Why the Eurocentricity of university English courses needs to be challenged
21st September 2018
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While foundational figures such as Shakespeare, Pope, or Byron are undoubtedly important to an understanding of the history of English literature, the exclusion of black and ethnic minority (BME) writers needs to be identified and challenged.
As a prospective or current English student in higher education, it is difficult to ignore the Eurocentricity of the university curriculum.
British universities’ English courses are overwhelmingly white, almost entirely structured around the literature of white authors and European thinkers.
Indeed white male authors such as Homer, Eliot, and Shakespeare feature majorly on the compulsory components of the curriculum and, at best, there are opportunities to study outside this sphere in limited optional modules such as African literature, colonialism, and gender and sexuality.
The issue is deep-rooted and can be traced back to the structure of primary and secondary education where global history, and not just the history of literature, is taught from an exclusively British perspective.
This colonial lens is carried through into higher education, realised in the curriculum’s narrow focus upon the British canon, which is notoriously historically problematic in writing out the works of BME writers and female authors.
By exclusively focusing on literature, art, and film created by white European authors, universities' syllabuses reinforce a single colonial perspective of literary and global history, contradicting the basic premise of higher education.
How can students, as per the aims of their course, think critically and interrogate assumptions, meanings, and perspectives when their curriculum does not include the long history of English literature composed by black and minority authors?
“Decolonising” the curriculum does not mean that foundational authors such as Shakespeare should be excluded from university syllabus, but it instead demands more serious attention and weight should be afforded to the literature of BME authors and thinkers of the global south, in order to enhance students’ perspectives and intellectual thoughts.
Tellingly, university students have called for the diversification of English courses at British universities on more than one occasion.
As a prospective or current English student in higher education, it is difficult to ignore the Eurocentricity of the university curriculum.

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