Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Credentials

At any elite university or liberal arts college, professors are expected to publish. In most disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, the path to publication usually features books and peer-reviewed articles; in others—such as Economics—peer-reviewed articles and case studies are the preferred options. Math, Engineering, and the natural sciences have quite different sets of scholarly expectations.

Only three members of the 69 tenured or tenure-track members of the Group came from Math or the natural sciences. (None came from Engineering or Economics.) Of the remainder, apart from a scattered few in Music and Dance, all teach in departments where professors are expected to publish books.

In looking through the Group’s c.v.’s, an interesting pattern emerges: sixteen* have published books with Duke University Press.

A couple of prominent anti-lacrosse professors are virtual DUP regulars. Diane Nelson has two forthcoming books with DUP (including The End/s of War: Reckoning and Assumptions of Identity in Post-Genocide Guatemala).

And Duke’s equivalent of Linwood (“The Intimidator”) Wilson, former Women’s Studies Director Robyn (“Language of Lynching“) Weigman, has three edited volumes plus a scholarly monograph with DUP. The “clarifying” professor—who tried and failed to intimidate into silence campus critics of the Group of 88—has written American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender, while her edited volumes include Women’s Studies On Its Own: A Next Wave Reader in Institutional Change.

For the most part, however, a disproportionate number of the DUP-published Group members are professors without books published elsewhere. The DUP book thus was or is a critical credential for the candidate’s recruitment to,* continued employment at, or promotion at Duke. This list includes:

  • Ranjanna Khanna (English): 1 book, Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism. Duke University Press, 2003.
  • Priscilla Wald (English): 1 book, Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form. Duke University Press, 1995.
  • Maurice Wallace (English): 1 book, Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideology in African American Men's Literature and Culture, 1775-1995. Duke University Press, 2002.
  • Alberto Moreiras (Literature): 1 book in English, The Exhaustion of Difference: The Politics of Latin American Cultural Studies. Duke University Press, 2001.
  • Antonio Viego (Literature): 1 book, forthcoming, Ruining Ethnicity and Race: Latino/a Studies, Psychoanalysis and Ego Psychology. Duke University Press, forthcoming 2007.
  • Esther Gabara (Romance Studies), 1 book, forthcoming, The Ethos of Modernism: Photographic Aesthetics in Mexico and Brazil. Duke University Press, forthcoming (no publication date listed).
  • Ralph Litzinger (Cultural Anthropology): 1 book, Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging. Duke University Press, 2000.
  • Rebecca Stein (Cultural Anthropology), 1 scholarly monograph, Itineraries in Conflict: The Political Life of Tourism in Israel and the Middle East. Duke University Press, forthcoming, (no publication date listed).

It’s not hard to miss the pedagogical slant of the list above. The website of the press states that DUP “publishes primarily in the humanities and social sciences and . . . is best known for its publications in the broad and interdisciplinary area of theory and history of cultural production, and it is known in general as a publisher willing to take chances with nontraditional and interdisciplinary publications.” But while the site lists the press editors, it does not contain a listing of the Editorial Advisory Board—which is composed of Duke professors, and which has the ultimate authority to render decisions on whether or not to publish a manuscript.

Because of the difficulty of gathering public information on the DUP EAB, I sent an email to Prof E. Roy Weintraub (Economics Department) since I recalled from his c.v. that he had served on that board. He said that he would not offer me his personal opinions on it or its members, but that specific factual information should be publicly available, since the Duke Faculty had in the past voted its support of the Press through the Academic Council. (A note on “interest”: Weintraub co-edits a book series on Science and Cultural Theory for DUP, and thus has many dealings with the editors of the Press. His last book was published by DUP, as were his three edited volumes in the History of Political Economy Conference series.)

I asked Professor Weintraub several questions, and he has permitted me to reproduce those questions and his answers:

Q. How is Duke Press organized?

A. It is a university unit reporting to the Provost, and is charged to support the university’s scholarly mission on a financial “break-even” basis. It is set up in two divisions, Books and Journals. Given the cost allocations, and the separate revenue streams to each, the Journals division is, per agreement with the Provost, a cross-subsidizer of the Books division.

Q. What is the reputation of the Books division?

A. It appears that among humanities scholars, and other university presses, it is quite high, and is regarded as fostering and supporting “cutting edge” work in the new humanities areas related to Cultural Studies, widely understood.

Q. What is the role of the Editorial Advisory Board (EAB)?

A. The EAB is a group of Duke University faculty who are selected by the Provost on the recommendation of the Editor of the Press to advise the (Book division) editors on projects, manuscripts, and other matters that the Editor brings to it from time to time.

Q. How does it work?

A. It meets monthly. The editors, in my time on it (1998-2003), provided pre-meeting copies of materials on the projects requiring advice/approval at the monthly meeting. Packets included referee reports, author’s responses, editor’s letters to the authors, tables of contents, c.v.’s of authors, chapter outlines, sample chapters, etc. Packets usually ran 50-100 pages per project, and each month there were ten or more projects to discuss. The editors asked the EAB for its views on each project, its author’s and reviewers’ reputations, and current “action” in the field of the author’s research, as well as suggestions for the editors and the authors, marketing advice to the Press, etc. Since all the Book division editors were present at the meetings, it was a way for the scholars and the book people to learn from each other.

Q. Who was on the EAB?

A. I recall serving at perhaps different times with Jan Radway, Fred Jamison, Priscilla Wald, Orin Starn, Anne Allison, Bruce Lawrence, Wahneema Lubiano, Patricia Leighton, Walter Mignolo, Stanley Hauerwas, Srivanas Aravamudan, and Houston Baker as well as the University Librarian at the time, David Ferriero. I am sure I am forgetting some people, though.

Indeed, Lubiano, for one, lists on her c.v. her DUP Editorial Advisory Board experience—creating the extraordinary situation of a professor who had herself not published a scholarly manuscript being put in a position to pass judgment on the manuscripts of others. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to determine that such an arrangement is highly problematic. (Lubiano has, at times, listed as a DUP publication one of her “perpetually forthcoming” offerings, Like Being Mugged by a Metaphor: “Deep Cover” and Other “Black” Fictions.)

Beyond Lubiano, the list of past EAB members includes Group members Jan Radway, Priscilla Wald, Anne Allison, Patricia Leighton, Walter Mignolo, Srivanas Aravamudan, and Houston Baker—along with anti-lacrosse extremist Orin Starn and Bruce Lawrence, husband of and co-author with Group member miriam cooke.

In short, it appears that—in the recent past, at least—the DUP has had an Editorial Advisory Board dominated by Group members or their sympathizers, which in turn has recommended publication of manuscripts produced by . . . Group members or their sympathizers on the faculty. And these manuscripts, in turn, have been vital to the continued employment at Duke of . . . Group members or their sympathizers.

*--modified from 14, error on my part ; added the Wald item more purposes of clarity.

250 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   201 – 250 of 250
Anonymous said...

debrah writes:

My senses tell me that this enthusiastic performance by KC's detractors of late on his blog is their frantic effort to be a part of it all.

I know that's why I'm doing this. In fact, right now I'm sitting by the phone, praying that when it rings a producer from Foxnews will be on the other end, so I can take time away from the dissertation I must finish by December in order to play politics.

Using KC Johnson's and Horowitz's names in the same sentence is pretty damn anti-intellectual.

Anonymous writes:

In the comments on my site, Rich Puchalsky noted another similarity that justifies the analogy:

There's a lot of resistance to the term "Horowitzian" or to association with Horowitz' political tactics, even from people like Bauerlein who have written approvingly for Horowitz' site. KC hasn't done that. But there's another commonality, besides that of the attack based on not informing the audience; the use of the political process to attack academia. In this case, the 88 were not simply wrong to sign this statement, their wrongness must also be made to apply to their work, and must be made a symbol of something generally wrong with academia that taps in to right-wing tropes.

There's a leap there, one that KC makes, and it's one of Horowitz's old standards.

Anonther anonymous writes:

You suggest that Prof. Johnson be removed from Cliopatria.

I did nothing of the sort. As I wrote to KC here:

KC, first, I said nothing about how to manage Cliopatria. In this regard, I believe there must've be some context I've missed, as you and Ralph both think my criticism of you is a call for your removal from the roster. I said, quite plainly, that "keeping you on the roster does the rest of [the contributors] a disservice." I suspect, given the context I'm missing, that any comparable statement in which I distinguish between what you've written and what your compatriots have would've sounded like I was armchair managing Cliopatria. I wasn't.

Anon. further wrote:

Or, is your suggestion motivated because you disagree with his commentary on this blog?

I'd earlier written:

The problem isn't that they're conservative arguments, but that they're bad arguments.

In short, then, you're attacking me for things I've already refuted, as you would've known had you done a little more reading. You're under no obligation to, obviously, but it's considered polite.

Mr. Packwood:

Dude, your dog is not hunting! What are you trying to say?

Seems like I was trying to say that my comment wasn't being posted. The first one said it was "held in moderation," the second gave me an error screen. I'm guessing two link-heavy comments posted in a relatively short period of time got flagged by Blogger as spam. I said as much in my comment. (Actually, I know why now: click "Preview" with the forms "Name" and "Your Web Page" filled out but the "Google/Blogger" button pushed instead of "Other" and you'll see the problem I encountered yesterday. I assumed it would've saved my settings -- or Firefox would've -- but it didn't.) What am I supposed to be hunting here, anyway?

If we need a decoder ring to read your stuff it might be helpful for you to remember that you skating on thin ice here.

Wait, I'm skating, not hunting. I'm, um, what are you trying to say here, Mr. Packwood?

Ralph Phelan writes:

You work with the people who practice "theory." I and others like me pay both their salaries and yours. Whose opinion as to the value of their work should govern funding?

Do you really believe that government funding of academia ought to be based on public will? Shall we shift all those billions from the hard sciences to theology departments? After all, "evilution" is just a theory, &c. You echo a common enough rhetorical feint, but like those before you, haven't really thought through its consequences.

AMac:

You might argue that the DUP pedigree of Wald's book was an important part of the hiring decision (appropriately or not).

He could argue that, but he'd be wrong to do so. I've been on a hiring committee, and I assure you that UPs have no influence on the initial culling of candidates. In fact, until the final vote, no one not on the hiring committee does. The panel of four people read through hundreds of applications and writing samples, draw their own conclusions, then recommend fifteen or so people to interview. Those fifteen are then further culled to three or four, campus visits are arranged, &c. Finally, the faculty vote. (Obviously more complicated, I'm just trying to show you the amount of work that's done without interference even from members of one's own department, much less UPs.)

Also, thanks for your comment RE: spam. Now, if someone would kindly tell me how to unsubscribe from ConservativesBetrayed.com's listserv, I'd appreciate it. Every time I try, I get an email confirming my subscription.

Still another Anon. writes:

Bet those egghead blogs mentioned here have never gotten so much traffic before.

If you mean mine, then I can assure that's not the case. I've been linked by Boing Boing a few times (as per here), Instapundit a few more, Crooked Timber more than I can count. I assure you, the slight uptick in traffic from a link in this comments section pales in comparison.

Upon preview, Ralph again:

Is it possible that Kaufman's harrassment claim is also a politically motivated lie? How can we tell? Does anyone know him well enough personally to say one way or the other if this is plausible?

You don't have to take my word for it. That KC has should carry some weight. That I'm considered a reputable member of the academic blogosphere -- gave a talk on blogging at the MLA, another for the history department at UC Davis, and will be giving another still at the ALSC (the so-called "anti-MLA") -- should carry some more. Of course, since those are all academic forums, I suppose they don't for you. I don't know what more to say to convince you. Maybe this'll do it:

Look at the post I wrote yesterday. It involved an email in which the emailer assumed she was going to be mocked. Did I 1) represent the email accurately, and 2) treat the emailer respectfully?

Anonymous said...

to me @1:23

What were the names of the conservative listserves in question? Can at least one of their administrators confirm that kaufman's email address was added and then removed within the last day?

kcjohnson9 said...

To SEK:

Amac: "You might argue that the DUP pedigree of Wald's book was an important part of the hiring decision (appropriately or not).

SEK: "He could argue that, but he'd be wrong to do so. I've been on a hiring committee, and I assure you that UPs have no influence on the initial culling of candidates. In fact, until the final vote, no one not on the hiring committee does."

I've been on hiring committes in six searches, both at Williams and at Brooklyn. Of course the pedigree of the UP matters! The average number of applicants for a job is, say, 80 or 85. The goal is to give everyone a fair shake, but also, any search committee has only so much time to devote to the process.

Can anyone seriously contend that a candidate with a book from, say, Oxford Univ. Press isn't going to be looked at more closely than a candidate with a book from, say, the University of New Mexico Press? It would be nice if, in every search, every applicant's scholarship was read in its entirety, and the readers skipped past the page saying which press published the book. But in the real world, that doesn't happen.

I am, by the way, now leaving for Durham. Comment moderation willbe sporadic this afternoon and evening.

Anonymous said...

To: SEK
Re: your comment "I know that's why I'm doing this. In fact, right now I'm sitting by the phone, praying that when it rings a producer from Foxnews will be on the other end, so I can take time away from the dissertation I must finish by December in order to play politics."

You. Are. Hysterical!

Some of us who read DIW admittedly are not academics and are not really qualified to comment on many of the posts, I speak for myself, but truly enjoy Prof. Johnson's biting sarcasm. It appears you have the same gift (don't get me wrong, I mean that as a compliment). Good luck with the dissertation ;)

Anonymous said...

SEF wrote "In short, then, you're attacking me for things I've already refuted, as you would've known had you done a little more reading. You're under no obligation to, obviously, but it's considered polite."

Sorry. My bad.

Enjoyed your site.

Anonymous said...

sek:
Ralph Phelan writes:

"You work with the people who practice "theory." I and others like me pay both their salaries and yours. Whose opinion as to the value of their work should govern funding?"

Do you really believe that government funding of academia ought to be based on public will?


No, I think it's a genuinely difficult problem. While problems of this sort arise any time someone hires an expert to do something they don't fully understand, figuring out how best to govern academia is much more complicated than figuring out how to tell if your plumber is ripping you off. Given the amount of public benefits, both monetary and nonmonetary, that academia receives it's also an unavoidable problem. "I'm telling you that everything we do here is worthwhile, and you can trust me because I almost have a Ph.D." won't cut it.

I do assert that the current method of judging which academic projects are worthwhile is systematically flawed: by placing too much weight on form over content, by having been hijacked by leftist political activists, and by having been forced to create BS departments of women's studies and african american studies whose real reason for existence is to make the faculty and student demographics look right, but which are then treated as if they contained real scholars.

I'd rather work with the professors than the fundamentalists on figuring out how to fix the mess, but if the professors refuse to play I'll take what allies I can get.

Shall we shift all those billions from the hard sciences to theology departments? After all, "evilution" is just a theory, &c. You echo a common enough rhetorical feint, but like those before you, haven't really thought through its consequences.
Shall we construct straw men and then gleefully tear their stuffing out and throw it around the room?

If UC Irvine's writing program is going to hire a sophist to teach its students how to throw fallacies around, you'd think they'd at least find someone who can deploy them skillfully.

AMac said...

Re. commenter/blogger Scott Eric Kaufman (SEK) getting spammed --

One can always construct a metanarrative that puts the other guy in the villain's role. To see that undertaken so readily in this thread is a disappointment.

Sure, Kaufman might be a master of self-victimizing schemes. But look at his blog. Doesn't fit. Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom says,

"Scott has been a guest poster at my site -- and though I don't often agree with him, and find some of his arguments a bit slippery, I do think he is willing to engage in good faith debate, and I would be very surprised were he to invent such a story... He is a nice guy, also one of a vanishing breed: an academic who seems genuinely interested in intellectual debate, rather than simply protecting this or that orthodoxy as a way to protect his standing as a scholar."

That's about as good a character reference as one is going to get from across the political divide.

Again, Scott, I regret that some knucklehead chose to annoy you with his stupid prank.

Debrah said...

TO Amac--

Indeed, we all share your regret that someone might have been the victim of this kind of annoyance. We were all such victims here inside Wonderland by one of our own posters.

Some here have suggested that it was more than a bit presumptuous of Kaufman to have run to KC as if "Oh man....I've been victimized and it's probably someone over there"....display.

KC has been more than gracious.

Given how we were all victimized by an impersonator from within, I share the opinion of a few others that it is not out of the realm of possibility that the man's troubles might have come from one of his own secretly disgruntled flock.

In any case, why should the multitude of posters in Wonderland be bothered with this?

Anonymous said...

SEKsie asked...

Do you really believe that government funding of academia ought to be based on public will? (emphasis in original)

Of course not -- Why let democratic governance get in the way of the good things we in the elite know are best for everyone? Really, only members of the academy should write the budget for the Education Dept. ... Same as only members of the military should write the budget for the Defense Dept. We're with you, SEKsie!!

[/sarcasm]

Gary Packwood said...

AMac 5:22 said...

...Re. commenter/blogger Scott Eric Kaufman (SEK) getting spammed --
...Again, Scott, I regret that some knucklehead chose to annoy you with his stupid prank.
::
I concur and regret that anyone chose to annoy Scott with his stupid prank.
::
GP

Antaeus Feldspar said...

AMac --

I certainly join you in condemning any act of spamming. It doesn't matter whether we agree with speech or not; silencing it by harassment or by trying to drown it out is loathsome and should be rejected by all.

I don't know who's doing the spamming. I don't know if it's a DiW regular, though I'd hope not. I don't know if it's a knucklehead like Polanski who'd do something like this so that he could piss off DiW and someone else at the same time. I don't know if it's even someone else mad about something unconnected to DiW.

What I do know is that this act is filthy and must stop. There is no motive that justifies such anti-thought tactics.

SEK said...

Debrah writes here:

Some here have suggested that it was more than a bit presumptuous of Kaufman to have run to KC as if "Oh man....I've been victimized and it's probably someone over there"....display.

Debrah writes there:

I'm so G/d-damned tired of this guy.

("Enough about me. What about you? What do you think of me?")

Let's revisit the mission of this blog.

Shall we?

Enough already!


If Debrah'd stop and think for a moment, she'd realize that "this guy" is a graduate student who sticks his neck out there and writes under his own name, and so is a little more careful than most to make sure that his Google-trail is accurate. So yes, I'm responding to my critics here so that I'm not misunderstood in the future. But I'll mention, again, (and for the last time, if you'll take care to listen), that I didn't write KC complaining that I've been harassed and/or victimized, only that I'd been inconvenienced. If you stop repeating things which aren't true, I'll stop refuting them. Deal?

(Not that you don't have a point. As I admit, I'm probably making this all up. It's all too improbable, and there's no proof, &c.)

Anonymous said...

SEK wrote at 10:27 "What? Why should I apologize for not calumniating the reputations of the 3,000,000 visitors who didn't sign me up for upwards of eighty conservatives listservs? Who else do I owe an apology to for not slandering? Bill Cosby? Because I love Bill Cosby. TiVO the old episodes every day. I didn't mean not to condemn him, but, well, I guess I owe him an apology anyway ..."

You. Are. Really. Fun.

It's a tough crowd here; I know, I've been seared before (yes, I also know I'm a coward to post anonymously). Thanks for joining the fray.

On another note, the discourse between academics and non-academics on this blog has been really interesting. I'm not an academic; I'm an attorney in private (civil) practice and was attracted to this blog b/c of its focus on the legal case against the players and the utterly unbelievable abuses by Nifong and the DPD which are detailed here better than on any other site. That the "academic" portion of the case crossed into the more pedestrian world of the legal is what, I think, makes this blog so interesting.

On your site, you note that you spent an hour reviewing this blog (I haven't reviewed your blog since yesterday, so correct me if you have since spent more time). If you were to review more of Prof. Johnson's posts, you'll see that he completed research and analysis of the procedural abuses on this case like a seasoned criminal defense attorney (one of the defense attorneys even admitted that he read the blog daily for assistance in the case).

The professors who inarticulately wrote/commented on this case, I suspect, did not do so with ill intentions, but they crossed over into a very technical world. The accused's attorneys very correctly cited the professors' commentary in support of a motion to change venue. The professors' ads, op/eds, etc. clearly would have prejudiced the average Durham juror (not academics, but the AVERAGE Durham juror) against the accused. Again, I am not an academic, but it is my opinion that the professors would have been better to confine their discussion of the case to the classroom until the termination of the legal case. I'm not suggesting that the professors be silenced; I'm merely suggesting that, as the AG of the State of NC stated, this was a case where caution rather than bravado would have been the wiser course.

Anonymous said...

Debrah said:
"Some here have suggested that it was more than a bit presumptuous of Kaufman to have run to KC as if "Oh man....I've been victimized and it's probably someone over there"....display."

Given the timing and the huge traffic surge caused at Acephalus by the crosslinking with DiW I consider it more likely than not that whoever spammed had his attention drawn to Kaufman by said crosslinking - i.e. found him from here.

But knowing the ratio of posters to lurkers on internet fora, I see no reason to believe that it was any of the regulars here.

Anonymous said...

Debrah & Kaufman

Do you think you could take a short
break from your catfight and comment on my 9:22 am post? I thought it one of my better efforts and was surprised when it sank without a trace.

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah-
Sorry to have doubted you Kaufman, but the surreality of this case and the massive dishonesty exposed makes me suspicious of everything.

I don't think the title "Durham in Wonderland" properly evokes the flavor of this fustercluck. It's more like a Phillip K. Dick novel.

Anonymous said...

2:32:

Here is a place where KC is more wrong and SEK is more correct. I've been on searches at several institutions and talked to people on others and it is clear that while the "pedigree" of the book "matters," having a book published by the hiring institution isn't a make it or break part of the deal.

Say there are four finalists in labor history at Illinois, which has an excellent labor series. Three of the finalists have books published by Illinois and one of them has a book published by Yale. Is the Yale finalist odd person out? Probably not, since that is also an excellent press, even if not the "home" press.

You don't like that example? Ok, try this one. Someone applyies for a job in gender history at U. of Chicago, which has an extraordinary list on the history of sexuality. Two of the candidates have books from U. of Chicago press, one has a book from NYU press and the other from Cal (both also very good). All things being equal, would the two candidates with books from Chicago have a "home court advantage"? I have never heard or seen any proof that they would.

Would the Latin Americanist (literature/history/anthropology) candidate with a book from UNM Press have an advantage in a job hunt at the University of New Mexico over someone with a book from the University of Arizona Press?

KC is making the assertion and it seems to me that he needs to prove it and hasn't.

Anonymous said...

Ralph Phelan at 1:07 is not suspicious of everything. Just those things with which he disagrees. Like he doesn't seem to have any suspicions at all that KC Johnson might sometimes do superficial research for this blog and/or error by omission... (See how long it took him to modify his Wald comment.)

Anonymous said...

2:22 Before KC sics me, correct to "applies."

Anonymous said...

anonymous 2:26:

"Ralph Phelan at 1:07 is not suspicious of everything."


See my 8/28/07 12:43 PM, 8/28/07 4:22 PM & 8/28/07 2:28 PM in which I question KC's "sense" that there is something obviously wrong with the rate at which G88ers publish with DUP.

Your statement is factually incorrect.

Anonymous said...

2:26 to 7:13

I was wrong. Ralph Phelan, you were suspicious of KC Johnson's assertions at least once!

And, you never really got a good answer out of him, although someone who posted at SEK's blog was able to pull up some of the info about publishing at at least one elite institution fairly rapidly. And, there's been some on here about Harvard history professors publishing with Harvard.

Anonymous

AMac said...

Anon 7:32am --

Pick a pseudonym, please, else it is difficult for readers to interpret your remarks like "I was wrong."

But yeah, Ralph Phelan red-flagged some major problems with the premises of this post.

My pre-existing suspicions were that DUP has a "mixed" reputation for quality. A couple of reasons, one being the Sokal Hoax--that should have been a huge red flag IMO, but to my knowledge there was never a sense of embarrassment or an overhaul of vetting procedures (I could be wrong). Another is the association of the vile Amanda Marcotte and her hateful blogging partner with the enterprise. That caliber of employee doesn't speak well of them.

The larger matter is the problem of "reputation" when it comes to the Emperor's tailor. Some (not all) of the scholarship outlined in Johnson's G88 Profiles series is, to an educated and widely-read non-academic, pathetic. The logic is opaque. The conclusions and their implications are drearily predictable. In some essays that I've read, a malicious copy editor could sprinkle the word "not" into the text (or turn the author's negatives into affirmatives), and most readers would miss the changes. The prose is that turgid.

If this is the work product of tenure-track professors in a given field, what does it mean for a university press to have a solid reputation? "We publish bunkum that our audience holds in esteem." Great.

The definition and evaluation of "quality" is a wicked problem. In many fields, e.g. the hard sciences, it seems amenable to rule-based and consensus solutions that work well enough. Well enough, that is, so that people in biology or geology can discuss the institutions of a pseudoscience movement like Creationism to dissect how they game the system.

There's no equivalent for the areas that DUP publishes. With a very few exceptions (such as our host), professionals don't seem to see much that's wrong with the status quo of these fields.

All that said, there's very little that has come out in the post or in the comments that substantiates (or for that matter, repudiates) my jaundiced view of DUP. If, in well-established fields, professors at X University regularly publish at XUP, than the pattern Johnson describes for the G88 and DUP is unremarkable. If some other UP shines in publishing actual excellence in areas that are laden with p.c. dreck, it would be instructive to compare their practices with those of DUP.

With the exception of seeing the almost unreadable Prof. Lubiano involved in their editorial process, DUP walks away from this one with a decision on points.

Not that they don't deserve to be raked over the coals. But evaluating the performance of a university press in faddish, p.c.-hobbled fields means tackling an imposing set of interconnected problems.

My two cents.

Anonymous said...

AMac at 10:32,

I agree with you that DUP wins, although I'd've probably stated it more strongly than you have.

I ran through DUP's list in a field I know--history--and was no less impressed this time than the last time--a year or so ago--I'd looked through it. There are a wide variety of books available; some of them have won prizes. In addition to monographs, some are monographs/books in translation; others are reprints of long out of print classics with introductions.
I'd still publish with DUP if the press I've published with most recently didn't want my next manuscript!!!

I think you've inadvertantly hit on an issue with KC Johnson's work in the faculty profiles. He outlines their work. And, an outline can make the bad look good or the bad look worse. Indeed, it can make the excellent appear average, if there's not another, easily available opinion as a counterweight.

But, on WL's terminally forthcoming volume? That's simply odd.

An Academic who you told not to post as anonymous... ;-)

Debrah said...

To Ralph--

This thread is so long--going into three days now--that I had to search for your post. It capsulizes the issue for most and I am reprinting it:

Ralph Phelan said...
Steve Horwitz -
Further thoughts on the animosity to professors.

This case has greatly increased the depth of my anger.

I used to consider the description of universities as "islands of tyranny in a sea of freedom" rather hyperbolic, as you could always step off the island. Even when they used academic disciplinary board show-trials, and trumped up charges of sexual harassment, the worst that the PC fascists could do is say "you'll never work in Academia again." Not that dire a threat. Consequently watching David Horowitz fight with leftist professors was primarily amusing in a pro-wrestling sort of way.

But when the campus fascists allied themselves with an obviously corrupt prosecutor trying to put innocent people in prison for 30 years, and a group of violent street thugs who threatened people's lives to the point they had to live in their cars, they chose to seriously raise the stakes of the game. I can no longer laugh at it, nor can I consider it "not my problem".

The islands of tyranny are now trying to extend their influence into the sea of freedom. The sea of freedom has no choice but to respond.

8/29/07 9:22 AM

AMac said...

An Academic 11:15am --

You say that the part of the DUP list that's most interesting to you is in History. I suspect that a UP's history offerings would seem stronger (to an outsider) than, say, Cultural Studies, or Gender Studies, or Critical Race Theory, or the application of postmodernism and deconstructionism to [insert a field of study here].

But what are my "suspicions" worth? More generally, what are the metrics for judging, and who gets to apply them?

Some of the very eloquent commentary by established academics on the earlier-linked posts at Scott Eric Kaufman's blog Acephalous suggest part of the problem's frame. Either most folks think that the quality status quo at DUP (and at other UPs--and in the humanities in general) is just fine, or they don't wish to discuss any glaring examples where quality has fallen off a cliff, as a first step in failure analysis.

If the latter, can you blame them? Citing chapter and verse means attacking some colleague's work product, and that will mean hurting feelings, and making an enemy, and likely making enemies of that person's advisor, students, and friends. And, profs whose turf is the use of similar 'tools' on related issues... Not very many collegial benefits to that approach to one's career.

Trying to do a fair evaluation of an institution like DUP brings up a host of difficult issues.

Anonymous said...

"I think you've inadvertantly hit on an issue with KC Johnson's work in the faculty profiles. He outlines their work. And, an outline can make the bad look good or the bad look worse."

This is true for any individual profile. But is there any reason to believe that such profiles sytematically make people from certain fields look worse than they are?

If not, then the aggregate result is still significant. Joining lynch mobs is, for whatever reason, significantly correlated both with doing race/class/gender studies and with not publishing much. I think that's interesting.

Figuring out the factor interactions and putting a numerical value on the correlations' significance would be a hell of a lot of work.

Debrah said...

To 12:43PM--

It could also be the subject of KC's next book.

Or it should be.

Anonymous said...

AMac & Ralph Phelan,

The stray academic here. I had never looked at the DUP history section before to get an overview. I was surprised that there was so much--to my mind--straight forward Latin American and other history. I noticed, for example, a book on Brazilian history & assumed that might be the influence--I don't know--of Duke's justly famous Brazilian labor historian, John French.

I sometimes teach gender history. That's one reason I look at DUP: it has a lot of good books on the subject. These books might address topics you may not find interesting/useful, but I do & so do--at least, some of--my students. (Before people start throwing things, my undergraduates read a lot of standard/classic work in the field; my graduate students sometimes read more specialized monographs from, say, Duke.) Some of my students comment on how difficult the class is. And, it is, because they have to analyze, analyze, analyze.

The trinity of race, class, and gender puts off a lot of people, apparently, but it is a good way to study a numerous power and social issues and how attitudes have changed over time, for example: attitudes toward lesbian behavior in prison, toward "public" sex, toward what constitutes "masculine" or "feminine," toward "independent" women (in the sense of "unmarried), toward prostitutes/ion (male and female), toward homosexuality, and on and on. These are topics are also of interest to some legal and constitutional historians. We just focus on them differently. The best presses in general for gender history, in my opinion, are: Cal, Chicago, Duke, NYU, and Routledge. That being said, some of the most important work in this area has been published by other presses.

I am disturbed at the attacks on DUP because I think it is a good press. I would be proud to publish there. People whose work I know and respect have. Some of them have won prizes for their books.

The stray historian

Anonymous said...

Correction to 1:23--

The topics are also of interest to...

Debrah said...

attitudes.......toward "public" sex....

Well, we could just ask Larry Craig about that one.

The Gang of 88 sex and gender faction would just love him.

LIS!

Anonymous said...

Debs, doll, you just don't get it, do you? Not everyone thinks (or not) like you. You remind me of a ten year old boy who giggles at dirty jokes.

And, of course, there's a reason for the connection between gay sex & public toilets. It can be historicized.

Anonymous said...

AMac at 12:15, You'll notice that Debrah chimed in immediately with what I consider an infantile comment when I tried to carry on a serious adult conversation with you.

Although I'm not in Cultural Studies, I suppose I could be classed as a fellow traveler. And, I would be happy to make arguments in favor of said area of study, but not on this list, where I'd have to contend with the smarmy, infantile comments of ankle biters (in the rug rat/house monkey/yard ape/curtain climber sense) like Debrah.

If I posted at SEK, what I'd have to say would be of little surprise to the readers!!!

Anonymous said...

stray historian:

"I am disturbed at the attacks on DUP because I think it is a good press. I would be proud to publish there."

Even after the Social Text/Sokal hoax? Coming out of the sciences as I do I find that incomprehensible.

We won't waste our time on a source that may or may not be bullshit. Editors and publishers are supposed to screen the bullshit out for us. If they don't, they're not doing their job, and we'll take our business elsewhere.

The claim that all race/class/gender studies is useless is of course wrong.

But the claim that in academia as a whole those subspecialties get more attention than they deserve is at least plausible.

I'd say the claim that at Duke those subspecialties get more attention than they deserve is self-evident.

I'd say the claim that in academia as a whole those subspecialties tolerate an unusually high amount of bad (either incorrect or flat-out meaningless) scholarship is also pretty strongly grounded in evidence.

Do you disagree with any of the above?

"You'll notice that Debrah chimed in immediately with what I consider an infantile comment"
So ignore her, she'll go away.

"If I posted at SEK, what I'd have to say would be of little surprise to the readers!!!"
And wouldn't that be boring?

Anonymous said...

"And, of course, there's a reason for the connection between gay sex & public toilets. It can be historicized."

This is an example of why I question the value of "cultural studies" - the use of sledgehammers to smash gnats. The connection doesn't have to be "historicized." It's a blazingly obvious matter of convenience.

Debrah said...

"And, of course, there's a reason for the connection between gay sex & public toilets. It can be historicized."

ROTFLM-T's-O !!!

You'll please pardon me. The Diva didn't major in subjects like that. I mostly did drama and music.

Thanks for the update!

Debrah said...

"It can be historicized."

This is an example of why I question the value of "cultural studies" - the use of sledgehammers to smash gnats. The connection doesn't have to be "historicized." It's a blazingly obvious matter of convenience.


Dear Ralph--

You have just made my points for me.

Which is why I chose to make a joke out of this unadulterated BS.

The fact that you entertain it with a straight face makes you quite a whiplash victim.

:>)

Debrah said...

I wonder....contemplating the strange.....if I wanted to write a few books on the positions I like to assume during sex, or how often I like it, or what rooms I most often have it in, or what time of day or night I find best....

.....could someone make this a course of study at universities everywhere?

Would we bask in its brazen culture?

Huh?

AMac said...

An Academic 11:15am, Stray Historian 1:23pm, and Anon 1:47pm --

Many thanks for your comments.

Re: race, class, and gender, I've mentioned that these must obviously be focuses of study of many events and developments. Respective examples of the Civil War, Bolshevism, Suffrage, from a very long list.

There is still the portrait of an academic who loathes the conventional mores of contemporary US society on, say, sex, and chooses to do an in-depth analysis of beliefs relating to sex of an extinct, preliterate culture, applying literary rather than historiographic methods to discover that all manner of blessedly Arcadian beliefs and practices flourished there. That is, before the practices were crushed by the hated white male European hegemon.

A distant mirror.

How does this relate to DUP? Well, the particular instance does not. Would turning the pages of a random sample of DUP titles reveal this sort of scholarship to be common or rare? I don't know. If there is a compelling argument to be made that such work is, indeed, important (and for that matter, falsifiable), are DUP texts the places to make this discovery? I'd hope so, but, again, I don't know. For me, the question will have to wait for another day.

On blog comments: they obviously mean different things to different people. (Hey--a fit subject for a race/class/gender based Culture Studies monograph!) In one sense, there's no happy medium. For instance, the Regulars at Acephalous seem to have their own problems with consideration of The Other, be it in the form of a strange person or an uncomfortable idea.

What I value most in comments was expressed by Feynmann: the indication that something in the argument is false, or in error, or wrongly formulated. Then there is often useful additional information and perspectives, often as links. And it's always nice to encounter writing that prompts a chuckle. "Community" doesn't mean so much to me, as something of a loner, and as somebody who is aware that I'm typing and staring at a screen, rather than joshing with friends at a real-life "Cheers."

Obviously, other people at various blogs have different ideas on the subject.

Seeing Ralph Phelan's 2:09pm comment --

"the claim that in academia as a whole those subspecialties get more attention than they deserve is at least plausible.

"the claim that in academia as a whole those subspecialties tolerate an unusually high amount of bad (either incorrect or flat-out meaningless) scholarship is also pretty strongly grounded in evidence.
"

I agree, from what I've read.

Anonymous said...

AMac,

I think the study of the sexual practices of extinct/earlier societies might be useful. For example, if it demonstrated that some societies accepted single-sex behavior as normative or that a social structure was matriarchal, the study would also show that some of what we accept today as "normal" is constructed. I don't think this has a great deal to do with white males, dead or alive...(As an aside: I think you make too much of the "hated white male European hegemon.")

I haven't read SEK's blog much, but I actually find the discourse rather more gentle than on KC Johnson's blog.

I don't know what some subspecialties "get more attention then they deserve," but frankly, the academic pie is fairly small and much fought over. I know at my state university, many of the interdisciplinary programs are v. underfunded as are the humanities, in general.

I disagree with you & Ralph Phelan that as a whole those subspecialties (which are?) "tolerate an unually high amount of bad (either incorrect of flat-out meaningless) scholarship," that this claim is "pretty strongly grounded in evidence." What evidence? I am certain that at least some people believe that.

My experience with Women's Studies, Gender Studies, and GLTB Studies says that this is not the case. I can't speak for Latino, Asian, Black or any other Studies because I've never been associated with these fields. I suspect that I would not make a blanket statement about what they produce.

Sometimes, it takes awhile to get used to new ideas & to recognize their value. This may be the case with some of the disciplines some of the people here are dismissing. I don't know; I simply raise the possibility.

AA

Anonymous said...

Debrah said:

"You have just made my points for me."

Then said:
"....contemplating the strange....."
I beieve you misunderstood my point. It wasn't a complaint about "cultivating the strange." It was a complaint about doing it badly.

Anonymous said...

AA

"I disagree with you & Ralph Phelan that as a whole those subspecialties (which are?) "tolerate an unually high amount of bad (either incorrect of flat-out meaningless) scholarship"
Then why wasn't Social Text laughed out of existence and its editors laughed out of academia after the Sokal affair?

Anyone who has treated Stanley Fish or Andrew Ross as a serious scholar since May 24, 1996 has a much higher tolerance for bullshit than I do.

This would appear to encompass much of "cultural studies" and much of Duke. And so once again, we come back to the question of whether a tolerance for bullshit and lies is a personality factor that increases the probablity one will join a lynch mob should the opportunity arise. It's certainly a plausible hypothesis.

Anonymous said...

"I think the study of the sexual practices of extinct/earlier societies might be useful. "

And Amac and I would both agree that it is useful if done well.

The complaint was about
"an academic who loathes the conventional mores of contemporary US society on, say, sex, and chooses to do an in-depth analysis of beliefs relating to sex of an extinct, preliterate culture, applying literary rather than historiographic methods to discover that all manner of blessedly Arcadian beliefs and practices flourished there. That is, before the practices were crushed by the hated white male European hegemon."

I.e. politically motivated bullshit, which is not useful. The presence of such work is not only useless, but actively harmful. If the above hypothetical paper is published in the same journal as your hypothetical well done study, and I encounter the bad one first, I'll never read the second one, as I'll have thrown the whole journal in the trash after the first or second paragraph. Tastes differ, so stuff I find trivial in achievement or uninteresting in subject I will skip over. But stuff that's obviously wrong calls into question the quality of all its neighbors. If the editors are not screening out bullshit for me, I might as be reading random rantings on the web. The trust that I am dealing with serious people working in good faith is broken. And once again I come around to the fact that while M.I.T.'s idea of a rock star is Steven Pinker, Duke's idea of a rock star is Stanley Fish....

Anonymous said...

'(As an aside: I think you make too much of the "hated white male European hegemon.")'

Ummm, what was this blog about again? Something that happened to some rich white males, partially contributed to be people who frequently write in a way that indicates they don't like rich white males?

AMac said...

AA 3:18pm --

> I actually find the discourse [on SEK's blog] rather more gentle than on KC Johnson's blog.

I agree. But then there are, alas, different flavors of "consensus." If you delve into the comments of Scott's latest post on KC Johnson ("Horowitzian"), you'll find a denial that the Listening Statement had much to do with the Lacrosse stripper party, followed by my cut-and-paste that shows the bad acts of that statement quite unambiguously.

Quite unambiguously in my opinion, that is, as other commenters offer improbable and in some cases false constructions in attempts to argue that the L.S.'s words must have been something other than what they were. Accompanied with snark about deficiencies in reading comprehension.

So it's civil, but also deep into Creationism Territory. People believe what they want to believe, and at some juncture there's not much more to be said. In this case, as an outsider, the desired insider outcome appears to be to find a way to not condemn the behavior of the ~66 tenure track faculty who signed and then wouldn't back down, because to do otherwise leads from question to question...

> I disagree with you & Ralph Phelan

Often enough, I find myself in disagreement with Ralph Phelan, but I'm in accord with the sentiments he expresses here.

He makes a good point, which I'd extend: it is not so much that a seemingly arcane monograph looks to be jargony and low in value. I've done work in an arcane specialty, so I understand that a performance that is both important and elegant can look indistinguisable from the trite and hackneyed, to the generalist.

In cell and molecular biology, you could have a fair amount of faith that the members of that community have some shared understanding as to why one manuscript wound up in Cell and another in an unrefereed online repository. Progress in the field--in, say, understanding the role of small RNAs in stem cell differentiation, or in developing drought-resistant maize or new cancer therapies--is connected to these judgments. Per Feynmann, if you had the time and interest, you and I could sit down and work through a great deal of them.

Ralph and I are doubting that the equivalent processes are functioning properly in swathes of the humanities in the modern American Academy. The chastening analogy would be the haute couture industry: this year's "progress" in hemlines is what the experts in Paris, New York, and Milan say it is, provided only that high-end customers of Marks & Spencer's, Macy's, and Le Printemps are willing to accept the designers' decrees.

Suppose, say, that studiers of military affairs thought it would be more important to tease out gender issues than to apply and refine (or rebut) the insights of a Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, von Clausewitz, or Mahan. I'd take that as evidence that the specialty's priorities are set more by fashion and less by 'quality' considerations that have relevance to the world outside the ivied gates.

Which brings us back to Sokal and Social Text.

Debrah said...

To 3:42PM--

I just love it when you talk dirty.

LIS!

Debrah said...

"So it's civil, but also deep into Creationism Territory. People believe what they want to believe, and at some juncture there's not much more to be said."

So true.

Which is why KC's blog is far more popular and superior in the accomplishment of reality-based discussion.

Those other blogs are fine if you have time on your hands and nothing else to do, but there is no hard-hitting analysis as KC has done here.

Bright, clean, brilliant, and crystal clear truth.

That's why KC is a Prince!

Anonymous said...

Stray Historian says...

The trinity of race, class, and gender puts off a lot of people, apparently, but it is a good way to study a numerous power and social issues and how attitudes have changed over time, for example: attitudes toward lesbian behavior in prison, toward "public" sex, toward what constitutes "masculine" or "feminine," toward "independent" women (in the sense of "unmarried), toward prostitutes/ion (male and female), toward homosexuality, and on and on. These are topics are also of interest to some legal and constitutional historians. We just focus on them differently.


What do these subjects have in common? Well, first, small audiences: societal attitudes toward lesbians in prison? Who's going to read that monograph? Not even lesbians in prison. Maybe prison guards on their smoke breaks?

Second, isn't there a Leftist bent to them? How about an academic study of societal attitudes towards, say, "romantically-and-procreatively partnered" women (in the sense of "married"), toward young people who choose long-term virginity or abstinence, toward male-led families?

I think the academy today is anything but honest and tolerant. Hey, prove me wrong: Given all awareness this Lax case has raised through the race, class, gender prism, I dare you to propose a class or a academic study of why white men so infrequently rape black women. You have to admit, it's a damned timely topic and might actually be of some use to more than a few hundred people.

R.R. Hamilton

Debrah said...

Hamilton--You have just raised a question for which they are not prepared, and are not honest enough, to answer. They had rather remain inside their insular huts, living off other people's money, and attacking anyone who questions them.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Divah. Btw, I think most of the criticism directed your way has its origin in the same thing that has been directed at KC in the past: Neither of you seem to suffer fools gladly. "Uncollegial", you are. :)

Debrah said...

To Hamilton--

You're so generous.

To be mentioned alongside KC......luscious!

:>)

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