"Daddy, What did you Do in the Culture Wars?": Academia and Public Life - NeMLA 2016
It's been almost thirty years since Allan Bloom made his clarion call to classicism within the American academy with the publication of The Closing of the American Mind. For as moribund as the humanities have supposedly been (according to positivist scientists, economics majors, and higher education administrators) the "Culture Wars" have surely blazed a bright path across the consciousness of any literature, history, philosophy, theology or cultural studies major. Columnists from William Safire to David Brooks have bemoaned the supposed death of the humanities (while conveniently ignoring how supply-side economics has had a hearty role in that) identifying a "post-modern bogeyman" as being responsible for the murder.