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Thursday, July 15, 2004

UPDATING UD'S POST TITLED "THE BOOK IMPERATIVE" [dated 1/4/04]:


The author of an account of the most recent MLA convention hears language there about the absurdity of the book imperative:


Everyone knows that it is utterly insane to require a book for tenure. But at the same time, these tenure committees are terrified that if they let their guard down, if they relax their own internal demands, their opponents will only amplify their snarls of frivolity and mismanagement. One professor calls the one-book-for-tenure custom "sheer mindlessness." In the United Kingdom, he says, tenure is ordinarily awarded after three or four years, on the basis of one or two meaty articles. "And they're neither better nor worse that the United States in their quality of humanistic scholarship."
Posted at: 7/15/2004 12:28:00 PM