"Culture" and the Problem of the Disciplines

One of the central battlefields of the culture wars has been the university, where liberals and conservatives have fought over questions of diversity, tradition, and pedagogy. The battles have been fierce, complicated by the university's unsettled, ever-chaning nature. In "Culture" and the Problem of the Deciplines, " several of our most prominent critics explore the university's engagement with "culture" -- a complex term that they define as a "vast number of different, competing representations." Combining critical theory and cultural studies methods, these scholars offer a new understanding of the way universitites shape and define "culture" -- and the way that teaching and research institutions are chaning in response to international movements, social forces, and the increasing importanceof cultural studies. Investigating the way "high" culture (literature, liberal education) and popular culture (fashion, film) are dealt with in the classroom, these essays show that the culture wars of the 1980s and '90s are by no means over; they have simply warped into new, less visible struggles for control of educational funding, curricula, academic standards, and pedagogical authority.