Word: englishness
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...sophomore advising system signals the start of the semester in which I will make my concentration choice, I remember stopping by the English Department’s open house with my fellow pre-frosh over a year ago, only beginning to know what a concentration was. Amid the flyers and pamphlets, I wondered aloud to a department member why so much British fiction was required, and if that would be changing anytime soon. Her smile suddenly disappeared. “Well, it is English and American Literature…” she replied...
...Technically and judging by name alone, she was right. But this technicality is no reason to allow the department to continue stagnating along traditional lines. Harvard’s concentration in English and American Literature and Language currently limits students unacceptably with its almost-exclusive focus on British literature, leaving no place for those who want to study a wide range of English-language literature using the department’s rigorous methodology, as opposed to the Literature Department’s more modern, theoretical approach or History and Literature’s interdisciplinary...
...English Department’s current concentration requirements, listed on the departmental website, call for the completion of two of 12 courses (14 for honors concentrators) on British literature and one on American literature. Further requirements, including those mandating one course in Shakespeare and two courses in other pre-1800 literature, are structured such that almost all eligible courses focus on British literature. In fact, half of the 100-level courses offered by the department this year are British literature courses while less than a third feature American literature specifically...
...Some may argue that British literature is the logical foundation for study of any literature written in English, and that reading such a canon will inform the way concentrators approach other literature. While a thorough study of a particular country or region’s literature no doubt broadly prepares concentrators to study that of other countries, there is no reason that only the West’s English-language literature should be able to provide that larger context...
...setting up widely agreed upon “classics,” (“Beowulf,” “Paradise Lost,” and “Pride and Prejudice”) as an entrenched canon, the English department takes a political stance: It suggests that Western English-language literature is the foundation of all English-language literature, and upholds the West’s cultural output as a standard against which all English literature should be measured...