Professing Literature by Gerald Graff

Professing Literature

By

Description

Widely considered the standard history of the profession of literary studies, Professing Literature unearths the long-forgotten ideas and debates that created the literature department as we know it today. In a readable and often-amusing narrative, Gerald Graff shows that the heated conflicts of our recent culture wars echo—and often recycle—controversies over how literature should be taught that began more than a century ago.

Updated with a new preface by the author that addresses many of the provocative arguments raised by its initial publication, Professing Literature remains an essential history of literary pedagogy and a critical classic.

“Graff’s history. . . is a pathbreaking investigation showing how our institutions shape literary thought and proposing how they might be changed.”— The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism

Preview

More Gerald Graff Books

  • "They Say / I Say": The Moves that Matter in Persuasive Writing

    Gerald Graff & Cathy Birkenstein

    Writing Reference

  • Profession 2012

    Profession 2012

    Rosemary G. Feal, Russell A. Berman, Jack Halberstam, Imani Perry, Christopher Freeburg, B. Venkat Mani, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Wayne C. Booth, James A. Castañeda, Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Helene Moglen, Gerald Graff, Claire J. Kramsch, Judith Ryan, Henry Louis, Jr. Gates, George Levine, Erik D. Curren, Jack H. Schuster, John Guillory, Dorothy James, Mara Holt, Leon Anderson, Alan Liu, Heidi Byrnes, Mary Louise Pratt, Philip Lewis, Domna C. Stanton, Christopher Newfield & Reed Way Dasenbrock

    Language Arts & Disciplines

  • Clueless in Academe

    Clueless in Academe

    Gerald Graff

    Education

  • The Origins of Literary Studies in America

    The Origins of Literary Studies in America

    Gerald Graff & Michael Warner

    Literary Criticism

  • Professing Literature

    Professing Literature

    Gerald Graff

    Language Arts & Disciplines