Dear President Naylor:
I write to urge reconsideration of the recently-proposed changes in the Faculty of Arts and Science amalgamating several independent departments into a single large School of Languages and Literatures. Since I myself have a joint appointment in East Asian Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Alberta, I will focus my comments on the potentially negative consequences to Toronto of eliminating both of those two programs.
From my reading of public statements by Dean Meric Gertler, I take it that FAS has anticipated that there would be protests at the proposed administrative changes, and that a prime motivating factor behind the protest would be the simple fact that neither faculty nor students like to see their disciplinary identity and independence taken away. There is some truth to this, of course: if you were to examine administrative divisions of peer institutions in the U.S., you would notice that the existence of independent East Asian Studies and Comparative Literature programs is one of the main criteria separating elite schools from the merely good, and as a result, there is significant prestige attached to their presence. I can only assume that Dean Gertler and other FAS administrators have realized that the loss of these programs could result in top faculty quickly being hired away, and in a future loss of top graduate student applicants, and have decided that this is a cost worth bearing. However, it is important to note that there are also substantial intellectual reasons why the loss of these two programs would be harmful to education and the advancement of knowledge at Toronto, and that resistance to the proposed changes should not be discounted as mere narcissism, nostalgia, and institutional inertia.
In the case of East Asian Studies, the change from an integrated area studies program to a strictly language-and-literatures model is, explicitly, an attempt to remove social and historical context from the study of East Asia at Toronto. Within a School of Languages and Literatures, the teaching of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean would necessarily be equated with purely linguistic aptitude, the study of literature probably being reduced to the role of the most difficult form of linguistic competence, for study by advanced language students. The great problem with this model is that even this stripped-down version of fluency would not work on its own terms. Even if one were to assume that language ability in absence of historical understanding were sufficient training for U of T students to interact with those countries, language itself is not ahistorical or asocial. For instance, modern Chinese—even at the basic colloquial level—is saturated with historical allusion; modern Japanese—also at the basic colloquial level—is structured with a complex system of formal and informal registers which require fairly detailed understanding of Japanese society in order to master.
Western languages do exhibit some similar features, but most Toronto students are fluent participators in Western cultures, and most have had secondary education in Canadian schools where introduction to the history of North America and Europe has been very thorough. In contrast, Canadian public understanding of East Asia is very sketchy, with much misinformation, mystifications, and other stereotypes circulating as “common knowledge.” It is reasonable for a Chinese student to competently study Chinese literature in isolation, and for a Canadian student to study English or French literature in isolation, because a knowledge of context can be taken for granted; the same cannot be said for Canadian students working cross-culturally with East Asian traditions.
With regard to research synergies, I strongly believe that cross-cultural comparison is valuable and necessary; perhaps scholars of European and Asian languages and literatures would find new venues of cooperation in the proposed school of languages and literatures. However, by eliminating the prime venue for contextual research, almost certainly more would be lost than would be gained. Interdisciplinary cooperation should not be limited to historically contingent fields, but it certainly should not ignore them either. In history, religion, governance, economics—as certainly in literature and language themselves!—the linkages between China, Japan, and Korea have persisted from ancient times through the present, meaning that a dissolution of the area-studies focus uniting the study of these three countries, and treating them as mutually indifferent participants in a global cultural market, would constitute the structural assertion of an untrue proposition.
The proposed dissolution of the Centre for Comparative Literature, even going so far as to end the granting of degrees in Comparative Literature, is also a potentially destructive decision, albeit for very different reasons. As I understand the rationale behind this move, it is believed that the program can be eliminated because of its successes: the comparative methodologies previously rare, at the foundation of the Centre by Northrop Frye, have now been widely adopted by other departments of literature. This reasoning is mistaken in two ways.
Firstly, it does not realize that Comparative Literature is defined as a discipline not merely by its methodology, but also by its object of study, cross-cultural influence, which simply can never be addressed within single-language programs. Are there any properties of literature as such, without regard to national or linguistic origin? If so, then they cannot be assessed or even discovered by research specific to single language groups, which could not isolate the mechanics of literature-as-such from their particular literary histories. Are there meaningful patterns of influence between literatures from different language families? If so, then there is little incentive to trace them rigorously without the institutional support of a comparative-focused home department. Of course, no specialist would dispute the importance of, for example, Vergil to Dante, or Li Bai to Ezra Pound, but such patterns of influence, in order to be investigated with proper rigor, need deep investments of time in disparate literary traditions which are made extremely difficult by the teaching exigencies and promotion standards of monolingual departments.
Secondly, to the extent that Comparative Literature is a site of methodological innovation (and it is), such innovation is a continuing process, not a one-time promulgation of Frye’s methods (which have long since been superceded by developments in the field). Shortly after the founding of the Centre, the postmodern revolution in the humanities began, driven in large part by comparatists; moreover, that revolution has now apparently run its course, and scholars affiliated with the Centre have been in the forefront of attempts in the past decade to define new directions for theoretical inquiry. I assume that Toronto would never contemplate abandoning its departments of mathematics and statistics on the grounds that the physical and social sciences have broadly adopted their discoveries; obviously, for the continued health of those methodologies, they need core groups of faculty dedicated to their continued teaching and elaboration through further research. Comparative Literature occupies a parallel position within the humanities, and hence has a parallel need for independence, for the general methodological health of its partner disciplines.
In short, I strongly urge that the University of Toronto begin a much more thorough and transparent process to reconsider the proposed changes in the Faculty of Arts and Science. The proposals have been broadly noted by scholars across North America, and there is virtually unanimous agreement among all of us that Toronto’s reputation would be seriously damaged if the changes were to be implemented. Though we are often competitors with Toronto, none of us would like to see such a sad end to the leading role which the U of T has played in these disciplines.
Sincerely,
Daniel Fried
Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies and Comparative Literature
University of Alberta
PS: I will also be sending a formal copy of this letter by regular post to your office and the office of Dean Gertler, but am sending this first by email because of my belief in the urgency of the matter.
