Lit programs that have not succumbed to postmodernism/cultural studies

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Take a look at Holy Cross. A great classics dept, the only Jesuit liberal arts college, and a great track record getting students into law, medicine and PhD programs.

You mean the Holy Cross English department that offers

“ Interdisciplinary courses cross-listed with Africana Studies; Catholic Studies; Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies; and Peace and Conflict Studies”?

Jesuits have always cared about marginalized people. The focus is on inquiry and critical reading — not indoctrination. For example, the Gender studies group condemned the over-turning of Roe v Wade, while others at the school applauded it. It will be debated, but students are not taught a right answer.

Ah… so non-Catholics are indoctrinating… because you say so? Sorry, but I don’t buy it. What I see in my kid’s humanities classes at an ultra- “woke” SLAC— as reflected by papers he’s sent me to read — are closely reasoned arguments relying on primary source material, and to the extent that there are criticisms, they are comments like “provide more evidence for this” or “what about X alternative explanation.” Nothing remotely resembling indoctrination.

It seems to me that what bugs people complaining about “woke” colleges is the decline in pro-US, pro-Christian, hetero-normative, pro-white majority, pro-capitalist indoctrination.

The PP just told you what they don’t like about woke colleges: students are taught the “right” answers and there is no tolerance for debate.

And why are you reading your college kids papers? Weird. Get a life and cut the apron strings.

Or more likely by your writing style and logical fallacies you are in college or high school yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So a serious “literature” education only values English langauge writers who have been dead for at least 150 years. Nothing else is of value. That’s not studying literature

This response is a huge part of the problem. We live in the USA. Our culture, politics, customs, etc. are products of the Western World. There are undoubtedly fantastic works of literature in China and India (for example) that have been hugely influential in Asia. But regardless of your feelings, they’re not relevant here.

Furthermore, stating that authors like Shakespeare and Dickens “have value” does not mean they are the ONLY authors who have value. What are you even talking about?

What century are you writing from? How did you figure out time travel?

The US is a western society.

And a Christian nation.

LOL no.

You can laugh but I agree with the PP (and with atheist Richard Dawkins) that countries like the UK and US *are* nations with heavy socially Christian traditions.
Obviously it isn’t the officially religion, but even with fewer churchgoers and professed “believers” than there were 30 years ago, it is still a nation based on Christian norms.

Also the PP who dismissed concerns as “mad just because the emphasis is no longer on western, capitalist view as a positive”—or something like that…yes, I’d say that’s a pretty huge problem when American society is built on the free market and the liberal free-thinking philosophy of seeking truth and exploring and debating ideas in search of it as pretty much the basis of our shared American values and what we all want to promote in higher education.
So yes—when we see that our American institutions of “higher learning” have been ideologically captured by individuals who are pushing an anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-western dogma onto students and passing it off as enlightenment, it is very concerning.

Incidentally, this is not exactly surprising given that ex-KGB agents literally spelled out this exact plan when being interviewed by Phil Donahue in the late 1970s. But I think many boomers and GenXers dismissed that as laughable—and just didn’t buy that they could pull that off HERE on our own soil. It sounded like a crazy conspiracist plot, honestly.

Until suddenly it isn’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems like Columbia has succumbed

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/02/columbias-crumbling-core

Totally unbiased source: The Institute on Religion and Public Life, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization (EIN: 52-1628303) and the publisher of First Things, was founded in 1989 by Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor who later became a Catholic priest. The Institute’s mission is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.

I'm not religious or a political conservative, but a broken clock is right twice a day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm the OP and that's ridiculous.

I think there's really a two-front war in defending the integrity of the university.

On the right, you have those who want to teach sanitized history or creationism.

Then there's the woke left who want think the proper teaching of the humanities should be replaced by faddish identity politics.

I reject both.

Suppose you found a school that taught lit the old fashioned way. Yay? But so what? You going to send your kid there? Even “properly taught” non-woke lit is not worth paying $80k/year for. Better to study it offline for free if that’s what interests your kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm the OP and that's ridiculous.

I think there's really a two-front war in defending the integrity of the university.

On the right, you have those who want to teach sanitized history or creationism.

Then there's the woke left who want think the proper teaching of the humanities should be replaced by faddish identity politics.

I reject both.

Suppose you found a school that taught lit the old fashioned way. Yay? But so what? You going to send your kid there? Even “properly taught” non-woke lit is not worth paying $80k/year for. Better to study it offline for free if that’s what interests your kid.

OP may want to stick with STEM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with OP.

One LAC offers a course titled Queer Feminist Environmental Studies (Hamilton College).

Is it required?

Required or not, it’s still ludicrous.

You know, I looked this up because I was curious. Seems to not be a real class at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm the OP and that's ridiculous.

I think there's really a two-front war in defending the integrity of the university.

On the right, you have those who want to teach sanitized history or creationism.

Then there's the woke left who want think the proper teaching of the humanities should be replaced by faddish identity politics.

I reject both.

Answer these two questions regarding your bolded statement, Comrade:

- What is the "proper" teaching of literature, precisely.

- Who in academia believes that. Please focus on your word "replace" and provide evidence. Academics write papers for a living so it should not be hard for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So a serious “literature” education only values English langauge writers who have been dead for at least 150 years. Nothing else is of value. That’s not studying literature

This response is a huge part of the problem. We live in the USA. Our culture, politics, customs, etc. are products of the Western World. There are undoubtedly fantastic works of literature in China and India (for example) that have been hugely influential in Asia. But regardless of your feelings, they’re not relevant here.

Furthermore, stating that authors like Shakespeare and Dickens “have value” does not mean they are the ONLY authors who have value. What are you even talking about?

What century are you writing from? How did you figure out time travel?

The US is a western society.

And a Christian nation.

LOL no.

You can laugh but I agree with the PP (and with atheist Richard Dawkins) that countries like the UK and US *are* nations with heavy socially Christian traditions.
Obviously it isn’t the officially religion, but even with fewer churchgoers and professed “believers” than there were 30 years ago, it is still a nation based on Christian norms.

Also the PP who dismissed concerns as “mad just because the emphasis is no longer on western, capitalist view as a positive”—or something like that…yes, I’d say that’s a pretty huge problem when American society is built on the free market and the liberal free-thinking philosophy of seeking truth and exploring and debating ideas in search of it as pretty much the basis of our shared American values and what we all want to promote in higher education.
So yes—when we see that our American institutions of “higher learning” have been ideologically captured by individuals who are pushing an anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-western dogma onto students and passing it off as enlightenment, it is very concerning.

Incidentally, this is not exactly surprising given that ex-KGB agents literally spelled out this exact plan when being interviewed by Phil Donahue in the late 1970s. But I think many boomers and GenXers dismissed that as laughable—and just didn’t buy that they could pull that off HERE on our own soil. It sounded like a crazy conspiracist plot, honestly.

Until suddenly it isn’t.

Speaking of conspiracist plots, have you looked at what you wrote?

[Anonymous]

None of you appear to understand the study of literature. At all.

-- someone with an graduate degree in it

[Anonymous]

I don’t understand why OP is saying that things like feminism or Marxism are faddish. These ideologies have been around for hundreds of years if not more … at what point do they stop being a fad? Does OP also think that women wearing pants is a passing fad? Or representative democracy?

I posted above about the podcast talking about the feminist and radical political messages in Canterbury tales. These themes have been in literature forever. And talking about them makes old stuff more relevant to readers of today. I’m a huge Tolstoy fan and studied it in college — even then we talked about tolstory’s really complicated and troublesome attitudes towards women. I don’t see how you can read Tolstoy or Austin or Dickinson without talking about feminism or how you can read dickens or Shakespeare without talking about class politics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand why OP is saying that things like feminism or Marxism are faddish. These ideologies have been around for hundreds of years if not more … at what point do they stop being a fad? Does OP also think that women wearing pants is a passing fad? Or representative democracy?

I posted above about the podcast talking about the feminist and radical political messages in Canterbury tales. These themes have been in literature forever. And talking about them makes old stuff more relevant to readers of today. I’m a huge Tolstoy fan and studied it in college — even then we talked about tolstory’s really complicated and troublesome attitudes towards women. I don’t see how you can read Tolstoy or Austin or Dickinson without talking about feminism or how you can read dickens or Shakespeare without talking about class politics.

But in today’s climate you wouldn’t read Shakespeare or Dickens or Tolstoy, because they’re just dead white men. And you most likely wouldn’t read Austin or Dickinson because they’re dead white women.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand why OP is saying that things like feminism or Marxism are faddish. These ideologies have been around for hundreds of years if not more … at what point do they stop being a fad? Does OP also think that women wearing pants is a passing fad? Or representative democracy?

I posted above about the podcast talking about the feminist and radical political messages in Canterbury tales. These themes have been in literature forever. And talking about them makes old stuff more relevant to readers of today. I’m a huge Tolstoy fan and studied it in college — even then we talked about tolstory’s really complicated and troublesome attitudes towards women. I don’t see how you can read Tolstoy or Austin or Dickinson without talking about feminism or how you can read dickens or Shakespeare without talking about class politics.

But in today’s climate you wouldn’t read Shakespeare or Dickens or Tolstoy, because they’re just dead white men. And you most likely wouldn’t read Austin or Dickinson because they’re dead white women.

DP - More platitudes, Comrade, that advance your agenda but completely avoid PP's informed and reasonable position.

Fail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand why OP is saying that things like feminism or Marxism are faddish. These ideologies have been around for hundreds of years if not more … at what point do they stop being a fad? Does OP also think that women wearing pants is a passing fad? Or representative democracy?

I posted above about the podcast talking about the feminist and radical political messages in Canterbury tales. These themes have been in literature forever. And talking about them makes old stuff more relevant to readers of today. I’m a huge Tolstoy fan and studied it in college — even then we talked about tolstory’s really complicated and troublesome attitudes towards women. I don’t see how you can read Tolstoy or Austin or Dickinson without talking about feminism or how you can read dickens or Shakespeare without talking about class politics.

The problem isn't talking about women or class. Scholars have been talking about these things long before the woke ideologues came along.

What's happening now is very different. The main problem is identity politics where mediocre writers are promoted as literary greats in the name of diversity, and students either avoid the canon altogether or are taught to dismiss it as racist dead white males.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand why OP is saying that things like feminism or Marxism are faddish. These ideologies have been around for hundreds of years if not more … at what point do they stop being a fad? Does OP also think that women wearing pants is a passing fad? Or representative democracy?

I posted above about the podcast talking about the feminist and radical political messages in Canterbury tales. These themes have been in literature forever. And talking about them makes old stuff more relevant to readers of today. I’m a huge Tolstoy fan and studied it in college — even then we talked about tolstory’s really complicated and troublesome attitudes towards women. I don’t see how you can read Tolstoy or Austin or Dickinson without talking about feminism or how you can read dickens or Shakespeare without talking about class politics.

The problem isn't talking about women or class. Scholars have been talking about these things long before the woke ideologues came along.

What's happening now is very different. The main problem is identity politics where mediocre writers are promoted as literary greats in the name of diversity, and students either avoid the canon altogether or are taught to dismiss it as racist dead white males.

You keep typing the BS, and when asked for evidence do not provide any.

Name a top college that doesn't teach Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens, Ibsen, Tolstoy, or the like. None? OK, name a lesser one that doesn't teach those. None AGAIN?

Well then maybe your post is bullsh*t, Comrade Snowflake.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand why OP is saying that things like feminism or Marxism are faddish. These ideologies have been around for hundreds of years if not more … at what point do they stop being a fad? Does OP also think that women wearing pants is a passing fad? Or representative democracy?

I posted above about the podcast talking about the feminist and radical political messages in Canterbury tales. These themes have been in literature forever. And talking about them makes old stuff more relevant to readers of today. I’m a huge Tolstoy fan and studied it in college — even then we talked about tolstory’s really complicated and troublesome attitudes towards women. I don’t see how you can read Tolstoy or Austin or Dickinson without talking about feminism or how you can read dickens or Shakespeare without talking about class politics.

But in today’s climate you wouldn’t read Shakespeare or Dickens or Tolstoy, because they’re just dead white men. And you most likely wouldn’t read Austin or Dickinson because they’re dead white women.

Of course you would. Moron.