Academic Instincts
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by Marjorie Garber
Princeton University Press
Due/Published
September 2003, 200 pages,
paper
ISBN
0691115710
New in paper (F03) Garber explores the pleasures and pitfalls of the academic life. She discusses three of the perennial issues that have surfaced in recent debates about the humanities: the relation between "amateurs" and "professionals," the relation between one academic discipline and another, and the relation between "jargon" and "plain language." Rather than taking sides, the book explores the ways in which such debates are essential to intellectual life. Garber argues that the very things deplored or defended in discussions of the humanities cannot be either eliminated or endorsed because the discussion itself is what gives humanistic thought its vitality. "In Academic Instincts--a bravura inspection of various foibles and follies currently besetting the academic humanities--Marjorie Garber reveals herself as an ideal tour guide: energetic, canny, jocund, illuminating, and as wicked as she needs to be. Yet even as she skewers the amour-propre of contemporary pedants and pullulaters, she also offers a passionate defense of the intellectual enterprise itself. Garber's book is solace as well as sortie: a potent affirmation of our noblest 'academic instincts' and the quest after truth they continue to embody."--Terry Castle "I have been waiting for years for a book about my profession as vital and zesty as Academic Instincts. Now Marjorie Garber has written it with her customary fireworks, learning, and flair. It should change our minds about academic life--for the better."--Catharine R. Stimpson "Marjorie Garber's Academic Instincts is a light, tripping, subtle argument in defense of the academic profession. It is itself a fascinating instance of refusing 'to have arbitrary lines drawn between things: between old masterpieces and contemporary works, between art and the rest of the world, between criticism and conversation."--Alexander Nehamas Contents Preface
Chapter 1: The Amateur Professional and the Professional Amateur
Chapter 2: Discipline Envy
Chapter 3: Terms of Art
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