The news is that Goldsmiths College, a subsidiary of the University of London, has cut its Queer Studies Program. The college is facing what is now a common enough crisis, running in the red because enrollments are down, with no end in sight to the decline. Who is to blame? Not Goldsmiths College, according to students, professors, and friends of Goldsmiths College. The world about them is to blame. It is full of Philistines who have no eye for how beautiful and important a program in Queer Studies is.
Meanwhile, I have had occasion to look at the lineup of courses being offered in the English Department at the University of Florida, and though there are scores of them, only two or three have anything to do with English literature written before 1900. Many of the courses are on film, comic books, and so forth. Most of the descriptions fall into two forms:
In English X, we will study how the literature (or film, et…
