The word on the street
Subtitle: linking the academy and the common reader
By: Harvey Teres
Series: The new public scholarship series
Publisher: University of Michigan Press and The University of Michigan Library
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Ann Arbor
Language: eng
Number of pages: 208
ISBN-13: 9780472071364; 9780472051366
Subjects: Literature; Politics and literature; Theory; Literature and society; Philosophy; History and criticism; Books and reading; Appreciation; Study and teaching; Literacy
Description: "Despite significant changes since the mid-twentieth century in American critical culture--the culture emanating from the serious review of books, ideas, and the arts--it attracts only a small and declining minority of Americans. However productive this culture has been, American society has not approached the realization of Emerson's or Dewey's vision of a highly participatory American cultural democracy. Such a culture requires critics who are read by the average citizen, but the migration of critics and intellectuals from the public to the academy has resulted in fewer efforts to engage with ordinary citizens. The Word on the Street investigates this disjunction between the study of literature in the academy and the interests of the common reader and society at large, arguing the vital importance of publicly engaged scholarship in the humanities. Teres chronicles how the once central function of the humanities professorate--to teach students to appreciate and be inspired by literature--has increasingly been lost to literary and cultural studies in the last thirty years. The Word on the Street argues for a return to an earlier model of the public intellectual and a literary and cultural criticism that is accessible to ordinary citizens. Along the way, Teres offers an account of the current problem and potential solutions, with the goal of prompting a future vision of publicly engaged scholarship that resonates with the common reader and promotes an informed citizenry." --From the back of the book.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Public culture and academic culture; title: Revitalizing literary studies; title: Post-9/11: why the public needs literary critics; title: Lionel Trilling as public intellectual; title: Mary McCarthy's beauty; title: The decline of aesthetic literacy and the new aesthetics; title: When everyone misreads the same book; title: Reading simic in Syracuse; title: Dialogues on aesthetics and politics; title: Dialogues on aesthetics and judgment; title: Dialogues on aesthetics and spirituality.