Cheap Who Killed Shakespeare? What's Happened to English Since the Radical Sixties (Book) (Patrick Brantlinger) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Who Killed Shakespeare? What's Happened to English Since the Radical Sixties

Despite its title, a level-headed cultural studies collection
Well, applaud the marketers of this provocatively titled volume of cultural criticism-- the title, graphics, and the Weegee-like cover photo all suggest an exciting exposé. Written by a professor at Indiana U. who's been there three decades and chaired a very large English department, this is a more sober study than the cover suggests. Like many essay collections by tenured scholars, it tends to jump about from chapter to chapter, reflecting the rather disparate contents. While I do wish more was provided than the usual introduction that lays out each of the forthcoming essays in big paragraphs with insufficient transitions or enough cohesion to warrant why they are gathered other than they are by the same writer, Brantlinger writes clearly and keeps his arguments moving along efficiently. And the introduction does tie together the essays as "postology," more or less, if that helps. Theoretical disputes with fellow academics do not slow his prose down much, to his credit. He even is wry without being (too) withering. But he does have to paraphrase considerably less skilled literary critics, and this necessary mediation does make the book often a slower read than you may expect from the energetic way the book's packaged. <
> <
>The title essay examines the supposed collapse of the core curriculum and the traditional canon (itself a misnomer). As the subtitle of the book suggests, this essay looks at the charges against departments and counters with a defense of their changing course offerings...which manage to sit comfortably next to the still-popular Bard. Although the reasons why Shakespeare remains so popular with undergrads deserves its own essay. <
> <
>Other essays show the utopian-dystopian-heterotopian descriptions of English departments, rhetoric vs. ideology, the faults of the "old" new historicism, postcolonial theory and its detractors, cultural studies as a meeting ground for humanistic Marxist and liberal applications of theory, infomatics at Indiana, and "posthistory" in the wake of 9/11. Nothing jarringly off here, but these articles are more typical examples of current lit-cult crit, albeit spiced with a multicult flavor. These essays personally did not engage me as much as the first one, but then that one's the reason I picked up the book. Back to the marketing! <
> <
>Readers of Gerald Graff, John Guillory, or Bill Readings' The University in Ruins will find much familiar with Brantlinger's critiques. I also recommend this to readers of Indiana & Illinois U's critics of academic posturing and mandarin snobbery, Cary Nelson and Stephen Watt. Similar to Nelson & Watt's joint publications, as a practicing department ex-chair as well as a professor Brantlinger's point-of-view does show more the behind-the-scenes contention with colleagues in other disciplines than the typical professor may encounter. Brantlinger's a bit more diplomatic at times than Nelson & Watt, but he shares their disdain for cant and narrow-minded attacks on intellectual freedom. <
> <
>Constantly, he has to correct his fellow profs from other departments about what all this deconstruction and queer studies and post-modern pursuit means for those more used to Austen and Chaucer than the array of cultural and literary "texts" opened by students and instructors today. If his colleagues need correcting, all the more a wider public. Maybe the cover will draw them in?