This book addresses literary critics in mainstream institutions who, though they vastly outnumber their colleagues in more prestigious institutions, have little voice in the profession. It examines the structures through which the institution of literary critical pressures its members to accept orthodoxy/heterodoxy as categories to describe their work, which in turn provokes theory wars. This opposition produces a method/application dichotomy that renders members' pursuits scientistic.
Leading voices in literary and cultural studies examine the study of literature at the college level, including the fate of theory, the rise of cultural studies, the academic “star” system, and the difficult job market.
Rethinking Cultural Transfer and Transmission. Reflections and New Perspectives formulates new directions within the studies on cultural transfer and transmission, including gender aspects of cultural transfer, the importance of cultural transfer for minority literatures and approaches to writing a cultural transfer and transmission history. The articles collected in this volume demonstrate that the field of cultural transfer and transmission is developing quickly and offers a variety of research possibilities. New aspects are scrutinised and new insights gained from rediscovered material, and although the discussion of the theoretical points of departure and the methods used has only just begun, it is already providing us with interesting results and insights. This book is Volume 4 in the book series Studies on Cultural Transfer & Transmission.
It’s not what you know, but who you know. It’s not what you do, but where you do it. Underlying such facile assertions, there lies at least a little truth—and, for academics, a complex web of relationships. Academic affiliations confer value and identity on individuals, disciplines, and institutions. They have a formative and formidable role in determining the status and self-image of academics and institutions. The subtleties and implications of such a system—in personal and professional terms—are the subject of this timely and thought-provoking volume. Here writers from all walks of academic life interweave personal experiences and critical insights to reveal the inner workings of affiliation in contemporary academic culture. These essays take up topics ranging from scholars’ attitudes toward their affiliated institutions to publishing in academic journals, from the phenomenon of the academic star system to activism among tenured professors, from the perils of crossing disciplinary boundaries to the merits of mentoring through affiliation. Together they offer a frank, firsthand view of the ways and means and the uses and abuses of affiliation in higher education today—a view that is sure to provoke discussion throughout academia.
The Knowledge Contract intervenes in the ongoing debates about the changing conditions of higher education in America, with a special focus on English studies and the humanities. This highly original study integrates three crucial concerns: the economic restructuring of higher education, the transformation of disciplinary models of teaching and research, and the rise of the academic labor movement. ø Whereas most contemporary critiques of higher education have focused on the impact of global economic forces, The Knowledge Contract adds a new dimension to the discussion by addressing the tensions between disciplinary and nondisciplinary forms of academic work. David B. Downing draws on several traditions of scholarship: histories of the university, sociological studies of education, critiques of disciplinary and interdisciplinary forms of work, histories of academic capitalism and the labor movement, and field-specific analyses of the history of English studies. Building on his analysis, Downing develops alternative possibilities to the dominance of disciplinary forms of labor and offers scenarios for creating more equitable working and learning conditions for faculty and students.
Transforming English Studies provides a uniquely interdisciplinary view of English studies’ “crises”—both real and imagined--and works toward resolving the legitimate pathologies that threaten the sustainability of the discipline.
This book examines satirical portrayals of academia as exhibited in works of academic fiction, revealing the way in which this genre represents University life to the broader reading public and enables members of that sub-culture to critically engage their own negotiations of individual, communal and institutional identity. This work should appeal to scholars interested in the literary genre of satire, in contemporary University life, and in literature. contemporary cultural issues, problems, and performances by way of interpretations of academic fiction that observe this phenomenon. Composed by practicing academics who also appreciate satire aimed at their profession, the authors offer this collection as a correction to increasingly cynical portrayals of academic life. Instead, the authors provide interpretations that identify satire as a timely and effective genre for critically commenting on the state of academia because it reveals ethical dimensions that engage an ironic voice to negotiate issues of culture and identity. Included among the essays are the results of responses gathered from practicing authors in the genre of academic satire who provide commentary and insights exclusive to this collection.
Few composition scholars two decades ago would have imagined the rate at which their field is now developing, expanding beyond its boundaries, creating new alliances, and locating new sites for research and generation of knowledge. In their introduction to this volume, Farris and Anson argue that, faced with a welter of competing models, compositionists too quickly dichotomize and dismiss. The contributors to Under Construction, therefore, address themselves to the need for commerce among competing visions of the field. They represent diverse settings and distinct points of view, but their over-riding interest is in promoting a view of the field that values interaction and mutual development above dogmatics and isolation.
