Writing is central to the work of all intellectuals, yet any given scholar's relationship to writing is a uniquely personal one. Gary A. Olson and Lynn Worsham bring together some of the world's leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to examine how they conceive of their own relationship to writing and to the work of being a critical intellectual. Using excerpts from interviews, originally published in JAC, each scholar's thoughts are revealed about writing habits, how writing relates to intellectual work, and the politics of intellectual work. Included are excerpts of interviews with the following: Gloria Anzaldúa, Mary Field Belenky, Homi Bhabha, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, Donald Davidson, Jacques Derrida, Michael Eric Dyson, Stanley Fish, Paulo Freire, Clifford Geertz, Henry Giroux, Stuart Hall, Donna Haraway, Sandra Harding, bell hooks, Luce Irigaray, Ernesto Laclau, Jean-François Lyotard, J. Hillis Miller, Chantal Mouffe, Avital Ronell, Richard Rorty, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tompkins, Stephen Toulmin, and Slavoj Zðizûek.

First published in 1988, Teachers as Intellectuals encourages us to see schools as democratic spaces in which teachers and students work together to transform society. Giroux incorporates the most valuable insights of critical pedagogy into a more comprehensive and practical theory of schooling, committed to educating students in the language of critique and possibility. At the heart of his vision for schooling is the ability of the teacher to act as a transformative intellectual and to use critical pedagogy as a form of cultural politics. The book includes an introduction by Paulo Freire, a foreword by Peter McLaren and new introduction from the author.

Writing is central to the work of all intellectuals, yet any given scholar's relationship to writing is a uniquely personal one. Gary A. Olson and Lynn Worsham bring together some of the world's leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to examine how they conceive of their own relationship to writing and to the work of being a critical intellectual. Using excerpts from interviews, originally published in JAC, each scholar's thoughts are revealed about writing habits, how writing relates to intellectual work, and the politics of intellectual work.

In this timely book, the first comprehensive study of the modern American public intellectual--that individual who speaks to the public on issues of political or ideological moment--Richard Posner charts the decline of a venerable institution that included worthies from Socrates to John Dewey. With the rapid growth of the media in recent years, highly visible forums for discussion have multiplied, while greater academic specialization has yielded a growing number of narrowly trained scholars. Posner tracks these two trends to their inevitable intersection: a proliferation of modern academics commenting on topics outside their ken. The resulting scene--one of off-the-cuff pronouncements, erroneous predictions, and ignorant policy proposals--compares poorly with the performance of earlier public intellectuals, largely nonacademics whose erudition and breadth of knowledge were well suited to public discourse. Leveling a balanced attack on liberal and conservative pundits alike, Posner describes the styles and genres, constraints and incentives, of the activity of public intellectuals. He identifies a market for this activity--one with recognizable patterns and conventions but an absence of quality controls. And he offers modest proposals for improving the performance of this market--and the quality of public discussion in America today. This paperback edition contains a new preface and and a new epilogue.

Intellectuals and Race is a radical book in the original sense of one that goes to the root of the problem. The role of intellectuals in racial strife is explored in an international context that puts the American experience in a wholly new light. The views of individual intellectuals have spanned the spectrum, but the views of intellectuals as a whole have tended to cluster. Indeed, these views have clustered at one end of the spectrum in the early twentieth century and then clustered at the opposite end of the spectrum in the late twentieth century. Moreover, these radically different views of race in these two eras were held by intellectuals whose views on other issues were very similar in both eras. Intellectuals and Race is not, however, a book about history, even though it has much historical evidence, as well as demographic, geographic, economic and statistical evidence-- all of it directed toward testing the underlying assumptions about race that have prevailed at times among intellectuals in general, and especially intellectuals at the highest levels. Nor is this simply a theoretical exercise. The impact of intellectuals' ideas and crusades on the larger society, both past and present, is the ultimate concern. These ideas and crusades have ranged widely from racial theories of intelligence to eugenics to "social justice" and multiculturalism. In addition to in-depth examinations of these and other issues, Intellectuals and Race explores the incentives, the visions and the rationales that drive intellectuals at the highest levels to conclusions that have often turned out to be counterproductive and even disastrous, not only for particular racial or ethnic groups, but for societies as a whole.

Including: A response to critics, and: Ten rules for "serious" writers, the author continues his fight on behalf of the American reader, arguing against pretension in so-called "literary" fiction, naming names and exposing the literary status quo.

Critical Trajectories: Culture, Society, Intellectuals brings together for the first time writings from one of the leading figures in cultural studies -- Tony Bennett. The selections in the volume span the period from the late 1970s to the present, representing issues of enduring concern in Bennett's work over this period and throughout his wide-ranging intellectual career. Charts the extensive influence of Bennett’s thinking across the humanities and social sciences - from cultural history to museums and memory, and from Bond and popular culture to cultural policy and governance Tackles some of the most important subjects in cultural studies, including aesthetics, textuality, the intellectual, and the role of cultural history Includes a new introductory essay pinpointing Bennett’s concerns in changing intellectual and political contexts

Zhidong Hao's fascinating book, Intellectuals at a Crossroads, examines groups of contemporary Chinese intellectuals, their successes, failures, identity contradictions, and ethical dilemmas. Three categories of intellectuals are studied: organic intellectuals who serve specific interests, from government and business to working class movements; critical intellectuals who defy authority with continued social criticism; and "unattached" intellectuals who are fast being professionalized. Using a historical-comparative approach enhanced with demographic and rare interview data, the book bridges the traditional with the modern and the Chinese with the foreign by exploring how these intellectuals are adapting to their roles and influencing political, economic, and social change in the "new" China.

Who are the new Chinese intellectuals? In the wake of the crackdown on the 1989 democracy movement and the rapid marketization of the 1990s, a novel type of grassroots intellectual emerged. Instead of harking back to the traditional role of the literati or pronouncing on democracy and modernity like 1980s public intellectuals, they derive legitimacy from their work with the vulnerable and the marginalized, often proclaiming their independence with a heavy dose of anti-elitist rhetoric. They are proudly minjian—unofficial, unaffiliated, and among the people. In this book, Sebastian Veg explores the rise of minjian intellectuals and how they have profoundly transformed China’s public culture. An intellectual history of contemporary China, Minjian documents how, amid deep structural shifts, grassroots thinker-activists began to work outside academia or policy institutions in an embryonic public sphere. Veg explores the work of amateur historians who question official accounts, independent documentarians who let ordinary people speak for themselves, and grassroots lawyers and NGO workers who spread practical knowledge. Their interventions are specific rather than universal, with a focus on concrete problems among disenfranchised populations such as victims of Maoism, migrant workers and others without residence permits, and petitioners. Drawing on careful analysis of public texts by grassroots intellectuals and the networks and publics among which they circulate, Minjian is a groundbreaking transdisciplinary exploration of crucial trends developing under the surface of contemporary Chinese society.

In the early years of the republic, the United States government negotiated with Indian nations because it could not afford protracted wars politically, militarily, or economically. Maureen Konkle argues that by depending on treaties, which rest on the equal standing of all signatories, Europeans in North America institutionalized a paradox: the very documents through which they sought to dispossess Native peoples in fact conceded Native autonomy. As the United States used coerced treaties to remove Native peoples from their lands, a group of Cherokee, Pequot, Ojibwe, Tuscarora, and Seneca writers spoke out. With history, polemic, and personal narrative these writers countered widespread misrepresentations about Native peoples' supposedly primitive nature, their inherent inability to form governments, and their impending disappearance. Furthermore, they contended that arguments about racial difference merely justified oppression and dispossession; deriding these arguments as willful attempts to evade the true meanings and implications of the treaties, the writers insisted on recognition of Native peoples' political autonomy and human equality. Konkle demonstrates that these struggles over the meaning of U.S.-Native treaties in the early nineteenth century led to the emergence of the first substantial body of Native writing in English and, as she shows, the effects of the struggle over the political status of Native peoples remain embedded in contemporary scholarship.