Eloquent Obsessions Writing Cultural Criticism

This collection explores a wide range of issues at the intersection of personal and social historyandmdash;from growing up in the South to exploring a love for France or Japan, from coming of age as a feminist to mapping the history of National Geographic, from examining the cultural andquot;weandquot; to diagnosing class structures in Israel or showing how photography deals with AIDS. The authors here bring writerly genresandmdash;autobiography, memoir, or travel narrativeandmdash;to intellectual tasks such as textual readings or investigating the histories of institutions. Continuing a tradition of cultural criticism established by writers such as Samuel Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Edmund Wilson, Hannah Arendt, or Raymond Williams, these essays seek to make a difference, to have an impact, and are based on the fundamental premise that writers have something to say about society. Simply put, this collection offers models for writing eloquently about cultureandmdash;models that are intellectually and socially responsible, but attuned to the criticandrsquo;s voice and the readerandrsquo;s ear.

Aimed not just at academics but also at a more general audience alive to the concerns and interests of society today, Eloquent Obsessions, a revised and expanded version of a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly (Winter 1992), will extend beyond the academy contemporary ways of writing about culture.

Contributors. Jane Collins, Cathy N. Davidson, Virginia R. Dominguez, Mark Edmundson, Gerald Graff, Richard Inglis, Aldona Jonaitis, Alice Yaeger Kaplan, Catherine Lutz, Nancy K. Miller, Linda Orr, Andrew Ross, Henry M. Sayre, Jane Tompkins, Marianna Torgovnick

Marianna Togovnick, Professor of English at Duke University, is author of Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives and Crossing Ocean Parkway: Readings by an Italian-American Daughter.