Professions: Conversations on the Future of Literary and Cultural Studies

Sometimes playful, always provocative, "Professions" is a collection of searching and candid conversations - ranging from dialogues to tongue-in-cheek diatribes - on the issues that face literary and cultural critics today. This volume bares professional concerns, relationships, ambitions, and insecurities about working in academe. "Professions" provides hard-to-get insider information for students contemplating an academic career. It also challenges professional scholars to retrieve the intellectual curiosity that drew them to scholarship in the first place while demonstrating how disagreement on controversial issues can be conducted with respect, good humor, and an open mind. "Professions" features: Jane Tompkins and Gerald Graff; John McGowan and Regenia Gagnier; James Phelan and James Kincaid; Marjorie Perloff and Robert von Hallberg; Judith Jackson Fossett and Kevin Gaines; Dennis W. Allen and Judith Roof; Niko Pfund, Gordon Hutner, and Martha Banta; Geoffrey Galt Harpham; Donald E. Hall and Susan S. Lanser; and, J. Hillis Miller, Herbert Lindenberger, Sandra Gilbert, Bonnie Zimmerman, Nellie Y. McKay, and Elaine Marks.