University cancels SONNETS as “products of white Western culture”

Hello, sucker. Thought you were smart to memorize a Shakespeare sonnet? Think again!

from the London Daily Mirror 15 May 2022

University of Salford cancels SONNETS from writing course because they are ‘products of white Western culture’ amid push to ‘decolonise the curriculum’

University of Salford chiefs sideline sonnets from their creative writing course
Second-year students will no longer have to write sonnets for their assessment
Historian Dr Zareer Masani called the change ‘patronising’ and ‘outrageous’

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

PUBLISHED: 17:34 EDT, 15 May 2022 | UPDATED: 03:42 EDT, 17 May 2022

University chiefs have sidelined sonnets from a creative writing course over concerns they are ‘products of white Western culture’.

The poetic form, notably used by Shakespeare, has fallen foul of efforts to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ at the University of Salford.

Following a drive to make the course more diverse, second-year students at the university will no longer have to write sonnets for their assessment.

Dr Scott Thurston, leader of the creative writing course at Salford, said students would still be required to undertake exercises in composing sonnets.

Acclaimed examples include Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” which includes the line: ‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10819139/University-cancels-sonnets-concerns-products-white-Western-culture.html

Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

While it may be obvious to some professors that Shakespeare’s sonnet 29 is not only the proiductf of white Western culture but also an act of “colonization,” I, a former English major in the king’s own regiment, don’t understand the logic. Bragging rights go to anyone who, in the comments field, can explain the reasoning to me. — DL

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