Harvard University’s English department has decided to revamp its undergraduate English concentration, replacing most course requirements with a plan to have students choose their courses from four thematic areas, The Harvard Crimson reports.

The university’s Educational Policy Committee is expected to vote in February on the proposed change, which the English department overwhelmingly approved last week. The department’s plan calls for the elimination of two required survey courses that had taught English literature chronologically, as well as a sophomore seminar and several course requirements.

Students would instead choose courses from four thematically organized “affinity groups”: “arrivals,” which would focus on outside influences on English literature; “poets”; “diffusions,” which would examine literature resulting from the spread of English around the globe; and “Shakespeares,” which would focus on the playwright and his contemporaries.

While some students are happy to see the survey courses go, not all welcome the proposed change. In a commentary written for the Crimson, Christopher B. Lacaria, a senior, protested that the revisions “point to an ongoing crisis in liberal education,” in which common requirements are being scaled back until “any semblance of a coherent academic purpose has disappeared.” —Peter Schmidt