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Whiteness, Curriculum, and the Infrastructures of Victorian Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2024

Sophia Hsu Open the ORCID record for Sophia Hsu [Opens in a new window]
Sophia Hsu*
Affiliation:
Lehman College, CUNY, New York, United States
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Abstract

This essay makes a case for viewing curriculum and the historical assemblages of slavery, racialization, and migration as infrastructures of Victorian literary studies. It does so by taking the recent curricular revision that the English department at Lehman College, a public, Hispanic-Serving Institution in the Bronx, New York, underwent as its starting point. I reflect on how this curricular overhaul, which was catalyzed by student activism, helped me see not only how curriculum has operated as an infrastructure of whiteness in my department and English studies at large but also how disentangling Victorian studies from its white Anglo assumptions will require reconceptualizing the methodological, epistemological, and historical foundations of the field.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 52 , Special Issue 2: Infrastructure , Summer 2024 , pp. 405 - 411
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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