Phillip Barrish, "Critical Presentism"
The essay contains excerpts from Liberal Identity, Literary Pedagogy,
and Classic American Realism. Developing an iconoclastic methodology
that I call "critical presentism," the book uses close analysis of works
by such classic American realists as Wharton, Twain, James, and Chopin
to "read" contemporary liberal identity in contexts that range from
an affirmative action court case to the liberal arts classroom. The
book's aims are two-fold: to provide new critical insights and pedagogical
approaches to specific realist works, but also to develop fresh interpretative
and political leverage over present-day liberalism. I seek to investigate
liberal identity primarily as it overlaps with currently-lived modes
of American exceptionalism and whiteness. The book's methodology offers
a pedagogical and critical alternative to what James Chandler has described
as the "regime of historicism" currently dominating critical studies.
[go to Barrish's essay]
Ron Broglio, "The Picturesque and
the Kodak Moment"
The optics employed by the Picturesque meet with the rules of taking
pictures according to Kodak. Both develop what Martin Jay calls "Cartesian
perspectivialism"—an abstraction that transforms the land into
a landscape for the viewer. Students can use web design and MOOs to
examine the way of seeing mapped by the Picturesque and Kodak aesthetics.
They can then re-think picturesque representation and consider other
means of representing the land that fall outside this way of engaging
with one's surroundings.
[go to Broglio's essay]
Jay Clayton, "Cultural Patchwork
in the Classroom: Shelley Jackson, Tom Stoppard, William Gibson, and
Bruce Sterling Rewrite the Romantics"
Jay Clayton's essay documents, with great brio and scholarly rigor,
his attempts at bringing together Romantic literature and popular culture
in a classroom environment. Clayton explores three modern texts - Shelley
Jackson's Patchwork Girl, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's
The Difference Engine, and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia - and
their relationship to, and usefulness in, teaching Romanticism. He offers
a critical reading of these texts and addresses questions of history,
genre and periodization.
[go to Clayton's essay]
Jon Klancher, "Presentism and the
Archives "
In critical dialogue with David Simpson's recent work, Klancher reassesses
the notion of "presentism" and how it is often entwined with historicism
while appearing in recent debates as its opposite. He invokes a range
of contemporary critical contexts in order to argue for moving beyond
the culture-wars legacy of claims and counterclaims about presentism.
[go to Klancher's essay]
Jerome McGann, "Preface to Radiant
Textuality: Literary Studies After the World Wide Web"
Jerome McGann's Radiant Textuality is his most recent scholarly
speculation regarding the connection between technology and text. This
short excerpt introducing McGann's new book argues for the importance
of foregrounding what is specifically literary history in discussions
of new digital technologies. His preface declares in clear language
the relevance of literary history in the Information Age, arguing that
"scholarship devoted to aesthetic materials has never been more needed
than at this historical moment."
[go to McGann's essay]
David Simpson, "Is Literary History
the History of Everything? The Case for 'Antiquarian' History"
David Simpson's essay, reprinted here from SubStance, makes
the compelling argument that strategies for making literary history
relevant in both research and the classroom involve inviting students
and scholars to project themselves uncritically upon the past. Simpson's
particular strategy is archivalism, the disinterested collection of
historical detail, which includes a critical appraisal of the limits
of such disinterestedness (or objectivity).
[go to Simpson's essay]
Atara Stein, "Immortals and Vampires
and Ghosts, Oh My!: Byronic Heroes in Popular Culture"
This essay examines Byronic heroes in popular culture and the pedagogical
value of such examinations. Drawing connections between Byron's heroes
and contemporary popular culture heroes allows students a fuller understanding
of Byron's work and its cultural context, while at the same time providing
them with another tool to analyze the films, television series, and
books that they, as consumers of popular culture, so avidly appreciate.
The essay considers Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation; Lestat
from Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat; Eric Draven from the film,
The Crow; Dream from Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics; and
Angel from the eponymous television series. A particular concern involves
the ways the Byronic hero provides his audience with a vicarious experience
of superhuman abilities and power, but at the same time needs to be
"rehumanized" in order to to gain his audience's sympathies in addition
to their admiration.
[go to Stein's essay]
Gregory Tomso, "Reading Queerly: A
Presentist's Confession"
Responding to David Simpson's concerns about the status of literary
history, Tomso argues that presentism in literary studies is neither
a threat to literary history nor a sign of the "end of history." In
his essay, he explains a few of the assumptions about history and reading
that motivate recent presentist work in literary criticism and history,
and attempts to articulate both the historical and the more personal
or subjective value of presentist scholarship.
[go to Tomso's essay]
Ted Underwood, "How to Save 'Tintern
Abbey' from New-Critical Pedagogy (in Three Minutes Fifty-Six Seconds"
Close study of popular music introduces students to the complexity
and pleasure of lyric experience more effectively than a New Critical
definition of the form. It can be a particularly valuable introduction
to Wordsworth, whose directness of statement is better judged by the
standards of song lyrics than of imagism. But a pedagogy based on this
connection needs to be wary of idealizing immediacy and authenticity.
Popular music is not necessarily more accessible to students than Romantic
texts. The form is more familiar, but effort is still required to move
from uncritical to articulate appreciation. A juxtaposition of contemporary
and Romantic lyric forms also provides an opportunity to grapple with
the paradox of Wordsworth's attitude to the popular culture of his own
time, and with anxieties about "mass culture" that our students share
with contemporary criticism.
[go to Underwood's essay]
