Almost every student who has come to UNC has encountered the perspectives of William Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. These writers (and others like them) were all white and have been dead for more than a century. They are all a part of the traditional Western Canon of literature — an elite club to be part of.
Their works are impressive and should be taught; however, by focusing only on these books and more specifically on the Anglo-Saxon perspectives they provide, we are only hindering the levels of discussion and inclusion that could possibly be achieved by teaching a diverse canon of books with a diverse and knowledgeable set of professors. The University ought to promote more diverse readings and look to hire professors with a diverse range of expertise.
Recently, The John William Pope Center published a research article that dove into the change of English departments. In their research, they argued that students are losing out by learning from obscure authors — even mentioning UNC’s own alumnus, Paul Green.
Green was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright with a whole theater on this campus named in his honor, considered by some to be one of the great American dramatists — far from obscure. Besides, there is a difference between being unknown and not being good. Commercial sales do not correlate to great writing, and neither does the opinion of any one researcher or editorialist.
What qualifies a great book is finding a personal value, or as author Ann Patchett said to PBS, “The mark of a truly great book for me is one that makes me forget that I’m reading.”
To help share this value, it becomes important to hire a diverse set of professors who have unique expertise in varying fields of literature. The University should always promote books of collegiate merit, but professors should be able to decide for themselves what that means. The educators on this campus are qualified, and by saying they are incapable of picking challenging books is insulting.
It is okay if students and others do not like works from Zora Neale Hurston, Amiri Baraka or Paul Green. All have the right to argue which books are the most challenging for students, but to turn the discussion into advocacy for one particular canon of work only hinders learning.
