Trinity College is considered to be the highest rated university in Ireland and ranks as the 134th university world-wide – according to The Times Higher Education World University rankings . Despite this high rating, an analysis into the lack of representation of women in its English Studies course suggests its lack of gender diversity is failing to keep up with modern standards.
Trinity’s English Studies course offers at least 45 places per academic year, the majority of which go to female students. Despite this students are regularly learning about the same over taught male authors when even the most famous female authors are under-represented. There are eight modules in the course that solely focus on a male author’s collected work, including the political writer George Orwell and “Sherlock Holmes” creator Arthur Conan Doyle.
There are four modules on the work of Shakespeare and two on Yeats. There are an additional five modules that focus on a close reading of an author’s singular work, all of which are male. And yet there fails to be a single module focusing on the work of a single female author or close reading of a text written by a female author. There was a module offered in the 2023-24 academic year, Early Modern Women, but this has since been discontinued.
There is a large gender gap in authors taught with most modules focusing on far more male authored primary and secondary sources than female. In the Genres module – which is mandatory for all students taking an English Studies major – sixteen primary sources are on the syllabus – only four of these are women.
In the Noise and Power module no female authors are taught whereas eighteen male authors are. In A Tour of American Short Story module eleven authors are taught with only two being female. Few of the modules have equal representation of male and female authors and just a couple feature more female authors than men on the modules. Upon further analysis the modules that have adequate representation of women are often coordinated by female module coordinators. Only 35% of the English Studies Professors are women, the fact that the modules being taught are coordinated by mostly male professors could indicate a reason behind a lack of representation of female authors.
Lack of representation of women in poetry is a recurring theme. as the poetry of those such as Yeats, Pound, and Heaney are regularly taught throughout the course whereas few renowned female poets feature at all. A module taught last year that has since been discontinued; US Poetry from Whitman to Modernism, focused on ten poets with only two of them being women. Meanwhile, The Poetry in Practice module teaches seven poets with only two of this lineup featuring female poets
Secondary sources on the primary reading are critical to understanding the course material, however most of the secondary sources provided throughout the course are written by men. The Literary Theory module offers a broad reading list of primary and secondary sources in relation to the theories studied. Interestingly of the 24 reading sources provided in the reading list, only two are written by women and these are studied in the week regarding gender studies. The Genres module provides eighteen secondary sources on the reading list with only three of them being written by women. The modernism module provides 26 secondary sources with only six being written by women. As expressed by K Harris, A Croston, T Hutti, & A Eyler “Emerging evidence demonstrates that female authored publications are not well represented in course readings in some fields, resulting in a syllabi gender gap. Lack of representation may decrease student awareness of opportunities in professional fields and disadvantage career success of female academics”.
Further lack of representation can be acknowledged in other areas of the course too with few representation of authors of other ethnicities, and very limited representation of people within the LGBTQI community. Often female authors and authors of colour are only featured in relation to racism or sexism. It is a regular occurrence that one week within a module will focus on race as written by black authors or sexism and gender violence as written by women. However, female authors and writers of colour should not only feature in relation to the issues they face but should also feature throughout the entire curriculum. Failure to adequately represent women when studying literature is inappropriate considering the contribution they have made to literature.
Trinity is no stranger to failing to adequately represent women as few of its buildings are named after women and after 280 years Trinity finally unveiled busts of women in the long room in 2023. However, progress seems to be taking a step backwards in relation to the representation of female authors in its English Studies course as the only module relating to female authors has been discontinued this year while the thirteen modules solely focusing on a single male authors work remain. Arthur Conan Doyle is an author that appears throughout the English studies course in multiple modules including one based around his impact on detective fiction named ‘Nineteenth – century detective fiction: The rivals of Sherlock Holmes’. A new module simply named Arthur Conan Doyle has been added this year going over a large viewing of his work. Has this additional module on an already overdone male author replaced the only module on the course that solely focuses on women, Early Modern Women? If the module was discontinued for other reasons surely a module in relation to women authors should have replaced it.
Other colleges within Ireland appear to feature female authors more often in literature courses with University College Dublin having modules on Jane Austen and Irish Women’s Poetry, Maynooth University having a Strong Female characters module and University College Cork having a Women in Literature module. From an analysis of other colleges’ modules, Trinity is the only university that does not have a single module in relation to women authors and the only university with an abundance of modules solely focusing on a male authors’ work.
Trinity College has clearly shown a lack of representation of female authors while showing a tendency to extensively represent male authors and often over represent certain male authors by continuously reteaching their work throughout the course. Although the lack of representation of female authors is an ongoing issue acknowledged academically in several universities Trinity College proves to be one of the universities that fails female authors the most. As it utilises its modules to overly represent male authors work instead of representing a single female authors work. Upon reaching out to the college Tom Walker the head of discipline for English has stated “We also have in recent years offered other modules specifically directed towards women’s writing of various kinds” He goes on to state “And work in this and other areas, as regards questions of diversity and balance, is very much ongoing for us, as it is across the whole discipline. Hence the final sentence in our policy as regards ‘continuing to work towards a better understanding of the issues involved”. Despite this comment upon breakdown of each modules’ primary and secondary reading shows a high tendency to focus on male authors’ work with very limited representation of female authors. Failure to adequately represent female authors has negative consequences as it teaches an unrealistic notion that male authors have written the majority of renowned literary works when in reality female authors have greatly contributed to literature but are not taught about enough to be acknowledged for this. Sexism is an ongoing societal issue and if our universities continuously fail to adequately represent female authors it continues the narrative of erasing women from history and further promotes the unrealistic notion that men contributed to the world more than women.
