Anonymous wrote:

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 wrote:the canon

Anonymous wrote:

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

-- someone with an graduate degree in it

If this is how you express your thoughts, then you are not well educated.

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

-- someone with an graduate degree in it

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.