Madelaine Hron, Wilfred Laurier University

Dear Dean Meric,

Thank you for your Email dated Aug 4th, 2010, in response to my Email to the President, dated July 14th, 2010. It appears however, that you did not read my Email – I did not write to you with regards to the East Asian Studies program. I wrote to you with regards to the proposed amalgamation of modern literatures (East Asian Studies included), and in particular, the elimination of the Center for Comparative Literature!

While I am glad to hear your assurances – with regards to the East Asian Studies program – that there are “governance processes of the University of Toronto, which will provide further opportunities for discussion and debate”; that “the views and concerns of all relevant stakeholders are part of the deliberation on the proposals”; that there will be “full public discussion of the plan and its detailed proposals” and “[b]oth the proposals themselves and the nature of any alternative structures will be fully and genuinely deliberated upon,” I certainly hope that these assurances also extend to the Center for Comparative Literature and the proposed School of Languages and Literatures as a whole. I also sincerely hope that these assurances are not empty rhetoric, and that you listen better to the concerns of your stakeholders, than you did to mine in my Email.

Since it appears you did not register my concerns the first time around, I reiterate them here again. Firstly, I will address the most egregious part of your plan: the proposed disestablishment of the Center of Comparative Literature, and the rational thereof. Your reasoning to close the center – that it was “successful” and hence dispensable, because its methodologies have now been incorporated by other disciplines – is simply ridiculous, and demonstrates that you have little understanding of the field of Comparative Literature! To give you an analogy, since you are so fond of them (e.g., “sacred cow” in Globe and Mail; “moving furniture” in Chronicle of Higher Education), your rationale is analogous to proposing the disestablishment of the department of mathematics because mathematical modules have been incorporated into the fields of physics, chemistry, computer programming, business, engineering or geography! As a scientist, you know that a gifted mathematician could indeed be of value in various fields – yet it would never occur to any administrator to eliminate the study of mathematics at any leading university, no matter the profit margin!

To give you an example of the value and practical (read “profitable”) application of a Comparative Literature degree, I take myself as example. Not because I am some kind of superstar, but because I am your typical Comparative Literature PhD (read “polymath”). After studying in the modern languages and literatures department at the University of Alberta, I completed a Comparative Literature PhD at the University of Michigan; I specialized in Slavics and Francophone literatures. However, I have taught in such different departments/programs as women’s studies, global studies, arts in society, as well as French and Comparative Literature. Currently, I teach English literature in the English and Film Studies Department at Laurier. It is an interesting development, really – because only took two English classes as an undergraduate/graduate student: English 101 and a queer theory grad course! Nonetheless, I was hired into the department because of my ability to research in and teach literary and narrative approaches, as well as cultural studies, global studies and postcolonial studies in relation to English. I obviously did a decent job, because I now have tenure. Don’t tell me that if I studied in a Slavics department, or in a French department, I would now be teaching in an English department, or have taught in so many other academic units...

As far as the Center for Comparative Literature is concerned, it is one of the few existing places in Canada where you can obtain an MA or PhD in the field. Moreover it has a lengthy, prestigious reputation, with Northrop Frye as its founder. You thus have the opportunity to brand, market and sell a unique “center of excellence” – instead however, you are choosing to disestablish it? I know you are driven by immediate fiscal concerns (and suspect that instead of replacing retiring Dr. Hutcheon with another brilliant super-star scholar, you could create three “new” tenure track hires somewhere else), but is the risk – of losing U. of Toronto’s uniqueness, prestige and reputation for humanistic research – really worth a $1.5 million dollar deficit reduction?

Your plan to amalgamate the literary departments is similarly short-sighted. I feel you are driven by a “copy-cat” impulse – that other literature departments in Canadian universities have been amalgamated – rather than by any real knowledge of how literature/language departments work, or by any commitment to high-quality scholarship in these areas. I know something about the study of languages and literatures; I am fluent in eight languages. I learned some of these languages at “study abroad” sessions, some on my own, some in amalgamated language/literature units, and a few in free-standing literature departments. Amalgamated literature/language units and “study abroad” sessions are just fine to learn a language – because their focus is on acquiring language skills and "fulfilling the second language requirement.” When choosing to study these literatures at an advanced, graduate level however, I only applied to universities with various free-standing literature departments, as I knew the quality would be much higher there because these literatures would be studied in the context of history, geography, culture and politics and because there would be dedicated scholars and specialists there, not just numerous adjunct language instructors, with a few token faculty scholars. I suspect you know all of this, (since you are not including English, French or Near Eastern studies in your proposed School of Languages and Literatures), but if you want to attract high-calibre scholars and students and maintain excellence in research and teaching in languages and literatures, you must retain free-standing literature departments.

As I’ve stated in my previous Email, I am neither an alumnus nor a former employee of the University of Toronto. I am simply a Canadian scholar who has always looked up to the University of Toronto as a world-class institution, and was never hesitant to share this laudatory opinion with my international colleagues. Similarly, I was also never hesitant to encourage my best and brightest students to consider University of Toronto’s graduate programmes, though personally I never considered it for my own studies, because I found it too conservative. If this restructuring proposal goes through however, I will no longer support the University of Toronto. On the contrary, I will be sure to inform all of my students, colleagues and possible University of Toronto donors, how, specifically, the University of Toronto threatens humanities scholarship in Canada.

In all, though you clearly did not read my previous Email, I am encouraged by your assuasive rhetoric, which seems to suggest that you are reconsidering your planned restructuring of the humanities in your Faculty, at least as far as East Asian Studies are concerned. Again, I sincerely do indeed hope that your assurances are not mere rhetoric. I urge you abandon this myopic plan, especially as far as the creation of an amalgamated School of Languages and Literatures and the closure of the Center of Comparative Literature are concerned.


Sincerely,

Madelaine Hron
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Madelaine HRON
Associate Prof., English & Film Dept.,
Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo ON, N2L 3C5, CANADA
(519) 884-0710 ext 2949