Yale University undergraduate students have launched a petition to the English department to abolish the basic course requirement of studying canonical writers, including Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton, stating that “it is unacceptable that a Yale student, considering that he studies English literature, could read only white male authors"
The prestigious University of Connecticut requires the study, for two semesters, of a selection of authors with the label of "great English poetry": Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Silliam Wordsworth, etc.
According to the university, its intention is the following:
"To provide all students with a generous introduction to the continuing formal and thematic concerns that concern traditional English literature."
In relation to the poems that students must read, the university comments:
"Understand the issues and problems that resonate throughout English literature: the state of the vernacular, the moral promise and dangers of fiction, the relationships between men and women, the nature of heroism, the riches of tradition and the desire to do something new. "
But the students want the university to remove the requirement for leading English poets and to proceed to a reorientation of requirements from the 1800s to 1900s to also include literature related to gender, race, sexuality and ethnicity.
“Using a year around a table where the literary contributions of women, people of color and strangers are absent actively harms all students, regardless of identity and creates a culture that is especially hostile to students of color. "
According to the Yale Daily News, Yale's daily newspaper, the petition has at least 160 signatures. One of the students, Adriana Miele, told the newspaper that a change is needed in the English department because openly reject criticism and analysis that other departments at Yale University have accepted.
In April, Miele wrote a column in the Yale Daily News criticizing the course and wrote the following:
"They are taught how to analyze canonical works of literature, they are not taught to question why it is canonical., or the implications of canonical works that oppress and marginalize non-white, non-male, transgender, and homosexual people. ANDIt is possible to graduate with a degree in English literature by exclusively reading the works of white men. Many students do not read a single female author in the two core courses. This department actively contributes to the suppression of history "
Some members of the Yale University English faculty welcomed student activism. Professor Jill Richards commented in the newspaper:
"It is unacceptable that the two-semester requirement only covers the work of eight white poets."
However, the petition was criticized by former members of Yale University. Writer Katy Waldman, who studied English literature at Yale, told students that if they wanted to become well versed in English literature they had to "hold their noses" and read a large number of poets written by white male authors.
“The canon is what it is and anyone who wants to understand how it continues to flow forward has to learn to swim in it . I am not saying that it is acceptable to graduate from college having read only white male authors or even that 70% of the readings were by white male men. But you cannot profess to be a student of English literature if you have not lingered in the wake of certain fundamental figures, who also happen to be (unfortunately), male and white "
What do you think of the fact that most of the literature they read is by white men? Although it is true that the majority of English literature had this type of person as its authors due to the oppression of society, do you think they should have a greater variety?