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The English Major Rewritten: Changes will shift focus from specific writers to eras, themes in literature

By Suzy Strutner

Jan. 18, 2011 1:13 a.m.

Jeanette Man

After years of debate, the English department will be nixing some existing courses, introducing some new ones and implementing new curriculum requirements for fall 2011.

For more than a decade, the English department has received feedback calling for the inclusion of literature from more authors and places, said Joseph Watson, chair of the Academic Senate’s Undergraduate Council.

This feedback comes from members of the UCLA Academic Senate and English departments from other universities, who complete reviews of the UCLA English department every eight years.

Over the past three years, faculty have drafted and voted on various proposals regarding the structure of the new English curriculum. Undergraduate student opinions and English programs at other universities influenced the finalized curriculum alterations, said Ali Behdad, chair of the English department.

The Undergraduate Council approved the revamped curriculum on Jan. 7, Watson said.

“The (external review) recommendations were that the department needed to be revised to reflect contemporary approaches to English,” Watson said. “They said the curriculum was too heavy on certain authors and didn’t feature enough American literature.”

The new curriculum will require 15 courses instead of 17 and will feature works from a wider span of places and historical eras.

The major’s requirements will place less emphasis on singular British authors and more on time periods and transcendent themes, Behdad said.

Currently, students are required to take courses about the works of authors William Shakespeare, John Milton and Geoffrey Chaucer. These requirements will be eliminated in the new major.

While courses focused solely on these writers will still exist, they will instead fulfill new thematic requirements such as “Ethnicity and Race Studies” or “Imperial, Transnational and Postcolonial Studies.”

These new requirements will affect English major concentrations. Currently, students may choose to complete a concentration in Creative Writing or World Literature.

The new thematic requirements and the inclusion of literatures from outside Britain will make the current World Literature concentration obsolete, said Elizabeth DeLoughrey, vice chair for undergraduate studies. It will no longer be offered. The Creative Writing concentration will be included in the new English major.

English seminars will continue to exist, but instead of being offered to all undergraduates, they will be a capstone experience exclusively for seniors, DeLoughrey said.

In addition, Behdad said the new requirements will allow faculty to teach courses about their research topics, which are impossible to fit into the current British author-based curriculum.

Faculty debated the new major’s setup for years, as all faculty were invited to participate and favored an array of opinions, Behdad said.

The major’s development involved much compromise, and dropping Shakespeare and Milton requirements was the center of debate between faculty, DeLoughrey said.

Professor Robert Watson said he is concerned that the revised curriculum’s disregard for deep analysis of singular authors will not challenge students in the way the current curriculum does. Watson teaches Shakespeare; other professors teaching author-focused courses expressed similar qualms about the new major.

Though courses focused solely on authors like Milton will still exist, Watson said he fears that students will ignore them because they are no longer required.

“Reading the works of one great author in depth has an educational value that cannot be replaced,” Watson said. “It was time for certain things (in the major) to be updated, but I think the revision went further than it needed to.”

Marisa Cohnen, a third-year English student, said she thinks the revamp is necessary for modernization, but added that she sympathized with those who disagree.

“I like that less units will be required in the new major, and I’d rather study an overall theme than just Chaucer,” Cohnen said. “But I do understand that faculty have a big respect for certain authors, and I don’t think students will get to see that passion as much now.”

Students who enter the major in fall 2011 will be required to follow the new curriculum, while students admitted earlier can choose to follow the old or new plans, DeLoughrey said.

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