In fact, it is yet another example of the hyper-Americanisation that has taken hold on campuses and in wider society in recent years. Yet it is a funny sort of “decolonisation” that sees a British university replacing Austen – a British novelist famous for depicting British society – with a writer from the United States, a cultural superpower whose art and literature derives from a very different past to our own. She championed freedom, and was herself an enthusiastic fan of Austen’s work. Over her long career, she won plaudits – including a Nobel Prize – for novels dealing with slavery and the harsh consequences of racism in America. There is no denying that Morrison, who died in 2019, is worthy not just of study but celebration. A master of skewering egos and puncturing pomposity, she would surely have found plenty to amuse her in the decision by Stirling University to remove her from their “special author” module, seemingly in order to achieve the “decolonisation of the curriculum” and “contribute to increased diversity”.Īusten has been replaced by the American writer Toni Morrison. It is tempting to wonder what Jane Austen might have made of the times we live in.
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