Lit programs that have not succumbed to postmodernism/cultural studies

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with OP.

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

This could be a very interesting class, depending on the syllabus and how it is taught.

Might be interesting, but what does one's sexual orientation have to do with the subject of Environmental Studies ?

Seems more like a "get-together" for credit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with OP.

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

This could be a very interesting class, depending on the syllabus and how it is taught.

It does look interesting.

https://hamilton.smartcatalogiq.com/current/college-catalogue/courses/envst-environmental-studies/300/envst-323/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see you're not a big fan of tolerance or freedom of expression.

DP. Quite the opposite. It’s today’s triggered youth who are intolerant. Any view that doesn’t perfectly alight with their microscopic lived experience makes them melt like butter in the hot sun. A pandemic adolescence spent online in isolation churned out a heck of a lot of whackos.

Seems to me that Harold Bloom was the one who was triggered by the idea that there might be literature or perspectives out there different from his lived experience as a horny old white guy.

💯

Totally. How could one possibly NOT read 200-year-old literature from a contemporary lens?

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Your kid doesn’t have to go to college to read Shakespeare. It’s not hidden in some back shelf at the library.

Interesting. A year ago, if a book was in a public library shelf but not in schools it was considered banned!

Whatever are you prattling on about.

[Anonymous]

I think people on here are confusing presenting one way of reading & analyzing a text as the “right” way. There is is more than one way.

If you are pursuing literature at the MA/PhD level, yes, you are supposed to present new scholarship, and yes, this can lead to what may appear to some as pointless and/or ridiculous journal articles that few people will read.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with OP.

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

This could be a very interesting class, depending on the syllabus and how it is taught.

It does look interesting.

https://hamilton.smartcatalogiq.com/current/college-catalogue/courses/envst-environmental-studies/300/envst-323/

Are you serious ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with OP.

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

This could be a very interesting class, depending on the syllabus and how it is taught.

It does look interesting.

https://hamilton.smartcatalogiq.com/current/college-catalogue/courses/envst-environmental-studies/300/envst-323/

It’s queer AND feminist and of color. That’s pretty specific and represents a tiny population when dealing with environmental studies. I would imagine there is only ONE acceptable perspective when submitting papers or engaging in discussions in that class. Only one at least of you want an A or even to pass the class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with OP.

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

This could be a very interesting class, depending on the syllabus and how it is taught.

It does look interesting.

https://hamilton.smartcatalogiq.com/current/college-catalogue/courses/envst-environmental-studies/300/envst-323/

It’s queer AND feminist and of color. That’s pretty specific and represents a tiny population when dealing with environmental studies. I would imagine there is only ONE acceptable perspective when submitting papers or engaging in discussions in that class. Only one at least of you want an A or even to pass the class.

$65k in tuition for this class:
This seminar examines U.S. climate politics through a queer and feminist of color lens. We analyze the disproportionate, intersectional, gendered harms of climate change inflicted upon queer and trans people. Examining case studies, students interrogate critical environmental justice frameworks and practice using tools from queer theory, queer of color critique, and women of color feminisms to fill the gaps of traditional climate justice frameworks and address its exclusion of queerness. Turning to activism throughout the seminar, students also analyze how queer and feminist social movements fight for climate justice

[Anonymous]

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.

"Western" = more than two or three countries.

Agreed. Who has demanded literature from only two or three countries be taught, and what countries are those?

Are you even capable of listing any great works of literature that have heavily influenced Western society?

[Anonymous]

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?

I’m talking about your first paragraph. People should only study “Western” literature? Does Tolstoy count? Having such a narrow minded view of literature that ends in 1900 is silly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Liberty

The Bible is not Western literature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see you're not a big fan of tolerance or freedom of expression.

Or they have standards..

+100

The only standards you have are whether it was written more than 100 years ago and was it written by a white guy.

[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.

Queer feminist environmental studies sounds like an interesting course. But hey that’s just my opinion as straight, white, male, traditional conservative who values the marketplace of ideas and recognizes that queer and feminist takes on all kinds of issues have long been suppressed by lazy hetero men who are unable to comprehend and afraid to compete with other perspectives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So my kid got into UC Davis for American Studies. I saw that the transfer admit rate to Berkeley in American Studies was 50% and extrapolated that DC’s odds would be good as a freshman in that major. (They don’t publish admit rates by major for Freshmen). DC’s stats weren’t good enough for Cal but were good enough for Davis. DC was admitted to that school for American Studies. I went over to the department page, and my God, DC is switching his major to history. Here are some of the faculty areas of study in American History: “maps racialized queer and disability histories of white social nonconformity across the rural US, from the 1910s to the 1990s,” “ Recuperating radical left articulations of legal lynching as a form of class warfare, the book theorizes lynching photographs as moving images that illuminate the constitutive relationship of racial terror to global capitalism,” “ research has focused primarily on the radical imaginations and deferred dreams of social movements that become entangled with the politics of institutionalization and funding.” I’m not paying for DC to get indoctrinated by these whack jobs.
/
Are you scared your kid will learn something you don’t want them to know?

Not responder here, but I do value the tuition dollars my child will be spending. I also value those years of their lives spent in college that they can never have back. So classes like these seem to be a sub-optimal investment of time and money.