In the span of less than a generation, university humanities departments have experienced an almost unbelievable reversal of attitudes, now attacking and undermining what had previously been considered best and most worthy in the Western tradition. John M. Ellis here scrutinizes the new regime in humanistic studies. He offers a careful, intelligent analysis that exposes the weaknesses of notions that are fashionable in humanities today. In a clear voice, with forceful logic, he speaks out against the orthodoxy that has installed race, gender, and class perspectives at the center of college humanities curricula. Ellis begins by showing that political correctness is a recurring impulse of Western society and one that has a discouraging history. He reveals the contradictions and misconceptions that surround the new orthodoxy and demonstrates how it is most deficient just where it imagines itself to be superior. Ellis contends that humanistic education today, far from being historically aware, relies on anachronistic thinking; far from being skeptical of Western values, represents a ruthless and unskeptical Western extremism; far from being valuable in bringing political perspectives to bear, presents politics that are crude and unreal; far from being sophisticated in matters of "theory," is largely ignorant of the range and history of critical theory; far from valuing diversity, is unable to respond to the great sweep of literature. In a concluding chapter, Ellis surveys the damage that has been done to higher education and examines the prospects for change.
The focus of any genuinely new piece of criticism or interpretation must be on the creative act of finding the new, but deconstruction puts the matter the other way around: its emphasis is on debunking the old. But aside from the fact that this program is inherently uninteresting, it is, in fact, not at all clear that it is possible. . . . [T]he naïvetê of the crowd is deconstruction's very starting point, and its subsequent move is as much an emotional as an intellectual leap to a position that feels different as much in the one way as the other. . . ." --From the book
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.
Ronny Campbell, a military kid raised in Texas, has graduated from medical school--but he is heavily in debt and feeling adrift. An ER staffing company leads him to his first job as an ER physician in a remote southern town and Ronny finds the work exciting. The job goes mostly as expected for a while. but then things get complicated"--Page 4 of cover.
Called both the "Island of Hope" and "Island of Tears," Ellis Island has a history as rich and surprising as that of the immigrants who passed through its doors. Between 1892 and 1954, it was the first stop for some 12 million immigrants coming to America, a tiny speck of land in New York Harbor that served as their gateway to new lives in a strange new world. Their experiences are put into vivid historical context, highlighted with riveting firsthand accounts and vintage photographs that eloquently capture their hope and heartbreak. In addition, you'll read accounts of the hardworking officials manning the station and the reformers who strove to salvage the immigrants' humanity on their journey through the Golden Door.
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