{"title":"Geoffrey Galt Harpham","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"glossary-of-literary-terms-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780495906599","title":"Glossary of Literary Terms","description":"A Glossary of Literary Terms, International Edition, will deepen your understanding of and insights into the literature you love - whether it's classic Greek, modern mysteries, cutting-edge drama, or any other form - and it will open the worlds of literary forms you have yet to discover.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49529509708049,"sku":"GOR005523035","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/049590659X.jpg?v=1751439999"},{"product_id":"shadows-of-ethics-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780822323204","title":"Shadows of Ethics","description":"In this volume Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues for a deeply original view of the relations among ethics, literary study, and critical theory. In thirteen lucid, provocative and often witty essays, Harpham rejects both the optimism of those who see ethics as a way of solving problems about values or principles and the pessimism of those who regard ethics as primarily a cover story for politics.  Ethics, he claims, has been seen by its most powerful theorists as a discourse of “shadows,” a characteristic disturbance of thought in the presence of the other, a source of doubts rather than certainty. At the same time, however, ethics includes an element of violence, even blindness and “fundamentalism,” a crushing drive to clarity and resolution. Contemporary thinkers, Harpham argues, have been unwilling to accept this account of ethics and the obligations it would impose, and have, as a consequence, cultivated social and intellectual marginality as the only site of virtue, the only position in which critical intelligence is at home. They have, he contends, failed to “imagine the center,” to take up the true intellectual and worldly challenge of ethics. Tracking these issues and energies in debates about enlightenment, the politics of the aesthetic, the nature of rationality, and the worldly contexts of theory, Harpham demonstrates in compelling detail the ubiquity and true difficulty of ethics. Shadows of Ethics also revives a neglected genre, the intellectual portrait, with extended meditations on Jacques Derrida, Martha Nussbaum, Fredric Jameson, Geoffrey Hartman, and Noam Chomsky.  The book will interest literary critics, philosophers, cultural critics, and all those interested in the ethical character of intellectual work.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49535824298257,"sku":"GOR004297232","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0822323206.jpg?v=1763482375"},{"product_id":"what-do-you-think-mr-ramirez-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780226480817","title":"What Do You Think, Mr. Ramirez?","description":"Geoffrey Galt Harpham's book takes its title from a telling anecdote. A few years ago Harpham met a Cuban immigrant on a college campus, who told of arriving, penniless and undocumented, in the 1960s and eventually earning a GED and making his way to a community college. In a literature course one day, the professor asked him, \"Mr. Ramirez, what do you think?\" The question, said Ramirez, changed his life because \"it was the first time anyone had asked me that.\" Realizing that his opinion had value set him on a course that led to his becoming a distinguished professor. That, says Harpham, was the midcentury promise of American education, the deep current of commitment and aspiration that undergirded the educational system that was built in the postwar years, and is under extended assault today. The United States was founded, he argues, on the idea that interpreting its foundational documents was the highest calling of opinion, and for a brief moment at midcentury, the country turned to English teachers as the people best positioned to train students to thrive as interpreters--which is to say as citizens of a democracy. Tracing the roots of that belief in the humanities through American history, Harpham builds a strong case that, even in very different contemporary circumstances, the emphasis on social and cultural knowledge that animated the midcentury university is a resource that we can, and should, draw on today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49585351688465,"sku":"GOR008709355","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50627444769041,"sku":"CIN022648081XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/022648081X.jpg?v=1751324214"},{"product_id":"humanities-and-the-dream-of-america-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780226316970","title":"The Humanities and the Dream of America","description":"In this bracing and original book, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that the humanities - the academic disciplines that study the potential of the human - represent a 'dream of America.' They were, Harpham contends, invented after World War II as an expression of American culture and character, and were advanced by their supporters as an instrument of American national interests. Although the humanities are struggling to retain their status in America today, the concept has spread to many other parts of the world and remains one of America's most distinctive and attractive contributions to higher education. \"The Humanities and the Dream of America\" explores a number of linked problems: the role, at once inspiring and disturbing, played by modern philology in the discipline's formation; the reasons behind the humanities' perpetual state of crisis; and the new possibilities for literary study afforded by the subject of pleasure. Framed by essays that draw on Harpham's pedagogical experiences abroad and as a lecturer at the US Air Force Academy, as well as his vantage as director of the National Humanities Center, this book provides an essential perspective on the history, ideology, and future of the humanities.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49910316335377,"sku":"CIN0226316971G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0226316971.jpg?v=1751070226"},{"product_id":"on-the-grotesque-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9781888570854","title":"On the Grotesque","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50170427277585,"sku":"CIN1888570857G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53663962300689,"sku":"GOR006649654","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1888570857.jpg?v=1750725910"},{"product_id":"scholarship-and-freedom-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780674245013","title":"Scholarship and Freedom","description":"A powerful and original argument that the practice of scholarship is grounded in the concept of radical freedom, beginning with the freedoms of inquiry, thought, and expression.  Why are scholars and scholarship invariably distrusted and attacked by authoritarian regimes? Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that at its core, scholarship is informed by an emancipatory agenda based on a permanent openness to the new, an unlimited responsiveness to evidence, and a commitment to conversion. At the same time, however, scholarship involves its own forms of authority. As a worldly practice, it is a struggle for dominance without end as scholars try to disprove the claims of others, establish new versions of the truth, and seek disciples.  Scholarship and Freedom threads its general arguments through examinations of the careers of three scholars: W. E. B. Du Bois, who serves as an example of scholarly character formation; South African Bernard Lategan, whose New Testament studies became entangled on both sides of his country’s battles over apartheid; and Linda Nochlin, whose essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” virtually created the field of feminist art history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50355176177937,"sku":"CIN0674245016G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51005438918929,"sku":"NIN9780674245013","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0674245016.jpg?v=1750911986"},{"product_id":"ascetic-imperative-in-culture-and-criticism-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780226316918","title":"The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism","description":"In this bold interdisciplinary work, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that asceticism has played a major role in shaping Western ideas of the body, writing, ethics, and aesthetics. He suggests that we consider the ascetic as the 'cultural' element in culture, and presents a close analysis of works by Athanasius, Augustine, Matthias, Gr newald, Nietzsche, Foucault, and other thinkers as proof of the extent of asceticism's resources. Harpham demonstrates the usefulness of his findings by deriving from asceticism a discourse of resistance, a code of interpretation ultimately more generous and humane than those currently available to us.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50726938476817,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50726939164945,"sku":"GOR014048790","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0226316912.jpg?v=1750694012"},{"product_id":"character-of-criticism-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780415971324","title":"The Character of Criticism","description":"Why are some critical texts more compelling, memorable, or engaging than others? Can criticism be judged as a discourse of description, explanation, and analysis alone, or do our evaluations reflect other kinds of investments in it? In this book, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that the most powerful and effective criticism demands to be read as an expression of a distinctive sensibility, a way of being in the world; it demands, in other words, to be read as a discourse of character.  Through a series of detailed and intimate intellectual portraits of leading critics--Elaine Scarry, Martha Nussbaum, Slavoj Zizek, and Edward Said--Harpham unfolds the complex and indirect ways in which human character is expressed in criticism. A final chapter on Criticism in a State of Terror assesses the contemporary situation. The Character of Criticism represents not just a snapshot of contemporary criticism but a fresh approach to criticism itself that clarifies the stakes involved for writers and readers of criticism alike. It does so not by making difficult thinking easy but by making it stranger--more idiosyncratic, exotic, and singular.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52404896596241,"sku":"NLS9780415971324","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53489919983889,"sku":"NIN9780415971324","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780415971324.jpg?v=1758765406"},{"product_id":"character-of-criticism-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780415971331","title":"The Character of Criticism","description":"Why are some critical texts more compelling, memorable, or engaging than others? Can criticism be judged as a discourse of description, explanation, and analysis alone, or do our evaluations reflect other kinds of investments in it? 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It does so not by making difficult thinking easy but by making it stranger--more idiosyncratic, exotic, and singular.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52522064576785,"sku":"NLS9780415971331","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53035015569681,"sku":"NIN9780415971331","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780415971331.jpg?v=1760574722"},{"product_id":"on-the-grotesque-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780691102177","title":"On the Grotesque","description":"The Description for this book, On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature, will be forthcoming.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53122071986449,"sku":"CIN0691102171G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780691102177.jpg?v=1770913146"},{"product_id":"one-of-us-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780226316963","title":"One of Us","description":"The concept of mastery straddles a largely unexamined seam in contemporary thought dividing admirable self-control from a reprehensible will to power. Although Joseph Conrad has traditionally been viewed as an admirable master; master mariner, storyteller, and writer; his reputation has been linked in recent years to the negative masteries of racism, imperialism, and patriarchy. In this book, Geoffrey Galt Harpham delves not only into Conrad's literary work and reputation but also into the concept of mastery. The text outlines a psychology of composition that embraces Conrad's personal as well as historical circumstances. This volume represents both a methodological innovation in the practice of literary criticism and a contribution to the understanding of how masters, and canons based on them, are made.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53336301502737,"sku":"NGR9780226316963","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780226316963.jpg?v=1774307641"},{"product_id":"ends-of-race-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780691291628","title":"The Ends of Race","description":"A new history of the scientific inquiry into race  The attempt to define the concept of race in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is often described as a corrupt “pseudo-science,” but in this strikingly original account, Geoffrey Galt Harpham describes the inquiry into race as a serious scientific project undertaken by some of the leading figures of the time. In a “skeletal history” of this project, Harpham tracks the rise and fall of racial science, focusing on the central role played by craniology, or the study of skulls, in key debates in Germany, the United States, and France.  Emerging at the end of the eighteenth century as a way of thinking about human variation, the concept of race became entangled in an extraordinarily wide range of scientific, philosophical, theological, and political debates about issues ranging from the place of humanity in the natural world to the rationales for colonization and slavery. But at the end of the nineteenth century, a number of prominent scientists came together to announce the failure of the century-long attempt to define race or even to locate racial markers in the human body—only to see the concept taken up by others, including W. E. B. Du Bois, who sought to preserve the concept as essential to the nonscientific ends of solidarity and identity.  With this probing and vivid narrative account of the scientific inquiry into human variation, Harpham provides a new way of approaching the history of race, introduces a host of previously little-known figures, explores the larger contexts and inner dynamics of the discourse on race, and questions the ends that the concept of race serves today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53341443162385,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53341443326225,"sku":"NGR9780691291628","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780691291628.jpg?v=1778580547"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-geoffrey-galt-harpham.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}