Monday, October 19, 2009

On Today's Agenda

It's Monday, and that's my long day this quarter. I got in about an hour ago (10 am), and won't leave until after 9 pm, when my night class gets out and I hit the freeway home.

So: what am I up to today?

***

Spent some time this morning on a committee project. I'm chair of our department's one-year-old Curriculum Committee, ascending to that noble throne last month. On the table first is a new one-course "Diverse Traditions" requirement for English majors, which we approved last year without ever quite defining what counted as a "Diverse Traditions" course.

Heh.

As you can imagine, this has led to a certain amount of internal wrangling & Chicago-style politicking. I'm not at liberty to divulge the details, but broadly speaking, we're having to decide which courses will count for this requirement.

Here's some of the language I've been playing with to define the requirement, which I'll bring to the committee and to the department overall in the future for debate. Your thoughts, everyone?
In “Diverse Traditions” courses, students will study authors, texts, or topics that have historically been marginalized by the dominant culture’s literary canon. [I keep wanting to add, "hereinafter referred to as "DCLC," pronounced "De Klerk," but I'll save that for the meetings.]

To receive “Diverse Traditions” status, a course must focus on at least one of the following:

1. Works in English by racially or ethnically marked authors (e.g., Latino/a, Asian American, African American, Native American authors), with attention to how such categories of difference have been constructed and contested over time;

2. Works in English by women, especially authors who have historically been excluded from the literary canon, with attention to how the relationships between gender, authorship, and social power have been constructed and contested over time;

3. Works in English by sexual minorities, especially authors who have historically been excluded from the literary canon, with attention to how the relationships between sexuality, authorship, and social power have been constructed and contested over time;

4. Works in English by working-class authors, especially authors who have historically been excluded from the literary canon, with attention to how the relationships between class, authorship, and social power have been constructed and contested over time;

5. Works in English by immigrant, exiled, or diasporic authors, especially authors who have historically been excluded from the literary canon, with attention to how the relationships between national identity, authorship, and social power have been constructed and contested over time;

6. Works in English by religious minorities, especially authors who have historically been excluded from the literary canon, with attention to how the relationships between religion and social power have been constructed and contested over time;

7. Non-Anglophone works (in translation) from predominantly Anglophone countries (e.g., Britain, Ireland, the United States), with attention to how such literature complicates or counterpoints the national literary narrative of that country;

8. Works by Anglophone authors from outside England and the United States, especially by authors who have historically been excluded from the Anglo-American literary canon;

9. Works of new interest in light of emerging categories of diversity (e.g., Disability Studies, Masculinity Studies), if the course introduces students to these emerging theoretical approaches in a way that will profitably complicate the way these works are taught or read in other contexts.
By separating these out, my plan is to allow debate and voting--if necessary--on each one, line by line, so that no single category can sink or delay the program as a whole.

5 comments:

Laura Vivanco said...

Having got to the end of the list, I'm beginning to wonder how many authors are really going to be excluded!

E. M. Selinger said...

Well, let's see--they'd have to be straight white men, middle-class or wealthier, native born, of the majority faith of their time and place, from Britain or the United States. Or (as other parts of the document suggest) something other than that, but long-since part of the literary canon: i.e., a course on Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf wouldn't necessarily count, unless it emphasized certain topics or issues.

But yes, I've drawn these up very broadly. We'll see which categories are standing by the end of the debate!

Laura Vivanco said...

Yes, but some of them had disabilities. Off hand I can think of Byron, Keats and Robert Louis Stevenson, and you could argue that Scots and Welsh authors in the UK had/have a semi-marginal position in some ways. Dickens's father spent some time in debtor's prison. Shakespeare's family was working class.

Obviously it would depend on how the course was focussed, but it does seem that you could potentially end up with a lot of the canonical authors getting back in via one of the categories. And then you've got the Masculinity Studies option.

I'm really just being a devil's advocate here, which probably isn't particularly helpful given that your colleagues will no doubt be debating it all with great vigour.

E. M. Selinger said...

Yes, I suppose one could offer a 10-week seminar on Alexander Pope for "diversity" credit, given the parameters here!

Practically speaking, I doubt that anyone in my department wants to do that. But it might be important, politically, to let some members feel that they could, if they so desired.

So far there's been a bit of discomfort with how broad the language is--but not so much discomfort that anyone's actually said, "You know, let's drop category X, Y, or Z." If that happens, I'll be sure to let you know!

jeff goodman said...

what the hell
i wanted to contact you by e mail or tweeter without success so i am making this comment here



eric shalom
i stumbled upon you via the poetry foundation
in hebrew there is an infantry term called "zfe pegia" which means "watch where my shot hits" and is used literally in the infantry to identify targets on the ground basically.
it seems - to me at any rate - that we might have mutual interests and it might be interesting to be in touch
i once worked with a great red headed profesor of law by the name of sara selinger who immigrated to israel from romania
years ago
any relation to you ?
jeff goodman
yerucham
israel
goodmnj@gmail.com