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From the Guest Editor: Summer Reading 101
William G. Tierney
The time has long since passed when summertime meant "the living is easy." For many faculty members, summers have simply become an extension of the academic year, a time when additional courses are taught as part of one's load or as a way to augment an increasingly meager salary. And yet the hope remains that the summer provides a bit of a break for individuals to get away from the daily grind, allowing time to take a breath and actually relax. Relaxation for an academic inevitably suggests reading, and this issue of Academe offers essays about books related to higher education.
One of the most trenchant analysts of sports in higher education, Murray Sperber, offers a provocative take on two recent books on college sports. While laudatory of one and dismissive of the other, Sperber highlights not merely the strengths and weaknesses of the particular books, but also the ongoing problems that plague intercollegiate athletics. Walter Allen looks at another of the academy's ongoing issues. He uses three books that deal with race to consider the paths those of us in colleges and universities might take in our work to make the academy more inclusive and diverse.
Simon Marginson and Stephen Van Luchene analyze texts that are both contemporary and timeless and consider their implications for the academy. Marginson works his way patiently through one of the more complex and important thinkers of our time: Manuel Castells. Castells is in a class by himself in his ability over the past two decades to consider the consequences of the information age for society. Marginson examines what the implications might be for colleges and universities if we subscribe to Castells's notions of how the world is changing. Van Luchene looks at change as well. But stemming from his experience as a tutor at St. John's College, he argues for the usefulness of Plato in teaching and learning as the academy struggles with the forces that Castells describes so well. Van Luchene also points out the timeliness of rereading what one of the AAUP's founders, John Dewey, had to say about education.
Kristen Renn and Judith Glazer-Raymo look at different aspects of identity in their reviews. Focusing on three current books that offer philosophical ways of thinking about identity, Renn asks what various ways of constructing identity suggest for how academics work with one another and their students. Glazer-Raymo attends to a more practical component of one's identity, the inevitable obstacle of retirement. She reviews recent books by and about women of the baby-boom generation—path setters in society in many ways—as they move on to a new stage of life.
Finally, a suggested summer reading list would never be complete without a review of fiction. Catharine Stimpson provides a breezy review of novels that have caught her fancy not merely because they are well written and engaging, but also because they fall within the genre of the academic novel. Although only Stimpson reviews such novels, in many respects, each author suggests ways to read these books so that they offer mirrors to academic lives and the academic vocation. The guilty pleasure of reading outside of one's academic domain, then, need not really be guilty. All of the books reviewed will provide not merely a way to take oneself away from the workplace, but also a way to be more informed about the academy and the work we do upon return for fall term.
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