Gerald Graff

Gerald Graff is the author of the polemical work Literature against Itself (Chicago University Press, 1979). He is a professor of English at Northwestern University.

Letter
In her review of Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalise American Education (LRB, 22 July), Lynn Hunt complains that I offer ‘no clues to [my] own values or [my] understanding of the truth and no intellectual defence of [my] position beyond expediency’. This charge is untrue, as Hunt’s own summary of my defence of the cultural Left will show. But even if it were true...
Letter
SIR: In ‘The Golden Age of Criticism’ (LRB, 25 June) W.J.T. Mitchell misrepresents my views on current academic literary criticism, expressed in Criticism in the University, edited by Reginald Gibbons and myself (1985). Mitchell takes a position which is actually sympathetic to his own defence of current theory and criticism and makes it sound as if it is antagonistic.Mitchell confuses me with...

The centre fights back

Lynn Hunt, 22 July 1993

Thanks to David Mamet’s new play Oleanna, the distracted, bumbling and self-regarding male professor has now become the archetypal victim of political correctness. Mamet’s John is...

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In March 1889 Edward Arber applied for the vacant chair of English Literature and Language at University College London. Arber’s career had been unusual. He began his working life at 17 as...

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The state of chronic hypochondria in which literary education subsists shows no sign of abating. Indeed, in some quarters it is entering an acute phase. Regular and formerly healthful activities...

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