Students at Dartmouth certainly do enjoy discussing the diversity of course offerings here -- in fact, it seems like we can't go more than a single term without engaging in another lively debate about which departments should be expanded and expended. Well, perhaps "lively debate" isn't as accurate a term as "cutthroat battle to the death," but at least we're having the conversation. I've generally tended to take the side of the "modern" departments that handle issues of race, gender and culture, but I'm starting to observe an unsettling problem in our curriculum.
As I was trying to piece together the shambles of my life Sunday morning, I took a moment to choose my Fall term classes, lest I forget to do so before the deadline (as I did for summer course election). I have a few more distributive requirements to get out of the way, namely the two SOC requirements, so I thought I'd flip through the history department's section in the course guide. You see, I'm a bit old fashioned, so I enjoy my classical European history courses. Lately, I've found myself fascinated with the early modern history of Eastern Europe, when Poland and Lithuania were unified under a single king, Sweden had an Empire and Russia was nothing more than a motley assembly of "Grand Duchies."
When I went to find a course on Eastern European history, however, there was nothing in sight -- and not just for Fall term, but for any term. There's a course on the Mongols, and a course on the Russian Empire that provides "a review of [the] Kievan and Muscovite antecedents," and then launches beyond my immediate interests. In my despair over this horrifying discovery, I thought to myself, "Surely I could take a history class on the Byzantine Empire!" Not a single one in sight. What about the complex history of the Indian sub-continent? I'd settle for a survey course! The history department doesn't touch that subject until the British arrive.
What was I able to find? A class on "Caribbean Women Writers," a class on "Black Theater, U.S.A." and a class on "Queer Marriage, Hate Crimes and 'Will and Grace.'"
This is the part of the column I call "tactfully avoiding hate mail." I do not dislike any of the above courses, nor am I questioning their role in the modern academic curriculum. I believe that Women's and Gender Studies, African and African American Studies, and Native American Studies are all integral parts of our curriculum, and I have no desire to abolish any of these programs. If anything, a class that involves an examination of "Will and Grace" sounds like fun!
Still, I find it puzzling, to say the least, that students here are willing to give Will and Grace a close look, but not the Byzantine Empire, which played an integral role in the development of Europe and the Middle East (even if that role was to slowly decay).
My fear is that, in our noble endeavor to modernize our curriculum, we may be ignoring the topics and subjects traditionally associated with old, white men, even though studying these fields is important in developing an educated academic background. We should be adding new classes to focus on the many rapidly developing fields of scholarship, but not at the total expense of the old ones.
The current discussion of balancing these old and new subjects seems to be centered on whose department is more important or fundamental to the college curriculum. This argument is like kindergarteners comparing their favorite Power Rangers: it's entirely irrelevant whether the Blue Ranger or the Red Ranger is better -- the giant robot can't save the day if one of them isn't around. The newer departments may be more adept at handling the modern social and cultural issues we face, but the contributions classical subjects have made to our society's development are just as important as they were yesterday. If anything, they can be made more pronounced by balancing them with contemporary issue courses.
Someday, I would like to leave a history class on the closeted bisexuality of the Byzantine elite and bring that knowledge to a discussion section on contemporary queer issues. At the least, I hope that the old and the new can be brought into peaceful coexistence before I graduate.
