“The rest of us will work to fight wrongs” – to make sure famed dead white men get their just due, and to ignore little-known black women?
I see. Interesting take on fighting racism.
In other words, with the economy doing better, tipping is up at Starbucks. 
@katliamom, sounds like literacy isn’t your strong point. I’ve stated several times that I’m fine with including all underrepresented authors, and hanging their portraits around all campuses.
You can fight only overt acts of violence against certain groups, since you say that racism is just that.
The rest of us will fight ALL acts of racism against ALL groups, and push for diversity that welcomes ALL.
This is like a Twilight Zone episode…
All I can say is, as an English teacher and Penn alumni, I am completely baffled that this is even an issue at all. Like, I have no idea why this is a topic of discussion. They updated a picture that nobody knew about or cared about in order to add some representation of authors who don’t get as much credit. I mean seriously, I have zero memory of this picture and so do all of my friends.
To those who are against this move in any way, I have literally no idea what your argument is, why you care, why you find this disrespectful or threatening, or why it is a bad thing to include more diversity and underappreciated authors. It is not a replacement. There are PLENTY of Shakespeare tributes on campus. There is an entire Shakespeare library. They have an annual birthday party for Shakespeare that’s pretty fun, people dress up and there is tudor-house cake and videos playing about Shakespeare’s legacy. And there are entire classes devoted to him - none to Audrey Lorde, if it makes you feel better.
We know Shakespeare is great (yes, he invented ‘bedroom’ and ‘lonely’… English as we know it will never be the same…) but studying English is not only about studying “the greats,” it’s about getting a fully well-rounded appreciation of writings and perspectives from around the world. In my ninth grade class, I teach The Odyssey, a classic piece of literature. We also read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian and a graphic novel called American Born Chinese. Are those two among THE GREATEST BOOKS EVER WRITTEN? Is Gene Luen Yang going to be remembered as significantly as Shakespeare 100 years from now? Of course not, but if we only read old classics, I didn’t do my job of educating these students about the variety of experiences and viewpoints and struggles in the world. Those two books are “the best” to incorporate into the curriculum to produce well-versed learners.
Come on. There are actual problems in the world. Next we’ll be back to complaining about how Starbucks putting a snowflake instead of a Christmas tree on their cups means that Christmas is being spit on. Two things can coexist.
In my mind, there is no issue with promoting diversity or under-appreciated authors, but with the quality and attributes of the person that replaced Shakespeare and the weak response of the faculty. Lorde was a Marxist, back in a time when Marxism was still taken seriously, and her work is highly political. The replacement of the Shakespeare portrait with hers was an act of political protest, not some thought out strategy to diversify the lesson plan.
.@rebeccar I’m suspect your students will remember those other books fondly. I know that while I loved Antigone, and still remember the Crucible, I also remember loathing Vanity Fair and My Antonia! But, I’ll never ever forget my 9th grade English teacher talking about Joni Mitchell in the same breath as she talked about Auden and e e cummings.
@mathmon -
My tenth grade Literature teacher went on and on about Bruce Springsteen, and interspersed reading the lyrics to his greatest hits throughout various lesson plans during the year. On the other hand, he did have us read Jorge Louis Borges and Roland Barth.
Sounds like you had an amazing 10th grade lit teacher, @Zinhead!
Oh, I remember that day as if were yesterday. Just awful. People were crying at lunch, business meetings, on the bus, everywhere. Professors gave us the day off to heal. Welk’s show was, in fact, more popular than the shows that replaced it! But the so called “Directorial College” at ABC ultimately held the power over the prime time schedule. To make matters worse, we learned that Welk was robbed of his chance for glory. For weeks before the cancellation there were rumors of the Soviets attempting to influence ABC ratings (they were spreading lies about the “Cheesecake Incident” and the ghastly attempt to “jazz up” Silver Bells, etc. to try to drag him down). It was the first time I seriously considered watching Canadian TV.
In a way, Welk was like the soothing parent who didn’t overreact when America would bump its head on a table. The day his show was cancelled was the day I learned what it felt like to not have hope. What else do you have if you don’t have hope??? Tears…
And Shakespeare’s works and his being chosen as part of the Anglo-American/Western Literary canon wasn’t?
Umm…I’m definitely sure Richard III would strongly beg to differ…along with Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan dominated government who felt Shakespeare’s works were so irreverent towards their version of “pure Christianity” that they practically banned his works from being performed or even possessed with serious punishments to match.
And his addition to the Western literary canon wasn’t necessarily rapid or even included in the standard college curriculum of the elite universities of the day in Britain or the US until much later.
That was a much more recent development…talking end of 19th/early 20th century* as many elite US universities still maintained the old curriculum centered on the Classics of Antiquity(Ancient Rome, Greece, Israel, etc)…and expected matriculated students to have mastered those languages to read them in the original…no reading in translation.
Incidentally, in the old curriculum, the studying of Ancient Greek and Roman works by Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Vergil, Polybius, etc would have been privileged far above and beyond that of Shakespeare among the Profs/college graduates of the day.
- Columbia U maintained the original antiquity classics centered curriculum up until 1916 and Oxbridge continued it well into the 1920s.
And here’s a link to an abstract of a PhD dissertation on Shakespeare’s place in American Education:
http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/182/
and the following is especially interesting:
Shakespeare’s prominence in the US depends, in part, on an old general education/core requirement to take a semester of Brit lit (not US). That requirement was standard from about 1920 to 1970. Though now long gone, it is interesting to think about how long our colonization lasted.
Your colonization will continue as long as you use English.
Actually “Englishes” is how linguists understand the language that was once owned by the English. In some places, it has morphed so far away from the original colonizing language that it can be difficult to be understood by outsiders. Other places (such as China) it is used as a global language with minimal cultural markers beyond basic vocabulary.
English has been translated into local languages. It is also interesting to think about how language moves on over time.
In this digital age, why not put up a digital Frame with rotating portraits. Problem solved.
@rebeccar - I LOVE “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian” and “American Born Chinese.” Your students are so lucky!
And count me as one of those English majors who heartily approves of the Lorde-for-Shakespeare swap.
It’s amazing that people here think taking down a single Shakespeare portrait is indicative of how the world is stacked against white males, but never recognize racism in the hundreds of CC threads that discuss issues that POC face at universities 
Who will think of the white men
2016 really is a mindtrip. #:-S