English department leans heavily into DEI while ignoring classics
“Queer literature” and “Honors Video Game Design” are two of the options University of Central Florida English students have this upcoming semester.
The video game class will explore the “impact of video games on culture and society through the lens of game literacies, or methods of communicating using gaming conventions,” according to a description on the honors website.
None of the courses at the Orange County public universities with “Literature” in the title seem to teach what would be considered classical literature. Besides “World Literature” classes, other options students will have next semester include “Puerto Rican Literature” and “Honors Science Fiction Literature.”
A list of past courses on the university’s website suggests that the school only offers one course each on William Shakespeare, John Milton, and Geoffrey Chaucer. Comparatively, the school’s English department has taught two Harry Potter courses, including one for honors.
Other English courses center on technology, such as one on social media.
Some courses emphasize identity, such as gender identity and race. For example, students can take a class called “Contemporary Topics in Queer Literature,” which pledges to teach students “[c]ontemporary literature that illuminates the complex and varied experiences of the LGBTQIA+ community.”
Many past courses for the university’s three English tracts also centralize identity, including “Latinx Rhetorics,” “Writing for Social Change,” “Gendered Rhetorics,” “Queer Rhetoric and Queering Writing,” and “Writing and Identity.”
The College Fix emailed and called multiple times to request comment from the University of Central Florida’s English department but did not receive a response. The Fix also contacted the university’s media relations department.
The Fix contacted the University of Central Florida’s English department on Wednesday, Nov. 27, and Monday, Dec. 9, as well as department chairman James Campbell and the university’s media relations office for comment. The Fix also made a phone call request to the English department on Dec. 9.
However, higher education reform group National Association of Scholars criticized the identity-based college courses.
“Any good literature class would discuss the identity of the author and of the main characters,” Chance Layton said.
“It is essential to understanding the story’s context. And yet, that can still be done without grossly exaggerating the extent to which an individual’s immutable characteristics transfer into their personality and character,” the group’s communications director told The Fix via email.
Layton criticized university administrators for creating many courses about non-serious subjects.
“Study should be a serious thing, particularly if the student is paying thousands of dollars for a course,” he said. “Universities do a disservice to their students with such knock-off courses.”
The University of Central Florida’s English course list is not an isolated example of non-literature and identity-based courses dominating the options.
English courses at the University of Florida this fall demonstrated a similar principle. Thirteen courses focused on identity, including Afrofuturism and “Early LGBTQ Literatures.” Very few of the courses featured traditional literature, as The Fix previously reported.
At the time, Thales College Professor Anthony Esolen called the loss of such courses “tremendous and irreparable.”
“Course after course is not about literature as literature, but rather about politics, sociology, or anthropology in literary garb, taught by people who are almost certainly mere dilettantes in those fields,” Esolen said.
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