Search results for ""author gerald graff""

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 essential history of literary pedagogy and a critical classic.

Read more less

Since its first publication more than fifteen years ago, Literature Against Itself has achieved wide recognition as the first major critique of post-1960s cultural radicalism—and still, one of the best. In it, Gerald Graff argues that the reigning strategies for defending literature now end up by trivializing it, and he analyzes why and how they have gone wrong. He charges that our leading literary critics, whether they claim to be traditionalists or innovators, have taken positions that ultimately undermine the authority of art, literature, and criticism itself. "An extraordinarily important book, biting and cogent on every page."—Robert Boyers, Salmagundi. "In this recoil from the current anarchy of interpretation, Graff has affirmed that `literary thinking is inseparable from social and moral thinking."'—New York Times Book Review. "A wonderfully trenchant and illuminating inquiry… the shrewdness and cogency of his commentary are constantly arresting."—Virginia Quarterly Review.

Read more less

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, Los Angeles Weekly, and Amazon.com. Purchase the audio edition.

Read more less