Laurie Taylor Column
From: The Office of the Vice-Chancellor To: All Members of Academic Staff Dear Colleagues Yes, it is Christmas once more. But as we look forward to the festive pleasures of yuletide we should not...
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Leader: Universities can't widen access on willingness alone
Universities, or at least some of them, have a lot to answer for in the complacent way they addressed the social composition of the student population in the latter years of the 20th century. As far...
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Leader: What good is a boom if languages go bust?
The focus of the government's languages strategy is, rightly, on schools. But the impact will be felt in higher education before long, and it is hard to imagine it being positive. By encouraging...
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Drive-thru education serves McNuggets of information
The audit system is turning UK higher education into a vast shopping mall, American sociology professor George Ritzer tells Walter Ellis Small, balding and be-jumpered, George Ritzer looks more like...
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Citizens, you are what you buy
Cultural studies is fighting for its survival in a harsh research marketplace, says Richard Maxwell, while Mica Nava argues that shopping is all part of politics Cultural studies is one of the fields...
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Consumption's potent political purchase
Cultural studies is fighting for its survival in a harsh research marketplace, says Richard Maxwell, while Mica Nava argues that shopping is all part of politics Until the late 1980s, consumption was...
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A fanfare of strumpets for a magical mystery whore
Nigel Barley invites you to enter the Whore of Babylon Experience, a fictional museum tour. Patchouli squirts, orgasmic commentary and multiple virgins await, not to mention your fellow visitors -...
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MLA: Two tribes united by single goal
Literature and anthropology scholars do not always see eye to eye but, writes Stephen Phillips, in thinking about ‘culture’, they share a joint project For James Buzard, associate literature...
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MLA: Sex rescues sad character from clutches of cariacture
Why, asks Jonathan Dollimore, is all theory so easily dismissed as irrelevant because of one or two bad ones? In Maggie Gee’s latest novel, The White Family , there’s a sad character writing a book...
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MLA: When fact and fantasy collide
Is imagination more important than knowledge? Both are crucial to our species’ evolution, argues Kathleen Taylor in a prizewinning essay Berlin, 1929. The poet and journalist George Sylvester Viereck...
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MLA: Widening the lens
The MLA has its annual meeting in New York next week and, in keeping with the post-9/11 mood, it is broadening its reach far beyond the traditional confines of academia, reports Jon Marcus This year’...
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Highlights of the Modern Language Association convention
Controversial academic scholarship in the public sphere after 9/11 8.30am, December 28 Across generational divides: women in the academy&...
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MLA: That's entertainment... and we can learn from it
Most English academics suffer from ‘entertainment deficit disorder’, an inability to see that show business is their real job. To overcome this - and in doing so improve teaching - they should quit...
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MLA: Race returns West to medieval mindset
The aftermath of al-Qaida's attacks on the US is forcing the West to remember the Middle Ages - in particular, how pre-modern societies used individual religious affiliation to define a...
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MLA: A nation in real need of some tragic characters
The lack of tragedy and moral ambiguity in US cultural forms leaves Americans naive about the the world, says Ken Hirschkop September 11 is commonly described as a national tragedy (a Google search...