Academic Instincts

In this book, cultural critic Marjorie Garber, who has written on topics as different as Shakespeare, dogs, cross-dressing, and real estate, explores the pleasures and pitfalls of academic life. Academic Instincts discusses three of the perennial issues that have surfaced in recent debates about the humanities: the relation between amateurs" and "professionals," the relation between one academic discipline and another, and the relation between "jargon" and "plain language." Rather than merely taking sides, the book explores the ways in which such debates are essential to intellectual life. Garber argues that the very things deplored or defended in discussions of the humanities can be neither eliminated nor endorsed because the discussion itself is what gives humanistic thought its vitality.