Miss Lucy Stanton had lived a privileged life of status and fortune, until her father gambled the family's entire fortune away to Sir Arnold Othelson. Sir Arnold demanded immediate payment or Lucy's hand in marriage; Lucy would rather die than marry him. Lord Marcus Carroway's last meeting with Miss Lucy Stanton had not gone well; he had come across arrogant and self-important. Marcus was determined that their next meeting would be better. When he hears about Lucy's problem, he makes An Arrogant Proposal.

What if Fitzwilliam Darcy had realized beforehand how his intended proposal would sound to the young woman he hoped to make his bride? What if he had attempted a much more civil and thoughtful proposal of marriage? Could Elizabeth Bennet have coldly and angrily rejected an offer made in such a manner? This variation on Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" explores how the lives of the two main characters, their families, and friends might have turned out differently had Darcy realized his error beforehand and thus avoided being so forcefully instructed and corrected by the love of his life.

Polarisation, intransigence and dogmatism in political and moral debate have in recent years threatened to overwhelm many Western-style democracies, where for centuries reasoned argument has been a hallmark feature of tackling disagreement. For many people, this marks a worrying deterioration in the moral and political climate, threatening to create a divisive environment of "us" versus "them". In this superb collection a team of international contributors examine these pressing issues from a philosophical perspective. Topics explored include: the problem of "deep disagreements"; martial conceptions of argumentation and the motivation to argue to win; epistemic egocentrism; intellectual trust; bullshit and dogmatism; intellectual humility and the internet; epistemic and "tribal" arrogance and authoritarianism; empathy and polarisation; and epistemic rights violations. Polarisation, Arrogance, and Dogmatism: Philosophical Perspectives will be of great interest to researchers in political philosophy, applied and social epistemology, ethics and feminist philosophy, as well as those working in politics and sociology.

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 the journal has addressed since its inception in 1977. The retrospective section includes articles by Leon Anderson; Wayne C. Booth; Heidi Byrnes; James A. Castañeda; Erik D. Curren; Reed Way Dasenbrock; Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; Gerald Graff; John Guillory; Carolyn G. Heilbrun; Mara Holt; Dorothy James; Claire J. Kramsch; George Levine; Philip Lewis; Alan Liu; Helene Moglen; Christopher Newfield; Mary Louise Pratt; Judith Ryan; Jack H. Schuster; and Domna C. Stanton.