Professing Literature: An Institutional History by Gerald Graff

Professing Literature: An Institutional History Reviews

• 
  Mary

  First off, can I take a moment to describe why I love Graff's writing style? True to his philosophies about high/low intellectual discussion, he'll always bring back down whatever theory or history he's talking about with quips and summaries that make me draw little smiley faces in the margins and the quote he includes from contemporaries often make their way onto my Facebook feed. Kind of a delight to read.
  
  Next I'd like to say that in addition to being influencial, this book is quite useful. Graff's description of "field covering" in English studies and generally the way that the structure of an institution can shape the way disciplinary conflicts are highlighted (or not) (91) can apply to my own research. I'm interested in this "patterned isolation" (L. Veysey's phrase)that he describes in terms of how we in English do research so distinct from each other.
  
  In a weaker sense, I'm fascinated by this idea that New Criticism increased in part because there were more practicing poets joining English faculties and wanting to add their view of research.
  
  And here's a good quote: "The boundaries that mark literary study off from creative writing, composition, rhetoric, communications, linguistics and film, philosophy, literature, and sociology each bespeak a history of conflict that was critical to creating and defining these disciplines yet has never become a central part of their context of study" (258).
  
  The introduction includes a mea culpa on ignoring the history of composition (everyone complains about this in this book, but it doesn't offend me, largely because I see literary studies as quite a different discipline), and the idea that field coverage leads to a sort of "safety valve" for ideas to head for a new "frontier" (his word). Awesome.
• 
  Hanna W.

  In this book, Graff provides an overview of the history of critical debates taking place within English departments between the nineteenth-century to the present day. Graff’s argument is centered on the notion that the humanistic ideal with which we currently associate literature departments is a myth; in fact, there are many conflicts that take place behind the scenes that students are not privy to until they are resolved (or managed in some way) by scholars and critics. At this point, the values of the debates are lost on the students, who are merely presented with a methodology of the history of literature that Graff terms “the field coverage model.” At an administrative level, the field coverage model works to separate the history of literature into analysis of distinct time periods, cultures, and societies that do not necessarily intersect (allowing every graduate student to “specialize” in a time period – note the connections here outside of literature and to all of the humanities), and while scholars and critics at the graduate level and above work out the various approaches to not only teaching these subjects but researching and writing about them, students are left on their own in some parts to work out the interdisciplinary connections between literary time periods, authors, and texts. It is evident that the field coverage model has many benefits (self-regulating and therefore timeless, organizes literature, expresses humanism, etc.) and that it is here to stay, however, that does not mean it shouldn’t be revised and built upon. For one, Graff argues that these methodological conflicts should be introduced in the classroom, where students can not only be made privy to them but also help shape the future of the curriculum and critical debates. Secondly, Graff emphasizes the importance of using the concept of the interdisciplinary within literary studies itself, in order to make connections within the curriculum that are missing.
  
  The history of these literary conflicts are not only at the level of pedagogy but also at the level of textual analysis and therefore at the level of ideology, where approaches to literature in the traditional method of the eighteenth-century involving rote memorization of classical poetry became transformed after the nineteenth-century towards other learning methods. While the New Critics of the early twentieth-century were more concerned with the explication of texts without appeal to external sources, traditional Humanists who entered later on in the scene found that there was a need for the discipline’s return to morality as a centre of analysis, with political/ethical principles highlighted in textual analysis, and not ignored or dismissed in the way that the New Critics had done. In a meta-analysis itself, Graff uses a historical and sociological approach to explain the political circumstances which lead to the disinterestedness of the New Critics in approaching literature outside of the narrow boundaries of mere explication. At the same time, Graff recognizes that a historical approach alone is not the answer in our understanding of a literary text: the combination of the historical and the intuitive reading of a text, or as Graff calls it, the internal and external, are what together makes the field of literary criticism. Graff makes the unique argument that what is internal for one reader may be external for another, and vice versa, and I found this to be one of the strongest arguments in the chapters I read, outside of the argument of Graff’s main thesis.
  
  Literary humanists and critics were influential in bringing to the discipline what we now most often associate it with, such as the close reading of a select few texts, the turn towards history/culture/society as contexts of said texts, and interpretations of apparent themes and moral/political ideologies which can either occur from an intuitive reading or external knowledge or both. A conflict however, arose within the field of criticism itself, Graff argues, and with the critical methodology of literary studies came various conflicts concerning aesthetics as a value, formalistic approaches to literature, and whether ideological interpretations posited a type of relativistic world view in the pedagogy.
  
  In this book, Graff does not spend much time identifying and explaining the various fields of literary criticism to the reader (New Criticism, Formalism, Humanism, Marxism/Ideology, etc.) mostly because they are secondary to the main questions of the book, which are questions such as: what is the value of literature? How should literature be taught, presented, and read? With knowledge of their history, what can we do to improve the state of literature departments today? Still, in reading this book you can get an idea of what approaches towards literature are associated with each of these fields.
  
  Overall, I found Graff’s book very insightful, especially having been familiar with literary theories in the past, but not the critical debates about them. I do think that he is in some ways too theoretical for his own good – there are many instances where Graff proposes solutions for the discipline which, in practice, would be hard to initiate, as good as they may sound on paper. Graff’s suggestions of unity however are very important; he has established that in the history of critical methodology it has often been scholars versus critics, and it seems that a combination of the work of both groups is what brings literary studies to its heights today. Graff’s emphasis on the lack of interdisciplinary approaches within the pedagogy is very true, and I have seen it myself, and I think his suggestions for improvement of curriculums – while written in the 1980s – are still very much needed today. Students do a great job of making connections not only between classes but between their coursework, however, they should not be the ones to bear the weight of this duty, as it should be something already part of the curriculum itself. Otherwise, we lose a lot of insights in literature, as Graff argues, that can bring the discipline forward.
  
  P.S. I really loved Graff’s emphasis and outline of the beliefs of specific literary critics in this book – his comments on critic John Crowe Ransom taught me new things I didn’t know about him, and also situated his thought within a wider critical debate that I wasn’t previously aware of. It is evident that in order to understand the literary theories, we must in part understand the debates that took place around them, and for this purpose Graff did an excellent job with this book.
• 
  Liam Guilar

  The version I read is the original 1987 edition. As a history of the field it is thorough, but as history it feels oddly dated. The final chapter on 'Theory" tries to show that all reading is theoretical, as though the discussion of methodology in the 1920s and full blown 'continental theory' (Graf's term), are identical.
  Other than that a fascinating survey of the problems facing American institutions once they had accepted the study of literature was academically respectable. The initial misgivings: how could you define the field, how could you define the knowledge and skills required for competence in the field, how would you ever deliver them and then assess them, remained and remain essentially unresolved, which allows for endless attempts to come up with the right way to study literature, doomed until everyone knows what 'literature' is and why it's being studied.
  Worth reading alongside Kernan's 'The Death of Literature".
• 
  Lorraine

  Poor Graff! I see from the goodreads that only academics and slightly curious people read him, and thus his rating here is, imo, lower than it should be.
  
  I see that most academics gave this 4 stars, and I am no exception. It is perhaps unfair, but telling of our biases and what we treasure as researchers. For those people who complained that it was "boring" to read the institutional history of literature... maybe the title should've given you a clue? I mean by all means, avoid "boring" stuff if you want to, but the substance of the book is in the title, so... picking it up and then complaining about its contents seems a bit unfair!
  
  Ok, the good stuff. I think that anyone who is looking to study literature should read this. The dude obviously did a LOT of work, and much of it is solid concrete history that we should know. The history also explains a lot of our vague convictions on why we should read and how we read (doesn't matter which camp you're in).
  
  On the other hand, the entire narrative of the book doesn't quite hold together. Asserting that current debates kinda resemble old ones is tricksy, though it has its merits. Don't really agree with some of his assertions -- there's something a bit Bourdieu-esque about him in his adherence to historicism -- and to think of teaching the conflicts -- as reasonable as it sounds -- has its issues.
  
  I see that someone here has asked to read this with The Death of Literature. I actually think that a better companion book would be Readings's The University in Ruins. The Death of Literature frankly falls into an entire group of people wailing about the death of literature in the 90's, mostly blaming 'value relativism' a la Allan Bloom (the most famous of these, though it was published in 1988, and THAT book is a hot mess of misreadings). Readings's book is rough on the edges. He died before he could polish it up after all. But it provides a more coherent narrative to the tensions that Graff points out (they're not quite 'tensions' because the Bildung project kinda assumes they're not, eventually..). The other interesting person to read here would be Spivak, with her book Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalisation.
• 
  Chelsea Renee Trevino

  Wow there goes 300 pages I’ll never get back 🥲 Graff gives many okay-ish points, and maybe it was the context of my grad class (teaching literature) that just threw off the reading of this, but it was drier than a Popeyes biscuit with no drink. It just dragged on with no context on references (outdated ones at that) and the historical parts definitely didn’t help me learn anything about teaching literature in a modern classroom. Flashback to ‘43 and maybe this would’ve been a 5 star read? I’m not sure.
• 
  Ted Leach

  A good overview of the development of Literature as an academic discipline. Graff asserts that Literature has gained a certain incoherence as a field because institutions have largely assimilated conflicting ideologies over the years without really trying to resolve them. He argues in favor of "teaching the conflicts" between different approaches to literature as a way to create coherence.
• 
  Danny Hunt

  kinda had to breeze through it bc the class i read it in gave us two weeks to finish it so a lot was probably lost on me. but. still. very informative.
• 
  Kari

  Good to know that there is no longer a difference between a 'scholar' and a 'critic.'
• 
  Tammy

  So dry...
  It did what was intended and explained why and how Literature became something to teach and learn in College.
  Graduate level class.
• 
  Michael P.

  We begin by noting that PROFESSING and PROFESSOR share the same root, and this book is about professors professing. It is a response to ED Hirsch and Allan Bloom’s books about reform in the teaching of literature. The book is enlightening because Graff’s examines the pre-history of literature classes to show how they evolved from Greek and Latin studies, and how once introduced they were taught in the same plodding way. He eventually advances to the controversial “-isms” of today.
  
  The first sentence of most paragraphs is a statement of fact, with an example given in the balance of the paragraph. Sometimes Graff expresses an opinion in the first sentence, with his reason given in the balance. This is as plodding as the execrable way that Greek, Latin, and English was taught in the early days, but shares their virtue of being informative, if not exciting. The meat of the book rewards plodding through this verbal sludge.
  
  Graff emphasis is that one theory of how to teach literature contended with another, sometimes leading to a synthesis, sometimes with one approach dominating until another theory competed with it. The same is true for theories of understanding literature, and often the two cannot be separated as I just separated them in order to describe them. Graff is very smart about theory, valuing what it has given literary studies while recognizing that there is “nothing inherently self-undoing or illegitimate about all idealizations,” and stating, “I doubt that all institutional patterns can be explained as effects of ideology, power, ‘logocentrism’ or subjugation” (11). Amen, brother.
  
  He ends with the suggestion that literature professors teach the controversy, rather than take sides as a more enlightened approach for themselves and their students. After all, there will be a new theory to replace current beliefs along any minute now.
• 
  Jessica

  This being written by Gerald Graff of They Say/I Say infamy, I proceeded with caution. Professing Literature, however, serves its purpose as a history of the English discipline. It investigates the premises and functions of literary scholarship from its derivation from philology and rhetoric in the late 1800s to its derivation of formal theory about a century later. Graff argues that recent anxiety over the specialization of academic English is only the latest permutation of the conflict between scholars of an autonomous literary science and advocates for a generalist, humanist, or populist approach. His solution is a pedagogic model that embraces difference by encouraging conversation and intersecting scholarly methods, rather than appending new perspectives to the disciplinary schema (invariably “routinizing” them, writes Graff) and thereby maintaining the status quo. The book did make clearer what it would have meant to study literature throughout its institutional history thus far, and it led me to a few worthwhile discoveries of my own. In defense of my rating: Frequent anecdotes and individual testimonies watered down Graff’s prose, which I sometimes found redundant. I also thought Graff treated American literature kind of instrumentally, and that the chapter itself was out of context in the absence of sections on, namely, comp. lit. or philology in the wake of linguistics.
• 
  J. Alfred

  This is a book which reviews the teaching of literature at the college level in America throughout history. With that as a premise, it is kind of astonishing that it reaches levels of real interest at many points, not just impressive details like the 1850s librarians who would attempt to keep anyone from borrowing any books. Graff's main idea in life is that conflict is not a bad thing (one of his works is called "Agonism in the Academy") and that pushing on and working through areas of conflict can be fruitful and enlightening. Thus his idea for making literature departments work together more cohesively is to allow professors and people from different viewpoints to air those views publicly and indeed make an institutional emphasis on exposing students to paired courses or professors, each of whom can show what her or she believes to be the reason for studying literature in the way that he or she does. Interesting.
• 
  Melissa

  It was well worth my time to read this book as a general overview of literature teaching in the academy. It helped to explain some of the conflicts and tensions we see in literature departments, the differences in approach by literary theorists, literary historians, and literary critics, to texts, how the various theoretical movements came into being over the course of the 20th century, and how they relate to or seek to refute one another.
• 
  Theresa

  This is an interesting book for anyone interested in the field of English studies, but it's a weird read for sure. The history bit is pretty cool if you enjoy reading histories, but then there's some really weird arguing through history stuff going on that's really jarring. But anyone who's studying English has something to gain by reading this, if nothing else to read a history of the discipline that isn't Valium.
• 
  Elise

  Indispensable for anyone who wants context for current debates in the discipline. (Whatever "current" may be for you: it's not like intradisciplinary debates are going anywhere.) However, given that Graff makes it clear throughout that the point of the book is to put forward a solution, the part at the end where proposals were given was surprisingly brief and vague.
• 
  Brooke

  This book discusses the history of pedagogy. Reading only the preface and introduction will suffice; the rest of the book deals with wordy, specific examples. I wouldn't recommend this book unless you're really, REALLY into the history of institutionalized pedagogy.
• 
  Tina

  Brought up some good issues, but was really dry. I only read about half.
• 
  Mic

  does it count if i skimmed the last 50pgs.. ?