{"id":19683,"date":"2010-08-30T08:15:22","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T12:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=19683"},"modified":"2012-02-29T14:50:29","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T19:50:29","slug":"of-deans-and-english-professors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/08\/of-deans-and-english-professors\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Deans and English Professors"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"<p>Jeremy<\/a>
Jeremy Teitelbaum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once a cynical faculty member, now part of the administration, the dean of UConn’s largest college muses on a shortlist of works that poke fun at the foibles of academe.<\/h3>\n

By Jeremy Teitelbaum, Dean<\/a>
\nCollege of Liberal Arts and Sciences<\/a><\/p>\n

If someone had told me, say, 10 years ago, that I would end up as a dean, I would have laughed at the notion. \u201cNot only am I a mathematician who would vastly prefer to spend a week completely alone in my office than an hour in a meeting with other people,\u201d I would probably have said, \u201cbut I would much rather satirize the administration than join them.\u201d And I would have pointed my inquisitor to a series of e-mails that I posted on an internal university list in which I skewered the administration for all sorts of boneheaded decisions.<\/p>\n

Well, times change. One consequence for me of having somehow ended up an administrator is that I don\u2019t have the opportunity to circulate satirical essays about the administration. Satire is a genre appropriate to the masses, not the bosses.<\/p>\n

\"<p>CLASEven if my opportunities to write satire are limited, I can, fortunately, still read it. I just finished a nasty (in a good way) piece of academic satire by Walter Kirn<\/a> called \u201cLost in the Meritocracy<\/em><\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s a ruthless, but hilarious, memoir of Kirn\u2019s rise through the percentile ranks in his high school and his subsequent experiences as a student at Princeton, where he received rigorous training in how social class functions at elite universities. He also learned how to use the words \u201cgestural\u201d and \u201cheuristic\u201d in order to get good grades on his English papers. He learned that all he needed to establish a certain credibility with other people was to tell them he went to Princeton. He learned how to use terms from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to seem smart. He didn\u2019t learn much about science, mathematics, languages, history, or literature.<\/p>\n

Reading Kirn\u2019s book prompted me to think of some of the other satires of academics that I\u2019ve read and enjoyed. Here\u2019s a short list of my favorites (in no particular order):<\/p>\n

Straight Man<\/em><\/a>, by Richard Russo. This is the story of the chair of the English Department at a definitely not-prestigious working class university. Russo is a great writer. Part of my pleasure in reading this book derived from my sympathy with the main character, who is grappling not only with the lunacy of his colleagues and the impossibility of running his department but with the personal consequences of being in his fifties. Particular highlights of this book are incidents involving geese and, separately, English Department meetings. <\/em><\/p>\n

Changing Places<\/em>, by David Lodge<\/a>. This book tells what happens when a high-flying Berkeley (oops, I mean Euphoric State) English prof named Morris Zapp trades places with Phillip Swallow, a professor at the University of Rummidge (Birmingham) in Great Britain. Zapp, who aspires to be the highest paid English professor in the world and hopes to write the \u201cfinal book\u201d on Jane Austen, is rumored to be modeled on Stanley Fish<\/a>, who was Dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago<\/a> while I was there. There\u2019s a great scene where the English faculty at Euphoric State play a killer round of the game Humiliation. The sequels (Small World<\/em> and Nice Work<\/em>) are fun, too. <\/em><\/p>\n

Lucky Jim<\/em><\/a>, by Kingsley Amis<\/a>. I read this a very long time ago, and I need to read it again. It\u2019s the story of a very junior English instructor at a British college and his very miserable life. One scene, involving a gorilla, has stuck with me forever, and my wife and I still crack up every time we think of it. <\/em><\/p>\n

Moo<\/em><\/a>,<\/a> by Jane Smiley. Uniquely among the books on this short list, Moo focuses on a large midwestern university. Hogs and budget cuts play key plot roles; literary theory is less important than state politics and big agriculture. This book is especially worth reading by anyone contemplating a move to the Midwest to take a leadership position at a major university. <\/em><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help but remark that, except for Moo<\/em>, all of these favorites are satires that focus on English departments. As dean of the entire College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, I believe it would be impolitic of me to draw any conclusions from this observation.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019d care to recommend other academic satires, drop me a line<\/a>. I\u2019m particularly interested in stories where deans are the good guys, but they seem to be rare in this genre.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Comments? Send them to: dean@clas.uconn.edu<\/a><\/p>\n

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has 23 departments in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, ranging from physics to philosophy, and more than 15,000 students, 600 faculty, and 83,000 alumni. Check out our three initiatives: Health and Human Behavior<\/a>, the Environment<\/a>, and <\/em>Culture and Society<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Other CLAS Blog posts:<\/h4>\n

On Not Buying an iPad<\/a><\/p>\n

A Step Closer to Science Fiction?<\/a><\/p>\n

Academic Freedom Meets Freedom of Information<\/a><\/p>\n

Ambition and Intrigue in the Court of Henry VIII<\/a><\/p>\n

A Civil Conversation on Contentious Issues<\/a><\/p>\n

Academically Anchored<\/a><\/p>\n

Meditations on A(nother) Snow Day<\/a><\/p>\n

Coming to Grips with Climate Change<\/a><\/p>\n

Ideas — The Psychological Currency of the University<\/a><\/p>\n

‘Just Hire the Best’?<\/a><\/p>\n

Will ‘Crowdsourcing’ Revolutionize Scholarship?<\/a><\/p>\n

Hidden Symmetries<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>Spectacular Storrs<\/a><\/p>\n

Citizenship, Marriage, and Mosques: Problems in the Applied Humanities<\/a><\/p>\n

The Joys of Jamming<\/a><\/p>\n

Slick Calculations<\/a><\/p>\n

The Road to Agra<\/a><\/p>\n

UConn Over Yale and Other Tales from Jim Draper \u201941<\/a><\/p>\n

The Amazon, Avatar, and Smallpox<\/a><\/p>\n

The Value of Curiosity<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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