Getting an Education at OCAD

 

OCAD's appropriately postmodern architecture.

Noticed recently: a job ad for OCAD University’s English Department. It is jarring to see the courses for which they want instructors. English lit is no longer about what you think it is.

COURSE TITLE: ENGL-2003 POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course looks at national and transnational literatures in a comparative perspective, focusing particularly on constructs of nation, gender, colonialism, and difference. Its aim is to imagine multiple literary times and spaces grounded in different parts of the world and in their different histories. That is, rather than creating a snapshot or conducting a literary tour of the world, this course seeks to refuse an easy commodification of Literature as a global product. All texts will be studied in their original English or in English translation.

To look at “postcolonial” writing from non-Western cultures is to severely limit one’s exposure to foreign culture and foreign ideas. These are necessarily drawn only from the postwar period, and are in the Western idiom, written by authors educated in the West.

Students should be exposed instead to Rumi, Li Bai, Basho, the Ramayana, and the like. That would give them a non-Western perspective. That’s the last thing they’ll get here.

And the focus is to be on “nation, gender, colonialism, and difference.” Only contemporary concerns of the political left. No new ideas or new cultural perspectives to be risked here. 

COURSE TITLE: ENGL-2011 LITERATURE AND SOCIAL CHANGE

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course takes a close look at the relationship between literature and concerns for equity, sustainability and social justice, focusing on the ways writers, artists and intellectuals work as agents for social change. The course discusses representations of topics such as dis/ability; gender, sexual and racial equity; labour activism; demands for Indigenous sovereignty; critiques of settler colonialism; postcolonial struggles against empire; and calls for environmental preservation. Texts are disciplinarily diverse and may be performative as well as written. Forms include comics, nonfiction, fiction, poetry and more.

All politics, no literature. “Texts may be performative.” 

COURSE TITLE: ENGL-2012 TRANS AND QUEER LITERATURE

COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course, we explore the ways in which sexualities, gender identities and sexual politics are addressed in literature. Texts will be by transgender, lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, queer and asexual creators, and will reflect the complicated nature of queer life. Intersectionality will be a guiding principle, as we examine ways race, gender, language, culture and disability justice intersect within representations of queer life across a variety of literary forms, such as fiction, nonfiction and memoir, poetry, drama and comics.

The subject matter is of obvious interest to, at a maximum, three percent of the population, in aggregate. The texts are also limited to that same three percent. Realistically from only the last couple of decades as well, because before that there was no market for gay lit. Yet this course is apparently offered every semester. One suspects the primary objective is to give sexual adventurers of various types an opportunity to meet, identify their preferences, and hook up.

Then finally something that almost looks sensible. They want someone to teach a course in Children’s Literature. An important and neglected field.

But you have to know that critical theory has a special focus on Children’s Literature. For the obvious sinister reason: they want to indoctrinate, and they think the best approach is to get them as young as they can.

COURSE TITLE: ENGL-2010 CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course aims to answer the question: What is children's literature? The course will survey children's fiction, poetry, and picture-books to introduce students to a wide range of children's literature. We will examine different cultural and critical approaches to this field in relation to cultural interpretations of childhood and gender. As we discuss the social and political visions put forth in these texts, we will consider the effects of publishing and the media (for example, the Harry Potter films) on the field of contemporary children's literature. Our analysis of genre will include the study of the relationship between text and illustration. Course readings may include works by Carroll, The Brothers Grimm, Lewis, Rowling, Seuss, and others.

“As we discuss the social and political visions put forth in these texts.” The important thing about children’s literature is its political vision. Obviously, children and their own interests are of no concern here.

And OCAD is not unusual; I have seen similar course descriptions at Queen’s, for example.

The very least we can do is pull all taxpayer funding.