In this frenetic critique, YouTuber Liza from https://www.youtube.com/@pensandpoison recounts her experience studying English literature at Columbia University after arriving with hopes of immersing herself in the great humanistic tradition of Western literature.
Instead of a deep engagement with beauty, tradition, and the enduring questions of human nature, she argues that modern English departments have become dominated by literary theory, identity politics, and ideological readings rooted in Marxism and social critique.
Through personal anecdotes from undergraduate and graduate study, she laments what she sees as the replacement of literature itself with political interpretation, ultimately calling for a return to aesthetics, humanism, and the transformative power of great books as a means of understanding both civilization and the human soul.
Apparently, Columbia’s Orientation Week was pretty indicative of literary education at Columbia.
