Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Columbia University

Dear President Naylor:

I am writing to you about your decision to integrate Comparative Literature into a larger school of Language and Literature and to take away the possibility of the Comparative Literature Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. Your university was kind enough to award me an honorary doctorate in 2000 and I therefore write with the added concern of an alumna.

There is no need to remind you of the extraordinary record of Comparative Literature at Toronto. I will simply speak to the absolute need to train students of the quality associated with Toronto precisely in Comparative Literature, especially as it is beginning to integrate areas of the world emphasized by the ongoing process of globalization.

Rightly or wrongly, we in the United States associate Canada, especially eastern Canada, and perhaps particularly the University of Toronto, as the custodian of the more humane virtues associated with a democratic polity. In this mission, deep language learning in a mode of diversity is a crucial requirement. The practice of reading literary texts in original languages establishes the affinity between peoples through the depth of imaginative training and an other-directed reading practice--an inhabiting of other worlds and cultures--that fuels the ethical capacity of the humanities. It is my experience, after forty-five years of full-time university teaching, that this training will not be rigorous if it doesn’t come through the doctoral process that a university such as yours provides. National language training, and/or heritage language training simply is not a substitute. Comparativism is not merely the learning of many languages, but training in an approach or in approaches that lead us to the perception of a just world.

This kind of training will never generate income for the university directly. Think of it as epistemological and ethical health care for the society at large. We have come to expect fully prepared global citizens and leaders from you. Indeed, rather than close operations, your university should find ways of making Comparative Literature a more attractive choice for interested students so that the number of such persons in society increases significantly.

I write this letter in confidence and hope and look forward to a positive response.

Sincerely yours,


--
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

University Professor in the Humanities
Columbia University

Roland Le Huenen, University of Toronto

Saint-Pierre et Miquelon

August 11, 2010



President David Naylor
Simcoe Hall
University of Toronto

Cc: Provost Cheryl Misak, Dean Meric Gertler, Prof. Neil ten Kortennar, savecomplit

Re : the disestablishment of the Centre for Comparative Literature


Dear President Naylor,

I have from the start endorsed the petition by the students of the Centre for Comparative Literature who oppose the decision to disestablish the Centre. If I have refrained from writing until now, it is because I know too well that my status as former director, instead of helping the cause of the Centre, could have been perceived as supporting partisan motivation. As the Bible says “no man is a prophet in his own country”. Now that the national and international academic community, through a petition of more than 6000 signatures and numerous letters addressed to you, has had the opportunity to express its views, I join my voice to theirs to denounce a shocking and ill-advised decision.

I do not intend to offer a full defense for the Centre. Many excellent arguments have already been provided in the letters which were sent to you, and I do not want to repeat what was previously so well said. Drawing on my experience as a former director, I simply wish to add a few remarks.

Far from being an ad hoc program which would serve a specific and temporary purpose, as the decanal decision seems to imply, the Centre was created under the leadership of Northrop Frye more than 40 years ago, to be the locus of a discipline which appeared in the 1830s in Europe before being taught at Harvard University at the end of the 19th century. Since then, Comparative Literature programs have flourished in the best universities around the world and especially in the US. What is unique to Comparative Literature as a discipline is that it allows a dialogue among national literatures, with the arts and other disciplines from the angle of cultural inquiries. Furthermore, it reflects upon and theorizes its own practice. If theory has to some extent penetrated the language and literature departments at the University of Toronto, it is certainly not present in these units to the same depth and with the same purpose as it is in Comparative Literature. In addition, the Centre is the only academic unit at the University of Toronto where graduate students can pursue research on several national literatures in the original languages. Since its inception in 1969, the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto has been a highly dynamic and productive academic unit, praised for the quality of its programs, the excellence of its faculty, teaching and research. It has always attracted top students from Canada and abroad where it contributes to enhance the reputation of the University. One has not to take my word for this, but simply to look at where the signatures on the petition are coming from and where the letters which were sent to you originated. Moreover, the large number of applications the Centre receives each year from abroad confirms how well it is regarded in foreign academic circles. Along the years the Centre has acknowledged the changes that occurred in the discipline, introduced new methodologies, promoted interdisciplinary inquiry and teaching, and went beyond its Eurocentric origins to welcome seminars and research in Asian, Latin American, African literature and culture. Remaining at the forefront of cross-cultural exchange, literary theory and innovative inquiry, the Centre for Comparative Literature is not simply another unit in the Faculty of Arts and Science, but stands at the very heart of the Humanities at the University of Toronto. Recommending its disestablishment is not only ill-advised, it is an absurd attack against academic excellence, a crime against Humanities. Such a move would deeply hurt the reputation of the University of Toronto in Canada and abroad.

I urge you to reconsider such a short-sighted and counterproductive decision.

Sincerely,



Roland Le Huenen, D. Lit (honoris causa), FRSC
Professor of French and Comparative Literature
Former Director of COL (1998-2009)
University of Toronto

Michael Palencia-Roth, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

CUPE Local 3902, University of Toronto

Dear Dean Meric Gertler:
CC: President David Naylor, Provost Cheryl Misak, Dean Brian Corman, savecomplit@gmail.com, uteau@lists.cupe.ca

On behalf of the over 7,000 members of CUPE 3902, we are writing to express our dissatisfaction with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Academic Plan and the process by which it was developed. This plan has had a deeply unsettling effect on many of our members as they contemplate the possible elimination of the departments and programs where they study and work.

Last October you formed a non-transparent committee composed entirely of administrators and tenured faculty to develop the FAS Academic Plan. Despite the obvious and predominant presence of our members as instructors, teaching assistants, and students in the departments evaluated, no CUPE 3902 member was included on this committee. As a result of the exclusion of CUPE 3902 members and thousands of other students and non-teaching staff, the committee has produced a plan that is wildly out of touch with the needs and perspectives of the broader University community. In a pattern that is becoming disturbingly prevalent, FAS chose to develop the plan first and consult with the community second. If FAS hopes to obtain the consent of the members of CUPE 3902 and other members of the University community, then we must be brought into the planning process in a meaningful way at its inception.

As a result of a very flawed planning process, the FAS Academic Plan has produced a series of proposals that cuts some of the most dynamic and effective programs at the University. The creation of a School of Languages and Literatures will regress to a thoroughly outdated model of language instruction. The elimination of East Asian Studies will dismantle one of the most treasured Departments at the University where scholars are undertaking research and teaching that cuts across disciplinary and national boundaries. Likewise, the elimination of the Centre for Comparative Literature will cut a locus of important interdisciplinary study and one of the most storied programs at the University. The elimination of the newly formed Centre for Ethics terminates what was quickly becoming an innovative cluster for scholars from across the University who are interested in ethical questions. These are just a few of the devastating effects that the FAS Academic Plan will have on innovative teaching and study at the University of Toronto. In addition, the proposed changes have badly damaged the reputation of the University resulting in scathing accounts in the Globe and Mail and the Chronicle of Higher Education and vocal dissent by prominent academics from around the world.

We believe that the FAS Academic Plan is fundamentally flawed and that none of the proposed changes and cuts should be made. A committee should be created that is representative of the University community. This committee should engage in meaningful consultation with the campus community before developing a plan. We understand the challenges facing FAS, but we believe the best way to address these challenges is through an inclusive and consultative planning process. If such a process is not undertaken, then the members of CUPE 3902 will actively oppose the FAS Academic Plan as an attack on their workplace and learning environment. We await your invitation to help develop a fair and workable plan and, as always, can be reached at the above address and phone number.


Sincerely,



The Executive of CUPE 3902

Lubomir Dolezel, emeritus, University of Toronto

Lago di Garda, Italy, August 2, 2010.

Dear President Naylor:

I have learned quite late about a proposal advanced by the Strategic Planning Committee (?) of the University of Toronto to merge the Centre for Comparative Literature with the proposed School of Languages and Literatures (?). As a former faculty member of the Centre, cross-apointed in 1982 from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, I am greatly alarmed by this proposal. Since its inception by Northrop Frye, the Centre has survived many and deep changes in the conception and philosophy of the study of literature. It has thrived on these changes, both by promoting them and critically assessing them. What I found exciting about teaching at the Centre was the energy, devotion, curiosity and creativity of both its faculty and its students. Students of the Centre have been very positively influenced by this atmosphere and are, as alumni still devoted to the institution of their maturation. A merger with the proposed School would most likely destroy this atmosphere and repudiate possible students-candidates.

What should also be considered is the national and international importance of the Centre. It has been seen as a true centre of Canadian humanities and its transformation would be felt as another severe loss for the Canadian humanistic studies. Internationally, the Centre has been known for its scholarly achievements, and its international reputation can, I believe, match any department or institute of the University of Toronto. The contacts with the international research of literature has been mutual: papers and books of the faculty and advanced doctoral students have been read all over the globe and often translated into several foreign languages; on the other hand, internationally renowned scholars were attracted to the Centre as visiting scholars or Northrop Frye visiting professors. It is in these mutual contacts that the study of literature as an artistic cultural activity has flourished at the Centre.

For these (and not only these) reasons, I cannot but join the former director of the Centre, professor Peter Nesselroth in pleading with you: “If the university is truly commited to excellence, it should seriously reconsider this ill-advised recommendation”.

Sincerely yours,

Lubomir Dolezel

Professor Emeritus of Slavic and Comparative Literature

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood
c/o McClelland & Stewart
75 Sherbourne St., 5th Floor
Toronto, ON
M5A 2P9


President David Naylor
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27 King's College Circle
Toronto, ON
M5S 1A1

CC. Provost Cheryl Misak, Dean Meric Gertler, Professor Neil ten Kortenaar,


Re. Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto

July 27, 2010


Dear President Naylor,

I am writing to express my disappointment and frustration with the recommendation of the University of Toronto's Strategic Planning Committee to disestablish the Centre of Comparative Literature in 2011. As you may know, I was a student at Victoria College and studied under Northrop Frye. My admiration for his scholarship, and the work done at the centre he founded, is longstanding.

But the reasons I urge for a reconsideration of this decision are not simply nostalgic. This is a time in which cross-cultural trends are increasing exponentially; interdisciplinary study is booming, and globalization is the watchword of the day. To shunt students off to various linguistic departments instead of permitting conversation and collaboration in a central space is both counterintuitive and short-sighted. This is precisely the wrong time to make a decision of this kind, and would indeed reflect very poorly on the university overall. The University of Toronto, I know, prides itself on being able to dialogue with many of the top universities across our southern border and around the world. The Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto is the only one of its kind in our country. While I understand the temptation to save a few bucks with this closure, I urge you instead to heed the loud reminders (available to read at www.savecomplit.ca) that the costs of closing the Centre might be greater than the University of Toronto can afford.

Sincerely,



Margaret Atwood

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

Marketa Russell Holtebrinck, University of Toronto

August 6, 2010

Dear Dean Gertler,

I am writing to you to express my astonishment regarding your recommendation to "dis-establish" the Centre for Comparative Literature as of July 1, 2011. Since the recommended measures, and the circumstances surrounding their announcement in particular, became a topic of public debate, I have been puzzled by the seeming indifference of the Strategic Committee to the academic and intellectual fate of the incoming PhD students in the unit deemed to close.

The vague insurance in the memorandum from vice-dean Baker that was distributed to graduate students on July 15th makes sure only three things for me. First, come what it may, our course schedule remains as planned for 2010-11; second, the PhD funding package remains valid; third, when I receive my degree the word "comparative literature" will appear somewhere on the document. What it does not assure me of-- and most probably no other incoming PhD student in the Centre --is the curriculum/course offering in my second and third year (should I need it), and the decreasing level of disciplinary cohesiveness due to the loss of faculty and the weakening of the "comparative" student body. In my eyes, a collaborative program in comparative literature is only a cosmetic measure that masks its factual nonexistence.

While academic units such as the German department realized the necessity of teaching theory already (!) in the 400-level courses in their BA programs, the need for real comparativity, i.e. reaching beyond the range of national, cultural and temporal delimitations, is not necessarily at the heart of many disciplines. This may, of course, change with time due to the increasing cultural diversification and shifting of national communities, but so is changing and growing the task of comparative literature. Not only do we read literature and culture in multiple languages and across established canons, we also take the findings of more narrowly constituted scholarship and learn to see them in different contexts in order to see new patterns and tendencies. This is the true experimental nature of our discipline.

I chose University of Toronto for its diversity, its stimulating environment, and for its faculty-- the human face of the huge university enterprise -- many of whom excel not only academically, but also in their ability and willingness to act as mentors to aspiring scholars. With my background -- I studied literature and culture in four different languages, none of which is my mother tongue -- I was aware that I would not fit in any of the more or less self-contained national literature departments in Toronto or elsewhere, which resulted in the preference I gave to the offer from the Centre for Comparative Literature.

The official offer of admission, both from the Centre and the School of Graduate Studies, stressed the financial and academic commitment of the Centre to incoming students that would enable them to develop and pursue their research, as well as, primarily, to complete their degree. With good faith -- indeed nothing else would occur to me -- I signed and returned the offer. There was no small press at the bottom of the letterhead or on its backside saying "subject to changes or cancellation at any time"; it was a solid and upright offer to make the Centre with all its resources my academic and intellectual home for as long as I pursue my degree in comparative literature. Or at least, I considered it solid enough to move my family to Toronto.

The recommendation of the SPC all at once shattered the multiple affiliations on which I had started to build my academic future. I urge you, Dean Gertler, to review and reasonably amend the plans of the SPC so that they accommodate the promises made in the name of the University in their full extent. I would not be able to carry on my multilingual research project in any of the affiliated departments of the proposed new School of Languages and Literatures. With faculty support severely cut back and no new students admitted fully as "comparatists", I also fear that my graduate studies would rather dully proceed than intellectually thrive, as they may do now in the current atmosphere of trans-departmental exchange that the Centre is known for across the University.


I am convinced that the Centre's intensive training in critical thinking, as the former director of the Centre, Professor Le Huenen described the PhD program to me three years ago, is not possible without a clearly defined comparative program. In practical terms, I think that the decreased disciplinary rigor of the proposed collaborative program would soon be well known within the academic community, which would no doubt devalue both the degrees conferred and the future employment prospects of their holders. This unsure future weighs on all of the students in the Centre, but it is especially hard on the incoming ones since the recommended closure of the Centre as a degree-granting entity would cut through their entire graduate training.

Regarding the recent announcement that your "goal is nothing less than to ensure the most stimulating and supportive environment possible for our students and faculty as we focus on our core mission of undergraduate and graduate education and advanced research across a wide range of fields," I firmly believe that you will value the trust I put into the University as represented by the Centre of Comparative Literature, and that you will reward the decades of the excellent teaching and research work done in the Centre by endorsing its status as well as its intellectual and academic capacities.


Sincerely,



Marketa Russell Holtebrinck

Incoming PhD student
Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
Maclaren Gold Medal (awarded by Victoria College to a graduating student with highest standing in Modern Languages)


CC: President David Naylor, University of Toronto
Provost Cheryl Misak, University of Toronto
Save Comparative Literature Campaign



Paper letter to follow

Olga Bazilevica, University of Toronto

Dear President Naylor, Provost Misak, and Dean Gertler,

I am writing to you as a concerned student of the Centre for Comparative Literature, one who is just about to begin her PhD at a Centre that might cease to exist before her graduation. I am deeply worried about the future of this institution as well as the impact that the closing of the Centre might have on the state of Comparative Literature in Canada. I am also worried about my own future here in Toronto—my trust in the University of Toronto has been shaken and the future of the program is so uncertain that I am seriously considering applying for other universities in Europe, a decision that is very unpleasant for me.

Like most of the international students at the Centre, I came to Canada from Latvia by way of Germany only because of the program and the chance to study at the Centre for Comparative Literature. I declined a prestigious DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) award in Germany which would have kept me closer to home in order to come to University of Toronto, a university, I might add, of which I had a great impression. Upon visiting the campus a year before applying, I was struck by the college-based structure that reminded me of Cambridge and the feeling of stability and strength was supported by the thick Romanesque walls of University College or Victoria University. The Centre for Comparative Literature is a renowned centre of progressive thought and academic innovations with a great reputation not only in North America, but also in Europe where I hope to return to teach upon graduation. I was strongly advised by my professors in Germany to accept the offer from University of Toronto, as the prestige of the Centre would add value to my degree and the innovation would give me the chance to widen my academic horizons. Indeed, this has been especially valuable as the approach to Comparative Literature in Toronto has proved to be significantly different from what I learned in Europe and, even though I work on European literature, I am actively engaging with North American theorists’ ideas.

The Centre for Comparative Literature at University of Toronto was the perfect mix for me – it is a small and very friendly, but also an incredibly creative and inspiring community that is an integral part of a huge community of one of the largest universities in North America, with contacts all over the world. Indeed, the Centre has its own very distinct and very special identity that is just as important as the reputation of the University for the students. It is a heterogeneous community that shares passion for culture and its constellations be it across time, media or national traditions. The discussions with my colleagues over a coffee are as productive for me as the discussions in classes. I have been deeply impressed by the vivacity and eagerness of the students of the Centre, and their professionalism, be it in giving talks or even organizing conferences. Last year’s colloquium left such a strong impression on me that I even changed the subject of my dissertation – after hearing a whole panel on nostalgia and having a chance to personally meet Svetlana Boym, I discovered that this is what I really want to pursue as a scholar.

Culture has the great potential to build bridges between nations rather than to erect walls, an idea that for me is one of the foundations of comparative literature; literary scholars act as ambassadors of social and political development across the world. I feel lucky to have a chance to explore Canada, a country that, by its singular example, manifests a humane and tolerant diversity. Coming from a young Baltic state that is facing serious challenges in human rights and strong nationalism, I am sure that it is definitely something we can learn from in my home.

It was a great shock for me to find out that the while the stability of the Romanesque walls remains unshaken, the inner structure of whole departments can be refurbished and programs doomed to disestablishment. In fact, it seems like the thick stone is not the guarantor, but rather a screen that covers big decisions so that their announcement becomes a shock for most of people affected. I do understand that the University is going through financial difficulties and agree that some changes have to be made, and yet I feel that the process of decision-making has to be more transparent, most especially for the departments and centres affected, so that these have a chance to “defend themselves” in giving a deeper understanding of their work and the consequences of the decisions made. I am sure that open discussions can be productive and more acceptable ways of dealing with the financial difficulties can be found. I am convinced that this ways will prove the current and future value of comparative literature to the University, and the disestablishment of the Centre will no longer be recommended.



Respectfully yours,


Olga Bazilevica,

Centre for Comparative Literature, PhD student, Toronto

Gaëtan Fleuriau Chateau, Director, APFUC

STATEMENT OF SUPPORT:
 
Closure of a university department is always a backward step, regardless of explanations and justifications that administrators find so easily.

When it concerns the Centre established by Northrop Frye, whose international reputation is a credit to the whole of Canada, such a closure borders on insanity.

An administrative decision is about to deal a serious blow to the reputation of the University of Toronto.
I sincerely hope that such an incredibly negative act will not be implemented.

Gaëtan Fleuriau Chateau

Directeur de la programmation
Association des professeurs de français des universités et collèges canadiens

Président de la section du Canada
Association des membres de l'ordre des Palmes académiques

Grievance Suit from UT Faculty Association

Information Report #14

Faculty of Arts & Science Academic Plan 2010-2015
Association Grievance

In the July 14, 2010, memo that accompanied the formal release of the Faculty of Arts & Science Academic Plan 2010-2015, Dean Gertler announced that “The real work of implementation now begins.” UTFA welcomed the change in tone in the Dean’s July 21 memo, in which he states that “the consultation part of the process is just beginning.” The instant and widespread protests that greeted the Academic Plan no doubt prompted this significant shift in approach.

UTFA believes that “the consultation part of the process” should have occurred long before any dramatic changes were announced. Lawyers at UTFA are drafting an Association grievance by way of protest. UTFA will issue notice to our members when the grievance is filed, in late August or early September. UTFA will ask that the approval process for the Academic Plan be halted until the grievance is settled. The Association grievance will be filed with the Provost’s office. UTFA’s senior officers will meet with the Administration’s senior officers within ten working days of filing or at a mutually agreed-upon time. If the grievance is not resolved over a series of meetings, it may be moved to the Grievance Review Panel and heard there. UTFA will prosecute this grievance firmly, steadily, and fully. The Association grievance is the only mechanism UTFA has available by which to challenge the planning process. The limited means of redress are among the many shortcomings of our antiquated Memorandum of Agreement, or special plan, which structures the relationship between the Administration and U of T’s faculty and librarians. Unlike some other faculty associations, UTFA does not have a negotiated protocol for addressing program closure.

It is UTFA’s position that significant structural changes in the delivery of the University’s academic program, especially because U of T is a public university, require open and extensive discussion among all stakeholders, including librarians who support faculty research, undergraduates, and graduate students. The consultation process is crucial when the proposed changes involve closing centres and programs and revoking departmental status. UTFA is disappointed to see that the Academic Plan appears to rely heavily on the report of the small committee of external reviewers.

From UTFA’s point of view, whenever the elimination or significant restructuring of units is contemplated, the quality of the education faculty deliver and the working conditions and scholarly standing of research-intensive and teaching-intensive faculty are paramount. There is no question that the closing of units adversely affects academic appointments, even if faculty know that they will not be fired. The disruption and pain are sharp for those pre-tenure faculty who have been recently hired, and they are equally so for those faculty and librarians who have worked for many years to build irreplaceable expertise in specific areas of research, whether Romance languages, ethics, or criminology.

No FAS academic program should be closed in order to save overhead costs, especially when we consider that monies generated by FAS enrolments continue to be transferred to other divisions. The Faculty of Arts & Science has sent mixed messages on the reasons for the closures. Many of the reasons provided in the Plan show a disheartening logic. Are we to believe that Comparative Literature was closed because it did its job “too well”? That it was too successful? The only acceptable rationale for forming a School of Languages and Literatures is that doing so would considerably empower its members academically. Are the former departments now to be called “programs”? Will independence be maintained? Will graduate students continue to be attracted to the disciplines covered by the School? What research funds and support will be available so that research may thrive? These are questions faculty are asking.

Problems with the FAS planning process were apparent early on. For example, the manner in which breadth requirements and competencies were hastily imposed undermined support for curriculum renewal. UTFA is not in the business of academic planning; on the other hand, we have rarely seen such an outpouring of dismay over a single plan. UTFA has long been worried by a lack of transparency in governance at the University. Weaknesses in planning, especially when they affect the appointments of faculty and librarians, are also weaknesses in governance.

Among the goals of UTFA’s Association grievance are these:
• to substantially improve and widen consultation on the Academic Plan
• to restore collegial relations and trust between our members and the Administration
• to negotiate a protocol for program changes in the future that will better protect the fine reputation of U of T, and, by extension, the scholarly reputations of our members

UTFA will hold town hall meetings in early September (dates TBA) to provide faculty, librarians, and students with the opportunity to discuss how the academic planning process at U of T might be strengthened.


Any and all comments on this Information Report are welcome.



UTFA Information Report #14

Sita Monsef-Rao, University of Toronto

August 3, 2010

Dear President Naylor,

I am writing as an incoming PhD student at the Centre for Comparative Literature this fall to express my deep disappointment and distress at the recent news of the proposed closure of the program I am about to commence.

To begin with, I must say that this announcement has come at a very difficult moment in the academic year for me: at a time when I am supposed to be searching for a place to live, preparing to move to Toronto for the next four years and writing SSHRC and OGS grant applications, I am now having to reconsider my decision to attend the University of Toronto and giving serious thought to applying to other programs; the announcement of the recommended changes is surely most ill-timed for new graduate students.

My proposed area of specialization is in contemporary women's literature in Britain, Spain and France; my background is in French language, literature and translation. During the application process for my doctoral studies, I chose the University of Toronto and the Centre for Comparative Literature not only over other universities and other Comparative Literature programs but also over programs in national language departments; I made this choice precisely because of the opportunity of working with cross-appointed English, French, and Spanish professors using a comparative approach to the literature and cultures which interest me. The U of T's Centre for Comparative Literature with its interdisciplinary mandate and its ties to national language departments such as English, French, and Spanish & Portuguese as well as the Institute for Women's Studies and Gender Studies seemed to me to offer the most exciting intellectual space in which to pursue my research. In fact, it was the only school in North America at which I found, among the cross-appointed professors, a suitable potential supervisor in my area of research. On top of this, the U of T was strongly recommended to me by my professors as the best place in Canada to study Comparative Literature, with an excellent reputation and a thriving group of professors and graduate students.

For me (and likely for many of my colleagues), the proposed new School of Languages and Literatures is not a logical place to do my research in Comparative Literature as it excludes two of the three cultures and languages that I will examine: British and French. Furthermore, with the elimination of cross-appointed faculty, my course options would be greatly reduced and my supervisor no longer part of my program. There may be solutions to these issues for me as an incoming student in 2010, but in the future, Comparative Literature at U of T would not interest a student like myself. In addition, I do not see how a collaborative program within a school of languages and literature can offer the space for the exchange of ideas between comparatists which students like myself are keen to explore; I am very concerned that the proposed collaborative program will not attract the quality of students with whom I have been so looking forward to work. In any case, the structure and operation of the new School of Language and Literature and the place of Comparative Literature within it is currently so unclear as to suggest that this will be an extremely unstable time to begin my studies at U of T. Essentially, with the closure of the Centre for Comparative Literature in 2011, my primary reasons for attending the University of Toronto would disappear.

To conclude, it seems to me that the University of Toronto administration's proposed closure of the Centre and creation of a collaborative program in Comparative Literature reflects a short-sightedness focussed solely on financial considerations, a misunderstanding of the role and the contributions of the discipline of Comparative Literature within literary studies today and a step backwards in the U of T's commitment to the Humanities, not to mention a troubling disregard for the incoming graduate cohort who, by the time of the announcement, had already given up opportunities to study elsewhere.

I certainly hope that during the upcoming consultation process, a less drastic, more logical solution can be found to address the University's financial concerns with respect to the future of its world-renowned Centre for Comparative Literature.


Yours truly,


Sita Monsef-Rao
Incoming PhD Candidate
Centre for Comparative Literature


Cc: Cheryl Misak; Meric Gertler; the Save CompLit campaign.

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Daniel Fried, University of Alberta

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.

Meng, Yue, University of Toronto

July 27, 2010

Dear Dean Gertler,

I am writing this letter in the hope that the Strategic Planning Committee is to strengthen the higher education of East Asia and comparative scholarship, rather than weakening them. Please forgive me if I haven’t seen any academic field has been “strengthened” by ceasing to exist as an institutional entity, a department. To me, as it is so obvious to my colleagues, the irreversible loses caused by the removal of EAS and Comp. Lit will be much greater than the million which the SPC believes will be saving by amalgamation.

I would like to bring the following points to your attention.

1), East Asian studies is a fruitful academic field of its own, not a series of courses on literature, history, philosophy and religious studies. The cultural categories and primary sources of East Asian studies do not fit the European disciplinary boundaries of literature, history, arts and so on, and naturally require transdisciplinary methodological trainings. From this perspective, the Plan of New School of Language and Literature risks supporting a rather Euro-centric disciplinary regime that many East Asian (as well as comparative) scholars have worked very hard for decades to depart from. The good news is that by now, there has been rather solid academic field of studying the humanities of East Asia. In fact as East Asian humanities and Comparative Literature have freed themselves from an older disciplinary regime, the two fields have become some of the most fruitful fields of research and teaching in the past two decades. That is way they have been in expansion in most of the research universities in North America, Europe, China, Australia, Korea, to name just a few. I hope you and the SPC members be very cautious not to usher an administrative denial to two successful academic fields to which EAS and comparative scholars across the world have devoted many years of efforts?

2), East Asian Studies department at U of T is a thriving, promising department. One of the privilege of being a faculty member at EAS is to be a colleague with brilliant, top-level scholars -- thanks especially to the successful recruitment in the past few years. Beside the good collaboration I have had with Graham Sanders, Atsuko Sakaki, and Andre Schmid, as a China scholar I am particularly happy to have new colleagues such as Yiching Wu, Linda Rui Feng, Janet Poole and Tom Keirstead. Yiching Wu’s work, for example, was widely respected by many senior scholars in the China field around the world even before he completed his Ph. D. Linda R. Feng’s work is so smartly unique that she was able to get some of the best young and senior scholars in China studies to come to Toronto and speak at the city workshop she organized last spring. They and other colleagues have made the department a home of inspiration for me. We share common academic interests and enjoy good working relationship in many aspects ranging from undergraduate and graduate teaching, supervising dissertation, to reading each other’s works. Even the small China reading group that started by 5-6 people in the Purple Lounge of EAS a couple years ago has tripled its size and now involves many in and out of the department. My point is that few EAS departments enjoy such talented faculties, good chemistry and shared intellectual focus at once. And these sure signs of future success make EAS at U of T a promising, exciting place to be. But it takes a department to hold these qualities together and to ensure their future existence. I hope you foresee that if we are dispersed into different departments, each of us will achieve much less in terms contributing to an “EAS program.” In fact my true worry is that the new faculty we have been so lucky to recruit will seek better future elsewhere, in school that provides a research- level EAS program, that is, a department.

3), At a personal level, I feel the Plan will take away the two homes of my research and teaching at once. My graduate training (my Ph.D. is in History), and my research interests on urban culture and environment-related topics are quite removed from language and literature. So are my teaching interests. (I taught EAS undergrads Chinese literature in the past couple years partially to balance the department’s China program where professor Guisso taught history and professor Shen philosophy.) Since professor Guisso retired, my teaching interests have moved back to fields I am more comfortable and qualified to teach, such as the culture of environment. My new undergraduate course in 2010-11 will be offered with greater dependence on curriculum that combines philosophy, environment events, Buddhist culture and modern cultural history of East Asia. These are subjects which EAS department colleagues have already shared an interest in teaching. I also plan to collaborate with cultural institutions and organizations in the East Asian community in courses like this. I simply cannot imagine I will find greater (or even equal) intellectual, curriculum-related and institutional support from the school of language and literature than from East Asian Studies department. It simply does not fit.

4) My graduate teaching is in the similar situation. But my biggest issue is about the trouble the Plan will bring to the current students. The removal of EAS department will bring more harm than benefits to the future work of my graduate students. The 5 Ph. D students under my supervision work on different research topics ranging from the urban transformation of Beijing to the Manchuria film industry in the 1940s. Only one to them is pursuing a topic that falls within the disciplinary boundaries of the new school of language and literature. In fact the faculty and graduate body of a school of language and literature cannot give the students the necessary intellectual environment and academic advices in terms of graduate study, dissertation writing, as well as job search. Most of these students came a long way from US and China, and had given up other good choices to be here. The sudden announcement of the Plan has already stirred fear among students and distracted them from what they should be doing with 100% focus. If the intention of SPC is to eliminate EAS graduate program and stop students from coming, then I must say it has done a good job. And to tell you the truth, I certainly lost some good sleep thinking what is more responsible for the students: to encourage them to stay in a weakened program of the new school or to suggest that they apply to other schools with true East Asian Studies program before it’s too late.

5) Finally, it will be very hard to persuade the international community and scholars and students in China that U of T by any chance supports its China program if Department of East Asian Studies ceases to exist. They will very likely see that education programs of their cultures at U of T are being willingly sacrificed by the policy makers. They will be questions about the logic of amalgamating Department of East Asia Studies -- why not Near and Middle Eastern Studies, English and French -- etc. These doubts need not be true to generate impact. It does not take much to turn potential investors and incoming students away from a school that seems to cut its East Asian Department so willingly.

I hope you and SPC members consider to revise the plan so that EAS can continue exists as a departmental unit. It will prosper in time.



Yours truly



Meng, Yue

Darcy Gauthier, University of Toronto

Dear Dean Gertler,

I am writing to you as a concerned PhD student at the Centre for Comparative Literature. I have just read through your 40 page outline of the changes you intend to make to the Faculty of Arts and Science. Though I believe that this is a valuable document that highlights many of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the Faculty, I would like to express my deepest disappointment towards your proposal to amalgamate several independent programs into a School of Languages and Literatures. I realize you have received many letters already, and so I apologize for your time in reading this one meagre addition to the mounting protest. However, as a student, I would like to implore you to consider my pleas and the pleas of many others -- both within the University and without, from students and professors, graduates and undergraduates, locally and internationally -- to consider a different way of resolving the financial problems of the Faculty that will not devastate the research and teaching that is being done in these disciplines.

I am disappointed to see many progressive suggestions within your document compromised elsewhere by the proposed new School. For one, you have rightly written in your document that “the most challenging problems of our complex, interconnected world do not always fall neatly into academic disciplines, or even professions” (14), and I agree upon the importance of “exploiting the breadth across the University through strong interdivisional partnerships” (18). The argument for ‘interdivisional partnerships’ is a convincing one. In this respect, your proposed courses in “Big Ideas” are interesting and valuable and I trust that first year undergraduates will benefit from being immersed in scholarship coming from diverse “disciplinary streams” (14). Linda Hutcheon’s own groundbreaking work with her husband, Michael Hutcheon, on the intersection of opera and medicine would be a valuable model for such an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to teaching and research. Your suggestion for a course showcasing how neuroscience, economics, and philosophy each approach “the mind” could also be a fascinating and important point of departure for new students to the University, one that rightly highlights the fragility and permeability of various disciplinary boundaries. Indeed, as Linda Hutcheon writes in a recent article on the dismantling of Comparative Literature, “to deal with the complex realities of today's world, we need to be able to think outside our disciplinary silos, to think across those borders that separate us from speaking to and learning from others in diverse fields with fruitfully differing perspectives” (truth-out.org, July 19, 2010). Of course, interdisciplinary research and teaching of this kind is already being pioneered at several places in the UofT: EAS for one is already a successful interdisciplinary department, and Comparative Literature by definition is interdisciplinary as well.

As an aside, I notice that you do not in fact use the term “interdisciplinary”, and opt instead to use “multidisciplinary”. I would like to know if you are drawing a distinction here between ‘multi-’ and ‘interdisciplinarity’, or whether these terms are interchangeable. I wonder because the Faculty of Arts and Science is in the most obvious sense already multi-disciplinary -- in the sense that it houses multiple disciplines. Multidisciplinarity is not, however, necessarily interdisciplinary. Perhaps it is a small point, but when I think of this term ‘multidisciplinary’, I imagine multiple yet discrete disciplines whose “ideas” are not always conversant with each other in a meaningful, mutually implicating way. They perhaps reside side-by-side, but their conversations run parallel to each other rather than overlapping. Interdisciplinarity, on the other hand, addresses the connections between these disciplines, as well as their inscrutable differences. Rebecca Comay frames the distinction quite well in the context of Comparative Literature when she says that “it’s not just about multiplying the number of disciplines you can juggle -- it’s about experimenting with different frames of reference” (rabble.ca, July 12, 2010). I trust that the “Big Ideas” program will keep this distinction in mind when it attempts to negotiate various disciplinary frameworks.

Let me reiterate that I applaud your efforts to promote “interdivisional partnerships”. However, I would also like to express my serious misgivings about whether or not the proposed School of Languages and Literatures will be contributing to this program of ‘interdivisionality’, or interdisciplinarity, or even multidisciplinarity -- unless by multiple disciplines we mean two: Literatures and Languages. I cannot understand how sending non-literature and non-language professors back to their respective disciplines -- history, philosophy, French, Latin American Studies, etc. -- can be fostering, in your own words, “the multidisciplinary comprehensiveness and strength of the faculty” (14). It seems instead that this will be reversing the progress made towards a more interdisciplinary approach to teaching and research at the UofT. As Linda Hutcheon has said in the same article quoted above, “the move back to departmental disciplinary hegemony and what will be perceived as a Eurocentric focus will be seen by many as a retrograde step for an institution that had prided itself, and rightly so, on its vibrant interdisciplinary and transnational/global intellectual environment of cultural exchange”. Narrowing the interdisciplinary focus down to mere instruction in languages and literatures is far from a championing of, and more like an attack on, interdisciplinary studies. It goes without saying that Comparative Literature in this proposed school will cease to function as a nexus of interdisciplinary work. Hutcheon goes on to argue that language departments, such as EAS, do not just teach language, and Comparative literature does not just teach literature: “neither language nor literature exists in a vacuum”. How could a school of Languages and Literatures, one that is very explicit about its intentions to send faculty who teach neither languages nor literatures back to their respective disciplines, be anything but such a vacuum?

There are other areas of your document with which I am in agreement. For one, you have written that “we are well recognized as a research powerhouse in all three major sectors of the Faculty,” and that “[a] large number of our graduate units enjoy very strong reputations internationally for the excellence of their programs” (4). I could not agree more. Our strengths in research and our international reputation are without question. Indeed, the Centre for Comparative Literature is one of the University’s strongest internationally recognized programs. Its annual graduate colloquium attracts scholars from around the world. Its students garner prestigious government scholarships, including the addition of a Vanier scholar this year. Well respected professors of international renown have come to the Centre to teach seminars -- for example Julia Kristeva, who has already written you a letter protesting the closure of the Centre.

For these reasons and many more, I am certain that the dismantling of the Centre will undermine the Faculty’s international -- not to mention domestic -- prestige, which we both agree is one of its key strengths. Letters of protest from many highly reputable international -- as well as local -- sources attest to this fact. Moreover, I gather that the widely held opinion of students within the program now is that they would not have considered applying to the University of Toronto, or would have accepted admissions offers from other serious Comparative Literature programs, had they known that the University of Toronto’s program would lose its autonomous status and be transformed into a mere collaborative degree. Such a program does not present itself as a very attractive offer to students who are serious about studying Comparative Literature. I know I speak for many students in the program when I say that I worry about the value my degree will have coming from the death throes of a soon to be defunct centre. Could you honestly say that as a member of a hiring committee looking for a Professor of East Asian Studies, or German, or Comparative Literature, you would choose an applicant with a degree in “Languages and Literatures” over one with a more specialized degree in those fields?

I also worry that the new school will not allow for the same research and teaching opportunities as the Centre for Comparative Literature. The research that I do as a PhD student does not fall neatly into any national literature, and actually extends beyond literature into theatre and cinema. Moreover, it draws upon the contributions of psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and phenomenological discourses, and where would I find the theoretical guidance for this project without any body within the school dedicated to issues of theory and criticism? I don’t see how my project can be continued meaningfully without the scholarly ethos of the Centre for Comparative Literature as support.

You need only look at the course offerings of the Centre to see that what it offers would not be possible elsewhere. Where, for example, would a course on Lacanian psychoanalysis, or on Benjamin’s Arcades Project, or in Neoprimitivist discourses, fit in the School of Languages and Literatures? And if it could fit, why not call it the School of Comparative Literature? For, it seems that this flexibility regarding national, linguistic, and disciplinary boundaries would indeed make it into a large Comparative Literature department. If you admit that this sort of work will not not fit, then you must concede that you are diminishing the humanities, not enriching them; if you admit that these projects will fit, then you will have to concede that the focus of this school ought to be much broader than Language and Literature, and would in fact be no different from a Comparative Literature program, in which case you should not be dismantling the Centre, but making it the focal point of the School. Indeed, you say that the new School intends to enrich students’ language comprehension and their appreciation of “multiple literatures in a broadly comparative perspective” (15), which would lead one to draw the conclusion that Comparative Literature, which has comparativity and excellence in languages as its guiding principles, would hold a key position within this school. Thus it is surprising to see that Comparative Literature is the one discipline that is being dissolved and made peripheral. The argument that Comparative Literature has already succeeded in its mission and that its methodologies have successfully been disseminated to other disciplines, thus rendering it redundant, is a faulty argument, as well. The ‘mission’ of Comparative Literature is constantly evolving and adapting, and so is never really definitively accomplished.


I am also in agreement when you write that “we are fortunate to be situated in the middle of Canada’s largest metropolis and one of the world’s most culturally diverse and vibrant urban regions” (5). However, I find that the validity of this statement to be compromised by the creation of this School of Languages and Literatures. The cultural diversity of the UofT is one of the very reasons why I chose to do my graduate work here in Toronto. This is why I find it so upsetting that you are deciding to turn many of its unique, culturally diverse programs into a melting pot of languages and literatures. It should be evident from the protest arising out of Japanese and Chinese language media that the Asian community, for one, is skeptical of the “global community” that this school proposes to be manufacturing. I would like to argue that what makes Toronto such a vibrant and culturally diverse urban region is its tolerance towards a diversity of local communities, no matter how small or fledgling. If we appreciate this, should we not adopt the same tolerance towards the proliferation of smaller units on campus (6)?

In fact, your document explicitly mentions “the large size of the institution” as being a challenge to “student engagement and a sense of community amongst our students” (10). For this reason, I find it difficult to see how further enlarging and homogenizing the Faculty of Arts and Science can do anything other than aggravate this problem. The individual units you intend to dismantle already have their own communities. I can serve as witness to the communities present already at the Centre of Comparative Literature and the Department of East Asian Studies. I am speaking not only of graduate communities: you will notice from the heavy undergraduate contingency in our protests in the department of EAS that there is not only a community already in existence at the undergraduate level, but that this community is in fact very engaged, and strongly opposed to what you believe will be “enhancing” their academic experience. I for one don’t think that a sense of community will be fostered by gutting current communities that have developed on campus. On the contrary, creating a mega-school of languages and literatures will be posing a threat to the communities that have already developed around and between the local home-bases of the various units you intend to dismantle.

You draw attention to weaknesses in “active and collaborative learning” (6), but I do not believe this new School will create new synergies between the different programs involved. Assuming that by corralling them all into one administrative umbrella you will be fostering an environment for collaborative learning is an overly simplistic and naive understanding of the complexity -- the history, the methodologies, the identities -- of each of these unique disciplines. For example, I am a student who studies Japanese literature. Why would arbitrary administrative and even physical proximity to other units inspire or influence me to take courses in their field, or to incorporate them into my research? Slavic Languages and Literatures, despite being present in the same room, would still be as distant from my research as it is now. This is not to disparage other literatures and languages. Far from it. I think that what is most disparaging is to assume that the study of these literatures and languages is so superficial as to be easily assimilated into a single body of research and teaching. To assume that they are all in some fundamental way the ‘same’ and assimilable is at best naive, at worst imperialist. Those who are serious about studying a few well-chosen literatures for their research will not be enticed by the sort of literary and linguistic dilettantism that assumes one can simply jump from one to the other with ease just because the space between them has been made more compact.

Respect for the diversity between and even within the plurality of studies being amalgamated would be a good start towards a more subtle vision of global community. It would require that we respect the local and the peripheral, and respect the particularities of all these valuable disciplines, rather than heavy-handedly lumping them together in a way that, I must say, seems rather haphazard and disrespectful of their very divergent histories, projects, and identities. Much like all languages and literatures, not all Centres and Departments are alike.

I realize I am straddling a paradox here: I applaud interdisciplinarity and comparativity, while I also affirm the inherent differences that separate cultures, languages, and disciplines. This paradox is one that that is carefully walked by all students of Comparative Literature. As Eva Kushner has written, “from their earliest days comparative literature studies have lived in a paradox: they presuppose universals at work within human literatures and cultures, and seek to bring them to light through the examination of the diversity of these literatures and cultures” (“Literature in the Global Village”, Journal of Intercultural Studies, no.19, 1992: 54-61). Kushner proposes that Comparative Literature has evolved beyond its original methodologies -- ones of simple binary opposition, comparison and contrast, between Europe and its Other, between centre and periphery -- to adopt a more flexible method with “respect for the diversity and for the differentials of specific objects.” Comparative Literature has evolved into a discipline that respects the “permanence of cultural specificities.” With this methodological emphasis, Comparative Literature is indeed one of the disciplines most able to negotiate the true complexities and paradoxes of “global citizenship.” This is why I believe that especially without the guidance of Comparative Literature, this new School of Languages and Literatures will be nothing other than a placeless and disarticulated melting-pot of cultural homogeneity -- one wherein, just as in the actual global sphere, asymmetrical or oppressively homogenizing forces at work on the economic level will trump any superficial celebratory optimism regarding the pluralization and hybridization of cultural contents.

I don’t know if any of my concerns will be of any influence to your decision. In fact, I have my doubts, despite your emphatic assurance, that these “organizational changes” are even for the purpose of “preserving -- and indeed, strengthening -- scholarship and teaching in these fields”. For, are they not also explicitly for the purpose of “reducing overhead costs” (16)? It is true that you are saying we can have it both ways, that “the current conjuncture presents us with a number of promising opportunities to enhance our strengths and address our weaknesses” (7). Your report is full of such dialectical compromises: small-group and large-group learning; graduate and undergraduate education; international and local opportunities for community involvement; and so on. The dialectic most fundamental to this proposal, however, is the one that I find most difficult to reconcile: that of “academic excellence” and “financial constraint.” That is not to say that I believe fiscal frugality and academic rigor are incompatible, but rather that I believe a true compromise between the two has not yet been presented. In other words, I am sure a solution can be reached in which no program needs to be bluntly sacrificed wholesale in the name of fiscal prudence.

I apologize in advance for the use of such a cliched analogy, but I am sure you are familiar with Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Therein, Swift laments that the number of children born to poor Irish families has become an economic burden on the state. Therefore, as they are of no worth alive, he satirically recommends that they be made economically productive by being sold as food to the rich. It is my belief that you are making a similar proposal that the University of Toronto lighten its economic burden by devouring its young. I entreat you to see the absurdity of this decision and to attempt, instead, to form a truly modest proposal, one in which no program need be devoured. Perhaps your School will save some money, but by liquidating all of these programs, the long term effects to the University -- its intellectual, as well as, in the long term, its financial worth -- will be devastating.


Yours,


Darcy Gauthier,
Centre for Comparative Literature, PhD student
Toronto, Canada


CC:
David Naylor, President, University of Toronto
Cheryl Misak, Provost, Faculty of Arts and Science
Dr. Neil ten Kortenaar, Director, Centre for Comparative Literature
Dr. Jill Ross, Graduate Coordinator, Centre for Comparative Literature
Save Comparative Literature Campaign

Paper letter to follow

Julia Kristeva, Université Paris 7 --TRANSLATION

Monsieur le Président, Cher Collègue,

I have just learned, to my great dismay, that the University of Toronto is considering the elimination of its Centre for Comparative Literature. I am writing to you because my connection to this Centre goes back many years. I first came to the Centre in 1992 as the holder of the Northrop Frye Professorship. My seminar, entitled “Proust et le temps sensible”, and its ensuing lectures formed the basis of my book of the same title, which came out the following year. I subsequently returned several times as a Visiting Professor to give lectures which led to two other books in my trilogy on the female gender: Hannah Arendt (1999) and Colette (2002). Finally, in 2000, I had the honor of being named Doctor Honoris Causa at your university.

I am convinced that the role Northrop Frye played in literary studies, and more widely in the global understanding of literature as a particular type of thought (and not merely as a hobby or affectation) merits an interdisciplinary approach that Canadian academics and the international academic community must develop and deepen as part of his legacy.

Frye initiated a research perspective that is urgently contemporary in its relevance: the idea of literature as sharing the same space as the aesthetic (both the perceptible and the beautiful) and the need to believe (spiritualities and religions). Comparative Literature thus has a heretofore unexpected role to play in a time of religious clashes.

UNESCO passed a resolution in favour of cultural diversity that both France and Canada inspired and actively support. This policy, which is intended to be a new social contract for globalization, based on the interaction amongst diversities—against banality as a “radical evil” (Arendt)—must be supported by a precise knowledge of languages of their cultural expressions , a knowledge that Comparative Literature and the humanities can indeed deepen and provide.

Mr. Naylor, please understand my worry concerning these proposed administrative changes. They appear drastic and they carry with them an implication of obscurantism. I hope with all my heart that the University of Toronto will not accept the recommendation "disestablish" its Centre for Comparative Literature.

En vous remerciant de l’attention que vous voudriez bien porter à cette lettre,

Recevez, Monsieur le Président et Cher Collègue, l’expression de ma haute considération à de mes meilleures pensées,


Julia Kristeva


[Translation of Julia Kristeva's letter of July 21 by Adleen Crapo, PhD student, Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto]

Haun Saussy, Yale University

Yale University
Department of Comparative Literature
P. O. Box 208299
451 College Street
New Haven, CT 06520-8299

July 27, 2010

President David Naylor
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, room 206
27 King’s College Circle
Toronto M5S 1A1 CANADA.

Dear President Naylor:

I was dismayed to hear of the planned closing of the University’s Centre for Comparative Literature and the dismantling of the department of East Asian Studies. I hope you will not take it amiss if I explain as briefly as I can why I think this plan, if carried out, is likely to be harmful to the University and to Canada’s national interest.

You will certainly have received a number of letters asking you to reconsider this reorganization. Perhaps a strategic planning committee thinks of people like me as obstacles to clear practical thinking, as anarchic throwbacks always ready to join a parade to Save the Dodo, as wasters of the University’s time and money. In these typecast debates, the sentimental humanists are always supposed to lack the tough business sense that tough times require. I would prefer to take the business analogy from another side, and ask: What are you doing to preserve the University’s brand?

Saving money is not the only activity that goes on in the managerial culture of successful businesses. If your business is founded on a unique or valuable product, you will try everything else before you cheapen its reputation.

The reputation of the University of Toronto has been a long time in the making. You are fortunate, as President, to have inherited a reputation for serious scholarship that is at once specialized and highly contagious, research that changes conditions in its own field and goes on to affect other fields. Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan are two Toronto thinkers whose work is received as an inspiration in every area of the humanities and social sciences. I could name other living Torontonians whose work will count in a similar way for future generations, but I’ll spare the parties the embarrassment of direct nomination. This reputation for intellect is what makes the University’s name. Reputation makes the University attractive to professors and students, gives credibility to the research done there, and thus makes it a resource for the nation. If I were in your position, I would be extremely careful not to tamper with this formula.

Academic departments are not just cost centers. They are niches in which a certain culture of inquiry can flourish. A department is a set of people, at various stages of their careers, who are able to judge one another’s work usefully (the basis of exams, hiring, publication and promotion). Where this structure exists, you should support it (thus I am surprised to hear of the plans to dismantle the East Asian Studies department, a place where linguists, literary scholars, historians and sociologists have long been engaged in a common conversation with a geographic basis). Where it does not exist, you cannot count on being able to create it by administrative fiat.

A department composed of people who do not share this ability to judge one another’s work atrophies, because judgments will be made on weak grounds. But this is precisely what has been recommended in the case of the new School of Languages and Literatures. “Future faculty appointments will be managed by the School,” and not by the “individual language groups” (the former departments) of which the School consists. That means, if I may put forth a few imaginary examples, that a committee containing few, or no, persons literate in Russian will be making decisions about whom to hire in Russian futurism; colleagues unable to read a word of Japanese will be voting on the merits of a junior faculty member whose research might bear on the semantics of verb aspect in the Genji monogatari; and so forth. I can’t believe that this situation would be very satisfactory to anyone inside the School. Discussions and judgments would become perfunctory (“well, the book is 480 pages long and was published by Cambridge, so it must be good enough”); faculty members might find they have very little stake in retaining their colleagues, once the sense of a common enterprise has vanished; niceness might become the major criterion for promotion; or worse yet perhaps, a standard of uniformity might impose itself, so that only people who wrote about language and literature from a predetermined thematic or theoretical angle were perceived as doing “important” work. Language and literature people devote themselves intensively to pursuing the specific differences of their field. The languages are not interchangeable, nor are the cultures; diversity is here not a vague moral imperative, but a fact of life and the chief object of study. This is why the administrative convenience of lumping languages and literatures into a common unit serves the larger aims of the discipline so poorly.

In this context, I should say a word about Comparative Literature. It seems that the planning committee thought that, once the School of Languages and Literatures had been formed, Comparative Literature would have no reason to exist; for isn’t Comparative Literature what you get when you combine two or three different literatures? This way of thinking, if indeed it did motivate the disestablishment of the Centre founded in 1969 by Northrop Frye, is erroneous. Comparative Literature has as its object the interactions of different literary traditions. It is a product, not a lowest common denominator. To do it well, you need to be immersed in several different literary cultures and have, on top of all that learning, a theoretical or analogical imagination that will enable you to see meaningful parallels. As the study of interactions and interchanges, this field reflects on historical and cultural specificity; it does not negate them. Comparative Literature needs a diverse and vital community of specialists in the different languages and literatures in order to be successful: otherwise, the commonalities that it discovers will run the risk of being banal or provincial. The fact that members of other departments (e.g., English) now sometimes work in a comparative mode does not mean that Comparative Literature can be dispensed with as an institutional structure. Rather, it is a sign of the seriousness and adventurousness of Toronto at its best that Comparative Literature has for so long had a home there and produced so many renowned scholars.

The dismantling of the East Asian Studies department would have a further unfortunate effect, with practical consequences for the University and the nation. China, Japan and Korea are countries with a long past, with a great deal of historical and cultural complexity, and their interactions with the countries of North America increase daily in intensity and significance. I am not familiar with the specifics of Canada’s East Asian relations, whether political, economic or military, but I can hardly believe that they differ greatly in essence from the relations that the United States and Mexico hold with that part of the world. Our industry and commerce are deeply rooted in their productive capabilities; our finances depend on the willingness of East Asian bankers to continue buying our bonds; such political order as presently exists across the globe will increasingly rely on the desire of East Asian governments to preserve the peace (indeed, the definition of this “peace” will increasingly reflect the interests of those governments). If there is any part of the world on which North Americans would be ill-advised to turn their backs, it is East Asia. But this is what is planned: a deskilling of the present multidisciplinary department, resulting in the severing of linguistic and philological training from its applications in history, philosophy, history of science, politics and sociology. This must be stopped. Canada needs intelligent, critically-aware, polyglot diplomats, soldiers and businesspeople with the ability to engage as equals in the East Asian conversation through mastery of culture and history, which so profoundly influence present interests and behavior. Students who can chatter away in modern Chinese but have never plunged into the history of the Song Dynasty, or students whose analysis of the North Korean strategic posture is unclouded by any knowledge of the Korean language or traditions, are less valuable to Canada and to the world than students who can integrate many forms of knowledge. The better-informed students will also make fewer mistakes.

These are hard financial times for universities. I know that too. But there’s a category of things worth preserving through the hard times. I write as an admirer and well-wisher of the University of Toronto, as someone whose professional life is enriched by the existence of impressive rivals across Lake Ontario. I share with you, I believe, the desire to see the University of Toronto continue to recruit the very best students and teachers. Wholesale reorganization and deskilling, I fear, will weaken Toronto’s reputation and cause it to lose its place in the first rank of North American research universities.

Yours very truly,


Haun Saussy

Bird White Housum Professor of Comparative
Literature and East Asian Languages & Literatures;
Chair, Council on East Asian Studies
Yale University

Marie Vautier, University of Victoria

Victoria, B.C.

July 25th, 2010


President David Naylor
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27, King’s College Circle
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 1A1

Dear President Naylor,

I am writing to encourage you to reverse the decision to close the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.

I am a professor of comparative Canadian Literature, working between the departments of French and English at the University of Victoria, B.C. I obtained my BA from the Université d’Ottawa, my MA from Université Laval, and my PhD from the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. I walked right out of the Centre into a tenure-track position here at UVic. I was hired to run a programme which is unique in the country, the “Combined Major in French and English (Canadian Literature).” I would not have been able to meet the requirements of this position had I not graduated from the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.

When I learned that the reasons given for closing the Centre included the fact that other literature departments “now teach theory,” I realized that you may not know enough about the Centre, the role the Centre has played in the discipline, and the many ways in which it serves the academic communities of the western world.

“Comparative literature” as a programme of study is in a class of its own. It is widely considered to be “la crème de la crème” of literary studies. There is no doubt that this Centre puts the University of Toronto at the level of the American Ivy League universities and major European universities within the discipline of literary studies. Last year, I was an invited scholar at the prestigious Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London, UK, and there is no doubt in my mind that my training in comparative literature at the University of Toronto, along with the door-opening name of my thesis supervisor, Dr. Linda Hutcheon, were among the primary reasons I was invited to pursue my research in this renowned interdisciplinary institute.

Interdisciplinary studies are necessary to today’s world; the Centre for Comparative Literature is at the very centre of interdisciplinary studies in Canada and beyond. When I was a student at the Centre, I met several of the best known theorists in the world on an almost weekly basis, as they were invited to give talks to our small international group of students in the Centre’s first year class. These students now work and publish in Canada, Australia, the UK, Sweden, and elsewhere, and their training at the Centre enhances its international reputation.

All across the country—indeed, all across the world, graduates of the Centre walk straight into tenure-track positions, and continue to highlight the advantages of having studied at the Centre as they become scholars with national and international reputations.

This Centre is crucial to the discipline of comparative literature in this country. It is important that it remain active, vibrant, and that it continue to bring credit to the University of Toronto.

Please reconsider your decision.

Respectfully yours,



Dr. Marie Vautier
Director, Combined Major in Canadian Literature
French and English Departments,
University of Victoria
P.O. Box 3045 STN CSC
Victoria, BC
V8W 3P4

Karin Beeler, on behalf of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association

Date: July 21, 2010

To: President David Naylor, University of Toronto

Provost Cheryl Misak, University of Toronto

Dean Meric Gertler, University of Toronto

From: Dr. Karin Beeler, President of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association and Members of the CCLA Executive Board

Re: Proposed Closure of the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Toronto

As members of the board of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association, we were astonished to hear of the proposal to close the internationally and nationally recognized Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. The Centre, was founded by the eminent scholar, Dr. Northrop Frye in 1969, and his vision helped develop the Centre as a site for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary studies. The Toronto Centre has been a cornerstone of Comparative Literature studies in Canada. Faculty have excelled in their research in this field, as is evident in the international and national reputations of faculty associated with the Centre. Dr. Linda Hutcheon, a professor affiliated with the Centre, is a 2010 recipient of the prestigious Molson Prize which recognizes her outstanding contributions to the intellectual and cultural life of Canada; she has been one of the leading supervisors of graduate students in this program. Two of the Centre’s faculty, Dr. Rebecca Comay and Dr. J.E. Chamberlain have delivered keynote addresses for Canadian Comparative Literature Association conferences to large groups of scholars from a variety of disciplines. Graduate students from the Centre for Comparative Literature have also had a significant presence in the annual Canadian Comparative Literature Association conferences held in conjunction with the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, thus demonstrating that there is a new generation of Comparatists who are building on the foundation of the discipline of Comparative literature in Canada.

We as members of the board of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association therefore urge the University administration to reconsider the proposal to close this Centre. The discipline of Comparative literature continues to have a strong future in Canada as is evident in the ongoing interest in the field by new generations of scholars. The national journal of the CCLA, the /Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/ edited by Dr. Jonathan Hart, also enjoys one of the highest SSHRC ratings for humanities journals. For some time now, Comparative Literature has been the driving force behind scholarship aimed at understanding the complexity of connections across national languages, cultural traditions and various artistic forms and media. It has been able to exert such a lasting influence thanks to an established network of units, departments and programs which, at the regional, national and international levels, provides students and scholars with sound institutional structures for training, teaching and research purposes. The belief that other disciplines now offer, here and there, the very same possibility for exploring cultural connections fails to recognize how crucial established academic frameworks are to the purposeful and concerted development of scholarship and knowledge. At a time when such connections are increasingly instrumental in fostering a mutual understanding of different cultures in local and global contexts, we need to strengthen rather than weaken the position enjoyed by comparative literature, as a discipline in the humanities aptly focused on understanding complex cultural interactions. We believe that if you decide to proceed with the dismantling of the Centre for Comparative Literature, you will be eroding not only the reputation of the University of Toronto as a leader in cross-cultural studies but also, at a national level, the well-established network of programs and centres which positions Canadian academic institutions at the forefront of comparative studies.

Sincerely,

Dr. Karin Beeler, President, CCLA

Dr. Susan Ingram, Vice President, CCLA

Dr. Markus Reisenleitner, Treasurer and Webmaster, CCLA

Dr. Pascal Gin, Secretary, CCLA

Dr. Jonathan Hart, CCLA Board Member and Editor of the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature