I don't know, perhaps it is that hard in Australia, Chris, but I don't
think it's quite so bad in Canada. Our department graduates a number of
PhDs in rather 'narrow' areas. I supervised two theses on SF, although with
a lot of interesting cultural & gender studies contextualisations. In both,
Delany was an important figure, evben if his work was not central to the
study. I actually did part of my thesis on Delany way back when (it looks
so naive today) but that was when 'we' sort of didn't think about either
the gender or ethnic subexts to his early writing (they are there, but 'we'
weren't noticing them: I am reminded of Marjorie Perloff's new introduction
to the reprint of her book on Frank O'Hara, where she more or less
apologizes for not even mentioning that he was gay and that that fact was
articluated in almost evry line, in much of the tone, of his work. That not
noticing was also a form of homophobia, I realize.
But to get back to the other point, about academia, I'd say that at least
in some of our departments of English, there is a growing recognition that
apparently marginalized areas of study are in fact as central as any...
doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
he said the President said
he would not kill anyone
anymore and the way he would not kill
would be to let the killers kill
and then he would not be a killer
Eli Mandel (circa 1970)
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