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.

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?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_(Annapolis/Santa_Fe)

This is what you're looking for. Lots of dead white men.

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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with OP.

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

+ 1. Lol

My goodness, these responses are so telling. Such a lack of intellectual curiosity, lack of openness to views/experiences other than yours.

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?

That poster was just stating facts. No time travel involved.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

Or they have standards..

I have a Ph.D. in psychology, which is not nearly as bad as the humanities has become, and have taught in universities. I am also a liberal. I can tell you that in academia, the type of environment the OP is concerned about is characterized by the opposite of tolerance and freedom of expression.

True

Anonymous wrote:Great Books-style schools are generally going to be pretty good for this.

The premier secular one is St John's.

Some of the Catholic GB-oriented colleges: St. Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Moore, Wyoming Catholic, John Paul the Great, University of Dallas (which offers some more traditional courses of study as well), Collegium Sanctorum Angelorum.

Some of the Protestant GB-oriented colleges: New College Franklin, New Saint Andrews College, Sattler College (also offers regular courses), Gutenberg College, John Witherspoon College.

Others: Zaytuna (Muslim), Dharma Realm (Buddhist), Saint Constantine (Orthodox)

Outside of Great Books, your best bet is more conservative schools, e.g. Hillsdale or Grove City.

Villanova, Assumption, Providence College

Anonymous wrote:Agree with OP.

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

+ 1. Lol

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?

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?

Anonymous wrote: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.

NP. Publish or perish - so it turns out that in the hard and soft sciences, publish or perish has lead to near-universal unrepeatable, unreplicable experiments and falsified data.

Sounds like OP has the right idea.

But

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!

Anonymous wrote:

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

Or they have standards..

I have a Ph.D. in psychology, which is not nearly as bad as the humanities has become, and have taught in universities. I am also a liberal. I can tell you that in academia, the type of environment the OP is concerned about is characterized by the opposite of tolerance and freedom of expression.

Oh yeah, reading literature out of context, that sounds like a great idea! Let's do it by candlelight while we are at it, and write our papers with quill pens! Then we will TRULY learn.

Idiots.