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Professing Literature: An Institutional History
GRAFF, PROFESSING LITERATURE. AN INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY [HARDBACK]. CHICAGO, IL, 1987, vii 315 p. Encuadernacion original. Nuevo.
324 pages, Paperback
First published February 15, 1989
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March 27, 2014
First off, can I take a moment to describe why I love Graff's writing style? True to his philosophies about high/low intellectual discussion, he'll always bring back down whatever theory or history he's talking about with quips and summaries that make me draw little smiley faces in the margins and the quote he includes from contemporaries often make their way onto my Facebook feed. Kind of a delight to read.
Next I'd like to say that in addition to being influencial, this book is quite useful. Graff's description of "field covering" in English studies and generally the way that the structure of an institution can shape the way disciplinary conflicts are highlighted (or not) (91) can apply to my own research. I'm interested in this "patterned isolation" (L. Veysey's phrase)that he describes in terms of how we in English do research so distinct from each other.
In a weaker sense, I'm fascinated by this idea that New Criticism increased in part because there were more practicing poets joining English faculties and wanting to add their view of research.
And here's a good quote: "The boundaries that mark literary study off from creative writing, composition, rhetoric, communications, linguistics and film, philosophy, literature, and sociology each bespeak a history of conflict that was critical to creating and defining these disciplines yet has never become a central part of their context of study" (258).
The introduction includes a mea culpa on ignoring the history of composition (everyone complains about this in this book, but it doesn't offend me, largely because I see literary studies as quite a different discipline), and the idea that field coverage leads to a sort of "safety valve" for ideas to head for a new "frontier" (his word). Awesome.
Next I'd like to say that in addition to being influencial, this book is quite useful. Graff's description of "field covering" in English studies and generally the way that the structure of an institution can shape the way disciplinary conflicts are highlighted (or not) (91) can apply to my own research. I'm interested in this "patterned isolation" (L. Veysey's phrase)that he describes in terms of how we in English do research so distinct from each other.
In a weaker sense, I'm fascinated by this idea that New Criticism increased in part because there were more practicing poets joining English faculties and wanting to add their view of research.
And here's a good quote: "The boundaries that mark literary study off from creative writing, composition, rhetoric, communications, linguistics and film, philosophy, literature, and sociology each bespeak a history of conflict that was critical to creating and defining these disciplines yet has never become a central part of their context of study" (258).
The introduction includes a mea culpa on ignoring the history of composition (everyone complains about this in this book, but it doesn't offend me, largely because I see literary studies as quite a different discipline), and the idea that field coverage leads to a sort of "safety valve" for ideas to head for a new "frontier" (his word). Awesome.
September 10, 2020
In this book, Graff provides an overview of the history of critical debates taking place within English departments between the nineteenth-century to the present day. Graff’s argument is centered on the notion that the humanistic ideal with which we currently associate literature departments is a myth; in fact, there are many conflicts that take place behind the scenes that students are not privy to until they are resolved (or managed in some way) by scholars and critics. At this point, the values of the debates are lost on the students, who are merely presented with a methodology of the history of literature that Graff terms “the field coverage model.” At an administrative level, the field coverage model works to separate the history of literature into analysis of distinct time periods, cultures, and societies that do not necessarily intersect (allowing every graduate student to “specialize” in a time period – note the connections here outside of literature and to all of the humanities), and while scholars and critics at the graduate level and above work out the various approaches to not only teaching these subjects but researching and writing about them, students are left on their own in some parts to work out the interdisciplinary connections between literary time periods, authors, and texts. It is evident that the field coverage model has many benefits (self-regulating and therefore timeless, organizes literature, expresses humanism, etc.) and that it is here to stay, however, that does not mean it shouldn’t be revised and built upon. For one, Graff argues that these methodological conflicts should be introduced in the classroom, where students can not only be made privy to them but also help shape the future of the curriculum and critical debates. Secondly, Graff emphasizes the importance of using the concept of the interdisciplinary within literary studies itself, in order to make connections within the curriculum that are missing.
The history of these literary conflicts are not only at the level of pedagogy but also at the level of textual analysis and therefore at the level of ideology, where approaches to literature in the traditional method of the eighteenth-century involving rote memorization of classical poetry became transformed after the nineteenth-century towards other learning methods. While the New Critics of the early twentieth-century were more concerned with the explication of texts without appeal to external sources, traditional Humanists who entered later on in the scene found that there was a need for the discipline’s return to morality as a centre of analysis, with political/ethical principles highlighted in textual analysis, and not ignored or dismissed in the way that the New Critics had done. In a meta-analysis itself, Graff uses a historical and sociological approach to explain the political circumstances which lead to the disinterestedness of the New Critics in approaching literature outside of the narrow boundaries of mere explication. At the same time, Graff recognizes that a historical approach alone is not the answer in our understanding of a literary text: the combination of the historical and the intuitive reading of a text, or as Graff calls it, the internal and external, are what together makes the field of literary criticism. Graff makes the unique argument that what is internal for one reader may be external for another, and vice versa, and I found this to be one of the strongest arguments in the chapters I read, outside of the argument of Graff’s main thesis.
Literary humanists and critics were influential in bringing to the discipline what we now most often associate it with, such as the close reading of a select few texts, the turn towards history/culture/society as contexts of said texts, and interpretations of apparent themes and moral/political ideologies which can either occur from an intuitive reading or external knowledge or both. A conflict however, arose within the field of criticism itself, Graff argues, and with the critical methodology of literary studies came various conflicts concerning aesthetics as a value, formalistic approaches to literature, and whether ideological interpretations posited a type of relativistic world view in the pedagogy.
In this book, Graff does not spend much time identifying and explaining the various fields of literary criticism to the reader (New Criticism, Formalism, Humanism, Marxism/Ideology, etc.) mostly because they are secondary to the main questions of the book, which are questions such as: what is the value of literature? How should literature be taught, presented, and read? With knowledge of their history, what can we do to improve the state of literature departments today? Still, in reading this book you can get an idea of what approaches towards literature are associated with each of these fields.
Overall, I found Graff’s book very insightful, especially having been familiar with literary theories in the past, but not the critical debates about them. I do think that he is in some ways too theoretical for his own good – there are many instances where Graff proposes solutions for the discipline which, in practice, would be hard to initiate, as good as they may sound on paper. Graff’s suggestions of unity however are very important; he has established that in the history of critical methodology it has often been scholars versus critics, and it seems that a combination of the work of both groups is what brings literary studies to its heights today. Graff’s emphasis on the lack of interdisciplinary approaches within the pedagogy is very true, and I have seen it myself, and I think his suggestions for improvement of curriculums – while written in the 1980s – are still very much needed today. Students do a great job of making connections not only between classes but between their coursework, however, they should not be the ones to bear the weight of this duty, as it should be something already part of the curriculum itself. Otherwise, we lose a lot of insights in literature, as Graff argues, that can bring the discipline forward.
P.S. I really loved Graff’s emphasis and outline of the beliefs of specific literary critics in this book – his comments on critic John Crowe Ransom taught me new things I didn’t know about him, and also situated his thought within a wider critical debate that I wasn’t previously aware of. It is evident that in order to understand the literary theories, we must in part understand the debates that took place around them, and for this purpose Graff did an excellent job with this book.
The history of these literary conflicts are not only at the level of pedagogy but also at the level of textual analysis and therefore at the level of ideology, where approaches to literature in the traditional method of the eighteenth-century involving rote memorization of classical poetry became transformed after the nineteenth-century towards other learning methods. While the New Critics of the early twentieth-century were more concerned with the explication of texts without appeal to external sources, traditional Humanists who entered later on in the scene found that there was a need for the discipline’s return to morality as a centre of analysis, with political/ethical principles highlighted in textual analysis, and not ignored or dismissed in the way that the New Critics had done. In a meta-analysis itself, Graff uses a historical and sociological approach to explain the political circumstances which lead to the disinterestedness of the New Critics in approaching literature outside of the narrow boundaries of mere explication. At the same time, Graff recognizes that a historical approach alone is not the answer in our understanding of a literary text: the combination of the historical and the intuitive reading of a text, or as Graff calls it, the internal and external, are what together makes the field of literary criticism. Graff makes the unique argument that what is internal for one reader may be external for another, and vice versa, and I found this to be one of the strongest arguments in the chapters I read, outside of the argument of Graff’s main thesis.
Literary humanists and critics were influential in bringing to the discipline what we now most often associate it with, such as the close reading of a select few texts, the turn towards history/culture/society as contexts of said texts, and interpretations of apparent themes and moral/political ideologies which can either occur from an intuitive reading or external knowledge or both. A conflict however, arose within the field of criticism itself, Graff argues, and with the critical methodology of literary studies came various conflicts concerning aesthetics as a value, formalistic approaches to literature, and whether ideological interpretations posited a type of relativistic world view in the pedagogy.
In this book, Graff does not spend much time identifying and explaining the various fields of literary criticism to the reader (New Criticism, Formalism, Humanism, Marxism/Ideology, etc.) mostly because they are secondary to the main questions of the book, which are questions such as: what is the value of literature? How should literature be taught, presented, and read? With knowledge of their history, what can we do to improve the state of literature departments today? Still, in reading this book you can get an idea of what approaches towards literature are associated with each of these fields.
Overall, I found Graff’s book very insightful, especially having been familiar with literary theories in the past, but not the critical debates about them. I do think that he is in some ways too theoretical for his own good – there are many instances where Graff proposes solutions for the discipline which, in practice, would be hard to initiate, as good as they may sound on paper. Graff’s suggestions of unity however are very important; he has established that in the history of critical methodology it has often been scholars versus critics, and it seems that a combination of the work of both groups is what brings literary studies to its heights today. Graff’s emphasis on the lack of interdisciplinary approaches within the pedagogy is very true, and I have seen it myself, and I think his suggestions for improvement of curriculums – while written in the 1980s – are still very much needed today. Students do a great job of making connections not only between classes but between their coursework, however, they should not be the ones to bear the weight of this duty, as it should be something already part of the curriculum itself. Otherwise, we lose a lot of insights in literature, as Graff argues, that can bring the discipline forward.
P.S. I really loved Graff’s emphasis and outline of the beliefs of specific literary critics in this book – his comments on critic John Crowe Ransom taught me new things I didn’t know about him, and also situated his thought within a wider critical debate that I wasn’t previously aware of. It is evident that in order to understand the literary theories, we must in part understand the debates that took place around them, and for this purpose Graff did an excellent job with this book.
May 24, 2014
The version I read is the original 1987 edition. As a history of the field it is thorough, but as history it feels oddly dated. The final chapter on 'Theory" tries to show that all reading is theoretical, as though the discussion of methodology in the 1920s and full blown 'continental theory' (Graf's term), are identical.
Other than that a fascinating survey of the problems facing American institutions once they had accepted the study of literature was academically respectable. The initial misgivings: how could you define the field, how could you define the knowledge and skills required for competence in the field, how would you ever deliver them and then assess them, remained and remain essentially unresolved, which allows for endless attempts to come up with the right way to study literature, doomed until everyone knows what 'literature' is and why it's being studied.
Worth reading alongside Kernan's 'The Death of Literature".
Other than that a fascinating survey of the problems facing American institutions once they had accepted the study of literature was academically respectable. The initial misgivings: how could you define the field, how could you define the knowledge and skills required for competence in the field, how would you ever deliver them and then assess them, remained and remain essentially unresolved, which allows for endless attempts to come up with the right way to study literature, doomed until everyone knows what 'literature' is and why it's being studied.
Worth reading alongside Kernan's 'The Death of Literature".
June 3, 2024
I first read this book in 2001 as a new MA student in English as part of Intro to Grad Studies. Revisiting it a quarter of a century later as a professor has been an interesting experience.
Through outlining the history of the study of literature in colleges and universities, Graff argues that the discipline has lacked unity and coherence and that the way literature has been taught often does little to achieve its ostensible aims. He says that the initial aim of teaching literature in the 19th century was the "transmission of humanism and cultural traditional in the Matthew Arnold sense" (3), which essentially boils down to upholding the culture of an elite class. For a very long time, well into the 20th century, college was an environment that was social for the wealthy and where only those less fortunate had to actually try to learn something.
Initial instruction consisted entirely of rote memorization of Latin and Greek without any discussion of what these works actually mean. The focus then became philological--entirely about dissecting syntax and etc.; this was partially because of the feeling that literature had to be taught as a science in order to be respected. Early students were rewarded for regurgitating the thoughts of others they found in research rather than their own ideas/arguments (still a problem we have to combat in beginning writers).
In response, criticism--interpretation of the text--emerged. It was seen as personal and subjective by the philologists who dealt in facts (scholarship). Now criticism and scholarship are pretty much interchangeable terms. When Graff published this book, theory was the change threatening the discipline (although Graff argues, quite rightly, that everything we've ever done in the discipline all the way back to the beginning has been theoretical).
Graff writes that pretty much since its inception, higher ed has presupposed that students come culturally literate and prepared to learn; this problem was much more of a problem in the rote memorization days of the 19th and early 20th centuries when students were expected to learn something just from exposure to the words of the text themselves, but it's still a problem.
One of the points that Graff makes that I find really intriguing is that modern languages and literature took so long be taught as a matter of course in higher ed because they were considered the purview of women, effeminate.
This book was published in 1987, ten years before I would start my undergraduate degree. Graff writes that "the tacit assumption has been that students should be exposed only to the results of professional controversies, not to the controversies themselves" (8), and this was certainly true of my undergraduate AND graduate experience (to a lesser degree). As an undergrad, I had no idea how recently women had gained a foothold in the academy (both as professors and in the canon), for example. Sadly, this book demonstrates that point. In nearly 300 pages, only five female scholars are mentioned (Nina Baym, Helen Vendler, Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar) and only very, very briefly. Baym gets one sentence, for example. Only two female writers are mentioned, Dickinson and Austen. And Graff makes pretty clear that he's suspicious of feminist theory and of the quality of literature written by women.
I think that many of the problems Graff highlights here have been resolved to some degree at this point (although IDK if he would agree with me). Most English Departments have student learning outcomes at the program and course levels that explicitly indicate to students what they are supposed to be learning and how that learning will benefit them professionally and personally. Pedagogical strategies like Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TiLT) also address this problem. Most English teachers highlight transferable skills. I don't know any of my colleagues who don't pair close reading with historical context and some kind of theoretical apparatus. Interdisciplinary studies thrive on most college campuses.
Where Graff's argument is still most potent for me is that we don't often make apparent to students the theoretical apparatuses that undergird the choices we make in designing our courses and that we don't expose them to the controversies/conflicts in the discipline, instead teaching our preferred side as if it is THE side.
Through outlining the history of the study of literature in colleges and universities, Graff argues that the discipline has lacked unity and coherence and that the way literature has been taught often does little to achieve its ostensible aims. He says that the initial aim of teaching literature in the 19th century was the "transmission of humanism and cultural traditional in the Matthew Arnold sense" (3), which essentially boils down to upholding the culture of an elite class. For a very long time, well into the 20th century, college was an environment that was social for the wealthy and where only those less fortunate had to actually try to learn something.
Initial instruction consisted entirely of rote memorization of Latin and Greek without any discussion of what these works actually mean. The focus then became philological--entirely about dissecting syntax and etc.; this was partially because of the feeling that literature had to be taught as a science in order to be respected. Early students were rewarded for regurgitating the thoughts of others they found in research rather than their own ideas/arguments (still a problem we have to combat in beginning writers).
In response, criticism--interpretation of the text--emerged. It was seen as personal and subjective by the philologists who dealt in facts (scholarship). Now criticism and scholarship are pretty much interchangeable terms. When Graff published this book, theory was the change threatening the discipline (although Graff argues, quite rightly, that everything we've ever done in the discipline all the way back to the beginning has been theoretical).
Graff writes that pretty much since its inception, higher ed has presupposed that students come culturally literate and prepared to learn; this problem was much more of a problem in the rote memorization days of the 19th and early 20th centuries when students were expected to learn something just from exposure to the words of the text themselves, but it's still a problem.
One of the points that Graff makes that I find really intriguing is that modern languages and literature took so long be taught as a matter of course in higher ed because they were considered the purview of women, effeminate.
This book was published in 1987, ten years before I would start my undergraduate degree. Graff writes that "the tacit assumption has been that students should be exposed only to the results of professional controversies, not to the controversies themselves" (8), and this was certainly true of my undergraduate AND graduate experience (to a lesser degree). As an undergrad, I had no idea how recently women had gained a foothold in the academy (both as professors and in the canon), for example. Sadly, this book demonstrates that point. In nearly 300 pages, only five female scholars are mentioned (Nina Baym, Helen Vendler, Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar) and only very, very briefly. Baym gets one sentence, for example. Only two female writers are mentioned, Dickinson and Austen. And Graff makes pretty clear that he's suspicious of feminist theory and of the quality of literature written by women.
I think that many of the problems Graff highlights here have been resolved to some degree at this point (although IDK if he would agree with me). Most English Departments have student learning outcomes at the program and course levels that explicitly indicate to students what they are supposed to be learning and how that learning will benefit them professionally and personally. Pedagogical strategies like Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TiLT) also address this problem. Most English teachers highlight transferable skills. I don't know any of my colleagues who don't pair close reading with historical context and some kind of theoretical apparatus. Interdisciplinary studies thrive on most college campuses.
Where Graff's argument is still most potent for me is that we don't often make apparent to students the theoretical apparatuses that undergird the choices we make in designing our courses and that we don't expose them to the controversies/conflicts in the discipline, instead teaching our preferred side as if it is THE side.
October 17, 2019
Poor Graff! I see from the goodreads that only academics and slightly curious people read him, and thus his rating here is, imo, lower than it should be.
I see that most academics gave this 4 stars, and I am no exception. It is perhaps unfair, but telling of our biases and what we treasure as researchers. For those people who complained that it was "boring" to read the institutional history of literature... maybe the title should've given you a clue? I mean by all means, avoid "boring" stuff if you want to, but the substance of the book is in the title, so... picking it up and then complaining about its contents seems a bit unfair!
Ok, the good stuff. I think that anyone who is looking to study literature should read this. The dude obviously did a LOT of work, and much of it is solid concrete history that we should know. The history also explains a lot of our vague convictions on why we should read and how we read (doesn't matter which camp you're in).
On the other hand, the entire narrative of the book doesn't quite hold together. Asserting that current debates kinda resemble old ones is tricksy, though it has its merits. Don't really agree with some of his assertions -- there's something a bit Bourdieu-esque about him in his adherence to historicism -- and to think of teaching the conflicts -- as reasonable as it sounds -- has its issues.
I see that someone here has asked to read this with The Death of Literature. I actually think that a better companion book would be Readings's The University in Ruins. The Death of Literature frankly falls into an entire group of people wailing about the death of literature in the 90's, mostly blaming 'value relativism' a la Allan Bloom (the most famous of these, though it was published in 1988, and THAT book is a hot mess of misreadings). Readings's book is rough on the edges. He died before he could polish it up after all. But it provides a more coherent narrative to the tensions that Graff points out (they're not quite 'tensions' because the Bildung project kinda assumes they're not, eventually..). The other interesting person to read here would be Spivak, with her book Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalisation.
I see that most academics gave this 4 stars, and I am no exception. It is perhaps unfair, but telling of our biases and what we treasure as researchers. For those people who complained that it was "boring" to read the institutional history of literature... maybe the title should've given you a clue? I mean by all means, avoid "boring" stuff if you want to, but the substance of the book is in the title, so... picking it up and then complaining about its contents seems a bit unfair!
Ok, the good stuff. I think that anyone who is looking to study literature should read this. The dude obviously did a LOT of work, and much of it is solid concrete history that we should know. The history also explains a lot of our vague convictions on why we should read and how we read (doesn't matter which camp you're in).
On the other hand, the entire narrative of the book doesn't quite hold together. Asserting that current debates kinda resemble old ones is tricksy, though it has its merits. Don't really agree with some of his assertions -- there's something a bit Bourdieu-esque about him in his adherence to historicism -- and to think of teaching the conflicts -- as reasonable as it sounds -- has its issues.
I see that someone here has asked to read this with The Death of Literature. I actually think that a better companion book would be Readings's The University in Ruins. The Death of Literature frankly falls into an entire group of people wailing about the death of literature in the 90's, mostly blaming 'value relativism' a la Allan Bloom (the most famous of these, though it was published in 1988, and THAT book is a hot mess of misreadings). Readings's book is rough on the edges. He died before he could polish it up after all. But it provides a more coherent narrative to the tensions that Graff points out (they're not quite 'tensions' because the Bildung project kinda assumes they're not, eventually..). The other interesting person to read here would be Spivak, with her book Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalisation.
October 7, 2021
Wow there goes 300 pages I’ll never get back 🥲 Graff gives many okay-ish points, and maybe it was the context of my grad class (teaching literature) that just threw off the reading of this, but it was drier than a Popeyes biscuit with no drink. It just dragged on with no context on references (outdated ones at that) and the historical parts definitely didn’t help me learn anything about teaching literature in a modern classroom. Flashback to ‘43 and maybe this would’ve been a 5 star read? I’m not sure.
July 18, 2020
A good overview of the development of Literature as an academic discipline. Graff asserts that Literature has gained a certain incoherence as a field because institutions have largely assimilated conflicting ideologies over the years without really trying to resolve them. He argues in favor of "teaching the conflicts" between different approaches to literature as a way to create coherence.
February 15, 2018
kinda had to breeze through it bc the class i read it in gave us two weeks to finish it so a lot was probably lost on me. but. still. very informative.
March 22, 2019
Good to know that there is no longer a difference between a 'scholar' and a 'critic.'
September 16, 2020
So dry...
It did what was intended and explained why and how Literature became something to teach and learn in College.
Graduate level class.
It did what was intended and explained why and how Literature became something to teach and learn in College.
Graduate level class.
July 11, 2023
Informational but boring!
January 29, 2024
This is obviously an important book but my god it wasn’t fun to read.
June 14, 2024
these books are bangers
May 25, 2010
How does one digest a two-hundred-and-sixty-page text in a paragraph or two? Perhaps to the accompaniment of organ music? Or should I begin with a ponderous “As everyone knows” (55) and then conjure up an obscure fact to intimidate all? (My only complaint with Graff as a stylist!) I’m reminded of David Kazanjian’s three “yeses.” (Did you know that “yeses” can mean the stimulation of one’s partner, producing the “yes”...”Yes”...”YES”? (As in “When Harry Met Sally”)). Well, “yes!” is what I found myself moaning again and again as I fingered through Graff’s inviting treatise: Yes! When literature is left to teach itself, the result can be another kind of reductive analysis--the fruit of the unexamined assumption or the status quo. Yes! Students need theoretical concepts in order to make sense of literature and to talk about it intelligently. YES! Without examples of the kind of work they are expected to produce, students have one hand tied behind their back. I know that feeling. When I came into literary study after an MA in theology it seemed a chaotic free-for-all--until I took theory. Kazanjian’s first yes: Read the text closely (like a good New Critic). But remember that democracy doesn’t presume a unitary culture. (How can anyone have thought that “Western” or American Literature was an organic or dialectical whole? Theology lost that innocence regarding the Bible in the early nineteenth century.) Kazanjian’s second yes: Make a best effort to understand what the text is saying. When we “study” a text without knowing it’s con-text (for Theology, the Sitz im Leben) we study ourselves--not the text. Kazanjian’s third yes: Before you pop off to disagree, claim the space of agreement (Graff says this too). Is there really any imperative that says others must love what we have loved? But before I continue to agree with Graff, I have to disagree: I love reductive analyses! I am a very happy camper when my students can do the math: “I Stand Here Ironing” / (primary maternal preoccupation+holding environment+good-enough mother+impingement+transitional space+object usage)=false self disorder and the not good enough mother. When they can successfully inhabit a theoretical perspective and disentangle the latent from the manifest--before we get to Althusser--I feel I’m doing my job. I’m proud of my role as a “licensed agent of alienation” (232). (I prefer the word “suspicion,” with its full Foucauldian trace.) Splitting foreshadows reparation, Eve would remind us, and reparation doesn’t necessitate intellectual agreement. But I agree anyway: We shouldn’t wait to teach the results of our controversies, we should teach the controversies themselves. Hiding disagreement from students leaves them clueless. I believe that there is a “deep cognitive connection between controversy and intelligibility”(xv)--at least that’s my experience--but I’m not sure it’s everyone’s. Good education is about helping students enter the culture of ideas and arguments, but I’m not clear how composition trumps literature in facilitating that. Questions remain: How to “really” bring the cultural text into a survey course? I’m afraid my literature students do read texts “New Critically in chronological order.” Are the passive powers of reception really at odds with the active powers of originality? I suspect its more of a spiral than an opposition. My favorite moment in the text, which Graff saves for the final page, the quote from James Kincaid: “all courses are courses in theory. One either smuggles it in or goes through customs with it openly...” (262). Amen.
December 30, 2010
We begin by noting that PROFESSING and PROFESSOR share the same root, and this book is about professors professing. It is a response to ED Hirsch and Allan Bloom’s books about reform in the teaching of literature. The book is enlightening because Graff’s examines the pre-history of literature classes to show how they evolved from Greek and Latin studies, and how once introduced they were taught in the same plodding way. He eventually advances to the controversial “-isms” of today.
The first sentence of most paragraphs is a statement of fact, with an example given in the balance of the paragraph. Sometimes Graff expresses an opinion in the first sentence, with his reason given in the balance. This is as plodding as the execrable way that Greek, Latin, and English was taught in the early days, but shares their virtue of being informative, if not exciting. The meat of the book rewards plodding through this verbal sludge.
Graff emphasis is that one theory of how to teach literature contended with another, sometimes leading to a synthesis, sometimes with one approach dominating until another theory competed with it. The same is true for theories of understanding literature, and often the two cannot be separated as I just separated them in order to describe them. Graff is very smart about theory, valuing what it has given literary studies while recognizing that there is “nothing inherently self-undoing or illegitimate about all idealizations,” and stating, “I doubt that all institutional patterns can be explained as effects of ideology, power, ‘logocentrism’ or subjugation” (11). Amen, brother.
He ends with the suggestion that literature professors teach the controversy, rather than take sides as a more enlightened approach for themselves and their students. After all, there will be a new theory to replace current beliefs along any minute now.
The first sentence of most paragraphs is a statement of fact, with an example given in the balance of the paragraph. Sometimes Graff expresses an opinion in the first sentence, with his reason given in the balance. This is as plodding as the execrable way that Greek, Latin, and English was taught in the early days, but shares their virtue of being informative, if not exciting. The meat of the book rewards plodding through this verbal sludge.
Graff emphasis is that one theory of how to teach literature contended with another, sometimes leading to a synthesis, sometimes with one approach dominating until another theory competed with it. The same is true for theories of understanding literature, and often the two cannot be separated as I just separated them in order to describe them. Graff is very smart about theory, valuing what it has given literary studies while recognizing that there is “nothing inherently self-undoing or illegitimate about all idealizations,” and stating, “I doubt that all institutional patterns can be explained as effects of ideology, power, ‘logocentrism’ or subjugation” (11). Amen, brother.
He ends with the suggestion that literature professors teach the controversy, rather than take sides as a more enlightened approach for themselves and their students. After all, there will be a new theory to replace current beliefs along any minute now.
July 23, 2016
This being written by Gerald Graff of They Say/I Say infamy, I proceeded with caution. Professing Literature, however, serves its purpose as a history of the English discipline. It investigates the premises and functions of literary scholarship from its derivation from philology and rhetoric in the late 1800s to its derivation of formal theory about a century later. Graff argues that recent anxiety over the specialization of academic English is only the latest permutation of the conflict between scholars of an autonomous literary science and advocates for a generalist, humanist, or populist approach. His solution is a pedagogic model that embraces difference by encouraging conversation and intersecting scholarly methods, rather than appending new perspectives to the disciplinary schema (invariably “routinizing” them, writes Graff) and thereby maintaining the status quo. The book did make clearer what it would have meant to study literature throughout its institutional history thus far, and it led me to a few worthwhile discoveries of my own. In defense of my rating: Frequent anecdotes and individual testimonies watered down Graff’s prose, which I sometimes found redundant. I also thought Graff treated American literature kind of instrumentally, and that the chapter itself was out of context in the absence of sections on, namely, comp. lit. or philology in the wake of linguistics.
June 20, 2016
This is a book which reviews the teaching of literature at the college level in America throughout history. With that as a premise, it is kind of astonishing that it reaches levels of real interest at many points, not just impressive details like the 1850s librarians who would attempt to keep anyone from borrowing any books. Graff's main idea in life is that conflict is not a bad thing (one of his works is called "Agonism in the Academy") and that pushing on and working through areas of conflict can be fruitful and enlightening. Thus his idea for making literature departments work together more cohesively is to allow professors and people from different viewpoints to air those views publicly and indeed make an institutional emphasis on exposing students to paired courses or professors, each of whom can show what her or she believes to be the reason for studying literature in the way that he or she does. Interesting.
January 17, 2014
It was well worth my time to read this book as a general overview of literature teaching in the academy. It helped to explain some of the conflicts and tensions we see in literature departments, the differences in approach by literary theorists, literary historians, and literary critics, to texts, how the various theoretical movements came into being over the course of the 20th century, and how they relate to or seek to refute one another.
September 29, 2013
This is an interesting book for anyone interested in the field of English studies, but it's a weird read for sure. The history bit is pretty cool if you enjoy reading histories, but then there's some really weird arguing through history stuff going on that's really jarring. But anyone who's studying English has something to gain by reading this, if nothing else to read a history of the discipline that isn't Valium.
August 24, 2016
Indispensable for anyone who wants context for current debates in the discipline. (Whatever "current" may be for you: it's not like intradisciplinary debates are going anywhere.) However, given that Graff makes it clear throughout that the point of the book is to put forward a solution, the part at the end where proposals were given was surprisingly brief and vague.
October 23, 2013
This book discusses the history of pedagogy. Reading only the preface and introduction will suffice; the rest of the book deals with wordy, specific examples. I wouldn't recommend this book unless you're really, REALLY into the history of institutionalized pedagogy.
September 9, 2007
Awesome and insightful, renews idealism about literature departments and a sense of purpose for academia. Anyone know of another book like this that is more recent?
September 10, 2009
I am learning how to read in the world of high literature. This book is an interesting look into the start of English as a part of academia and the conflicts facing the discipline.
August 13, 2016
An essential read for anyone interested in the teaching profession. A bit idealistic in the proposals that are made, but a very good examination of the history of lit studies in the US.
December 11, 2008
Brought up some good issues, but was really dry. I only read about half.
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January 29, 2016does it count if i skimmed the last 50pgs.. ?
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