How to Be an Intellectual: Essays on Criticism, Culture, and the University

by Jeffrey J. Williams

Overview

Over the past decade, Jeffrey J. Williams has been one of the most perceptive observers of contemporary literary and cultural studies. He has also been a shrewd analyst of the state of American higher education. How to Be an Intellectual brings together noted and new essays and exemplifies Williams's effort to bring criticism to a wider public

How to Be an Intellectual profiles a number of critics, drawing on a unique series of interviews that give an inside look at their work and careers. The book often looks at critical thought from surprising angles, examining, for instance, the history of modern American criticism in terms of its keywords as they morphed from sound to rigorous to smart. It also puts in plain language the political travesty of higher education policies that produce student debt, which, as Williams demonstrates, all too readily follow the model of colonial indenture, not just as a metaphor but in actual point of fact.

How to Be an Intellectual tells a story of intellectual life since the culture wars. Shedding academic obscurity and calling for a better critical writing, it reflects on what makes the critic and intellectual the accidents of careers, the trends in thought, the institutions that shape us, and politics. It also includes personal views of living and working with books.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823263806
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2014
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jeffrey J. Williams has published widely on the history of the novel, contemporary American fiction, the history of criticism, and the American university. He regularly publishes in magazines such as Dissent and The Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as academic journals. His most recent book is The Critical Pulse: Thirty-six Credos by Contemporary Critics (co-edited), and he is one of the editors of The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticis (2001; 2nd ed. 2010). He also served as editor of the minnesota review from 1992 to 2010. Currently, he is Professor of English and of Literary and Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part One: The Politics of Criticism
1. How to Be an Intellectual: Rorty v. Ross
2. The Retrospective Tenor of Recent Theory
3. The Rise of the Theory Journal
4. How Critics Became Smart
5. Publicist Intellectuals
6. The Ubiquity of Culture
7. Credibility and Criticism: On Walter Benn Michaels
8. The Statistical Turn in Literary Criticism

Part Two: Profiles in Criticism
9. Prodigal Critics: Bloom, Fish, and Greenblatt
10. A Life in Criticism: M. H. Abrams
11. Bellwether: J. Hillis Miller
12. The Political Theory License: Michael Walzer
13. The Critic as Wanderer: Terry Eagleton
14. From Cyborgs to Animals: Donna Haraway
15. Intellectuals and Politics: Stefan Collini
16. The Editor as Broker: Gordon Hutner
17. Gaga Feminism: Judith "Jack" Halberstam
18. Book Angst

Part Three: The Predicament of the University
19. The Pedagogy of Debt
20. Student Debt and the Spirit of Indenture
21. The Academic Devolution
22. The Neoliberal Bias of Higher Education
23. The University on Film
24. The Thrill Is Gone
25. Unlucky Jim
26. Academic Opportunities Unlimited

Part Four: The Personal and the Critical
27. The Pedagogy of Prison
28. Shelf Life
29. Teacher: Remembering Michael Sprinker
30. My Life as Editor
31. Other People's Words
32. Long Island Intellectual

Editorial Reviews

"Jeff Williams makes the case that the university, thanks in part to the dramatic loss of job security for faculty, is no longer marginal to American life, but central to it. His book is compulsively readable, lucid without being populist. It makes you see that while being an intellectual is hard in all sorts of ways, old and new, it's still worth giving it a try."-Bruce Robbins, Columbia University

"The scope of this book is astonishing, and Williams in one of the very few academic writers who could have pulled it off."—Frank Donoghue, The Ohio State University

"For more than twenty years, Jeff Williams has been one of the indispensable critics of the politics of American higher education, and one of the most reliable and perceptive commentators on the intellectual trajectory of cultural studies. Since taking over the minnesota review in the early 1990s (when he was what, maybe twenty years old?), he has also become something else: the most astute and rigorous interviewer in the business. No one has even attempted to perform the kind of interlocutor/archaeologist role Jeff has defined for himself and I am not sure anyone could. Every essay here, and every interview, offers an invaluable demonstration of how to be a responsible, engaged, and organic intellectual." -Michael Bérubé, Director, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Pennsylvania State University

"The book's 32 essays cover a vast stretch of territory, from profiles of prominent critics to the impacts of student debt to an analysis of how universities are portrayed in film. . . The book thus draws connections between 'post-welfare state university' and everything from the importance of being 'smart' to the 'conceptual shrinkage' in literary theory." -InSide Higher Ed

"The book's 32 essays cover a vast stretch of territory, from profiles of prominent critics to the impacts of student debt to an analysis of how universities are portrayed in film. . . The book thus draws connections between 'post-welfare state university' and everything from the importance of being 'smart' to the 'conceptual shrinkage' in literary theory." -InSide Higher Ed

"'How to Be an Intellectual' can best be recommended because of Williams scathing and fact-filled indictment of colleges, in concert with the politicians, who have decided that the education biz is just that: a business." -RALPH & The Folio

"Jeffrey Williams has provided ample evidence here of a passionate and principled intellectual engagement with the political and financial interests that are combining forces to gut higher education. There could not be a better time for all of us working in the academy to follow his example."-Academe

"This is a book full of shrewd insights, illuminating and suggestive histories of how the intellectual has been and could be. The criticism without footnotes approach helps bring the crucial questions into a much clearer and open light than is usual. In short, it helps to make its reader an intellectual. This is a vital and necessary book." Thomas Docherty, Left History: A Interdisciplinary Journal of Historical Inquiry and Debate

From the Publisher

Jeffrey Williams has provided ample evidence here of a passionate and principled intellectual engagement with the political and financial interests that are combining forces to gut higher education. There could not be a better time for all of us working in the academy to follow his example.

Academe

The book's 32 essays cover a vast stretch of territory, from profiles of prominent critics to the impacts of student debt to an analysis of how universities are portrayed in film. . . The book thus draws connections between 'post-welfare state university' and everything from the importance of being 'smart' to the 'conceptual shrinkage' in literary theory.

InSide Higher Ed

No one has chronicled the lives and times of modern intellectuals as astutely as Jeff Williams. The breadth and depth of this brilliant guidebook to the shifting landscape of the last quarter-century showcases his unparalleled talents as a critic, reporter, editor, scholar, and independent thinker.

New York University - Andrew Ross

'How to Be an Intellectual' can best be recommended because of Williams scathing and fact-filled indictment of colleges, in concert with the politicians, who have decided that the education biz is just that: a business.

RALPH & The Folio - Irving Spivak

Jeff Williams makes the case that the university, thanks in part to the dramatic loss of job security for faculty, is no longer marginal to American life, but central to it. His book is compulsively readable, lucid without being populist. It makes you see that while being an intellectual is hard in all sorts of ways, old and new, it's still worth giving it a try.

Columbia University - Bruce Robbins

For more than twenty years, Jeff Williams has been one of the indispensable critics of the politics of American higher education, and one of the most reliable and perceptive commentators on the intellectual trajectory of cultural studies. Since taking over the minnesota review in the early 1990s (when he was what, maybe twenty years old?), he has also become something else: the most astute and rigorous interviewer in the business. No one has even attempted to perform the kind of interlocutor/archaeologist role Jeff has defined for himself—and I am not sure anyone could. Every essay here, and every interview, offers an invaluable demonstration of how to be a responsible, engaged, and organic intellectual.

Director, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Pennsylvania State University - Michael Bérubé

This is a book full of shrewd insights, illuminating and suggestive histories of how the intellectual has been and could be. The criticism without footnotes approach helps bring the crucial questions into a much clearer and open light than is usual. In short, it helps to make its reader an intellectual. This is a vital and necessary book.

Left History: A Interdisciplinary Journal of Historical Inquiry and Debate - Thomas Docherty

Critics, books, journals, institutions, money: Jeffrey Williams takes on the many faces of the humanities in this engaging book. If only more scholars wrote with such verve and clarity! How to be an Intellectual is the perfect guide to the idiosyncrasies of academic life.

University of Virginia - Rita Felski

The scope of this book is astonishing, and Williams in one of the very few academic writers who could have pulled it off.

The Ohio State University - Frank Donoghue

The book's 32 essays cover a vast stretch of territory, from profiles of prominent critics to the impacts of student debt to an analysis of how universities are portrayed in film. . . The book thus draws connections between 'post-welfare state university' and everything from the importance of being 'smart' to the 'conceptual shrinkage' in literary theory.

Inside Higher Ed

The 'criticism without footnotes' that Jeffrey Williams proposes and enacts in How to Be an Intellectual makes for lively and engaging reading. His shrewd assessments of contemporary critical pashas, schools, and fashions are necessary reading for anyone involved in the literary and cultural issues of our times.

Laura Kipnis