American and British student activists are tired of white men controlling the curriculum
Activists at British and American universities want changes made in their curriculum. Several students at Yale and Cambridge have signed a letter demanding more diversity in their syllabi.
An open letter titled «Decolonizing the English Faculty» has created a furious debate at the University of Cambridge. The students who have signed the letter say they find the number of texts written by white men on the curriculum to be excessive. Several employees at the university now wish to include more women and writers of minority backgrounds.
Rianna Croxford studies English Literature at Cambridge, and says it’s high time more voices are included in the syllabus.
«For Cambridge to become more inclusive, the curriculum needs to be broadened,» she says. There are only three mandatory texts on Croxford’s curriculum, amongst them Shapespeare’s «Cymbeline». Because of this, Croxford says the rest of the list’s optional texts should be open to as many different voices as possible.
«We have a mandatory eight week course on Shakespeare. Why can’t one of these weeks be spent reading Shakespeare in a postcolonial context?» Croxford asked.
Postcolonialism is a term for relationships regarding former colonies and colonial powers, and the interaction between them.
More diversity
Croxford believes that the quality of English teaching will improve if the proposed changes are taken into consideration.
«The ‘decolonialized’ way to read enables you to challenge the motif, narrative and perspective of everything you read, and one can ask oneself what voices are silenced and ignored, and why.» She does not believe focusing on diversity will alter the standards for what makes a good text.
«Right now the prerequisites for a ‘good’ text is that it is written by a white man, because historically, they have had the power to determine the curriculum,» Croxford says.
Critical interpretation
Students at the University of Yale are also dissatisfied with the curriculum. A total of 160 students have signed a document that demands for more women, people of color or people of a different sexual orientation to be included on the syllabus.
The former mandatory courses in English poetry 1 and 2 have become voluntary after pressure from the activists. This means students can complete a degree in English literature without having to read English writers such as Shakespeare, Milton or Chaucer. They now have the opportunity to choose the new subject «Readings in Comparative World English Literature,» which applies a critical interpretation English literature with regards to the colonial era.
«I have a challenging and diverse course. We have acknowledged literary giants who have not previously been on the curriculum,» said Professor of English Stephanie Newell to the Yale Daily News. She has received several complaints. Amongst them is an angry father who refuses to send his daughter to Yale because of what he terms ‘Soviet inspired cultural genocide.’ Newell emphasizes that she has been careful not to promote a specific agenda through the course.
«A joke»
Espen Goffeng, lecturer at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages at the University of Oslo (UiO), thinks the activists are missing the target.
«English literary history consists, no matter how much one dislikes it, of texts written by white [people], and mainly men. Anyone can see that it is absurdly desperate to search for white or black voices in Chinese literary history. And so it is in this case,» Goffeng says.
He still believes in can be good to focus on texts written by minorities and women.
«But in this case it just appears as a joke. It seems like an fake injury when students feel attacked because one studies white poets from a country that has historically been full of white inhabitants. This falls under a wave of infantilization of adults, which students are supposed to be,» he said.
Goffeng gave an example for why he believes such demands may lead down the wrong path.
He recently used «The White Man’s Burden» by Rudyard Kipling for a seminar on American foreign politics. Despite this being a racist poem, it illustrates how the world was perceived by many in the late 1800s.
«If texts like this are removed due to consideration for students’ discomfort, one does not just remove the opportunity to learn history, but also to learn from history. And one eliminates the respect we should have for students and studies,» Goffeng said.
