Shakespeare, the Public, and Public Education

Abstract

N 1985 ALAN SINFIELD PUBLISHED AN ESSAY with provocative and only halfsatirical title Give an account of and Education, showing why you think they are effective and what you have appreciated about them. Support your comments with precise references. Sinfield wrote that the importance of is perhaps greater than ever, for he is becoming sole vehicle of highcultural ideology and establishment literary criticism in schools.... 1 He was referring to relations between methods of teaching in British system and preparation for occupying certain class positions. Having a similar interest in heightened importance of in US national dialogue, I wish to pay attention to his position in American college and university curriculum. My particular focus is not on classroom per se, however, but on wars in print: How do changes in curricular position of something called Shakespeare circulate among something called the public? What have such representations to do with something called education? Article after article uses these terms as though they were self-explanatory. Yet it is precisely meanings of these terms that I believe are at stake in wars. In taking up curricular-change reporting, this paper extends a conversation initiated in 1997 winter issue of Quarterly. Writing about a plenary session he had chaired at a recent Association of America conference, Geraldo U. De Sousa explained panel's objective: to understand changes brought about by pursuit of theory and come to a consensus about impact of those changes on liberal-arts curriculum and training that our students and future teachers are receiving in our undergraduate and graduate classrooms.2 Although each participant adopted a slightly different position on how literary theory influenced his or her work in classroom, all alluded to media's role in creating a misperception of theory's place in pedagogical practice. My own comments bring media in general, and print journalism in particular, into prominence as object of study.3 Among difficulties of undertaking such a study is distinguishing between a history of curricular change, in which departments over time routinely adjust their offerings and requirements, and more recent escalation in published reports of that change, where every aspect of university decision-making is presented as though it were an originary event and an occasion for potential outrage. Although curricular-change reporting gives impression that is disappearing from Englishdepartment offerings, a Modern Language Association study of English departments in 1990-91 found that survey courses in British and American literatures are among