English Department Limits Graduate Admission to Pre-1900's Focus

[JBStillFlying]

@mtmind

Take for example “Human Accomplishment,” the absurd book by bigoted pseudoscientist Charles Murray (of Bell Curve fame), in which Murray pretends to “objectively” rank all of human accomplishment across a variety of disciplines through 1950. In it, he supposedly determines the most significant figures in all of Western literature, and Longfellow easily makes the list, ranking of “equal quality” to John Steinbeck, Henry David Thoreau, and better than George Orwell. On the other hand, Hughes doesn’t even make the list. He’s in good company. Black intellectuals, artists, and music from the first half of the 20th century are almost completely shut out. But what else would one expect from Charles Murray?

Would black intellectuals and artists from the early 20th century have considered themselves to be contributors to “Western Culture”?

As to Murray’s book - haven’t read it, but I understand his methodology was objective. He didn’t come up with a personal-preference ranking but instead used citation count to rank these figures in terms of significance. This is a fairly common method of determining the influence of a member of the university academy, for instance, so not too surprising that Murray relied on a similar method. Now, did he exhaustively search for citations? Or is there a better, equally objective method to assess the contributions of those of the more recent years who might not have the history of citations as, say, those from several hundred years prior? It’s worth considering. @mtmind apparently read the book, based on her comments, and clearly has issues with the methodology used. What suggestions can you make to improve the work, MT?