I took American novel before 1920 as an upper division English core curriculum class in the late 80s or early 90s. It was taught by a very masculine lesbian, and while we did read Melville’s Benito Cereno and of course Huck Finn, and I think one Jack London novel, everything else was from female authors like Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, Sarah Orne Jewett. etc. I never even thought about dropping it, much less complaining to anyone about her choice of representative reading (because I was not a titty baby snowflake, or moron)
And it was an awesome class full of books I probably would not have otherwise been exposed to had I had some old white dude loading us up on Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane and William Dean Howells.
I probably wouldn’t have read any of those female authors on my own, especially since my only exposure to Wharton was Ethan Frome in high school
Oh also, we did read uncle Tom’s cabin, and she had a pretty awesome take on it. I wrote my main paper for the semester on the contrast between Babo and Uncle Tom.
so again, fuck that kid, fuck the university president, and fuck the daily texan snowflakes that see any of this as political