{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02230259192284509, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.384615384615385, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Teaching Required Courses: Pedagogy under Duress

Curriculum revision can be one of the most contentious projects an English department undertakes. In addition to local pedagogical and pragmatic pitfalls, disciplinary specialists confront larger intellectual and ethical questions as they reassess which classes to require, what new media constitute appropriate objects of study, and which methods of interpretation to privilege. Perhaps the most confounding debate of the last thirty years, however, assumes an inherent opposition between the traditional canon and emerging authors and cultural expressions. Since the canon wars, this debate often pits Shakespeare (and the “great literature” for which he stands as an easy synecdoche) against literatures that are cast as emerging from “identity politics.” The tendency to position multifarious literature and rhetoric courses as players in a zero-sum game results in part from the strictures of college English curricula, which are limited in the number of required courses and electives they can oblige students to take. In this context, departments have had to ask, do we want to require a class on gender and/or race? If so, which requirement must we cut to make room? These questions, and the compromises they spur, can foster a sense of competition among those who teach these courses and believe in their import. And yet, in most English departments across the country, compromise has been struck. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton generally have their place alongside literature by underrepresented authors. At Quinnipiac University, the small, private university in the Northeast where we are junior