By Emily Jacobs
New York Post
September 15, 2020
The University of Chicago’s English department will only
consider graduate school applicants interested in “working in and with
Black studies” for this upcoming admissions cycle, it has announced.
The department announced the decision in a faculty statement on the department’s homepage, dated July of this year.
In it, the professors stood with the Black Lives Matter movement and those lives lost to police brutality before committing as a staff “to the struggle of Black and Indigenous people, and all racialized and dispossessed people, against inequality and brutality.”
Their decision came alongside an explanation of how racial strife was impacted by the department’s studies.
“English as a discipline has a long history of providing aesthetic rationalizations for colonization, exploitation, extraction, and anti-Blackness. Our discipline is responsible for developing hierarchies of cultural production that have contributed directly to social and systemic determinations of whose lives matter and why.
“And while inroads have been made in terms of acknowledging the centrality of both individual literary works and collective histories of racialized and colonized people, there is still much to do as a discipline and as a department to build a more inclusive and equitable field for describing, studying, and teaching the relationship between aesthetics, representation, inequality, and power,” the statement read.
The department then explained how it planned to enact change, referencing hiring and expanded research plans.
“In light of this historical reality, we believe that undoing persistent, recalcitrant anti-Blackness in our discipline and in our institutions must be the collective responsibility of all faculty, here and elsewhere. In support of this aim, we have been expanding our range of research and teaching through recent hiring, mentorship, and admissions initiatives that have enriched our department with a number of Black scholars and scholars of color who are innovating in the study of the global contours of anti-Blackness and in the equally global project of Black freedom,” the department’s statement continued.
In a statement to The Post, the University said of its English department, “Like many graduate programs around the country, the English Department at the University of Chicago can accept a limited number of PhD graduate students in the 2020-21 application season due to the COVID-19 pandemic and limited employment opportunities for English PhDs.
“Currently, there are 77 PhD students studying a wide variety of disciplines within the English Department, and the department is admitting 5 additional PhD students for 2021. The English department faculty saw a need for additional scholarship in Black Studies, and decided to focus doctoral admissions this year on prospective PhD students with an interest in working in and with Black Studies. As with other departments in the University, the department’s faculty will decide which areas of scholarship they wish to focus on for PhD admissions in future years.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: Here is how the Daily Mail headlined its report - 'Who needs Shakespeare anyway?' University of Chicago is slammed for 'indoctrination' and 'racism' after English Department declares it will only accept applicants interested in working 'in and with Black Studies'
The department announced the decision in a faculty statement on the department’s homepage, dated July of this year.
In it, the professors stood with the Black Lives Matter movement and those lives lost to police brutality before committing as a staff “to the struggle of Black and Indigenous people, and all racialized and dispossessed people, against inequality and brutality.”
Their decision came alongside an explanation of how racial strife was impacted by the department’s studies.
“English as a discipline has a long history of providing aesthetic rationalizations for colonization, exploitation, extraction, and anti-Blackness. Our discipline is responsible for developing hierarchies of cultural production that have contributed directly to social and systemic determinations of whose lives matter and why.
“And while inroads have been made in terms of acknowledging the centrality of both individual literary works and collective histories of racialized and colonized people, there is still much to do as a discipline and as a department to build a more inclusive and equitable field for describing, studying, and teaching the relationship between aesthetics, representation, inequality, and power,” the statement read.
The department then explained how it planned to enact change, referencing hiring and expanded research plans.
“In light of this historical reality, we believe that undoing persistent, recalcitrant anti-Blackness in our discipline and in our institutions must be the collective responsibility of all faculty, here and elsewhere. In support of this aim, we have been expanding our range of research and teaching through recent hiring, mentorship, and admissions initiatives that have enriched our department with a number of Black scholars and scholars of color who are innovating in the study of the global contours of anti-Blackness and in the equally global project of Black freedom,” the department’s statement continued.
In a statement to The Post, the University said of its English department, “Like many graduate programs around the country, the English Department at the University of Chicago can accept a limited number of PhD graduate students in the 2020-21 application season due to the COVID-19 pandemic and limited employment opportunities for English PhDs.
“Currently, there are 77 PhD students studying a wide variety of disciplines within the English Department, and the department is admitting 5 additional PhD students for 2021. The English department faculty saw a need for additional scholarship in Black Studies, and decided to focus doctoral admissions this year on prospective PhD students with an interest in working in and with Black Studies. As with other departments in the University, the department’s faculty will decide which areas of scholarship they wish to focus on for PhD admissions in future years.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: Here is how the Daily Mail headlined its report - 'Who needs Shakespeare anyway?' University of Chicago is slammed for 'indoctrination' and 'racism' after English Department declares it will only accept applicants interested in working 'in and with Black Studies'
No comments:
Post a Comment