'll have to add more by the time his advisors are done reading it. Then Professor Sherry came by and said that the model of a dissertation he was given in grad school was 1,200 pages. It was on "rivers in literature." Can you imagine? If I EVER try to pull a stunt like that just hit me in the head with the biggest book nearby, probably a copy of the 1,200 page dissertation on literary rivers.
:) -Tammy
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