15. What are we reading? —an investigation of the genres of texts being studied by the Queen’s Undergraduate English Department"

Abstract

The 2006 report by Dr. Frances Henry entitled “Understanding the Experiences of Visible Minority and Aboriginal Faculty Members at Queen’s University” stated that “Queen's, like most other North American universities, is still struggling to overcome deeply entrenched cultural beliefs, values, norms and structures that preserve the continued dominance of Whiteness and maleness” (Henry, 157), and called on all departments to diversify their curriculum. Today, the Queen’s Academic plan expressly states that “Adequate representation of Indigenous issues in curricula across campus needs to be a major objective“(29). With the addition of Mohawk and Inuktitut classes and the Indigenous studies program, Queen’s as a whole is taking action to meet this objective. As a student of English myself, I was interested in examining the state of the curriculum in Undergraduate English Department. In particular, I was interested in exploring whether texts by North American Indigenous authors are being included in the curriculum, and what space is created for these texts within the English Department. My researchexamined the 1,289 texts ordered for Undergraduate English classes between the Fall Semester of 2009 and the Winter Semester of 2013. These texts represent up an institution-specific canon, a snapshot of what the Queen’s English Department—intentionally or unintentionally—have construed as important to the field. My goal was to determine whether the “Eurocentric curriculum” (146) that the Henry report underscored persists within the English department, or whether academic spaces are being created that include Indigenous Literature.