The Knowledge Contract

by Downing, David B.

• ISBN13: 9780803217300
• ISBN10: 0803217307
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

The Knowledge Contract intervenes in the ongoing debates about the changing conditions of higher education in America, with a special focus on English studies and the humanities. This highly original study integrates three crucial concerns: the economic restructuring of higher education, the transformation of disciplinary models of teaching and research, and the rise of the academic labor movement.Whereas most contemporary critiques of higher education have focused on the impact of global economic forces, The Knowledge Contract adds a new dimension to the discussion by addressing the tensions between disciplinary and non-disciplinary forms of academic work. David B. Downing draws on several traditions of scholarship: histories of the university, sociological studies of education, critiques of disciplinary and interdisciplinary forms of work, histories of academic capitalism and the labor movement, and field-specific analyses of the history of English studies. Building on his analysis, Downing develops alternative possibilities to the dominance of disciplinary forms of labor and offers scenarios for creating more equitable working and learning conditions for faculty and students.David B. Downing is a professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is the editor of Changing Classroom Practices: Resources for Literary and Cultural Studies and the co-editor of Beyond English, Inc.: Curricular Reform in a Global Economy, among other books. He edits the journal Works and Days.

Author Biography

David B. Downing is a professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is the editor of Changing Classroom Practices: Resources for Literary and Cultural Studies and the coeditor of Beyond English, Inc.: Curricular Reform in a Global Economy, among other books. He edits the journal Works and Days.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Writing the Knowledge Contract: An Introduction	1	(18)
Working outside (and beside) the Knowledge Contract	19	(31)
Professions, Disciplines, and Paradigms: Reconstructing Academic Labor within the Nonmodern University	50	(42)
Paradigms Performed and the Kuhnification of the Humanities	92	(32)
Radical Diversities and the Cosmopolitan Self: The Disciplinary Intellectual Confronts the Multivalent University	124	(35)
Pragmatic Interventions: The Lure of Method and the Rise of Disciplinary Labor	159	(31)
The ``Mop-up'' Work of Theory Anthologies: Theorizing the Discipline and the Disciplining of Theory	190	(35)
Beside Disciplinary English: Working for Professional Solidarity by Reforming Academic Labor	225	(37)
Imagined Futures: A Miniepilogue	262	(5)
Notes	267	(28)
Works Cited	295	(18)
Index	313