Problematic Perspectives
Sobriety and the Spectacle
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session John Marsh
For several decades now, critics have worried about the expanding role that entertainment plays in American life and thought. To a certain extent, critics have always worried about such matters. (Recall Plato’s "Allegory of the Cave.") Yet with the arrival of smart phones, and with the availability of on-demand digital streaming, which together allow us to access our entertainment whenever and wherever we like, these concerns have grown even more acute. Not for nothing have we adopted the language of addiction and excess (“binge-watching”) to describe our consumption of entertainment. By this view, entertainment, as its etymology of "to hold" suggests, represents a threat to human freedom, one that the humanities would do well to resist. In this paper, by contrast, I try to save the notion of entertainment from contemporary attacks against it and widespread anxiety about it. My argument for entertainment, or against those against entertainment, proceeds principally through a dissenting reading of David Foster Wallace’s "Infinite Jest," a reading that pushes back against critics who wish to turn the novel into a straightforward warning against entertainment. The paper concludes, reluctantly, that the problem is not entertainment per se but the predominant form, the screen, through which most entertainment now flows.
Interrogating Ideological Homophily in Higher Education: The Exclusion, Silencing, and Othering of Religiously and/or Politically Conservative Students in the Humanities
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Merzamie Clark
This research explores the ongoing attack upon universities caused by an “intellectual intolerance” and a “political one-sidedness” (Etchemendy) within its own walls that, if left unaddressed, will inflict great damage to scholars, research, and institutions of higher learning. The project focuses on the experiences of students who identify as conservatives (religiously and/or politically) in order to interrogate the theory and practice of diversity in academia and, particularly, in the humanities. Based on the assumption that the university operates on predominantly secular (Crowley, Neitz) and liberal (Abrams, Etchemendy, Haidt, Yancey) modes, this research argues that students with identities and identifications outside of these modes have “minority” status. This research broadens current conceptions of “diversity” to include not merely visible markers of identity like race, sex, and ability (Moya), but also less visible markers such as religious belief, political ideology, and experiential knowledge. Furthermore, it problematizes “minority” identities within academia to include students whose ideologies, experiences, and perspectives are marginalized, even subjugated (Yancey). This research introduces data from student writings as evidence that ideological homophily leads to many missed opportunities for expanding free debate and advancing scholarship. It offers recommendations to help educators implement and cultivate holistic diversity in their pedagogical practices.
Straw Man Pharmakos in Northrop Frye: Forensics of Plagiarism
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Richard H Goranowski
We discern modern paradigms of academic fraud as a double-standard varying as plagiarism in undergraduate papers and graduate pre-publications are academically expelled, yet collegiality shields professorial utterance despite the degree of profundity in the fraud. We proffer Northrop Frye's elide of Peacock's essay or name from the index of Frye's canonical "Anatomy of Criticism" despite touting T.L.Peacock's cyclic recurrences referenced by "The Four Ages of Poetry" as exemplary. We cite Christopher Ricks' "legitimate borrowing" purport in Paull, yet propound Frye's scholarly omission of Peacock's historic response to Sydney's "Defence of Poesy" then Shelley's corresponding "Defence of Poetry, as a neo-Platonic academic expulsion of Romantic radicalism. As in Sidney: "For conclusion I say the philosopher teacheth, but he teacheth obscurely, so as the learned only can understand him; that is to say, he teacheth them that are already taught."
