Angelo State Provost Censors Literature Readings

According to a letter provided to The Concho Observer, professors of literature at Angelo State University have been instructed to remove content from their courses that fail to align with the “heteronormative” standards being imposed on Texas higher education by state leaders who have turned arbitrary guidelines from the Trump White House into official state policy.

The letter, from Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Don Topliff, Ph.D. was dated Thursday, Jan. 22, addressed to two different instructors, and is published in full below.

The following courses require content to be removed.  The content Identified is also listed.

English 2321 – Introduction to British Literature –

The third unit of the course covers “the gothic” in English literature, part of Victorian England. Part of this is a very famous and very canonical poem by Christina Rosetti, “Goblin Market,” which implies, among other readings, a reading that would eschew heteronormative love for a preference for a homosocial or even homosexual world of women. I also include the “Lesbian Gothic” which is a subgenre of the larger gothic, with Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” — the first vampire novella (25 years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula), which elides vampirism with lesbianism. Le Fanu’s novella is one of students’ favorite in the term and directly engages the gothic. Both texts are essential to discussion of the period and the genre.

English 6301 – British Literature History –

In the third unit of the course on teaching British Literature covers “the gothic” in English literature, part of Victorian England. Part of this is a very famous and very canonical poem by Christina Rosetti, “Goblin Market,” which implies, among other readings, a reading that would eschew heteronormative love for a preference for a homosocial or even homosexual world of women. This text is essential to discussion of the period and the genre and one students are likely to interact with as faculty on secondary campuses.

Please let those faculty know that they need to remove that content.

Don R. Topliff, Ph.D.