Michael Bérubé | |
---|---|
Academic background | |
Education | |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Cultural studies |
Institutions |
Michael Bérubé (born 1961) is an Edwin Erle Sparks [ clarification needed ] Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University,where he teaches American literature,disability studies,and cultural studies. He is the author of several books on cultural studies,disability rights,liberal and conservative politics,and debates in higher education. From 2010 to 2017,he was the director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Penn State;from 1997 to 2001 he was the founding director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. He was the 2012 president of the Modern Language Association,and served as vice president from 2010 to 2011. He served two terms on the National Council of the American Association of University Professors from 2005 to 2011,and three terms on the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure from 2009 to 2018. He was a member of the International Advisory Board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes for two terms,2011–2017. Bérubéwas named a University Scholar for research at the University of Illinois in 1995 and was awarded the Faculty Scholar medal for research from Penn State in 2012.
The son of Maurice Berube (now Eminent Scholar Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Educational Leadership at Old Dominion University), [1] Bérubéwas born in 1961 in New York City,and attended Regis High School. [2] He received a B.A. in English from Columbia University in 1982 and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia,where he studied from 1983 to 1989. Bérubéheld a professorship in the English department at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1989 to 2001,where he was affiliated with the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory and the Afro-American Studies and Research Program. In 2001,Bérubémoved to Penn State for the then-newly created Paterno Family Professorship in Literature,from which he resigned in the wake of the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. [3]
From 1996 to 2016,Bérubéedited "Cultural Front",the New York University Press series which published his 2009 book The Left at War and his 1998 book The Employment of English, as well as fifteen other titles,many in disability studies. He now co-edits "Crip:New Directions in Disability Studies" for NYU Press along with Robert McRuer and Ellen Samuels. He maintained a personal blog from 2004 to 2010 and wrote for Crooked Timber from 2007 to 2012.[ citation needed ]
Bérubédrew attention in the early 1990s for his essays in the Village Voice and Village Voice Literary Supplement (VLS),which dealt with (among other things) political correctness,postmodernism,and cultural studies. [4] In 1994 he published an essay in Harper's Magazine ,"Life As We Know It:A Father,A Son,and Genetic Destiny",about his son Jamie,who has Down syndrome,and in 1995 a review essay in The New Yorker on contemporary black intellectuals;these essays,particularly the latter,drew a wide array of energetic and often contentious responses. Some of the VLS essays were revised and republished in Bérubé’s second book,Public Access (1994). Since then,Bérubéhas continued to write for newspapers and magazines,including Dissent , the Nation ,the New York Times (and New York Times Magazine ),the Boston Globe ,the Chicago Tribune ,and the Washington Post . Since 1997 he has also been a contributor to the Chronicle of Higher Education .[ citation needed ]
Bérubé's third book,Life As We Know It:A Father,A Family,and an Exceptional Child,was published in 1996. Following a positive review by Beverly Lowry, [5] Life As We Know It was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year;it was also named as one of the best books of the year by Maureen Corrigan of National Public Radio. [6] It is an expanded account of Jamie's first four years,as well as a discussion of disability rights,abortion and prenatal testing,early intervention programs,early childhood language acquisition,school policy,and theories of justice.[ citation needed ]
In 2005-06,Bérubéemerged as a critic of David Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights";an account of that campaign,together with a description of Bérubé's pedagogy in undergraduate classes,makes up most of Bérubé’s fifth book,What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and "Bias" in Higher Education (2006). Bérubéalso published a number of essays critical of figures on the antiwar left and their response to the terrorist attack of 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan,though he said he opposed the Iraq War;the argument was elaborated in his seventh book,The Left At War,published in 2009. [7] [8] In 2016 Bérubépublished two books in disability studies:The Secret Life of Stories,a study of narrative strategies involving varieties of intellectual disability,and Life as Jamie Knows It,a sequel to Life as We Know It written with substantial input from the now-adult Jamie Bérubé. In 2021,the Norton Library (W. W. Norton) published his edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In 2022,he published It's Not Free Speech:Race,Democracy,and Academic Freedom with Jennifer Ruth,and in 2024,he published The Ex-Human:Science Fiction and the Fate of Our Species.[ citation needed ]
Bérubélives in State College,Pennsylvania,with his wife Janet Lyon. Their first child,Nicholas,is an architect.[ citation needed ]
Liberal arts education is the traditional academic course in Western higher education. Liberal arts takes the term art in the sense of a learned skill rather than specifically the fine arts. Liberal arts education can refer to studies in a liberal arts degree course or to a university education more generally. Such a course of study contrasts with those that are principally vocational, professional, or technical, as well as religiously based courses.
"Political correctness" is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in society. Since the late 1980s, the term has been used to describe a preference for inclusive language and avoidance of language or behavior that can be seen as excluding, marginalizing, or insulting to groups of people disadvantaged or discriminated against, particularly groups defined by ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. In public discourse and the media, the term is generally used as a pejorative with an implication that these policies are excessive or unwarranted.
Allan David Bloom was an American philosopher, classicist, and academician. He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon, and Alexandre Kojève. He subsequently taught at Cornell University, the University of Toronto, Tel Aviv University, Yale University, the École normale supérieure, and the University of Chicago.
Lionel Mordecai Trilling was an American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher. He was one of the leading U.S. critics of the 20th century who analyzed the contemporary cultural, social, and political implications of literature. With his wife Diana Trilling, whom he married in 1929, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review.
Ziauddin Sardar is a British-Pakistani scholar, award-winning writer, cultural critic and public intellectual who specialises in Muslim thought, the future of Islam, futurology and science and cultural relations. He wrote or edited more than 50 books Prospect magazine named him as one of Britain's top 100 public intellectuals and The Independent newspaper called him: 'Britain's own Muslim polymath'.
Roger Kimball is an American art critic and conservative social commentator. He is the editor and publisher of The New Criterion and the publisher of Encounter Books. Kimball first gained notice in the early 1990s with the publication of his book Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Higher Education.
Gerald Graff is a professor of English and Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He received his B.A. in English from the University of Chicago in 1959 and his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Stanford University in 1963. He has taught at the University of New Mexico, Northwestern University, the University of California at Irvine and at Berkeley, as well as Ohio State University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Chicago. He has been teaching at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 2000.
Eric "E. D." Donald Hirsch Jr. is an American educator, literary critic, and theorist of education. He is professor emeritus of humanities at the University of Virginia.
Annette Kolodny was an American feminist literary critic and activist, held the position of College of Humanities Professor Emerita of American Literature and Culture at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Her major scholarly writings examined the experiences of women on the American frontiers and the projection of female imagery onto the American landscape. Her other writings examined some aspects of feminism after the 1960s; the revision of dominant themes in American studies; and the problems faced by women and minorities in the American academy.
The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America is a 2006 book by conservative American author and policy advocate David Horowitz. Contending that many academics in American colleges hold anti-American perspectives, Horowitz lists one hundred examples who he believes are sympathetic to terrorists and non-democratic governments.
John Frow is an Australian writer of literary theory, narrative theory, intellectual property law, and cultural studies. He is currently a professor of English at the University of Sydney.
Ian Gordon McKay is a Canadian historian who serves as Chair of the L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University. He was formerly a professor at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, where he taught from 1988 to 2015. During his time at Queen's, Ian supervised or co-supervised over 33 doctoral theses and 49 master's theses and cognate essays. His primary interests are Canadian cultural and political history, the economic and social history of Atlantic Canada, historical memory and tourism, and the history of liberalism, both in Canadian and transnational aspects. His long-term project is to write a comprehensive history of the Canadian left. He is the younger brother of poet Don McKay.
Allan Bérubé was a gay American historian, activist, independent scholar, self-described "community-based" researcher and college drop-out, and award-winning author, best known for his research and writing about homosexual members of the American Armed Forces during World War II. He also wrote essays about the intersection of class and race in gay culture, and about growing up in a poor, working-class family, his French-Canadian roots, and about his experience of anti-AIDS activism.
The Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory is an interdisciplinary program developed within the Graduate College and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It works to promote conversations among a range of departments in the humanities, social sciences, and performing arts by organizing lectures, panel discussions, and conferences, as well as a yearly series of lectures on Modern Critical Theory. The unit is one of several dozen centers around the world devoted to critical theory, and was one of the first to be formally established.
Jasbir K. Puar is an American professor at Rutgers University. Her most recent book is The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017). Puar is the author of award-winning Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007). She has written on South Asian diasporic cultural production in the United States, United Kingdom and Trinidad, LGBT tourism, terrorism studies, surveillance studies, biopolitics and necropolitics, disability and debilitation, theories of intersectionality, affect, and assemblage; animal studies and posthumanism, homonationalism, pinkwashing, and the Palestinian territories.
Robert McRuer is an American theorist who has contributed to fields in transnational queer and disability studies. McRuer is known as being one of the founding scholars involved in forming the field of queer disability studies, particularly for a theoretical outlook known as crip theory. He is currently professor of English at The George Washington University in Washington, DC.
John Jeremy Stuhr is an American philosopher who teaches at Emory University. He has written extensively about a wide assortment of philosophical figures and movements as well as a broad array of cultural problems and issues. His work is known for its lively, engaged, and direct style. He draws critically on thinkers from often separated philosophical traditions. Revealing his impatience with narrow and academic conceptions of philosophy, his writings make deep and consistent use of poetry, painting, photography, and the lyrics of contemporary music, and they exhibit a broad interdisciplinary reach across fields such as rhetoric, media studies, relativity theory, political and legal theory, cultural geography, and economics.
Caroline Levine is an American literary critic. She is the David and Kathleen Ryan Professor of Humanities at Cornell University. Her published works are in the fields of Victorian literature, literary theory, literary criticism, formalism, television, and climate change.
Timothy Andres Brennan is a cultural theorist, professor of literature, public speaker, and activist. He is known for his work on American imperialism, the political role of intellectuals, Afro-Latin music, and the problem of the "human" and the humanities in an age of technoscience.
Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study is a widely-reviewed 2022 nonfiction book written by literary scholar John Guillory.