The English department hasn’t run a course on modernism since 2020, when ‘ENGL2762: Postcolonial Modernisms’ was last run. Since then, apart from the occasional modernist novel in a reading list, USyd undergraduates have missed out on a forty-year period of incredible writing. This is a fundamental disservice to those students who want to study the central literary movement of the 20th century. Writers like Joyce, Eliot, Pound, and Crane, are all essentially overlooked. The university ought to reconsider this decision.
Cuts in English courses indicate the severity of course cuts in the humanities. It is a part of Australian tertiary education corrupted by the expediency of budget constraints. Classes like Australian literature, modernism, and modern Irish Literature, have fallen victim to the purse strings. To remove a central literary movement from the English offerings at a major university is not only indicative of this moribund state of play but a significant setback to the quality of literary education that students deserve. Similarly, ANU has not offered its ‘Literature and Modernity’ class since 2023, and UNSW has not run a similar one. It is a rather poor reflection on the state of what is valued, when a university that reported a 351 million dollar surplus in 2023 cannot find the money to teach a whole period of writing. Academics are now placed, by outside circumstance, in the unenviable position of deciding which flowerings of the human spirit can be saved from the chopping block. Time and the bell have buried the day; the decision not to continue a course on modernism illustrates the magnitude of these cuts.
Losing this course is intrinsically detrimental for those who enjoy studying literature. Complexity is often a byword for modernist literature. The diaphanous references, the assumed level of classical knowledge, and the obscure vernacular jokes, all mean that many modernists texts flourish most when interpreted in an academic context. Indeed, Joyce hoped “to keep the professors busy for centuries.”
The close reading and discussion that a university context provides allows these works to be fully understood and enjoyed by their readers. This is not to say that modernist writing can only be understood inside an academic echo chamber, rather that the mutual enjoyment of these texts in a class would be obviously beneficial to both teacher and student. To teach modernism is to allow it to be fully appreciated and understood.
The removal of modernist studies is detrimental to all students regardless of the area they study. FR Leavis was correct that it was not until Eliot that critics could be “fully conscious” of Victorian verse. With this and similar observations in mind, omitting a large swathe of 20th century literature damages the critical ability of many students interested in both earlier writing and contemporary fiction. To understand and appreciate all areas of literature can only engender positive outcomes for all students.
This decision leaves a dangerous critical gap in the general literary comprehension of undergraduates in the English faculty, and limits the scope of their interpretation, and critical analysis, in their study. To deny this context is to deny students the chance for true critical analysis and appreciation. How could any self-respecting Dante scholar not mention Four Quartets, or any lover of Hamlet not at least passingly consider the influence of Stephen Daedalus and the purring Quaker librarian?
The ending of a modernist undergrad unit is also more broadly detrimental. Many HSC students study Eliot’s verse in school, and to risk having English teachers who haven’t taken any classes on modernism is a hindrance to secondary students’ grasp and appreciation of his writing. They cannot provide a full explanation of his context without a knowledge of the other literary currents flourishing in that period; no author writes in a vacuum. Moreover, we need to ensure future teachers (and indeed literary scholars) are well-versed in as many types of writing as possible. This is an essential opportunity that we lose if students don’t have the chance to engage in deep study of this incredibly influential period of writing.
The reintroduction of modernist studies would be a success for everyone involved in university life. It would also be an impetus to academics in other faculties that it’s worth fighting for the reintroduction of courses that have been slashed. Anything that increases the availability of course content is a net positive for students, and decisions that allow these wonderful works to flourish ought to be encouraged and celebrated. It would mean a reversal of this depressing trend of course reduction. The English faculty should consider running another class on modernist writing. It would certainly be beneficial and very popular.
Take up your ashplant, English, and reintroduce the course!
