That's Just Insipid!

"As a test case, consider three titles of current fellowship projects... :

• Traveling Philosophers: The Constitution of a Pragmatist International Network, 1890-1920.
• Stages of Transition: Performing South Africa's Truth Commission
• Lollard Affect and the Contestation of Holiness, 1370-1550

I invite you to guess from which departments these project statements emerge. Philosophy, political science, religious studies, in that order? No, the first, "Traveling Philosophers," is by a historian; the second, on South Africa's Truth Commission, is by a professor of theater; and the third, on the Lollard contestation of holiness, is by an English professor.

"Many of us regard this blurring of boundaries as a healthy sign, a marker of our newfound interdisciplinarity. Perhaps. But, whatever the inter- in the topics listed above, there is one discipline that is conspicuously absent, and that discipline is what the Greeks called poetike, the discipline of poetics. True, the South African Truth Commission may be better understood when we examine its workings as a form of theater, and the meaning of holiness for the followers of John Wycliff may well have a strong rhetorical component. But in these and related cases, the literary if it matters at all, is always secondary; it has at best an instrumental value. Accordingly, it would be more accurate to call the predominant activity of contemporary literary scholars other-disciplinary rather than interdisciplinary."

—Marjorie Perloff, "Presidential Address 2006: It Must Change." PMLA, May 2007.

It is refreshing and relieving to hear such a reasonable, if dubious, assessment of the professional arena into which I'm heading. Thus far, my greatest success and expansions of confidence have been founded upon my close readings, on a belief in the primacy of the art of the text, be it in human or purely aesthetic terms. If people are listening and willing to change, maybe there is a place for me (and other would-be literary scholars) in the world.

If not, reading this article has made me realize and affirm why teaching at a private boarding school really afforded me all I ever wanted from an occupation: reading attentively, helping others read attentively, growing together as thinkers, readers, and writers. If there isn't room for that in universities, then I'd be pleased to spend another four or forty years doing what was so fulfilling at The School.