Synopses & Reviews
In the half century since World War II, American academic culture has changed profoundly. Until now, those changes have not been charted, nor have their implications for current discussions of the academy been appraised. In this book, however, eminent academic figures who have helped to produce many of the changes of the last fifty years explore how four disciplines in the social sciences and humanities--political science, economics, philosophy, and literary studies--have been transformed.
Edited by the distinguished historians Thomas Bender and Carl Schorske, the book places academic developments in their intellectual and socio-political contexts. Scholarly innovators of different generations offer insiders' views of the course of change in their own fields, revealing the internal dynamics of disciplinary change. Historians examine the external context for these changes--including the Cold War, Vietnam, feminism, civil rights, and multiculturalism. They also compare the very different paths the disciplines have followed within the academy and the consequent alterations in their relations to the larger public.
Initiated by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the study was first published in Daedalus in its 1997 winter issue. The contributors are M. H. Abrams, William Barber, Thomas Bender, Catherine Gallagher, Charles Lindblom, Robert Solow, David Kreps, Hilary Putnam, José David Saldívar, Alexander Nehamas, Rogers Smith, Carl Schorske, Ira Katznelson, and David Hollinger.
Synopsis
In the half century since World War II, American academic culture has changed profoundly. Until now, those changes have not been charted, nor have their implications for current discussions of the academy been appraised. In this book, however, eminent academic figures who have helped to produce many of the changes of the last fifty years explore how four disciplines in the social sciences and humanities--political science, economics, philosophy, and literary studies--have been transformed.
Edited by the distinguished historians Thomas Bender and Carl Schorske, the book places academic developments in their intellectual and socio-political contexts. Scholarly innovators of different generations offer insiders' views of the course of change in their own fields, revealing the internal dynamics of disciplinary change. Historians examine the external context for these changes--including the Cold War, Vietnam, feminism, civil rights, and multiculturalism. They also compare the very different paths the disciplines have followed within the academy and the consequent alterations in their relations to the larger public.
Initiated by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the study was first published in Daedalus in its 1997 winter issue. The contributors are M. H. Abrams, William Barber, Thomas Bender, Catherine Gallagher, Charles Lindblom, Robert Solow, David Kreps, Hilary Putnam, José David Saldívar, Alexander Nehamas, Rogers Smith, Carl Schorske, Ira Katznelson, and David Hollinger.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Stephen Graubard vii
Acknowledgments xi
INTRODUCTION Thomas Bender and Carl E. Schorske 3
PART I HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Thomas Bender Politics, Intellect, and the American University, 1945-1995 17
PART II TRAJECTORIES OF INTRA-DISCIPLINARY CHANGE: PARTICIPANT PERSPECTIVES
ECONOMICS
Robert M. Solow How Did Economics Get That Way and What Way Did It Get? 57
David M. Kreps Economics--The Current Position 77
William J. Barber Reconfigurations in American Academic Economics: A General Practitioner's Perspective 105
ENGLISH
M. H. Abrams The Transformation of English Studies, 1930-1995 123
Catherine Gallagher The History of Literary Criticism 151
Jose David Saldivar Tracking English and American Literary and Cultural Criticism 173
PHILOSOPHY
Hilary Putnam A Half Century of Philosophy, Viewed From Within 193
Alexander Nehamas Trends in Recent American Philosophy 227
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Charles E. Lindblom Political Science in the 1940s and 1950s 243
Rogers M. Smith Still Blowing in the Wind: The American Quest for a Democratic, Scientific Political Science 271
PART III INTER-DISCIPLINARY COMPARISONS: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Carl E. Schorske The New Rigorism in the Human Sciences, 1940-1960 309
Ira Katznelson From the Street to the Lecture Hall: The 1960s 331
David A. Hollinger The Disciplines and the Identity Debates, 1970-1995 353