I'm an old dude, so I remember when one out of ten Ivy undergrads was an English major, and the reading lists were just beginning to include some nonwhite authors or authors from cultures other than Europe and the United States. Women's Studies still had the "wet paint" sign on it.
I'm an old dude, so I remember when one out of ten Ivy undergrads was an English major, and the reading lists were just beginning to include some nonwhite authors or authors from cultures other than Europe and the United States. Women's Studies still had the "wet paint" sign on it.
Back then, the curmudgeons' complaint was that all these long-hair free-love kids had no work ethic (the one exception always being the engineering students) and wouldn't even have to learn Latin, much less Greek, so the diploma was gonna be useless.
We were the children of the men (and a few women) who crushed Hitler and Mussolini, and fought Emperor Hirohito's army and navy back to their home islands. My generation didn't fight that fight; we didn't have to lace up our boots and walk into global war every morning. We laced up our Adidas and put quarters in Missile Command and Space Invaders.
My literature classes were not full of -isms. There might have been a couple such classes in the catalog but they weren't required.
I do think students lose the opportunity to find their own passion for literature when they are asked, time after time, to read a book and write about how some -ism "informs" the book or its author.
As an adult I taught high school (now retired) and I tried for a simpler, broader, accessible path for literature exploration. I would tell students that writing a novel or play is a struggle for any author, so there has to be a powerful motivation to endure that struggle. Most novels, I would suggest to the students, were written for one of two reasons: the author believes passionately that something precious is threatened and needs defending, or the author believes passionately that something precious is broken and needs fixing. Then the students could decide on their own what the characters in Achebe or Faulkner or Morrison or Shakespeare were attacking, defending, breaking, or fixing.
This comment of mine is a little too long. Sorry! Thanks for your patience.
Hi Liza,
I appreciate your essays here.
I'm an old dude, so I remember when one out of ten Ivy undergrads was an English major, and the reading lists were just beginning to include some nonwhite authors or authors from cultures other than Europe and the United States. Women's Studies still had the "wet paint" sign on it.
Back then, the curmudgeons' complaint was that all these long-hair free-love kids had no work ethic (the one exception always being the engineering students) and wouldn't even have to learn Latin, much less Greek, so the diploma was gonna be useless.
We were the children of the men (and a few women) who crushed Hitler and Mussolini, and fought Emperor Hirohito's army and navy back to their home islands. My generation didn't fight that fight; we didn't have to lace up our boots and walk into global war every morning. We laced up our Adidas and put quarters in Missile Command and Space Invaders.
My literature classes were not full of -isms. There might have been a couple such classes in the catalog but they weren't required.
I do think students lose the opportunity to find their own passion for literature when they are asked, time after time, to read a book and write about how some -ism "informs" the book or its author.
As an adult I taught high school (now retired) and I tried for a simpler, broader, accessible path for literature exploration. I would tell students that writing a novel or play is a struggle for any author, so there has to be a powerful motivation to endure that struggle. Most novels, I would suggest to the students, were written for one of two reasons: the author believes passionately that something precious is threatened and needs defending, or the author believes passionately that something precious is broken and needs fixing. Then the students could decide on their own what the characters in Achebe or Faulkner or Morrison or Shakespeare were attacking, defending, breaking, or fixing.
This comment of mine is a little too long. Sorry! Thanks for your patience.