Keywords to the academy

IU English prof and colleague concoct a 'devilish dictionary'

It's too early to tell how Academic Keywords: A Devil's Dictionary for Higher Education (Routledge) is selling nationally, but the book was discussed in the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education March 12 and in Bloomington, it's stayed in the top ten non-fiction category at a popular local bookstore for the past month.

'Academic Keywords'--an exercise in rethinking how stakeholders will participate in the university of the future.

Written by Stephen Watt, an Indiana University Bloomington professor of English, and Cary Nelson, professor of English at the University of Illinois, Academic Keywords contains 47 essays that Watt says are intended not as a doomsday prophecy for higher education but as an exercise in rethinking how stakeholders will participate in the university of the future.

"A Devil's Dictionary is written as a handbook for anyone who cares about the future of university education--students, parents, faculty and administrators," Watt said. "The campus environment has changed so radically in the last 30 years that many once-familiar academic terms have to be redefined, and many other new buzzwords have to be honestly understood, in order to have a useful public discussion of the serious problems facing higher education."

The defining essays run from two pages to 25 depending on the topic and cover a diverse range. The study of English, for example, is what the authors refer to as "America's fast-food discipline." They look at cafeteria workers in the academy, sexual harassment and academic freedom, and intervene in the major debates that have infiltrated American campuses with updates on such buzzwords as down-sizing, yuppies, outsourcing and moonlighting.

"We hope A Devil's Dictionary will help provide a wake-up call for those both inside and outside academia," the authors write in their introduction. "It is a call for active engagement in the whole life of the university."

In addition to presentations on the book at Syracuse University and the universities of Missouri and Georgia this spring, Watt and his collaborator have been working on a second volume of related essays.

Watt also has been planning a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded theater festival next month in Bloomington. "One Hundred Years of Irish Theater" is scheduled May 26-29. Theater productions are planned at T-300 and the Waldron Art Center, among other activities.

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