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At Yale: ‘We ask that Major English Poets be abolished…’

A Petition [to the Yale University English Department] — We, undergraduate students in the Yale English Department, write to urge the faculty to reevaluate the undergraduate curriculum. We ask the department to reconsider the current core requirements and the introductory courses for the major.

CN150excerptIn particular, we oppose the continued existence of the Major English Poets sequence as the primary prerequisite for further study. It is unacceptable that a Yale student considering studying English literature might read only white male authors. A year spent around a seminar table where the literary contributions of women, people of color, and queer folk are absent actively harms all students, regardless of their identity. The Major English Poets sequences creates a culture that is especially hostile to students of color.

When students are made to feel so alienated that they get up and leave the room, or get up and leave the major, something is wrong. The English department loses out when talented students engaged in literary and cultural analysis are driven away from the major. Students who continue on after taking the introductory sequence are ill-prepared to take higher-level courses relating to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, ability, or even to engage with critical theory or secondary scholarship. We ask that Major English Poets be abolished, and that the pre-1800/1900 requirements be refocused to deliberately include literatures relating to gender, race, sexuality, ableism, and ethnicity.


Continued at the Googledocs petition | More Chronicle & Notices.

One Comment

  1. wrote:

    The Yale yahoos are less concerned about dead white males than replacing what they wrote. They have defined the subjects to be written about so must find among the disabled a replacement for Byron, among the LGBTQ’s a Wilde, and Goldsmith’s substitute might well be a Goebbels to serve as major domo for all their aggrieved.

    Sunday, 21 August 2016 at 20:08 | Permalink

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