end construction

Again and again we hear the left lambasted for obsolete schemes and outdated thinking, while neo-cons speak assuredly of themselves as the wave of the future. If I find this self-advertisement preposterous, that doesn’t mean I know why it’s wrong.

At the December 2007 Chicago meeting of the Modern Language Association, Henry Turner and I decided to adjust the Special Session format by having our panelists present ‘annotated bibliographies’ in our field of research, namely: conjunctions of literature and science. In our discussions with colleagues at the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, we expressed surprise and some disappointment that the presence of new media had, thus far, little positive effect on the way scholarship is presented at conferences - not to mention that conferences themselves were expanding in number and further fragmenting into specializations.

What’s the use of postmodernism? Almost two decades later, the term has largely disappeared from literary and cultural criticism. There would seem to be little use in discussing postmodernism when the term and the concepts or artistic styles that it was meant to signify now seem completely outmoded.