To the Editors:
I can’t even begin to tell you how much I enjoyed your reflections with respect to the “Professor of Hip,” Andrew Ross. Of course, I read the New York magazine article on Mr. Ross; I reveled in your coverage of the ever-scandalous MLA gathering in which Mr. Ross figured (February 1995) and am tickled by your latest installment in Notes & Comments (November 1995).
Why such an interest on my part? In the fall of 1990, as an English major at Princeton, I made a horribly uninformed decision; I signed up for Mr. Ross’s then hyper-popular course, dubiously entitled “Contemporary Culture: Postmodern Theory and Practice.” As a product of the wayward academy, I was neither apprehensive nor suspicious.I didn’t even know the culture wars existed, and why would I?
However, if you are able to withstand one of Andrew Ross’s lectures, replete with all the postmodern jargon, the outlandish extrapolations, the non-sensical analogies, and the glorification of pop icons, then you can’t help but feel that something has gone terribly awry in academe. Mr. Ross opened my eyes to the culture wars. I was studying with the enemy!
Imagine my horror when I entered the classroom one day only to find one of Robert Mapplethorpe’s most explicit offerings on the large screen at the front of the hall. How was this to contribute to my degree in English? Then there was the lecture devoted to the likes of Grace Jones and Madonna, both
