As reported by the Daily Mail, a recent audit has revealed that 10 universities, including three from the Russell Group, have either removed books from module reading lists or added trigger warnings and made them optional due to sensitive ‘challenging’ content.
Affected texts reportedly include award-winning piece The Underground Railroad, which has reportedly been removed from a module at the University of Essex because of its ‘graphic description of violence and abuse of slavery’ and Miss Julie, which has been withdrawn from a University of Sussex module for its discussion of suicide.
A University of Sussex spokesperson responded that the removal of Miss Julie was a temporary change following a number of student suicides. The Underground Railroad has reportedly been replaced because ‘another book was viewed as better suited to the learning aims’.
Liz Truss, however, has accused universities of ‘mollycoddling students’, stating that ‘real life doesn’t come with a content warning’. Meanwhile debates have erupted on social media.
History should not be ignored
We cannot simply sanitise history because it is ‘challenging’. Although they are shocking and graphic, texts such as The Underground Railroad are a crucial tool in ensuring new generations never forget the horrors of slavery. These books are supposed to make the reader uncomfortable. This is the only chance we have at learning from the past. Is that not the whole point of studying history at university?
Keeping difficult books on university reading lists ensures that the most productive and sensitive interpretations are squeezed from them. Where offensive language is used, lecturers can explore the history of these terms and why we don’t use them, and graphic scenes can be studied in the appropriate historical context.
As Ray Bradbury wrote in Fahrenheit 451, a text coincidentally about the dangers of censoring books, ‘books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget.’ In other words books, especially challenging ones, are how we remember and reflect on history and they should not be meddled with.
Out of proportion?
The UK education system is far from the dystopian reality of Fahrenheit 451, and critics of these reading list alterations are blowing the changes grossly out of proportion. While module texts have been replaced or decorated with a trigger warning, they remain available to students in the university library.
As part of my English Literature degree at the University of Birmingham, I study a module on gender and sexuality. Whenever we read texts covering (or have discussions about) sensitive topics such as rape, homophobia or abuse, this is always headlined with a content warning. If, for whatever reason, a topic is particularly personal or sensitive to somebody, they can step out momentarily and not engage in content that will upset them. Most students continue to read about and discuss difficult topics. However, for those that cannot, I think content warnings are necessary to protect students’ mental health.
Sure as Truss says, ‘real life doesn’t come with a content warning’ and people experience difficult things everyday. But that is precisely why we need these content warnings.
We have to be fair
Ultimately, ‘challenging’ books on important topics should never be censored. It is imperative that we learn from our past, take accountability for it, and have difficult conversations in order to move forward. However, headlining a text with a trigger warning where topics might personally effect students, or replacing a book with one that better fits the module of work, is simply not censorship.
If a content warning that there is ‘mention of assault on page 6 and page 12’, for example, is given on a text, it simply means the student who was assaulted last week can skip over those pages and avoid reading something which would prod at their trauma.