English survey course scrapped

Shahreen Saifi Staff Writer

Beginning with the Class of 2007, the year-long English 220/221 course “British and American Literature: Origins to the Early Twentieth Century” was made mandatory for all English majors. Before the pre-registration period for the spring semester, however, the English Department announced that it would end the requirement with the Class of 2009 and is now considering replacing it with an optional semester-long course.

English 220/221 has a long history at Vassar. It originally concentrated solely on British literature and covered a much shorter period. For years, the English Department offered it as an alternative to the three credits required to take 300-level courses. “It was like a required class because almost all students took it,” said English Department Chair Robert DeMaria.

The English Department had a retreat in 2001 and discussed improvements that could be made to the department. “We felt students in our department had very disparate [backgrounds],” said DeMaria, “and this meant when we stepped into an upper-level class there wasn’t much shared experience among the students.”

“We wanted to create a feeling of community between the English majors. And this insured that everyone stepped into the classroom with the same advantage,” said Assistant Professor of English Eve Dunbar.

The department also sought to bring together the faculty. According to DeMaria, “The faculty had little experience of what their colleagues were doing or how they were teaching.” The 220/221 course was designed so that it was taught by four professors per semester, and the following semester at least one professor who had taught previously would continue teaching.

Finally, the department wanted to ensure that students had a basic, shared background in the subject that would give them a solid grounding for the higher-level courses they chose to take. “Most upperclassmen that I’ve spoken to think that it was good to have met the material beforehand,” said Dunbar.

The course was expanded to include American literature and given a three-year trial period after which the department decided to review it. “There was a fair amount of student dissatisfaction with the course. The most serious complaint was the flyover nature of the course: They didn’t have enough time to focus on the work. And, of course, some students didn’t want to study what they didn’t have to study,” said DeMaria.

“It’s one of the courses that’s use isn’t really realized until you’re in your senior year,” said Dunbar. “So the class had a lot of mixed reviews.”

Cassie Kirk ’07, who took the course in her sophomore year, defends its content. “I thought the class was really useful just because it exposed us to a lot of stuff,” she said. “But since it was the first year it was made a requirement, we were the guinea pigs and it wasn’t very organized. We tried to do way too much and we didn’t spend time on anything we read.”

Still, Kirk added, “Personally I think it’s sad [that it was cancelled], because it had the potential to be really good for English majors.” She suggested that a one-and-a-half credit course with a two-hour discussion period might have improved the overall experience. “There was too much lecture,” said Kirk. “It would be better if there was more discussion than lecture, because then students would be more involved in class.”

The English Department seems to agree that certain aspects of the course should be preserved. “We’re still committed to all the reasons we established the class as a requirement in the first place,” said Dunbar. “It just wasn’t doing everything we wanted it to do so we have to go back to the drawing room.”

“There are fewer English majors in the junior class than in the senior class and it was possible that some students were choosing not to be English majors because of the requirement,” explained DeMaria. “But we’re planning on introducing a new course for just a semester: essentially the original version of the 220, focusing only on British literature.”