Books November 2006
Canon fodder
A review of “What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts?” by Michael Bérubé.
For many years, Michael Bérubé has been an outspoken and topical voice in the humanities professoriate. His books cover critical theory, academic employment, and the canon, and he weighs in on current events, academic and political, on a personal blog that has a steady and interactive readership. He’s an MLA insider but also a popular writer, contributing to The Nation, The Village Voice, and Dissent. He leapt into the Culture Wars in the early 1990s, and, with regular sallies into campus controversies, his career sets a different example of professorial labor. His writings don’t evince months and years spent poring over archives and assembling primary documents, and the focus on contemporary matters gives them a dated feel a few years after their publication. But, then, Bérubé’s practice exempts him from many of the vices that have bedeviled humanities professors for three...
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