“Angry, silenced and incredibly confused,” says a level 1 student, who was interrupted for challenging the course’s representation of women.
Level 1 Comparative Literature students have voiced concerns about diversity within the module, yet have been ignored, the Glasgow Guardian finds. On 21 February 2024, reports claim a student expressed such sentiments at a class representative feedback meeting for the level 1 School of Modern Languages (SMLC) semester two courses. The student alleges that their feedback was not only interrupted and ignored, but met with unprofessional conduct from a professor.
Sources claim that a male member of the faculty said that the students should be grateful to learn about women’s stories, at the in-person meeting. The student, who raised the topic of “only [studying] media of how much women suffer,” said they “felt ignored and unsupported” after being “silenced” by the professor.
Members of staff at the meeting approached the student after the session, praising them for their comment.
One witness who was present at the class representative meeting, claims that the professor “interrupted the 1B representative with [their] personal opinions on the course”, after the student had “brought up constructive feedback about the course content for 1B.”
The student, who gave the feedback, voiced their feedback on the course content, “they [the female characters] were heroes, yes, but it would be good to study some novels with female heroes who aren’t raped, murdered or abused.”
The student points to some of the depictions of female characters in the novels used in the class. “The Lost Honour of Katherina Blum, where a woman faces a public and brutal smear campaign. Interrogation, about a woman being falsely imprisoned in pro-soviet Poland and details the abuse and assault she suffers in prison. Another Way, about lesbians in 1959 Hungary and ending with one dead and the other assaulted and permanently disabled. Mother Courage and her children, where a mother loses her children to her own ‘greed’ during a war. 3 Winters, where the women of a family attempt to muddle through extreme generational trauma, and finally Indiana: about the life of a woman in a toxic marriage.”
While fellow class representatives and even members of staff commended the vocal criticism, the student told the Glasgow Guardian, “all I could think was that none of them stood up for me, despite agreeing with me, particularly as [there is] a power dynamic [between a student] and that professor.”
A witness at the 2024 SMLC meeting recalled that a fellow representative shared that “the representation of women in 1B Heroic Women depicts female trauma and negative narratives, whereas in 1A […] we discussed lighter topics and classical heroes.”
They further voiced, “for a course supposed to be focusing on cross-cultural and translated comparisons, almost all the authors and characters we read in level one were white and European or American, with many originally written in English. The texts are good but, for the discipline, are widely inadequate when it comes to the actual aims of the degree. Because of this, there is little separation between the disciplines of English Lit and Comp Lit, for example.”
The student witness added, “[the professor’s] reaction to the issue of sexism within the course was large enough that I genuinely could not imagine a student raising an issue of racism, and what that reaction would be.”
“I did not feel comfortable voicing my concerns about the course at all. Even if I did, I did not feel it would be productive or bring about any change.”
This sentiment has also been voiced by previous cohorts. A student, who studied level 1 Comparative Literature from 2020-21, described the student feedback system as “immeasurably hampered by the poor reception to critique.”
During their time studying English Lit at the University of Glasgow five years ago, the student felt that the level 1 course’s “lack of diversity on the course was extremely disheartening.”
The Class and PGR Representatives system, in collaboration with the SRC, is a framework intended to ensure improved representation of students’ voices. “The University of Glasgow is committed to receiving and responding to student feedback in order to monitor and enhance the quality of the student experience within the institution,” the Academic Policy & Governance writes.
The issue of diversity is not a subject of the past, a current level 1 student told the Glasgow Guardian. One student said that the course “proudly expresses its range which led me to the expectation of learning about multiple cultures and experiences, and yet the majority of texts have limited this to the white male experience, which has been somewhat disappointing.”
“It’s saddening to still find a level of whiteness and eurocentrism as its focus,” the student added. “As an elective, this does make the course less attractive to choose in following years. Is there only one certain demographic worth studying?”
The University of Glasgow’s Comparative Literature undergraduate course is promoted as “the study of “literature without walls”. It ranges across cultural and national frontiers, time periods, languages and genres, even across the boundaries between literature and the other arts.”
Dr. Elwira Grossman, Convener of Comparative Literature 1B, commented that, “when it comes to 1B we always address gender diversity stressing that ‘reading for gender is necessary but not enough’ and showing that such factors as ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural backgrounds, affect the representation of gender significantly.”
“I do not believe that any Comp Lit course can ever reach sufficient ‘representation and diversity’ in terms of texts provided as there is so much to choose from and so limited time to teach.”
“Women writers’ visibility is crucial to us in constructing our curriculum, but so are the social mechanisms that have severely limited how many women could write for over two millennia and which we want our students to understand and reflect upon,” Grossman adds.
Students have also commented on the course structure. The 2023-24 advising leaflet for level 1 is split into two components. Comparative Literature 1A outlines the ‘Heroic Men’ module as a course which is taught from September to December. The second component details ‘Heroic Women’ as the 1B strand, taught from January to March. A separate 2023-24 advising leaflet, which summarises a 1C course option, named ‘Heroism Across Times and Cultures,’ is stated to be taught from January to March — overlapping with the 1B module. The assumption for students, then, is that ‘Heroic Men’ is the sole option for semester one, while semester two offers a choice between ‘Heroic Women’ and ‘Heroism Across Times and Cultures’.
Whilst senior management within the Comparative Literature department have informed the Glasgow Guardian that “none of our level 1 courses are compulsory,” it is reported that not all students were aware at the beginning of the course.
One class representative witness at the 2024 SMLC meeting, wrote to the Glasgow Guardian that there is “the impression that ‘Heroic Men’ is compulsory while ‘Heroic Women’ is optional. If this is not the case, it was not communicated to us.”
Dr. Grossman writes, “other level one courses from ‘sister’ disciplines such as Eng Lit and Scottish Lit as well as language courses are accepted to enter level 2 Comp Lit.” For instance, it would be “absolutely” possible for a student to select modules ‘Heroic Women 1B’ and ‘Heroism across Time and Cultures 1C’ for the year, without ‘Heroic Men 1A,’ Grossman clarifies.
In 2022, a former student submitted a complaint letter, describing the course structure as “troubling,” since the 1B ‘Heroic Women’ module “unlike 1A’s ‘Heroes (Heroic Men)’, was optional, and could be substituted for 1C.”
The complaint also draws attention to the fact that “only one text was present that was not itself written by a man,” during their time of study, referring to Tena Štivičić’s 3 Winters.
“Instead of covering both bases in 1A with a combined inclusive course championing both men and women in heroic capacities, one sex was put to the wayside in favour of parading traditionally masculine narratives, when there was ample opportunity to give a more balanced view of the broad subject of ‘heroism’,” the former student wrote in the formal complaint. “As it turns out, the male viewpoint was assigned as a necessity, and students were able to avoid giving any heed towards feminine perspectives if it suited them.”
At the end of the 2021-22 academic year, it is documented in the Comparative Literature 2B Summary & Response Document that “the [2B] texts are chosen on the basis of quality and especially to fit particular themes of the course. There are courses in the SMLC that specialise in female and non-European authors. This is not it.” The Summary & Response Document was issued by a senior lecturer after the end-of-term EvaSys feedback.
Despite the contention of the curriculum’s diversity and representation, this is not a reflection of the academic teaching quality, stresses students at the SMLC class representative meeting in 2024.
“I think most of the professors are brilliant,” writes the student, who presented their feedback surrounding “appalling” female representation.
One student, who was present at the 2024 meeting and initially planned on taking Comparative Literature into honours, commented: “if the faculty felt comfortable speaking that way to level 1 students, I did not want to go on to honours where there could be more issues going on beneath the surface.” The student, however, acknowledges that such “severe lack of willingness to address blatant issues” is not reflective of all teaching staff, noting that they have “met and been taught by some incredible members of the Comparative Literature department.”
