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Academic Instincts
In this lively and provocative book, cultural critic Marjorie Garber, who has written on topics as different as Shakespeare, dogs, cross-dressing, and real estate, explores the pleasures and pitfalls of the academic life. Academic Instincts discusses three of the perennial issues that have surfaced in recent debates about the the relation between "amateurs" and "professionals," the relation between one academic discipline and another, and the relation between "jargon" and "plain language." Rather than merely 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.
Written in spirited and vivid prose, and full of telling detail drawn both from the history of scholarship and from the daily press, Academic Instincts is a book by a well-known Shakespeare scholar and prize-winning teacher who offers analysis rather than polemic to explain why today's teachers and scholars are at once breaking new ground and treading familiar paths. It opens the door to an important nationwide and worldwide conversation about the reorganization of knowledge and the categories in and through which we teach the humanities. And it does so in a spirit both generous and optimistic about the present and the future of these disciplines.
Written in spirited and vivid prose, and full of telling detail drawn both from the history of scholarship and from the daily press, Academic Instincts is a book by a well-known Shakespeare scholar and prize-winning teacher who offers analysis rather than polemic to explain why today's teachers and scholars are at once breaking new ground and treading familiar paths. It opens the door to an important nationwide and worldwide conversation about the reorganization of knowledge and the categories in and through which we teach the humanities. And it does so in a spirit both generous and optimistic about the present and the future of these disciplines.
187 pages, Paperback
First published November 20, 2001
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About the author
Marjorie Garber
42 books77 followersMarjorie B. Garber (born June 11, 1944) is a professor at Harvard University and the author of a wide variety of books, most notably ones about William Shakespeare and aspects of popular culture including sexuality.
She wrote Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety, a ground breaking theoretical work on transvestitism's contribution to culture. Other works include Sex and Real Estate:Why We Love Houses, Academic Instincts, Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life, Shakespeare After All, and Dog Love (which is not primarily about bestiality, except for one chapter titled "Sex and the Single Dog").
Her book Shakespeare After All (Pantheon, 2004) was chosen one of Newsweek's ten best nonfiction books of the year, and was awarded the 2005 Christian Gauss Book Award from Phi Beta Kappa.
She was educated at Swarthmore College (B.A., 1966; L.H.D., 2004) and Yale University (Ph.D., 1969).
(from Wikipedia)
She wrote Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety, a ground breaking theoretical work on transvestitism's contribution to culture. Other works include Sex and Real Estate:Why We Love Houses, Academic Instincts, Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life, Shakespeare After All, and Dog Love (which is not primarily about bestiality, except for one chapter titled "Sex and the Single Dog").
Her book Shakespeare After All (Pantheon, 2004) was chosen one of Newsweek's ten best nonfiction books of the year, and was awarded the 2005 Christian Gauss Book Award from Phi Beta Kappa.
She was educated at Swarthmore College (B.A., 1966; L.H.D., 2004) and Yale University (Ph.D., 1969).
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 12, 2019
This book is about academic life, what's acceptable and not acceptable, amateurs and professionals and their entanglement, disciplinary boundaries, political correctness and other definitions. Garber writes well and perceptively, albeit sometimes in areas of little if any personal expertise or familiarity, but then again it was her discussion on amateurs and professionals I was most interested in.
A book to encourage reflection, particularly in disciplines like psychology and history when examining both the past and also present arguments.
A book to encourage reflection, particularly in disciplines like psychology and history when examining both the past and also present arguments.
February 2, 2018
A fun and interesting read. Garber explores the three paradoxes that effect the academy. She views each of these paradoxes through the lens of her own discipline, literary criticism. While I personally place very little value on literary criticism, I enjoyed the book and found it valuable for understanding intellectual endeavors more broadly.
August 23, 2023
I'm going through a book purge, and my targets are books I purchased on impulse several years ago. This one is going into the donation box.
The first essay on amateurs and professionals (more specifically between the amateur professional and professional amateur) wastes several pages going over their etymology. She quotes a lot to the point of making the prose unreadable. Aside from these things, there's a lot of insider-joke quality to the writing. You can tell that these essays didn't go through any editorial eyes because she name-drops authors by their last name on her first mention of them (e.g. she assumes readers would know which Poe she's talking about when she says "Poe's Augustus Dupin") or spells out an acronym only after mentioning it seventeen times as if she presumes her audience knows.
On the one hand, I don't mind authors having a narrow set of audience and writing for them. On the other hand, these choices feel sloppy coming from a Harvard English-literature professor who publishes a collection of three half-baked essays from a university press that charges $20.00 (albeit mine was a used-copy sold at half the price).
The first essay on amateurs and professionals (more specifically between the amateur professional and professional amateur) wastes several pages going over their etymology. She quotes a lot to the point of making the prose unreadable. Aside from these things, there's a lot of insider-joke quality to the writing. You can tell that these essays didn't go through any editorial eyes because she name-drops authors by their last name on her first mention of them (e.g. she assumes readers would know which Poe she's talking about when she says "Poe's Augustus Dupin") or spells out an acronym only after mentioning it seventeen times as if she presumes her audience knows.
On the one hand, I don't mind authors having a narrow set of audience and writing for them. On the other hand, these choices feel sloppy coming from a Harvard English-literature professor who publishes a collection of three half-baked essays from a university press that charges $20.00 (albeit mine was a used-copy sold at half the price).
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews