Eloquent Obsessions

by Torgovnick, Marianna; Kaplan, Alice (CON); Miller, Nancy K. (CON); Davidson, Cathy N. (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780822314721
• ISBN10: 082231472X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-06-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

Out of the core of experience, these essays began as obsessions. Whether founded in some strongly lived moment, deeply held conviction, long-term interest, or persistent and unanswered question, these essays reveal the writerrs"s voice-personal, often passionate, full of conviction, certainly unmistakable. Marianna Torgovnick has drawn together writings by leading contemporary scholars in the humanities, representing fields of literary criticism, American and Romance studies, anthropology, and art history.Eloquent Obsessionspresents cultural criticism at its thoughtful and writerly best. This collection explores a wide range of issues at the intersection of personal and social history-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 ofNational Geographic, from examining the cultural "we" to diagnosing class structures in Israel or showing how photography deals with AIDS. The authors here bring writerly genres-autobiography, memoir, or travel narrative-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 culture-models that are intellectually and socially responsible, but attuned to the criticrs"s voice and the readerrs"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 ofSouth 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

Table of Contents

Introduction

The American Stranger

Decades

The Duplicity of the Southern Story: Reflections on Reynolds Price's The Surface of Earth and Eudora Welty's "The Wide Net"

Tatami Room

Saving Our Lives: Dances with Wolves, Iron John, and the Search for a New Masculinity

Pursuing Authenticity: The Vernaacular Moment in Contemporary American Art

Becoming America's Lens on the World: National Geographic in the Twentieth Century

Power, History, and Authenticity: The Mowachaht Whalers' Washing Shrine

The Ecology of Images

Academic Writing and the Uses of Bad Publicity

Ideology, Energy, and Cultural Criticism

Invoking Culture: The Messy Sid of "Cultural Politics"

The Politics of the "We"

Notes on Contributors

Index

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