Anthologies: Limitations in Higher Education

by Elaine Magin

Ethical ELA resonates with my own experiences as a teacher who often feels limited by what I’m able to teach in the classroom. Even though this blog is not focused on teaching English language arts in higher education, I am overwhelmed by the ‘educational stepping stones’ that lead to my own experiences as an educator. More directly, my ten years of experience teaching college students with anthologies.

Whenever I teach a literature, short fiction, or poetry course, I am faced with the difficulty of assigning materials from diverse populations. Anthologies are provided as the required textbook, and they are overwhelmingly filled with works by old white men. Whether or not the lack of cultural diversity is directly brought up by my students, I am certain to discuss the limitations of anthologies with the class as it comes up. As a class we discuss what/who ends up in an anthology. For example, anthologies recognize influential texts of continuing cultural capital. This immediately excludes texts/voices that have been prevented, destroyed, undervalued. In other words, ‘lost’ for reasons including (but in no way limited to) historical time period, politics, gender, economic/social status, systems of oppression, sexual orientation, genocide, cultural genocide, etc. Also, since white male writers, especially from the western world, have been historically prioritized for a myriad of factors, they have had the amplified possibility of becoming seminal texts. Furthermore becoming anthologized is a lengthy process that depends on accessibility, subjective value judgments, industry connections, a substantial body of work, etc.

Whenever I put together a reading list for an anthology-based course, I feel quite limited when it comes to the diverse backgrounds, multicultural interests, and ethnically diverse education of my students. I find myself looking desperately through the anthology for ways to bring diversity into the classroom for a 16-week course.

To be fair, I can put together a reading list I feel good about (but it takes a lot of my own individual research). The most frustrating moments are when I realize just how few choices there are to incorporate any real sense of diversity. For example, in short fiction anthologies, I have only ever been able to find one piece of Antiguan writing. It is always “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid. “Girl” is a fantastic piece from one of Kincaid’s award-winning collection of stories; but why is it my only choice to assign? Why is “Girl”- a piece of fiction only slightly longer than a single page- the only representation of not Antiguan, but also West Indies short fiction?

I’m not Naïve. No anthology can provide a perfect assemblage of quality texts that are both educational and ethnically diverse—but I know we can try harder and do better.

Elaine Magin is an adjunct faculty member who teaches writing composition and literature to college students. When she is not binge-watching Netflix, she can be found listening to audio books.

Ethical ELA is a place to support all teachers considering how our practices and content can be more just and ethical. We can come together to support one another by sharing our own experiences and research. Thus, we would like to know the following:

If we could , all together, design a globally inclusive short fiction and poetry course, which stories, poems, authors would be on the syllabus?