- Here is the explanation of the English Department’s pedagogy and approach to research. While they have just recently updated/revised their website in order to provide these more comprehensive explanations, I’ve no doubt that this has been their approach for awhile. Not being a specialist in literary studies, I’ll leave to others to assess whether this represents a deterioration in quality or is merely “different” compared to more traditional approaches:
“Research in English used to be categorized by traditional field designations such as Renaissance or Victorian, but Chicago’s English faculty have always been more interested in critical inquiry (the journal Critical Inquiry was founded and lives here) than in working within categorical boxes. That exploratory ethos continues to unify us as a department and animate our research interests, which are otherwise various, even heterogeneous, and which are constantly evolving.
Research interests, however, may be defined in a variety of ways and at various degrees of specification. For instance, a scholar such as Ken Warren, who has written a book on Ralph Ellison, could be said to be working within the American field, but also within the fields of African American literature and literary history. Visitors to this site may also have many interests, at many levels. They may want to identify the subset of faculty who are working in a specific historical period such as the Renaissance, on a particular object of study such as the novel, or on a specialized theoretical or methodological problem such as gender and sexuality. See the lists and categories below to help guide your search.”
https://english.uchicago.edu/about/fields-study
- Should anyone want to do a deep dive into what the English department teaches its undergraduates and graduate students, the course list for the past 4-5 years can be found here (select English over on the LHS and select quarter and year): https://coursesearch92.ais.uchicago.edu/psc/prd92guest/EMPLOYEE/HRMS/c/UC_STUDENT_RECORDS_FL.UC_CLASS_SEARCH_FL.GBL?& I've been undertaking this endeavor off and on for the past few months but haven't compared it to how other schools teach their students. I do believe that the course descriptions support the statement about "exploratory ethos" above. They typically revolve around a topic rather than stick to a set time period, genre, methodology or country of origin. Is this approach a poor way to teach English? Have no idea. I think, ultimately, that profs are generally given a lot of latitude in designing their courses and will probably teach their research. One expects that in graduate school more than undergrad, but that's what happens at UChicago in the College. By the way, this tends to be true in the History department as well, where even most of the Core-required Civ sequences will be at least partly focused on the instructor's research and will include contemporary methodologies and other more recent (trendy?) developments. The history major doesn't require large-lecture survey courses like you see at other schools (even top schools) but I happen to think that it's an excellent program of study for learning how to think and write critically in the field of history. My D - a history major - would have been very bored in a large-lecture survey course. The upside is that she was able to pursue her areas of interest and think and write deeply about them. The downside? She's never taken a course in, say, Asian or African history and probably knows little of those fields. That would have been covered in the survey course. Is that bad? We can debate that question for days.
- To @marlow1's point about lack of Christian world view or texts: I believe that bible-illiteracy, as well as illiteracies in many other areas including classical and Christian texts, is helping to destroy the humanities. The desire to blow away all the "dead white males" seems futile and risks further marginalizing the discipline as "irrelevant." I read a recent essay from a young college student who provided a very objective and critical viewpoint of why this is a bad thing: the level of ignorance actually slows down the pace of the course so that the prof. can explain where the reference or analogy or metaphor originates. Thankfully, UChicago provides a wonderful opportunity to explore at least some of the Western Canon via Hum and Sosc. A student can build on these texts. But even in his (literature based) Hum, my son had to point out a fairly obvious core Christian faith reference after the class took time pondering what it "meant to them." No one had a clue; they, including the prof, were ignorant of Christian theology (and they were studying the Divine Comedy!).* The second criticism mentioned in this essay was another problem suggested in that little example: when you are ignorant of the interpretations, you make up your own. That's just easier than doing the hard research to learn what the heck the author might have been talking about.** Now I realize that much of "critical studies" nowadays consists of "new and exciting" interpretations of old texts. But making up stuff is hardly critical or scholarly. At the very least, you have to be knowledgable of the what the reference MEANT before you can put a new spin on what it MEANS. That's called "understanding the body of work" and is true for every field - STEM, social sciences, etc. It should be true for the humanities as well or it risks becoming (further) irrelevant as a genuine academic discipline.
- Imagine being in a physics class where the prof has to slow it down in order to explain some of the core math.
**Imagine being in a physics class where the entire class makes up the core mathematical principles rather than being aware of the correct ones. It might make for exciting learning, but it probably won’t result in many advances in the field.