PERSPECTIVES
fhe Michigan Daily Friday, June 3, 1988 Page 7
Professor responds
BY ALAN WALD
In "Integrate Curricula" (Daily,
/20), staff writer Anna Senkevitch
uses misleading arguments to de-
nounce the English Department's
"New Traditions" requirement, re-
cently approved by a majority vote
of the faculty after months of de-
bate.
From now on, all English majors
must take at least one course that
devotes intensive study to the
unique literary traditions of people
f color, women, and ethnic mi-
norities. According to Senkevitch,
this is "offensive" and a "profound
affront" to women and people of
color.
In my view, the "New Tradi-
tions" requirement constitutes the
first break from the overwhelming
institutionalization of elite, patriar-
chal Eurocentric literature in the
cpartment's history. The task of
anti-racist students - not to men-
tion everyone else who wants to
have access to the full cultural
achievements of humanity - is to
be vigilant so that this requirement
is realized to the fullest extent. A
crucial aspect of this vigilance is to
do everything possible to insure
that faculty are soon hired with ap-
propriate qualifications to teach
these specialized courses - espe-
cially women and men of color.
Senkevitch's first misrepresen-
tation of the new situation is her
claim that courses such as my
English 319 and similar ones to be
offered in the fall term were
developed ex nihilo to fulfill the
"New Traditions" requirement. To
the contrary, English 319 and many
others have been around for years.
What is different is that now, for
the first time, the English Depart-
ment is saying that specialized
courses that study Toni Morrison,
Leslie Silko, Maxine Hong
Kingston, Lorna Dee Cervantes,
Piri Thomas, and the writings of
other women and men of color are
just as important to understanding
literary culture today as are inten-
sive courses in "Shakespeare's Ri-
vals," "Chaucer," "Milton," and
similar offerings that have hitherto
constituted the exclusive require-
ments in specialized study.
A second misrepresentation is
Senkevitch's claim that single
courses such English 319 purport
to cover the entirety of the culture
and life experience of all people of
color in the U.S. in just one term.
This claim, along with several oth-
ers about the course, is an inven-
tion on her part and is nowhere
made in any course description.
As an alternative, Senkevitch
proposes: "Rather than reinforce
many University students' precon-
ceptions of minorities, the English
Department should integrate a vari-
ety of literary works by ethnic mi-
norities, women and persons of
color into currently existing genre-
specific courses."
However, Senkevitch's proposal
is little different from the perspec-
tive of the English Department
leadership for the past several
decades, which was never against
"integration." Resisted was the
more radical idea of requiring inten-
sive, culture-specific courses for
any group other than European-de-
rived ones.
The reason for the past failure of
this "integration" strategy is two-
fold. First, if Senkevitch feels that
a single course exclusively focusing
on cultures of people of color al-
lows inadequate time for full cover-
age, how does she imagine that a
course that also includes substantial
representatives of the dominant,
patriarchal, elite Eurocentric culture
will make things easier?
A second explanation for the
failure of restricting oneself to
"integration" is that the key, elitist
concepts around which genre-spe-
cific courses are presently organized
are themselves inadequate to the
understanding of literature by wo-
men and people of color.
Finally, there is no evidence that
the requirement of culture and gen-
der specific courses will remove
pressure to learn and grow on the
part of those faculty whose genre
courses are presently overwhelm-
ingly patriarchal and Eurocentric.
Have the existence of specialized
courses in Shakespeare and Hem-
ingway resulted in the disappearance
of those authors from survey and
genre courses? The dynamic is just
the opposite.
Wald is a Professor of English
Literature and American Culture
Daily staffer meets Russian emigre' scientist:
A new superpower summit
To the Daily:
In the May 13, 1988 issue of the
Daily, your "Sporting Views" col-
umn described the "adventure" trip
of reporters Holt and Webster to the
Kentucky Derby. If the writers were
doing this article tongue-in-cheek, I
guess I just failed to see through
their sense of humor. It seemed
more like some immature young
males who think that behavior in-
volving drugs and alcohol, mixed
with long sleepless hours of driv-
ing, is something to boast to their
readers about. On the contrary, es-
pecially if I were the parent of any
of those young men, I believe what
they have expressed in writing is a
sad commentary on their lifestyle
and their sense of responsibility to
one another and to others with
whom they share the highway.
How ironic that within a few
days of their reputed stupor-filled
drive through Kentucky, newspa-
pers, radio, and television reported
the tragedy of 27 people killed,
many charred beyond recognition,
because one vehicle operator chose
to drive while under the influence o
alcohol and ran his truck head-on
into a school bus carrying young
people home frotn an amusemen
park outing. The coroner would no
even permit parents of those who
would never come home again to
view the remains because of the
gruesomeness of their deaths. Did
your reporters come close to a po-
tentially similar case during their
drive to the Derby and back?
What would your intrepid re-
porters write to their readership i
they were incarcerated for having
crashed head-on into a vehicle while
under the influence of dope, mint
juleps, beer, and "our old standby
ginja(sic)." Worse still, what i
they had caused the death of even
one person. I don't think they
would be very proud, and I don't
think that action would be a pleas-
ant memory for them to carry the
rest of their lives. It would indeed
have been an unforgettable weekend
as your headline declared.
-Robert Schneider
May 19
vorite. For me, it was "Wind," a
poem about people in an unnamed
country who flee their village when
a wind blowing through a field of
corn brings them a rumor of immi-
nent invasion:
"Centuries, minutes later, one
might ask/how the hilt of a sword
wandered sofarfrom the smithy?"
Steingraber is a Daily Opinion
staffer
BY SANDRA STEINGRABER
This is the story of how a Soviet
engineer and an American biologist
met last week at a poetry reading in
Minneapolis and had a conversation
about military research.
The poet was James Fenton, a
British writer more known in this
country for his first-person re-
ortage from the frontlines in In-
dochina. Fenton is the journalist
who stayed in Vietnam after Saigon
fell and became famous by riding
on the first North Vietnamese tank
as it rolled through the gates of the
Presidential palace.
Fenton's poetry is shot through
with images of war, exile, famine,
terror, death. He gave a powerful
and disturbing reading on that
evening, and, given these themes,
perhaps it was appropriate that this
particular conversation took place
during the reception that followed.
I was the American. The Soviet
engineer was a professor at the
University of Minnesota. I'm not
sure how we happened to meet.
Fenton was nowhere in sight during
the reception, and the others in at-
tendance were a strictly literary
crowd who bunched into tight clus-
ters around the punch bowl. So
perhaps it was just the natural
gravitation of two oddballs which
brought us within speaking dis-
5. JL-
tance.
We agreed the reading was both
wonderful and difficult. He said all
poetry was difficult, and we agreed
again. He asked what I did, and
seemed impressed I was at Michi-
gan. I guessed from his accent he
was Russian, and he said that yes,
he was. A Jew, he left the univer-
sity in Moscow eight years ago
when he and his family were per-
mitted to immigrate to the United
States.
I asked him what he would be
doing now if he had stayed in the
Soviet Union. He laughed. "Well, I
would have finished at the univer-
sity and then I would have gone to
look for a job."
We drank some punch. We dis-
cussed our own research. He re-
marked the National Science Foun-
dation had poured a lot of funding
into Michigan. I replied that
Michigan does a lot of military re-
search, including chemical weapons
and SDI work.
He said Minnesota is not in-
volved in much military research.
I pointed out that many people at
Michigan - including scientists -
are actively opposed to military and
weapons research on campus. He
said, "Well, money is available for
that kind of work."
"Well, it's our money, and what
kind of science we choose to fund
reveals what kind of society we
are. -
He laughed, "Well, of course."
I asked about military research in
the Soviet Union. For the most
part, he said, it is carried out at
special institutions rather than in
the universities. Physicists and en-
gineers in the universities usually
conduct more academic kinds of re-
search. He said he thought military
research had really advanced com-
puter technology in the United
States.
It occurred to me that we were
talking about the university's role
in the arms race between the two
superpowers as if we were compar-
ing the strategies of two rival foot-
ball teams.
We were calmly discussing the
use of science to create and legit-
imize the technology of mass death.
We were in fact talking about total
insanity in completely normal
tones of voice after hearing poems
about war read in a voice of deep
urgency and rage.
I had to catch my bus. We smiled
and said "nice to meet you" at the
same time.
Clearly, any Soviet scientist al-
lowed to immigrate into the United
States is not going to have too
many problems with the governing
ideology here - or the relationship
between that ideology and the kinds
of science that get done. Still, there
are many issues I would like to
discuss with a Soviet engineer.
Such as the issue of tanks.
I myself once traveled with tanks
down the Ethiopian-Sudanese border
to get to a refugee camp where I
wanted to do research. The Sudanese
commander had proudly told me
these were indeed the same kinds of
tanks the Americans used in Viet-
nam. The Sudanese People's Liber-
ation Army was the target of that
particular offensive. Meanwhile, on
the other side of the mountains, the
Ethiopian army was overrunning
members of their armed opposition
with Soviet-made tanks.
Tanks leave vast swathes of eco-
logical destruction in their wake. I
would like to tell a Soviet engineer
how it felt to be part of that. We
could talk about the village garrison
I stopped at on the way. The place
was armed to the teeth with mortars
and tanks, and everyone was sick
with dysentery because the water
was contaminated. Someone asked
me there, "Why don't the super-
powers solve the problem of where
to put human shit?"
Or we could talk about how they
kill elephants in Ethiopia with ma-
chine guns.
At least I wish I had asked this
particular Soviet engineer which of
James Fenton's poems was his fa-