College Literature articles from September 1999

College Literature archives from September 1999

Introduction: The Profession of Literature at the End of the Millennium.
September 22, 1999... This issue of College Literature will be the last to be published in the 20th century. It is an appropriate time then to reflect on our profession and to speculate on what might be in store for those teaching literature in the 21 st century. We...

Literature's Year 2000 Problem.
September 22, 1999... The dating of a new millennium is one of the purest examples of a cultural phenomenon that is as arbitrary as it is consequential. The onset of this particular millennium has become more real than most because of our near-total dependence on...

Fear of the Other, Loathing the Similar.
September 22, 1999... This appeal to come [appel a venir] gathers language together in advance. It welcomes it, not in its identity or unity, not even in its identity, but in the uniqueness or singularity of a gathering together of its difference to itself: in...

Reading the Texts that Read the Profession: Ads for Literature Texts in College English, 1960-1995.
September 22, 1999... In an analysis of the turn-of-the-century rise of mass advertising, Richard Ohmann reads the "discourse of mass culture" during the time it began to "establish itself as a dominant idiom in our social life," singling out the textual medium of...

Post-Millennial Postmodernism: On the Professing of Literature in the Centrifugal Age.
September 22, 1999... [A]head was the somnolent horizon, pulsing in dust and fumes, a fiction whose limits were determined by one's perspective, not unlike those imaginary quantities (the square root of minus-one, for instance) that lead to fresh dimensions. (Don...

Christian Pharisees and the Scandalous Ethics of Jesus: Teaching Luke's Gospel at the End of a Millennium.
September 22, 1999... To mark the millennium is to mark a numerical recurrence from a certain point - not some absolute start, but a particular beginning. It is not defined by the first moment of the Jewish or the Hindu calendar, the Hegira, or the French...

Theory after the "Theorists"?
September 22, 1999... It has become a fairly common perception that the emergent generation of North American literary-critical intellectuals and academics lacks any one, dominant theoretical "voice" or paradigm of its own. The heroic years of "high theory" having...

Transference, Desire, and the Ethics of Literary Pedagogy.
September 22, 1999... In recent years, literature teachers have become increasingly sensitive to the ethical issues entailed by their position of authority, and with the current culture wars, the question of pedagogical ethics has become a central point of...

Vocationalizing Higher Education: Schooling and the Politics of Corporate Culture.
September 22, 1999... Corporate Ascendancy is emerging as the universal order of the post-communist world. . . . Our social landscape is now dominated by corporations that are bigger and more powerful than most countries. . . . Our end of the century and the next...

The Struggle to Define and Reinvent Whiteness: A Pedagogical Analysis.
September 22, 1999... In the emerging sub-discipline of whiteness studies scholars seem better equipped to explain white privilege than to define whiteness itself. Such a dilemma is understandable: the concept is slippery and elusive. Even though no one at this...

World Bank Literature: A New Name for Post-colonial Studies in the Next Century.
September 22, 1999... I am a postcolonial critic at the end of the millennium contemplating the ends of our profession. In the reports that I read about the employment conditions in the lit. crit. industry, I am routinely reminded that the academy has begun to...

Multimedia Pedagogy and Sunday Morning Millennial Fever.
September 22, 1999... THE WIDENING FRAME OF CULTURAL DEBATE On December 19, 1998, the day President Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury and obstruction of justice, Republican Congressman Bob Livingston publicly confirmed that...

The Other Politics of Tenure.
September 22, 1999... I was at the mailbox yesterday, and I was bending over because I dropped a piece of mail, and [a full professor in the department] came by and said to me, "That's an appropriate position for an untenured professor to be in." (a colleague) ...

Representing the End[s] of English (or not)?(Review)
September 22, 1999... Recently, the American Film Institute and the Modern Library issued their top 100 lists, and responses suggest that there may be a few more skirmishes in the culture wars left to fight. John Ellis's Literature Lost and Mark Bauerlein's Literary...

Literary Criticism: An Autopsy.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Bauerlein, Mark. 1997. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. $36.50 hc. xv + 156 pp. Recently, the American Film Institute and the Modern Library issued their top 100 lists, and responses suggest that there may be a few more...

Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Ellis, John M. 1997 New Haven: Yale University Press. $25.00 hc. vii + 262 pp. Recently, the American Film Institute and the Modern Library issued their top 100 lists, and responses suggest that there may be a few more skirmishes in the...

After the Death of Literature.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Schwartz, Richard B. 1997. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. $26.95 hc.181 pp. Recently, the American Film Institute and the Modern Library issued their top 100 lists, and responses suggest that there may be a few more...

Writing the Elephant: Five books on Modern Poetry.
September 22, 1999... As a child I was fascinated, and frustrated, by that old story about the blind men and the elephant. You know the one: a bunch of blind men stand around an elephant and each of them thinks the part they're touching - a leg, an ear, a big, broad...

Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Bernstein, Charles, ed. 1998. New York: Oxford University Press. $49.95 hc. x + 360 pp. As a child I was fascinated, and frustrated, by that old story about the blind men and the elephant. You know the one: a bunch of blind men stand...

Ghostlier Demarcations: Modern Poetry and the Material Word.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Davidson, Michael. 1997. Berkeley: University of California Press. $35.00 hc. xvi + 273 pp. As a child I was fascinated, and frustrated, by that old story about the blind men and the elephant. You know the one: a bunch of blind men stand...

Gender and the Poetics of Excess: Moments of Brocade.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Ford, Karen Jackson. 1697. Oxford: University of Mississippi Press. $45.00 hc. 240 pp. As a child I was fascinated, and frustrated, by that old story about the blind men and the elephant. You know the one: a bunch of blind men stand around...

Poetry On and Off the Page: Essays for Emergent Occasions.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Perloff, Marjorie. 1998. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. $79.95 hc. xv + 376 pp. As a child I was fascinated, and frustrated, by that old story about the blind men and the elephant. You know the one: a bunch of blind men stand...

What Is It Then Between Us: Traditions of Love in American Poetry.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Sellinger, Eric Murphy. 1998. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. $39.95 hc. xi + 251 pp. As a child I was fascinated, and frustrated, by that old story about the blind men and the elephant. You know the one: a bunch of blind men stand...

Remapping the Poetic Landscape: Privileging Marginal Voices in Recent on American Poetry.(Review)
September 22, 1999... In the area of poetry, the canon wars do not appear to be over. Recent trends in poetry texts openly or subliminally continue to call into question the advocates of New Criticism (predominantly white males) whose assumptions about canon...

Nineteenth Century American Women Poets, An Anthology.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Bennett, Paula B. 1988. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers. $83.95 hc. $34.95 sc. xlvii + 524. In the area of poetry, the canon wars do not appear to be over. Recent trends in poetry texts openly or subliminally continue to call...

She Wields a Pen.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Gray, Janet. 1997. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. $29.95 hc. $15.95 sc. xlii + 374. In the area of poetry, the canon wars do not appear to be over. Recent trends in poetry texts openly or subliminally continue to call into question...

Nineteenth Century American Women Writers, An Anthology.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Kilcup, Karen. 1997. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers. $64.95 bc. $24.95 sc. xlix + 601. In the area of poetry, the canon wars do not appear to be over. Recent trends in poetry texts openly or subliminally continue to call...

Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Van Wienen, Mark W. 1997. Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press. $59.95 hc. xiv + 311. In the area of poetry, the canon wars do not appear to be over. Recent trends in poetry texts openly...

The Feminist Poetry Movement.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Whitehead, Kim. 1996. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. $45.116 hc. $18.06 sc. xxiii + 247. In the area of poetry, the canon wars do not appear to be over. Recent trends in poetry texts openly or subliminally continue to call into...