Goldsmiths ends Queer History MA, to xomplaints

[Treaclewell]

I picked this up from an annoying little feed on my laptop so can't link, but the lead tutor (Bengry) been made redundant and is not best pleased.
Weren't Goldsmiths' students very active in shutting down women's groups in the area back a few years?
They are alsp ending their Black History MA.
The story was first in the Independent but I can't find it on their site.

I knew a lecturer at Goldsmiths (thankfully not in history) who thought that the Gunpowder Plotters were aiming to turn England into a republic. She genuinely thought we'd be living in some kind of socialist utopia if they had succeeded.

A lot of university lecturers I know are facing this. The expansion of student numbers has devalued degrees, graduates aren't getting graduate jobs, degrees are expensive and so students are getting a lot more hard-headed about what they study.

Meanwhile, universities are becoming more dependent on foreign investment and lucrative foreign students but this means that suddenly foreign governments, who don't necessarily have good intentions, are suddenly getting a lot of say over how UK universities teach and operate.

Motivated be reading that to post again here the link to Derrick Jenson's jeopardy in full:

Not watched this in ages - timeless!

Wasn’t Labour’s favourite woman officer, LilyMadigan studying there? Whatever happened to him?

LM was studying Politics as an undergraduate. Nobody seems to know what has happened to him. There were allegations of inappropriate conduct with female students.

I assume not enough overseas students, who are the most lucrative, want a Master's in Queer History. Who would have thought it?

https://x.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1159356615855869952

Many allegations. It seems Goldsmiths did nothing.

Bengry doesn’t seem particularly likeable but fwiw I do think it is important for research institutions to do things that society at large might think silly or preposterous. That, in one sense, is their mission - to extend the boundaries of knowledge.

Whether it is financially viable is a different question. Universities are in straightened times and a narrowing of the curriculum is an inevitable result given the reliance on international students and a domestic turn away from the humanities.

There was a thread on MN recently about Mickey Mouse degrees…and I propose this one.

Really enjoyed this thread. Thanks, everyone! “vandalism” 🤣

I agree about the value of extending the boundaries of knowledge. But everything I’ve read from queer studies has been unevidenced, speculative or just plain nonsensical.

This is the opposite of extending the boundaries of knowledge. It’s trying to crush reality into the bounds of an ideology.
It’s extending ignorance.

oh bless her heart 😀
nothing like the confidently incorrect is there?
see also - person I heard about who wanted spain to win the euros because ‘england was imperialist and colonial’. So they were backing SPAIN, that well-known historical bastion of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist sentiment 🤔

I think Goldsmiths is also home to Natacha/Mark Kennedy.

These MAs (and similar tertiary qualifications) exist largely as marketing tools. Given that most under/postgraduate degrees in the humanities have a modular basis, an institution can offer specific modules on queer history / black history / Tartarian empire history, and a student can effectively design the focus of their own qualifications. There's no academic need to offer these as discrete degree courses, providing an institution is offering variety within a particular course of study.

But higher education is a business now, and marketing is important. Offering queer history / black history / Tartarian empire history gives a means by which courses can be publicised, and students drawn to an institution. If you can claim to be the only university offering a particular qualification, you can draw people in who might otherwise be tempted to study at other, better institutions. Of course, if no-one is interested in taking on a particular course, it doesn't have much of a reason for existence. Within a modular system you can maintain a skeleton course, but not if, as in this instance, the course leaders are being made redundant.

Omigod -heard everything now 😔😔

I used to think that too. However, many years of being freshly amazed on a daily basis in the study of gender hatstand have shown that each new day really is a school day. You have hand it to these nutters that they do come up with some absolute zingers that would never, ever have crossed the mind of anyone on planet earth.

😂😂

That's the first time I've listened to that. That oh-so-polite TW was doing a lot of faffing around to say "woman" is an idea in a man's head. As for that woman shouting all the time about being "queer" and how Jensen "doesn't care about trans people's lives" - any money she's another spicy straight TRA.

Bengry's a lecturer, not a professor- pretty junior. Redundancy in academia is a particularly horrible experience as there are no new jobs atm. And queer history encompasses the whole history of same-sex sex and love over centuries, with all its political significance : you may not be interested, or be put off by the term 'queer', but it's very much a valid historical subject. This is a mean-spirited thread.

It is a valid historical subject, but not valid as a discrete MA course in and of itself. What gives history - and indeed any discipline - meaning is the interconnectivity between subjects and academic approaches, and a strength of an academic is normally measured in the breadth of that academic's understanding of a discipline. Reducing a course of study to "queer history" or "black history" or whatever is a disservice to the students studying the subject; a decent MA course of study will force the student to confront a variety of methodologies, approaches, subject matters, because that it an essential part of learning.

Oh no! Not ‘mean spirited’. Ladies, pipe down, you’re being howwid.

"same-sex sex and love"?

"same-sex"?

How very transphobic.

I thought Jenson delivered a masterclass in trying to pursue respectful debate.

He did indeed.

Incase anyone missed it in the twitter thread, there was a great pictoral summary of Jenson's points about Queen theory here:

Gah queer autocorrect typo!