Just because you don't understand the value of something doesn't mean it is wrong or bad.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The late great Harold Bloom warned how literary studies was taken over by cultural studies, i.e. not reading the great works at all or "reading" Shakespeare and Dickens through faddish ideological lenses (feminist, Marxist, por-modernist). Traditional literary scholars are in the minority.

At what colleges these days can one get a serious education in literature these days?

Literature was read through these lenses when I got my BA / MA at a Jesuit university 25 years ago. You can read it through multiple lenses. If you don’t, I don’t know that there’s enough to talk about and write about (whether there’s value in doing so is another question.)

Some English departments emphasize reading criticism over reading the original texts. I think that's the problem. So the person graduates knowing more about Derrida than Shakespeare or Whitman.

BTW, citing Shakespeare and Dickens as “the great works” is very Brit-centric, which is why I was interested in comparative literature. You are describing a focus in British Literature from a historical perspective, and yes, you can still do that, but to be published in academia, you are supposed to focus on new ideas, which is one driving force of the scholarship your describe. Publish or perish, after all. Some professors use classes to further their own research and interests.

Sewanee

Anonymous wrote:The late great Harold Bloom warned how literary studies was taken over by cultural studies, i.e. not reading the great works at all or "reading" Shakespeare and Dickens through faddish ideological lenses (feminist, Marxist, por-modernist). Traditional literary scholars are in the minority.

At what colleges these days can one get a serious education in literature these days?

Literature was read through these lenses when I got my BA / MA at a Jesuit university 25 years ago. You can read it through multiple lenses. If you don’t, I don’t know that there’s enough to talk about and write about (whether there’s value in doing so is another question.)

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

NP - That, and important, timeless literature.

Anonymous wrote:The late great Harold Bloom warned how literary studies was taken over by cultural studies, i.e. not reading the great works at all or "reading" Shakespeare and Dickens through faddish ideological lenses (feminist, Marxist, por-modernist). Traditional literary scholars are in the minority.

At what colleges these days can one get a serious education in literature these days?

St. Johns.

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

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.

I agree, but I just wouldn’t send my kid there. Doesn’t affect me.

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.

Anonymous wrote:Agree with OP.

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

Is it required?

St. John's College (Annapolis). Hillsdale College. Grove City College. Certain colleges in Oxford and Cambridge. Princeton. Notre Dame.

Agree with OP.

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

I think it would be really cool to be able to read Romeo and Juliet through the eyes of a 1599 English women although that would be impossible for a number of reasons. Instead I am stuck reading it through the lens of my own experiences from my own time period. My lens is indeed faddish but so are all lenses. The 1599 lens is long gone and we can only get glimpses of it through the items left to us by history.

I'm not sure what you mean by serious education but maybe majoring in the classics might be a better fit.

The late great Harold Bloom warned how literary studies was taken over by cultural studies, i.e. not reading the great works at all or "reading" Shakespeare and Dickens through faddish ideological lenses (feminist, Marxist, por-modernist). Traditional literary scholars are in the minority.

At what colleges these days can one get a serious education in literature these days?