The Postmodern University

Postmodernism and deconstruction have rapidly (and soberly) been defined, redefined, and thus assimilated by academics in the humanities whose operant muse seems for the most part to be the desire to progress from Assistant to Associate to Full Professor. Nonetheless, these two recently developed concepts still contain the potential to disrupt cliched and reified ways of reading and teaching. In The Postmodern University: Essays on the Deconstruction of the Humanities, Stanley Fogel seeks to unearth and capitalize upon their destabilizing qualities. His targets are university structures and practices, the organization of the humanities, the language and style of literary criticism and literary critics, as well as propriety in the academy. Fogel also examines a number of texts which display a postmodern sensibility.