I was cleaning out the files the other day — not the files in my office file cabinets (I did that in August for the first time in years, and let me tell you, it was so much fun I kept it up for days), but the files in my trusty little laptop, the very device on which I write these words today. I have three five-drawer file cabinets in my office, full to bursting with the records of class preparations, former graduate students, essays assigned in faculty reading groups, tenure and promotion reviews, offprints and copies of old essays, book contracts, and so forth. Cleaning out files is, of course, the least rewarding kind of office- and life-maintenance, because when you’re done everything looks pretty much the way it did when you started — which is why you dumped all that extraneous crap in your file cabinets in the first place, to get it out of sight. The only interesting thing I learned, in the course of winnowing through (or wallowing in) all that paper was that my course records start to go paperless somewhere around 1995. I always kept my students’ grades (and my responses to their papers) on Ye Olde Computers, all the way back to 1986 when I was TAing the History of English Literature course at the University of Virginia and working on a Leading Edge knockoff with the floppy disks. But beginning in the mid-90s, almost <i>all</i> my course materials disappear from the file cabinets and appear instead on … well, a series of hard drives leading to the very device on which I write these words today. So I realized, diligent recordkeeper that I am, that I should have a look at those files as well, particularly the one called “miscellaneous,” which now holds something like five hundred documents.
Posts by author:
Michael
It’s that time of year again, only worse.
The academic job search process is under way, and in the modern languages, things look quite dismal. Yes, I know, things have looked quite dismal for some time now, but this is extra extra dismal, because the effects of the Great Collapse of 2008 are only hitting this part of the academic machinery now. Colleges and universities have already taken — and administered — hits elsewhere, via salary cuts and/or freezes, furloughs, elimination of travel and research budgets, etc. And I don’t know how many searches were cancelled last year after being advertised. But I do know that in the modern languages, we might be looking at a 50 percent dropoff in jobs from last year, and there’s no federal stimulus coming to bail us out.
I’ve decided to take the Great Cultural Studies Debate (Round CXLVIII) over to CT in the hopes of running it by a more international and interdisciplinary readership. Hi, more international and interdisciplinary readers! Here’s what’s been going on in my little world lately.
I recently published an <a href=”http://chronicle.com/article/Whats-the-Matter-With/48334/”>essay</a> in the <i>Chronicle of Higher Education</i>.  People responded. The brief recap is <a href=”http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/cultural_studies_fandango/”>here</a>, though you should also check out <a href=”http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/the_lo/”>this post</a> from Andrew Seal, <a href=”http://www.pmgentry.net/blog/2009/09/whither-cultural-studies.html”>this one</a> from Philip Gentry, and <a href=”http://rsa.cwrl.utexas.edu/node/3128#comment-3986″>this comment</a> by Josh Gunn, who helpfully kicks things off by explaining that my essay is “bullshit.”
My general reaction to the response is: good. I wanted to provoke discussion, and I got it. And, begging your indulgence, I’d like to carry on that discussion here, by picking up where <a href=”http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/comments/1342/”>my blog’s last comment thread</a> leaves off.
<i>Warning: Clicking “click to continue” will lead you to a two-part, Internets-straining essay.</i>
[click to continue…]
It’s time to blog about bloggers blogging about blogging! Let’s start with <a href=”http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909u/professional-bloggers”>Benjamin Carlson’s recent account</a> of “the rise of the professional blogger”:
<blockquote>In early July, Laura McKenna, a widely respected and longtime blogger, <a href=”http://www.apt11d.com/2009/07/the-blogosphere-20.html”>argued on her site, 11D</a>, that blogging has perceptibly changed over the six years she’s been at it. Many of blogging’s heavy hitters, she observed, have ended up “absorbed into some other professional enterprise.” Meanwhile, newer or lesser-known bloggers aren’t getting the kind of links and attention they used to, which means that “good stuff” is no longer “bubbling to the top.” Her post prompted a couple of the medium’s most legendary, best-established hands to react: Matthew Yglesias (formerly of <i>The Atlantic</i>, now of ThinkProgress), confirmed that blogging has indeed become “institutionalized,” and Ezra Klein (formerly of <i>The American Prospect</i>, now of <i>The Washington Post</i>) concurred, “The place has professionalized.” </blockquote>
This confirms what I’ve been hearing from people like <a href=”http://maudnewton.com/blog/index.php”>Maud Newton</a> (whom I met last spring) and <a href=”http://fauxrealtho.com/”>Lauren Bruce</a> (whom I met last week while sightseeing in West Lafayette, Indiana). Because of course, when I meet bloggers in real life, we take the opportunity to talk about blogging. (Well, actually Maud and I were <i>supposed</i> to do that — it was a forum at Penn State on blogging and the arts.) Note, by the bye, that all three of these bloggers are (1) widely respected, (2) longtime bloggers (Lauren, of course, invented blogging in 1985), and (3) women. So of course we have to ask them: where were all the women bloggers?
In his brief but delightful introduction to <i>What Are Intellectuals Good For?</i>, Scott McLemee offers a précis of the Scialabbian moral/political universe: “Reconciling the skeptical pragmatism of Richard Rorty and the geopolitical worldview of Noam Chomsky is not a simple project. Rarely do you find them treated as two sides of one ideological coin. But that seems like a reasonably accurate description of Scialabba’s sense of the possible. If he were to write a manifesto, it would probably call for more economic equality, the dismantling of the American military industrial complex, and the end of metaphysics.” This does indeed sound reasonably accurate, and it serves as a reminder that McLemee is one of the few contemporary writers and reviewers who belongs in Scialabba’s league. For regardless of whether one agrees with Scialabba’s judgments on matters moral and political (and, often enough, I don’t, even though I’d endorse that hypothetical manifesto in a heartbeat), one has to be impressed with Scialabba’s uncanny ability to <i>inhabit</i> the books and writers he reviews. Scialabba’s work in <i>What Are Intellectuals Good For?</i> is remarkable for its range, yes, and his prose is notable for its precision and clarity. But what’s most impressive, I think, is the scrupulousness fairness that Scialabba brings to the task of reviewing. Almost every essay in this collection allows the reader some degree of imaginative sympathy with the books and writers under review, even when Scialabba himself turns out to be largely unsympathetic to the material he’s writing about. That’s because Scialabba, like McLemee, always offers a reasonably accurate précis of the material he’s writing about before he gets around to taking issue with it. It’s easy enough to do, of course, when you’re writing about someone who sees the world as you do; but George Scialabba does it as a matter of course. I wish I could say the same of all reviewers; and though it’s a standard to which I hold my own review essays, I know very well that I’ve sometimes honored it in the breach.
A moment of silence for <a href=”http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/07/barefaced-goaway-bird.html”>Hilzoy</a>, who’s retiring from blogging this week.
Since I have to do one last gig before I take off on vacation, and since the gig happens to be a conference titled <a href=”http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/cp/research/duke/”>“Beyond Utility and Markets: Articulating the Role of the Humanities in the Twenty-First Century,”</a> I thought it would make sense to begin this post where I end my contribution to that symposium, namely, with the closing passage from <a href=”http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090608/deresiewicz”>William Deresiewicz’s recent <i>Nation</i> review essay</a> on the new wave of Darwinist literary criticism:
<blockquote>There is much talk among the literary Darwinists and their allies about not wanting to go back to the days of “old-boy humanism,” with its “impressionistic” reading and “belletristic” writing. (Only in English departments could good writing be considered a bad thing.) But no matter the age or gender of the practitioner, any really worthwhile criticism will share the expressive qualities of literature itself. It will be personal, because art is personal. It will not be definitive; it will not be universally valid. It will be a product of its times, though it will see beyond those times. It will not satisfy the dean’s desire for accumulable knowledge, the parent’s desire for a marketable skill or the Congressman’s desire for a generation of technologists. All it will do is help us understand who we are, where we came from and where we’re going. Until the literary academy is willing to stand up in public and defend that mission without apology, it will never find its way out of the maze. </blockquote>
… as, for example, when the conversation is <a href=”http://theconversation.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/guns-gays-and-abortion/”>an exchange between Gail Collins and David Brooks</a> on “Guns, Gays and Abortion” that begins,
<blockquote><b>Gail Collins:</b>Â David, can we talk hot-button social issues for a second? I know this is not really an area where you fly the conservative colors, but <i>you’re the go-to guy on how America lives</i>, and I’d like to hear your thoughts even if we can’t work up a fight.</blockquote>
This just makes me want to lie down on top of the <a href=”http://www.hoffmania.com/blog/2008/06/brooks-obama-do.html”>Applebee’s salad bar</a> and never get up again.
So I’m back from the AAUP national meeting, and I’ve decided that I’m a bad person for not blogging about <a href=”http://www.law.duke.edu/publiclaw/supremecourtonline/certgrants/2005/garvceb.html”><i>Garcetti v. Ceballos</i></a> or <a href=”http://www.umich.edu/~sacua/sacmin/hongvgrant.pdf”><i>Hong v. Grant</i></a> (.pdf) until now. (Marc Bousquet was all over it <a href=”http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/bousquet/high-noon-for-academic-freedom”>more than a year ago</a>.) The <i>Hong</i> case is just one example of what I call the Children of Garcetti, and if you teach at a public university in the United States (or if you know someone who does), you should know about <i>Garcetti</i>.
Here’s the <i>Oyez</i> <a href=”http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2005/2005_04_473″>summary of the case</a>. Since <i>Garcetti</i> involves the fate of a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles who was whistleblowing with regard to what appeared to be a fraudulent affidavit, most people didn’t realize that it might have implications for academic freedom. Ah, but not the AAUP’s legal staff! They were on the case, so to speak, from the start (here’s a .pdf of <a href=”http://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/FA297466-D642-4040-987D-BAF46DDA0CA0/0/GarcettiSupremeCourtFinal.pdf”>the brief</a>). Which is yet another reason you all (if you’re college professors) should have <a href=http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/involved/join/>joined the AAUP</a> by now, because (a) the AAUP sees these things coming when most of the rest of us don’t and (b) helps to fight ‘em in court. Indeed, the AAUP/ Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression brief seems to have caught the attention of David Souter, who, bless his retiring heart, wrote in dissent:
<blockquote>This ostensible domain beyond the pale of the First Amendment is spacious enough to include even the teaching of a public university professor, and I have to hope that today’s majority does not mean to imperil First Amendment protection of academic freedom in public colleges and universities, whose teachers necessarily speak and write “pursuant to official duties.”</blockquote>
In response, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion, citing Bugs Bunny, replied, “ehhhhhh … <i>could be</i>!” Though the actual language was this:
<blockquote>There is some argument that expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction implicates additional constitutional interests that are not fully accounted for by this Court’s customary employee-speech jurisprudence. We need not, and for that reason do not, decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.</blockquote>
In other words, <i>we’re leaving that door open, thanks — if any lower courts want to walk through it, just make sure they wipe their feet on the 1940 Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom</i>.
In January 1995 I published a little essay that almost nobody liked. Eh, that happens sometimes. It was a review essay on the then-recently-published work of a couple of African-American public intellectuals, and I wrote it quite simply because the <i>New Yorker</i> asked me to. I was a newly-tenured associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and I was surprised by the request; to this day it’s the only time I’ve written for the <i>New Yorker</i>. And then, within about three months of the thing’s appearance, a whole mess of people decided to weigh in on the work of a couple of African-American public intellectuals. Many of those people came to the conclusion that I had done a pretty piss-poor job of writing about the recently-published work of a couple of African-American public intellectuals; the general verdict was that I had basically written a press release, a puff piece on a bunch of lightweights and/or sellouts. But some of those people weren’t responding to me at all; they had much more important figures to go after, like Cornel West. And it wasn’t just my little essay they were responding to; my essay was bad enough, sure, but it was compounded by the appearance, in the March 1995 <i>Atlantic</i>, of a much longer essay by Robert Boynton. That essay was about the work of a couple of <i>other</i> African-American intellectuals, and, like my essay, it drew a loose analogy between contemporary African-American intellectuals and the New York intellectuals of yesteryear, so clearly there was some kind of conspiracy afoot.
In <a href=”http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/comments/1269/”>comments to a post</a> over at my newly-renamed Other Place, a person by the handle of FrogProf directed me to <a href=”http://suburbdad.blogspot.com/2009/04/project-based-education-response-to.html”>this discussion</a> of <a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?_r=2&ref=opinion”>Mark Taylor’s recent (and very strange) <i>New York Times</i> op-ed</a>. Taylor’s essay is modestly titled “End the University as We Know It,” and the response, from (as it says on the blog banner) a veteran of cultural studies seminars in the 1990’s who has since moved into academic administration, takes apart Taylor’s proposal for replacing departments with temporary topic-clusters with seven-year sunset clauses:
<blockquote>I’m at a loss to explain where all these interdisciplinary experts will get their disciplinary expertise. Yes, a significant part of grad school involves exploring new questions. But another significant part — the part he skips — involves getting grounding in the history of a given line of inquiry. Call it a canon or a discipline or a tradition, but it’s part of the toolkit scholars bring to bear on new questions. Abandoning the toolkit in favor of, well, ad hoc autodidacticism doesn’t really solve the problem. If anything, it makes existing grads even less employable than they already are. I need to hire someone to teach Intro to Sociology. Is a graduate of a program in “Body” or “Water” capable? How the hell do I know? (And even if I think I do, can I convince an accrediting agency?) Am I taking the chance? In this market? Uh, that would be ‘no.'</blockquote>
I agree that Taylor’s proposal is unworkable, but I have a tangential-but-related point. Challenging the departmental structure of universities (whatever you might think of that project) isn’t the same thing as doing away with <i>disciplines</i>.
Last Thursday I took part in a plenary session of the <a href=”http://www.csaus.pitt.edu/frame_home.htm”>US Cultural Studies Association</a>. The session was called “the university after cultural studies,” and the participants were (besides myself) Marc Bousquet, Michele Janette, Cary Nelson, Sangeeta Ray, and Jeff Williams. We were each given eight minutes to speak, and we were admirably (I might say anomalously) disciplined, coming in at 50 minutes altogether. For those who might be interested, I’ll post my remarks below, with this brief explanation/ introduction: my talk assumes that everybody in the ballroom, at a cultural studies conference, can speak to the impact of cultural studies on their own research and/or teaching and/or program and/or department, so that <i>somebody</i> has to get up and say that whole entire huge sectors of the university are not “after” cultural studies at all: they didn’t have any cultural studies to begin with, so they’re not “after” cultural studies in a temporal sense, and they’re not interested in doing any now, so they’re not “after” cultural studies in that sense either.
And without further ado:
[click to continue…]
Yes, hogging time is here again! I never did finish <a href=https://crookedtimber.org/2007/04/25/hogging-ii-son-of-hogging/#more-5818>hockey blogging for the 2006-07 season</a>, and completely blew off blogging about the 2007-08 season, so let me start off in 2009 by predicting that the Anaheim <strike>Mighty</strike> Merely Ducks will overpower the Ottawa Senators in 2007 and that in 2008 the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins will finally deliver us from the bizarre string of Stanley Cup finals involving Obscure Canadian Cities* v. Sweltering Towns in the Southern US That Weren’t Aware They Had Hockey Teams (Calgary v. Tampa Bay, Edmonton v. Carolina, Ottawa v. Anaheim). For obvious reasons, those Finals were ratings dynamite — or would have been, if they had been televised. No, wait, they <i>were</i> televised! Apparently you can watch National Hockey League games in the US by tuning to a channel called <a href=”http://www.versus.com/”>“Against,”</a> which is available on cable channel 488356 (if you get the special ultra supreme X-treme package) and which features, along with hockey, an unbeatable combination of bull riding, cage fighting, <a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50jVa25gmWs&feature=related”>riding-mower racing, and competitive flogging</a>. So that’s positive.
Just as in 2007, veteran Calgary Flames fan Scott Lemieux will offer his take on the playoffs over at <a href=”http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2009/04/post-youve-all-been-waiting-for.html”>Lawyers, Guns, and Money</a>, and I’ll do the honors here, where rumor has it that people have been clamoring for hockey blogging with a mighty clamor. Though I’ll put most of this under the fold, so that the three or four clamorers and I won’t disturb all the rest of you.
[click to continue…]
<object width=”560″ height=”340″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/1vKr95e5aIE&hl=en&fs=1″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/1vKr95e5aIE&hl=en&fs=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”560″ height=”340″></embed></object>
Inviting one and all to the April 15 <strike>Tin Foil Hat Parades</strike> Tea Parties to protest Obama’s gay Islamic socialism and the Obama Depression it has brought upon us all. And also to protest fraud in government, a subject about which Newt is an acknowledged expert.
Please join Newt and the “big ideas” people of the new GOP — Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, and J. T. Plumber — as they issue their bold new Declaration of Independence from Economic Reality one week from today.
While I was at LSU talking about disability and stuff, a graduate student asked me about Obama’s “Special Olympics” gaffe on <i>The Tonight Show</i>. I said more or less what you’d expect: that it was a stunningly foolish and thoughtless remark, and something of a bitter irony that the United States’ first African-American president had become the first president to use “Special Olympics” as a laugh line. Guess we didn’t see <i>that</i> coming!
Now, of course I know the joke was supposed to be self-deprecating. But there are much better ways to be self-deprecating! Obama could have mocked his bowling skills by saying “I brought my Z game,” which would have been Very Funny because it would have been a play on the sports-cliché of bringing one’s A game, you see, and it would not have offended any Z-Americans, since they have notoriously generous senses of humor.