Academic Questions articles from January 2000

Academic Questions archives from January 2000

A Soulless Place.
January 1, 2000... To the Editor: Jonathan A. Cook's (Summer 1999) account of his up-till-now failed struggle to obtain a tenure-track position has the power to evoke a resonant response to his frustration and despair. After all, he covered every base and...

Enemies of Promise: Why America Needs the SAT.(analyzing standard achievement tests)
January 1, 2000... I. In March 1998 UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale, a cab driver's son who had earlier risen through faculty ranks to become Provost of Harvard, announced to California taxpayers what he thought was a bit of good news. UCLA had just...

Introduction A Beacon in the New Historicist Fog.(National Association of Scholars awards Gertrude Himmelfarb the Sidney Hook prize)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... For several decades the search for evidence to substantiate historical claims has been subject to the argument that truth itself is an artificial construct designed to maintain the influence of society's most powerful forces. History as a...

A Tribute to Sidney Hook.
January 1, 2000... It is a privilege to receive an award from the National Association of Scholars, and an even greater privilege to receive this particular award, the Sidney Hook Memorial Award, on this occasion, the tenth anniversary of his death. But a still...

Surplus Theory in the Cultures Market.(state of literary education)(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2000... "English Department at Duke Dissolves in Anger" --New York Times, 21 November 1998, page 1 If I had felt the inclination at the December 1998 MLA convention in San Francisco, I might have sauntered over to hear Panel Number 747...

Cultural Studies in the Light of Frank Sinatra.
January 1, 2000... Proponents of cultural studies typically contrast their project's interest in all sorts of cultural phenomena with the narrow focus of the traditional humanities on great works. Cary Nelson, Paula A. Treichler, and Lawrence Grossberg,...

The Philosophy of the Faculty.
January 1, 2000... In 1926, A.R. Lunacharsky, the People's Commissar of Enlightenment, passed his official judgment on Mikhail Bulgakov's new work, The White Guard: "The play... is not ideologically sound," he grumbled, "in fact, in places it is politically...

Revising the Museum.
January 1, 2000... A letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal from the controller of a Houston construction company illustrates the impact that ideas hatched in the academy have on museums and on the public consumption of art. This contractor wrote: ...

Diminished Masterpieces.
January 1, 2000... When the American Musicological Society held its annual meeting in Boston in 1998, most of the papers reflected business as usual. There were papers on historical styles ("Verse Meter, Word Accent, and Rhythm in the Polyphonic Hymn of the...

Variations on "P.C." in the Movies.
January 1, 2000... Some half a century ago I heard Arthur Miller give a talk at Harvard. In it, he said there were only two classes of people left that a writer could safely criticize: the unemployed and babies. All others had union or non-union representatives...

A Defense of Popular Culture.
January 1, 2000... A few days before the Academy Awards, the New York Times ran a story lamenting the publicity blitz being conducted by Miramax Studios for its film Shakespeare in Love (7 March 1999, Arts & Entertainment, 1 ff). Normally we might expect that any...

The Corrosive Trivialization of Culture.
January 1, 2000... When it comes to education, almost every rule has exceptions. And I am sure that there are instances in which a plausible case could be made for giving over some part of a liberal arts curriculum to the study of popular culture. By and large,...

The Tyranny of the Near-at-Hand.(popular culture in education)
January 1, 2000... Sanford Pinsker: editor at large of Academic Questions and Shadek Professor of Humanities at Franklin & Marshall College. His book Worrying about Race 1985-1995: Reflections during a Troubled Time was published by Whitston in 1996. There...

In Plato's Cave.(Review)
January 1, 2000... In Plato's Cave, by Alvin Kernan. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999, 336 pp., $25.00 hardbound. The introductory inscription to Alvin Kernan's personal and professional memoir is the famous opening passage of Book VII of Plato's...

In Defense of History.(Review)
January 1, 2000... In Defense of History, by Richard J. Evans. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999, 288 pp., $25.95 hardbound (Initial release in 1997 by Granta Books of London) Rarely these days does one find a book that reads lucidly to the specialist as well as...

Books and Articles of Academic Interest.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Affirmative Action policies in higher education continue to generate lively and thoughtful debate among NAS members. In the spring 1999 issue of Public Interest (volume 135), Nathan Glazer and Martin Trow present opposing views of The Shape of...