Where's Shakespeare?
A couple of nights ago, Dad the Emeritus Historian of Graeco-Roman Egypt noted, somewhat sardonically, that I appeared to be a rather conservative English professor. Conservative, that is, in the sense that my courses emphasize close readings of mostly canonical texts (entirely canonical in the lower-divison surveys, less so in more specialized upper-division and graduate courses). I'm a historicist in my scholarship, but a strictly literary historicist in the classroom. Moreover, despite going to a theory-oriented school as an undergraduate, my interest in literary theory is entirely pragmatic: does it raise illuminating questions about a particular set of texts, or not? And if I had my druthers, quite frankly, we'd require Milton and Chaucer along with Shakespeare.
Therefore, I ought to be the ideal audience for a report like Vanishing Shakespeare (PDF), which criticizes the disappearance of Shakespeare requirements. Instead, this report reminded me why my academic "conservatism" has never progressed beyond occasional manifestations of crankiness. I have always operated on the assumption that any critique of academic practice should be grounded in a) empirical evidence for current practices and b) historical awareness of past practices. This report plays fast and loose with both a) and b). Here, for example, is how the authors describe their undertaking:
To determine where Shakespeare stands in today's curriculum, ACTA surveyed English departments at the U.S. News & World Report's top 25 national universities and top 25 liberal arts colleges, as well as the Big Ten schools and select public universities in New York and California. With the current festivities in our nation's capital in mind, we also looked at universities in or near the District of Columbia. (9)
Now, as someone who does not teach in any sort of top 25 college or public research institution, I confess that this approach inspires me with a deep-seated urge to drop the Riverside Shakespeare on somebody's toes. Repeat after me, children: this is not a representative sampling. The curriculum at a Research I or an expensive liberal arts college has nothing to do with the curriculum at comprehensive institutions in rural areas serving first-generation college students. Or even comprehensive institutions in urban areas serving first-generation college students. Let's try an experiment, shall we?
I wandered over to the Index of American Universities and checked the Shakespeare requirements for colleges and universities with "State" in the name. I did so on the (correct) assumption that such schools would be comprehensives, frequently located in rural or relatively low-population urban areas. To be honest, I had never heard of most of them before undertaking this exercise. And that was precisely the point: what happens when we move away from elite schools? The final count in my list, available beneath the fold, is 120 public schools (I did not try to exhaust all of the CSU and SUNY campuses).
Now, it's important to remember, as ACTA does not, that most English departments actually have several concentrations, tracks, or emphases. (Tom Dillingham called the C 18-L list's attention to that salient detail.) Shakespeare may be required in some tracks, but not in others. Bearing that in mind, what are the statistics?
ACTA: 15 out of 70 schools, or approximately 21.5%, required Shakespeare (NB: Dillingham has shown that at least one of the schools they claim does not require Shakespeare actually does, but in the secondary ed track.)
LP: All schools with requirements in at least one track: 68 out of 120, or approximately 57%. (That's not counting one school's "Age of Shakespeare" course.)
Schools that didn't require Shakespeare of their regular "literature" majors frequently required it of their secondary education majors--probably in response to certification standards.
21.5% to 57% is a noticeable increase, which suggests that any serious quantitative discussion requires far better sampling techniques than ACTA uses (or that I used, for that matter). I'm sure that I could have obtained a different result by manipulating my search criteria.
This increase also reminds us of something that every instructor at a comprehensive college or smaller university knows perfectly well, but outside commentators insist on forgetting: that the curricula are usually much more traditional in nature. Many such schools have teacher-training mandates as well, which leads me to the question of "children's literature." It's not quite clear why the ACTA writers think college-level children's lit courses are a new thing, or why (believing so) they have suddenly felt the urge to complain about them; my mother, after all, enrolled in one at CSULA over thirty-five years ago when she was pregnant with yours truly. More to the point, the ACTA writers eem not to have noticed that programs have to offer children's and young adult literature courses in order to be accredited for teacher certification. The report treats departments as though they're floating in space, instead of responding to national, state, or university mandates. Along the same lines, one might point out the obvious: if a college has, say, a diversity GE requirement, departments will do their best to offer such courses so as to maximize their FTEs. (Hence, for example, the "Women in the Novel" course I teach every couple of years or so--it fulfills an upper-division GE requirement.) Show me the money.
I have additional criticisms of this report's arguments and methodology--for starters, their inability to actually justify why we should require, and not just teach, Shakespeare--but those will wait for a later post.