Widely considered the standard history of the profession of literary studies, Professing Literature unearths the long-forgotten ideas and debates that created the literature department as we know it today. In a readable and often-amusing narrative, Gerald Graff shows that the heated conflicts of our recent culture wars echo—and often recycle—controversies over how literature should be taught that began more than a century ago.Updated with a new preface by the author that ad...

First published in 1994, Black Planet is at first glance a reporting of David Shields’s journey following his hometown Seattle Supersonics through the 1994-95 NBA season. He went to the team's' home games; watched their away games on TV; listened to interviews and call-in shows; talked, or tried to talk, to players, coaches, and agents; attended charity events; corresponded with members of the Sonics newsgroup on the early internet.He kept a daily journal which then transformed int...

Originally published in 1989, The Origins of Literary Studies in America brings together for the first time hard-to-find speeches, reports, and other writings by the founders of literary studies in the United States: Bliss Perry, Woodrow Wilson, Irving Babbitt, M. Carey Thomas, and many other scholars between 1874 and 1937.The selections—on teaching, the MLA, and the goals of the discipline—are readable, accessible, often charming and amusing; what is most striking about t...

Gerald Graff argues that our schools and colleges make the intellectual life seem more opaque, narrowly specialized, and beyond normal learning capacities than it is or needs to be. Left clueless in the academic world, many students view the life of the mind as a secret society for which only an elite few qualify.In a refreshing departure from standard diatribes against academia, Graff shows how academic unintelligibility is unwittingly reinforced not only by academic jargon...

The best-selling book on academic writing—in use at more than 1,500 schools.“They Say / I Say” identifies the key rhetorical moves in academic writing, showing students how to frame their arguments in the larger context of what others have said and providing templates to help them make those moves. And, because these moves are central across all disciplines, the book includes chapters on writing in the sciences, writing in the social sciences, and—new to this edition—writing about ...

This issue of Profession contains Russell A. Berman’s introduction to his Presidential Forum, Language, Literature, Learning, held at the 2012 MLA convention, and the essays of the forum participants Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Christopher Freeburg, Jack Halberstam, B. Venkat Mani, and Imani Perry. To mark the journal’s thirty-fifth anniversary, the issue also features a retrospective sampling of articles that illustrate the evolution of the profession and of the professional issues...

Book One in the Mages of Martir seriesThirty-five-year-old Darek Takren always did his best to keep up with the demands of the prestigious North Academy, a magical school where only those with the drive to succeed are allowed to learn. Having lived in the school for his whole life, Darek Takren sees North Academy as his home, a sanctuary safe from the troubles that plague the outside world.But when his best friend is injured in an unexpected attack on the s...

Ever since a drunken one-night stand gone wrong, single mother Meredith Banks can't seem to shake Christian Morgan, the hypnotically attractive and dangerously obsessive intern from her office. It started with the late night phone calls, the hang-ups, the unwanted visits to her row home in Detroit. Now her son Troy, all that matters in her world, has gone missing after school.Meredith knows Christian is behind her son's disappearance, but the cops won't help without evidence. To fi...

By a USA Today Bestselling Author. After decades of clandestine government operations, James "Beck" Becker and his wife Elizabeth return to Beck's childhood home town to enjoy a settled retirement in the small Mississippi river community of Red Wing, Minnesota. But "settled" is a relative term and no matter where Beck goes, intrigue follows. When Minneapolis computer genius, Katherine Whitson, disappears under peculiar circumstances...

Death Comes To Us AllIt is sixty years since a great war made the Earth uninhabitable. The few survivors took shelter within towered cities. They, and now their descendants, have only one goal: to construct colony ships so that they can leave the ruined planet in the hope of establishing a settlement on Mars.The first of those ships is nearing completion. If the species is to survive, then nothing can interfere with this last great effort. But the city is n...

A new Dragon has come to protect Isabelle's village. However, the dragon has one demand that must be met: a wife. A young virgin, dressed for a wedding.Isabelle has been chosen to become the Dragon's wife. She has no idea what to expect when, one dark autumn day, the Dragon comes to take her.18+! Contains graphic sex scenes.

Three short stories inspired by Dante’s Inferno, linked by a book of human skin passed down through generations.Sins of the FleshWhen the tortured and mutilated corpse of a wealthy author is discovered, the police officer sent to investigate finds a curious diary amongst the occult objects at the scene. Will he uncover the author’s secret at the ruined chapel, and is he willing to pay the price that it demands?Sins of Treachery...