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The Shakespeare buzz
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a sharp and incisive piece on ACTA's new report, The Vanishing Shakespeare:
A new report contends that fewer and fewer college English majors are being required to study Shakespeare. In a 60-page report titled "The Vanishing Shakespeare," the non-profit American Council of Trustees and Alumni reports that only 15 of the 70 colleges and universities it examined require their English majors to take a Shakespeare course.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison, the only Wisconsin school surveyed, is one of just three in the Big Ten to require Shakespeare, according to the council. Marquette University, not mentioned in the report, also requires that English majors take a Shakespeare course.
The tone of the new report is nothing if not dramatic.
"If reading Shakespeare is not central to a liberal education, what is?" the authors ask, adding, "A degree in English without Shakespeare is like an M.D. without a course in anatomy. It is tantamount to fraud."
But others dismiss such thinking as intellectual hysteria, expressing a view of the report best summed up with the Bard's own words: "It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing."
"I can't imagine the study of Shakespeare has diminished in any way," says Rosemary G. Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association, a Manhattan-based humanities organization. "I look at curricula all the time, and I know that English majors are reading Shakespeare. I have absolutely no doubt about that."
"You have a real paradox here," says Tom McBride, who has taught Shakespeare for more than 30 years at Beloit College, where the subject is not required.
"On the one hand, Shakespeare is bigger than ever. You have movies based on Shakespeare's plays. He is a huge, huge factor in our culture. On the other hand, you can go to Barnes & Noble and buy books called 'Shakespeare Made Easy.' They are like modern editions of the Bible that turn everything into American, easy-to-understand English."
The debate over Shakespeare goes to the heart of a much larger struggle for identity and mission at colleges and universities.
On one side are those who believe that institutions have so fully embraced pop culture, diversity and social/political issues of every flavor that they are watering down what's truly important and failing to stress the classics. On the other side stand those who believe universities must broaden their offerings to remain relevant, and that such efforts pose no threat to the Big Three: Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton.
"I really do think we're at a crossroads in academia and we're having a tough time making the call," says Curran, of Marquette. "We want to be welcoming to new areas, but we do want to be held accountable and produce English majors who are really English majors."
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has been an especially active participant in this larger debate.
Founded in 1995 by a group that included Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Nobel laureate Saul Bellow and Lynne V. Cheney, wife of the vice president, the council says it is committed to "academic freedom, excellence and accountability" in higher education. Its report on Shakespeare goes well beyond the lack of course requirements, targeting new literature courses that "address a multiplicity of non-literary topics," including adoption, AIDS, film noir, "Baywatch" and Madonna.
"Essentially a course in Shakespeare counts the same as these courses," says Anne D. Neal, president of the council. "But to leave Shakespeare out of one's education is a serious disservice to these students. The college curriculum has essentially become a do-it-yourself kit."
Feal, of the Modern Language Association, believes those at the council suffer from "a nostalgia for a kind of literary studies frozen in time. . . . New learning, new scholarship and new ways of teaching are not automatically suspect." She points to the enormous popularity of Stephen Greenblatt's biography "Will in the World," and predicts that large numbers of students will continue to study Shakespeare whether or not it is required.
McBride would prefer mandatory Shakespeare, not only for the English majors but for all students at Beloit College.
"In order to be culturally literate, you really have to be exposed to the greatest writer who ever lived," he says.
UW-Madison associate professor Henry S. Turner has taught Shakespeare since 2000 and says there is a simple reason why the author is a requirement for English majors.
"Every discipline needs some fundamentals," he says. "Shakespeare is fundamental. A lot of people would rightly say that he is the most influential writer in English."
That is the very reason Marquette English major Stephen McDonald supports his school's Shakespeare requirement. Many of the great writers who came to prominence after Shakespeare's death in 1616 have referred to his plays in their own work.
"In order to understand them," says McDonald, "one should look at the original."
As is so often the case, Shakespeare says it best himself: "Strong reasons make strong actions."
Posted by acta online on April 24, 2007 at April 24, 2007 07:49 AM
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Comments
It would be interesting to do further statistical research on this topic. The main reason fewer curricular requirements are set by colleges is not the rise of pop culture studies -- it's the huge democratization of university studies that came with various admissions reforms in the late 60s and 70s.
So, while perhaps not every English major is reading Shakespeare, far more 18-22 year olds are studying literature than ever before. I actually bet *more* people know more about Shakespeare now than ever before.
Posted by: Linval Thompson at April 24, 2007 09:20 AM
This is my point. Specific course requirements are not the only way to guarantee that a particular author is studied in-depth. The analysis as it stands is too superficial. Take a deeper look at the course requirements and whether or not they could be satisfied without having extensive exposure to Shakespeare (or Milton, or Chaucer). Survey grads in the English major and ask them which plays they read in their courses, whether or not they studied the sonnets, etc. I suspect a very different picture would be painted.
Posted by: euskaria at April 24, 2007 12:58 PM