ACTA's Must-Reads

This concern is vastly overblown, at least with regard to Yale University. I'm not familiar with the programs at all of the insitutions included in this survey, but I was a recent English major at Yale, so I am familiar with its requirements. It *may* be possible--through diligent scheduling geared toward this one singular goal--to graduate as a Yale English major without getting extensive exposure to Shakespeare, but even if it is possible (and I'm not sure that it really is) it would be a feat to do so.

Just because there is no requirement for a Shakespeare course per se doesn't change the fact that to satisfy the requirement of taking 3 pre-1800 literature courses you pretty much have to take at least one course in Shakespeare. And the pre-req of 4 courses in major English poets also makes Shakespeare hard to avoid.

Meanwhile, the Yale courses you single out for ridicule--Adoption Narratives and Literature for Young People--are upper-level elective seminars that are very easily avoided if you find those topics unserious or too niche.

As an English literature major at Yale, I spent copious time in the company of Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare, and I am sure that my fellow majors did as well. Bottom line: the entire Western canon of literature is alive and well at Yale and if you're a prospective student hoping to avoid the 'greats' you'd best be advised to head elsewhere.

Given the discrepancy between my personal experience and the characterization of Yale's English major in your report, I am now dubious of your characterizations of the other institutions in your survey as well. I suspect you're just trying to cause a sensation, but even so you could have put a little more effort into studying the colleges' requirements and been more fair in your characterizations.

So you admit that there is no requirement that English majors at Yale take a course in Shakespeare, but criticize ACTA for saying that Yale has no required course in Shakespeare?

Thanks for weighing in on this.

How silly. I'm saying a required course in Shakespeare does not equal "vanishing Shakespeare" or anything like it.

The press release makes statements like, "The world loves Shakespeare. But American universities don't. That's what our study shows." But I'm telling you--Yale's English department LOOOVES Shakespeare, regardless of whether or not they have a required couse in Shakespeare. I studied Shakespeare in at least 6 separate courses with 6 separate professors, including such luminaries as Harold Bloom and John Hollander. I believe I read all but 2 of his plays during my studies, many of them multiple times. In various courses we considered Shakespeare as a poet, a playwright, an illuminator of humanity, and a grand strategist. Extracurricularly, I acted in 4 student productions of Shakespeare plays. And I did all this without particularly trying very hard-- Yale's English (and Theater) departments are saturated with Shakespeare.

When ACTA says, "In most of today?s English departments, Shakespeare is no longer required reading. Instead, he is an elective?no more important than courses on Madonna and ?body studies.? What are these colleges thinking?? and put's Yale on the side of the villains, it rings hollow to me as someone who recently experienced that school's curriculum and knows better. It is sensationalistic nonsense and it undercuts the credibility of the report.

Look, I completely support the goal of keeping Shakespeare at the center of any English program. But he is. At least at Yale, he is. Yet this report implies that he's not for the sole reason that there is no requirement to take a *specific* course in Shakespeare, and that's misleading at best.

You miss the point. Shakespeare was once considered so essential to any humanist's training that studying him was a required part of undergraduate education. That is no longer the case. It is not unreasonable to regret that devaluation in favor of the identity politics flavor du jour: Students are properly educated, not politically programmed by passing fads.

I get that point. You're missing mine. Yale English majors *are* being properly educated with plenty of exposure to essential authors such as Shakespeare (as well as Chaucer, Milton, Pope, Spenser, etc.).

You can decry courses based on identity politics all you want, but they are *not* part of the core curriculum at Yale--they are easily avoided electives. Seriously, look for yourself at the requirements of the Yale Undergraduate Program in English Literature. You'll see a smattering of 'flavor du jour' courses, but you'll see *plenty* of meat and potatoes, Western lit stalwarts. The sky just isn't falling.

Recent English Major --

Don't confuse Yale with the seventy schools surveyed.

Don't confuse personal experience with universal experience.

Don't confuse people on this site with non-academics. Our experience is based on decades as professors at different institutions.

You must believe that ACTA failed to review the Yale program before writing about it? Thank God for recent English majors, and links to Yale sites that they provide. What would we do without you?

Euskaria writes: "[T]o satisfy the requirement of taking 3 pre-1800 literature courses you pretty much have to take at least one course in Shakespeare."

This is far from the truth.

In Fall 2007 one can satisfy Yale's three pre-1800 requirements with courses on Romantic poetry, women writers from the Restoration to Romanticism, and colonial literatures of America. In other words, students can get an English literature degree from Yale without reading anything written before the seventeenth century, and without reading a single canonical author before the Romantic poets. Never mind Shakespeare -- students can avoid the entire medieval/Renaissance era if they choose.

Federal Dog: I'm not universalizing my experience; I'm giving additional details based on my experience that suggest that ACTA's study is too simplistic. I'm sure they reviewed Yale's catalog, but only on a superficial level.

I'm not confusing Yale with the 70 other institutions. It is the only institution I have experience with and it is the only one I can speak to. But Yale is clearly lumped with the culprits in the press releases on this study, and that couldn't be farther from the truth based on my personal experience.

I find it frustrating that while we seem to be on the same side of the fence with regard to the primacy of Shakespeare, you continue to be sarcastic, snarky and dimissive of my comments. Okay, you're all decades-long academics on this site. Great! But just because you have authority based on your position, doesn't entitle you to just off-handedly dismiss criticism. Slag me for linking to the course catalog? Why? Why shouldn't the report itself link to the course catalog so that readers can review the source documents for themselves?

My suggestion for ACTA would be to take a deeper look at this topic by surveying recent English grads from the various institutions and ask *them* how much exposure they had to Shakespeare (i.e. how many single-author courses, how many multiple-author courses, which plays were read, etc.) That would give you a better picture of the Bard's status at various institutions than a surface-level review of a course catalog does.

Angus: Romantic poetry isn't pre 1800--it was a 19th century movement. I admit that it is technically possible to avoid Shakespeare under that particular requirement (although you'll almost certainly read him in the pre-req 125 if nowhere else). I'm just saying that it is difficult to do so, one would need to actively try to do so, and in actuality no-one I know of did do so.

More broadly speaking, higher education does not equal humanist education any longer, and hasn't for a long time. Sadly, even our top universities are as likely to be pre-career institutions for investment bankers and management consultants. If a student wanted to avoid a humanist education at a top university, it would be a lot easier to do by majoring in Economics instead of English than by majoring in English and then contorting himself into scheduling knots to avoid the canonical writers.

I would recommend that if there are factual errors in the survey, you identify them clearly. Absent that basic showing, your comments come off as arrogant and uninformed.

I didn't say there were factual errors. I said that the characterizations of the survey in the press releases (i.e. that Shakespeare is vanishing, replaced by po-mo nonsense courses) are overblown and not supported by the survey itself, which is too facile to prove any such thing. It is an error-free, superficial study.

Euskaria writes: "Romantic poetry isn't pre 1800--it was a 19th century movement. "

Not so, I'm afraid. By 1800, William Blake had written most of his poetry; Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth had published major works; and a host of minor Romantic poets, such as Robert Southey, Walter Savage Landor, Charlotte Turner Smith, Mary Robinson, and Joanna Baillie, had been active. But don't take my word for it. Professor Paul Fry, who has taught at Yale since 1971, lists his Fall 2007 Romantic poetry course as satisfying the major's pre-1800 requirement.

Euskaria writes: "I'm just saying that it is difficult to [avoid Shakespeare], one would need to actively try to do so, and in actuality no-one I know of did do so."

Of Yale's ten pre-1800 courses offered in Fall 2007, eight are in subject matters other than Shakespeare. Of the two Shakespeare courses on offer, one ("Shakespeare's Afterlife") deals mostly with modern rewritings of his work. As such, it actually seems quite easy to avoid him.

As for "no-one I know of did so," personal anecdotes don't prove anything. ACTA wasn't surveying what courses you and your friends took; they were surveying Yale's stated requirements for its English major, which is quite a different thing.