It’s now possible to get a degree in English at UCLA without any familiarity with them.
Yeah, that’s a degree worth putting yourself into undischargeable debt for.
5 thoughts on “Chaucer And Shakespeare”
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It’s now possible to get a degree in English at UCLA without any familiarity with them.
Yeah, that’s a degree worth putting yourself into undischargeable debt for.
Comments are closed.
Both are written in a different language than what we speak today, especially Chaucer. Historically, both are important but more or less so depending on what type of writing they expect their graduates to do. Shakespeare is incredibly relevant to modern storytelling, I have no idea how they could leave him off the list. Anyone getting a degree in English with the goal of being an academic should have a good understanding of old and middle English.
It isn’t just the fact that they dumped the requirement for these three authors. It’s what they put in place of those requirements:
Until 2011, students majoring in English at UCLA had to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton —the cornerstones of English literature. Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the “Empire,” UCLA junked these individual author requirements. It replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take a total of three courses in the following four areas: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing.
In other words, the same PC bilge being shoved down students’ throats across the country in the name of “diversity”. It’s diverse, all right, in everything but thought.
But surely they’ll have a firm grounding in the poetry of Sapho of Lesbos, so it’s not like they’re neglecting ancient literature.
The past isn’t just another country, it’s an evil empire from which nothing of value can be recovered. Or so they behave.
UCLA was a great school when I attended (undergrad, Astronautical Engineering) and Medical School….
The Med School is still pretty good. I barely recognized the rest of the campus, or understood the students, last time I was there.
And the Regents wonder why I don’t contribute any money…