[David Mason]

At my college majors are required to take all the historical periods and only ONE course in literary theory, so literature rules. We're weak in Anglo Saxon, but strong in Middle English and Renaissance, and manage to hit all the traditional folks on up to the Moderns, where we also have courses that would make right-wingers squirm, like Gay and Lesbian Literature. My impression is that it's the same in all the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, the organization we are part of. Anyway, Berube's book is worth reading. PS: I also have colleagues who vote Republican or Libertarian, though they are the minority on campus, and our student body is also divided pretty much the way the nation is. Respect for reasoned argument is the by-word in my classrooms, and I'm sure in those of most of my colleagues.



[This message has been edited by David Mason (edited October 25, 2006).]

[Jim Hayes]

I got excited about Janet's aquaintance doing a lingerie degree
in Italian. Then I realised it was a Freudian slip.

[Janet Kenny]

Originally posted by Jim Hayes:
I got excited about Janet's aquaintance doing a lingerie degree
in Italian. Then I realised it was a Freudian slip.

Here we have a first class example of the deplorable influence of Irishness on academic gravitas
Janet

[Quincy Lehr]

I'm sorry, but why is it that discussions of "academic freedom" in the United States have gotten positively Orwellian? For there to be "academic freedom" according to David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, and their ilk, left-leaning professors had better watch their step, not deviate too much from their conception of conventional wisdom, and generally shut the fuck up. The last brouhaha at Columbia while I was a graduate student was, for all intents and purposes, a witchhunt of the Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures program.

Quincy

P.S.--It is a balancing act, particularly when you are, say, a political historian whose work focuses on race and class conflict in the relatively recent past.

[This message has been edited by Quincy Lehr (edited October 25, 2006).]

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

It's not done as Mark describes it at any branch of CUNY I've ever been in, either, whether as student, speaker or guest poet. I studied Poetics and Anglo-Saxon at Hunter, and had courses in Elizabethan Theater, European Drama, the Romantics, and so on and so on, the whole traditional gamut of literary studies, including mythology and legend and the fabliau, complete with the Green Night and Shakuntala and portions of the Ramayana, right down to the American 20th century, without ever once being told who was gay or lesbian--or caring about it, either.

More recent visits suggest that people are still teaching the kind of things I learned, and that students still seem to be listening, reading and learning. Asking smart questions, too.

If now they're being told who is gay or lesbian--or Black or Hispanic or Asian or female--it may be useful, as a refutation of the inaccurate notion that all writing is done by Male Other. That kind of demographic information will probably seem irrelevant and drop away as the old ugly biases disappear; it can't happen soon enough to suit me. What I regret is the necessity for the inclusion of such private information about authors--in other words, the fact that the canon in the past has been so biased that it seems necessary to include it, as a corrective, in the interests of justice. In the same manner, I'm troubled by the disease that makes surgery necessary, not by the surgery itself.

[Daniel Haar]

Quincy,

I am anti-witchhunt. However, Hamid Dabashi, the "Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature" at Columbia University, is an idiot. Have you read Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi? Wonderful book -- it is refreshingly human, but also quite deep as Nafisi's comparison of the lives of her and her students to great works of English literature. Here's a review by Dabashi: Dabashi's review of Reading Lolita .

And here are a couple of discussions of that review: Dabashi v. Nafisi I and Dabashi v. Nafisi II . No witchhunts, agreed. Yet something is wrong if someone in such a high position writes a damning review (theory-laden, of course) of a book based literally on its cover. (I'm not sure he actually read the book).

Here's a hilarious send-up of Dabashi on Nafisi: Fake interview of Hamid Dabashi .

- Daniel

P.S. Quincy, I'll agree with you too that Horowitz and Pipes are off their rockers. I've noted before that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, has joined their campaign to clean universities of liberals and radicals: Ahmadinejad and the Universities .

[This message has been edited by Daniel Haar (edited October 25, 2006).]

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

"It is a balancing act." - Quincy

Here in Denmark the mantra of the 90s was: "Do not attempt to sway the minds of the students towards your own political leanings." Now in the 00's the pendulum has swung the other way - now we are encouraged to 'bring our personalities into the classroom'.

Whenever a corrective is established then its opposite is waiting in the wings.

(Which is why I continue to write 'doggerel' and 'romantic drivel' unphased. MY TIME WILL COME!)

Duncan

[Quincy Lehr]

Daniel--

Yep, that's a pretty overwrought review of a perfectly good book--though Benador Associates is in league with Satan. Good she broke from them.

Quincy

[This message has been edited by Quincy Lehr (edited October 25, 2006).]

[Mark Allinson]

I know it must seem like this is purely my own idiosyncratic crusade, but things have got so bad in Oz recently that the fedral government is now trying to gain control of the high school university-entrance syllabus from the state-sponsored deconstructors. As if it isn't bad enough that these folk have control of the universities, they want to extend this control into the high-school system.

Here is a link to a relevant article

Here is a quote from that article:

In April, The Australian reported how literary study in Australia had been declared "dead" by Harold Bloom, one of the world's leading authorities on the works of William Shakespeare. After learning that a prestigious Sydney girls school had asked students to apply Marxist, feminist and racial analysis to the play Othello, the internationally renowned critic said: "I find the question sublimely stupid.

"It is another indication that literary study has died in Australia," the Sterling professor of humanities at Yale and Berg professor of English at New York University told The Australian.

[Alan Sullivan]

There's a charming new film out called Art School Confidential. Let's not be narrow-minded. There more at stake than mere literature.