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Tuesday, December 05, 2006

A Sheep Farm North of Baltimore


In one of my earliest posts at UD, I praised to the skies a book of essays that came out twenty years ago. Against Theory: Literary Studies and the New Pragmatism was edited by one of my Chicago professors, W.J.T. Mitchell, and featured a smart and nasty fight between two art critics - T.J. Clark and Michael Fried - that taught me a great deal about modernism.

Also in that volume -- the inspiration for it, really -- is the now-classic "Against Theory" by Walter Benn Michaels (whose recent book, The Trouble with Diversity, has been much-discussed) and Steven Knapp. Here's an excerpt from it.

Knapp seems to have gone into academic administration in a big way over the last couple of decades, because he's about to become the new president of UD's place of business, George Washington University.


He has a sheep farm north of Baltimore!
Posted at: 12/05/2006 05:27:00 AM