Queer Studies Should Not Be a Department

To the editors:

We heartily agree with the Crimson’s endorsement of a degree in queer studies (Editorial, “Recognize Queer Studies, Feb. 15) and in the same spirit wanted to suggest some further areas of study that should be granted degree-granting powers as they too constitute modes of intellectual inquiry that have profound and far-reaching influence on life and society.

While we’re busy siphoning off money from soft sciences like “physics” and “chemistry” you may fear that we are ignoring an even more neglected group: the Dwarf Studies Department. The fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin” or dwarf cinema classic Willow would be perfect for conference courses. And what about the effects of dwarfish imperialism on Keebler elf poetry? The philosopher race that are the Oompa-Loompas? The lines of intellectual inquiry are almost endless.

Ad absurdum arguments aside, we sincerely hope to see the day that homosexuals enjoy the same rights to which every citizen is entitled. What we dislike is the mistaking of an academic discipline for social acceptance. The desire to find “marginalized discourses, perspectives and theories” should be weighed against the cost and importance of their study and against whether this research could be fit coherently into a larger, less exclusionary whole. Why not have a Department of Gender and Sexuality that could deal with all aspects of these topics? Why break down into ever-smaller groups and not build up into “axes of intellectual inquiry”?

Matthew Milikowsky ’02

and Eliot I. Hodges ’02

Feb. 19, 2002