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Sad to say, especially for those of us who studied literature in college and grad school, but literary studies in America are dead. All that remains is the task of nailing the coffin shut.
At the venerable and generally excellent University of Chicago the English Department has just announced that it will actively discriminate against all candidates for graduate school admission… except those who want to work on Black Studies.
If you want to pursue an advanced degree at the University of Chicago and want to study Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer or Dickens, you will only be allowed to work on the implications that their work has for race consciousness.
You would think that this is a joke. It is not. Campus Reform shows us the announcement, from the Department itself:
For the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies. We understand Black Studies to be a capacious intellectual project that spans a variety of methodological approaches, fields, geographical areas, languages, and time periods.
For the record, these aspiring members of the illiterati do not know how to use the word “capacious” in a sentence. It means-- roomy-- like a handbag or even a cave. Perhaps these idiots thought that they were creating a clever metaphor. In truth, it shows that they do not understand anything about metaphor. No wonder they are avoiding English literature and becoming community activists. As I said, the study of English literature is dead.
Their statement continues:
As literary scholars, we attend to the histories, atmospheres, and scenes of anti-Black racism and racial violence in the United States and across the world. We are committed to the struggle of Black and Indigenous people, and all racialized and dispossessed people, against inequality and brutality.
Did you notice the non-sequitor. Literary scholars are refusing to study literature. They are trying to become leftist activists, the better to destroy their department. They are joining the Black Lives Matter movement, the better to hate America and to advance the cause of Marxist revolution. Time to revoke their tenure, don't you think?
Should parents spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to have their children indoctrinated in radical leftist ideology? English literature is dead at the University of Chicago. It remains for students to boycott the department, to boycott all of its course offerings. And if the students are not smart enough to do so, their parents should refuse to pay for it.
It’s about time that someone just said No to this nonsense. Perhaps the university should just disband the English department.
10 comments:
For the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies. We understand Black Studies to be a capacious intellectual project that spans a variety of methodological approaches, fields, geographical areas, languages, and time periods.
Medical problems forced me into an early retirement several years ago. I considered going to the nearby university to earn a degree in English Literature. I discovered that, while Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Twain still had a place, now there was also modern black fiction, and feminist writers and perspectives.
Most of these were simply unreadable, or were largely obscenities. I learned to bake cakes and pecan pies instead. Far more people ask me to bring chocolate cake to a dinner than to discuss Faust.
The "illiterati do not know how to use the word 'capacious' in a sentence."
And I thought they merely misspelled "capricious".
The good news is the lovers of wisdom are going to get back their philosophers from the place that hates wisdom. Finally, the university concedes that it hates Western Civilization and can be rid of it. It is the place of all error and all evil.
I would very much like to discuss Faust. Pecan pie and Faust is even better. I propose that God and the Devil have been in cahoots since the beginning, ask Mr. Gurdjieff, he'll tell you. Cahoots.
Black students can major in "Blacklish". Afterwards, they can sue the university for damaging/ruining their future and for taking their money.
They should call it the "Department of POC Spoke Studies Not Open to Whitey So Don't Bother to Apply If You White."
They aren't educated, that went out the window decades ago. Their papers are all about this or that "gaze." I just tried to read an academic history paper. It was unreadable since every other word was "gaze." There was no gaze in that period of history. People might have been seeing, or looking, but not gazing. Archive.org is my favorite site, I just read source material.
I say NO. And I know I am not a lone voice in the wilderness.
Obviously this did not happen overnight but it is nevertheless difficult to wrap my brain around the speed at which all of this is happening. It has the feel of “slowly, slowly and then all at once.”
And of course these “literary scholars” will study the “histories, atmospheres, and scenes of anti-Black racism” and will be “committed to the struggle of Black and Indigenous people, and all racialized and dispossessed people, against inequality and brutality.” There is only a small amount of black literature to be studied so they have to fill their days with activism and stirring up strife.
I fear for our civilization.
Mister Shakespeare, he dead.
Yep, the writing was bad, wasn't it. We "attend to"? Used incorrectly. And leaving out the "and" toward the end made it awkward.
O did the same -- messed up American idioms, in his case, changing the meaningful "line in the sand" to the meaningless "red line," which the corporate media then copied....Then he used "optics" to mean "appearance," and that has now entered the language, as well. And "throw her to the wolves" became "throw her under the bus."
Heh.
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