Associate Professor and English Chair Nat Strout was interviewed for a Black Issues in Higher Education article about how college English departments choose minority and female authors for their reading lists.
Hamilton College was included in a recent National Association of Scholars report that argues "that the expanded focus (on female and minority writers) has resulted in a fragmented curriculum soliciting cause for alarm. For the NAS, by including more female and minority writers in their courses, 'English departments have abandoned their true purpose.'" The NAS report based its findings on the curriculum at the top 25 liberal arts colleges, including Hamilton.
In the article Strout says, "The intellectual combination of a text drives the book selection process, and each individual professor selects books based on the value of a book to the aims of a course...They rationally consider whether it is intellectually responsible to include women authors. It is not plausible that faculty choose authors on political grounds only. Even specialty courses are hinged in a background." Strout adds, " (Toni) Morrison's literature is responding to a need."
