Widely considered the standard history of the profession of literary studies, "Professing Literature" unearths the long-forgotten ideas and debates that created the literature department as we know it today. In a readable and often-amusing narrative, Gerald Graff shows that the heated conflicts of our recent culture wars echo and often recycle controversies over how literature should be taught that began more than a century ago.
Updated with a new preface by the author that addresses many of the provocative arguments raised by its initial publication, "Professing Literature" remains an...

In the heated academic warfare over multiculturalism and the curriculum, Gerald Graff takes a daring stand. He suggests that the anger and hostility over political correctness should be channelled into productive debate and that teachers, administrators and students alike could actually make good use of the crisis to tackle the real problems of academic incoherence and student apathy.

The National Basketball Association is a place where white fans and black players enact virtually every racial issue and tension in U.S. culture. Following the Seattle SuperSonics for an entire season, David Shields explores how, in a predominantly black sport, white fans-including especially himself-think about and talk about black heroes, black scapegoats, and black bodies. Critically acclaimed and highly controversial, Black Planet was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN USA Award, and was named one of the Top Ten Nonfiction Books of 1999 by Esquire, Newsday,...

"Limited Inc "is a major work in the philosophy of language by the celebrated French thinker Jacques Derrida. The book's two essays, "Limited Inc" and "Signature Event Context," constitute key statements of the Derridean theory of deconstruction. They are the clearest exposition to be found of Derrida's most controversial idea, that linguistic meaning is fundamentally indeterminate because the contexts that fix meaning are never stable. "Limited Inc" includes an important new afterword by the author.

When it first appeared in 1976, this groundbreaking exploration of the influences of capitalism on the profession of English touched a nerve among educators and inspired Library Journal to declare, "This book should be read by all thoughtful Americans." Now, 20 years later, in a substantial new introduction that recontextualizes the book, Richard Ohmann addresses the critical furor over its initial publication, evaluates his own arguments in the aftermath of the Cold War, and locates the profession of English in the thick of the hotly contested culture wars. A remarkably prescient book whose...

Designed for "teaching the conflicts," this critical edition of Shakespeare's The Tempest reprints the authoritative Bevington text of the play along with 21 selections representing major critical and cultural controversies surrounding the work. The distinctive editorial material helps readers grapple not only with the play's critical issues but also with cultural debates about literature itself.

The second edition includes four new readings, revised headnotes that more helpfully contextualize the critical essays, a portfolio of visual representations of Caliban, and an...

"Inflation affects literary occupations and preoccupations quite as much as it does financial scrip." Starting from this premise, Charles Newman ventures forth on an irreverent, wide-ranging discussion of the"Post-Modern" attitude infiction, culture, and sensibility. Newman questions the "revolutionary" claims of avant-garde novelists and literary theorists, but he is no less critical of the argumentsof neoconservatives, neorealists, and advocates of "moralfiction." Newman argues that neither of these groups has confronted the unprecedented break with tradition entailed by an economics and...

"They Say / I Say" identifies the key rhetorical moves in academic writing, showing students how to frame their arguments in the larger context of what others have said and providing templates to help them make those moves. And, because these moves are central across all disciplines, the book includes chapters on writing in the sciences, writing in the social sciences, and--new to this edition--writing about literature.