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But students can also take classes on Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling
Sexual politics, “feminist fabulations,” and “black trans poetry,” are among the topics Cornell University students can explore to fulfill their first-year writing seminar requirements.
According to the Knight Institute, which administers the writing seminars, most students have to take two first-year writing seminars, though some only have to take one.
Students have quite the range of options to choose from.
One seminar, “Writing and Sexual Politics: Tender Masculinities—Black Trans Poetry as Theory,” has students “reimagining masculinity through poetry.”
Taught by Professor Brad Zukovic and graduate tutor Joël Simeu Juegouo, the course explores “how poets use line breaks and white space to theorize gender as process rather than destination.”
The course description also highlights that in addition to personal reflection, the class will, “engage photography, music videos, and drag performance.”
Cornell also offers, “Feminist Fabulations and Queer Alter-Worlds,” a seminar examining how feminist and queer writers imagine “alternative realities” and “potential futures.” Taught by Knight Institute staff and graduate student Amrita Chakraborty, the syllabus identifies “queer theory, intersectionality, and eco-feminisms,” as key areas of study.
Another seminar, “Cultural Studies: Black Politics and Writing Towards Liberation,” examines the relationship between literature, activism and “systemic oppression.” Professor David Faulkner and doctoral student Colin Stragar-Rice lead the course. The pair examines the life of convicted cop-killer and prison escapee Assata Shakur as a starting point.
Where those seminars approach writing through questions of identity and political theory, the university also offers, “Topics in Health Equity: The Body Speaks—Narratives of Female Pain,” which focuses on women’s physical experiences and the institutions responsible for treating them.
Also taught by Knight Institute staff professors and a doctoral student, Sophie Belfield, this course asks students to question whether pain is a “central and ubiquitous experience of being female” and how social systems and everyday life affect that experience.
The College Fix attempted to reach all of the professors and graduate instructors, using emails and phone calls in the past several weeks, but none responded to questions about goals of the class and openness to different points of view.
The Fix left voicemails for some instructors, but in other cases a staffer for the College of Arts and Sciences refused to leave a note reminder to some professors.
‘Distribution requirements’ contribute to lack of common intellectual foundation
An education analyst with the Heritage Foundation said the university’s offerings reflect a broader shift among elite colleges away from a common intellectual foundation and toward curricula that allows students to approach writing through their desired ideological framework.
“I believe this shift started to happen when universities began to move away from the structured ‘core’ curricula and replace them with loose ‘distribution requirements’ in the mid to late 20th century,” Madison Doan said in an email to The Fix.
She is the co-author of a book which analyzes core curriculum requirements and classes at all the Ivy League universities.
Doan said an effective writing seminar should engage students with, “serious texts, influential thinkers, and deeply meaningful topics,” and help them strengthen their writing through thoughtful analysis and discussion.
“Great writing, in itself, can teach students how and what to write,” Doan said.
Not all writing seminars at Cornell appear to have a clear ideological bent.
“Elements of Academic Writing: Writing Back to the News,” emphasizes the fundamentals of the writing process as well as “producing interesting, clear, and precise academic prose.”
Another class, “Power and Politics: Democracy and Authority,” gives students the opportunity to “read prominent political theory texts” and investigate where power comes from while also reading “critical commentaries.”
Other classes cover Shakespeare, Russian literature, and Rudyard Kipling.
For Doan, the distinction between courses that develop writing skills and those that primarily introduce students to a particular intellectual framework comes down to whether students are prepared to engage seriously with opposing viewpoints.
Her proposed solution is for universities to follow guidelines created by institutions such as the National Association of Scholars who require students to take a course focusing on grammar, rhetoric and logic.
This would expose students to influential writers and allow them to improve their own style, Doan said.
