MacIntyre identifies the increasing fragmentation and specialization of academic inquiry as a problem for the future of the university; it is also a concern, I would argue, within individual departments. It has been my experience that people working or studying in the same department sometimes have difficulty discussing their work with each other because they have few common texts or theoretical frameworks upon which to build a common understanding. MacIntyre argues that “proponents of th[e] Great Books curriculum often defend it as a way of restoring to us and to our students what they speak of as our cultural tradition; but we are in fact the inheritors . . . of a number of rival and incompatible traditions and there is no way of either selecting a list of books to be read or advancing a determinate account of how they are to be read, interpreted, and elucidated which does not involve taking a partisan stand in the conflict of traditions” (228). While I agree that it would be challenging to get an entire department to agree on a curriculum of the most influential texts in any particular cultural tradition, and while I realize that the identification of certain texts can easily lend itself to the promotion of the “dead white guy” tradition, I nevertheless believe that such a course would be beneficial to undergraduate (and perhaps graduate) students. The very identification of “rival” traditions suggests the identification of a primary (for lack of a better word) tradition against which other traditions are compared. A critique of the concept of the Great Books course could be incorporated into the syllabus, forcing students to ask who decides which books are Great and why. Perhaps instead of, or in addition to, a Great Books course, we should consider a Great Theorists course (I would call it Major Approaches to Literature to avoid the artificial distinction between literature and theory that we have discussed previously), which would consist of a chronological survey of how (and why) we have studied literature, including the “close reading” technique which purports not to use theory. I feel I would be a much better scholar if I had had the opportunity to take a Great Books course and a Great Theorists course. I would even consider making them prerequisites for all other literature courses.

On a largely unrelated note...

Why does culture have to be considered only as inseparable from national identity, as Bill Readings indicates? Admittedly, I have not read Humboldt, and perhaps this explains my problem with Readings’ reading of culture. According to the OED, culture has also been defined as the “cultivation or development of the mind, faculties, manners” or the “improvement by education and training”—and, by extension, the “refinement of mind, taste, and manners” and “artistic and intellectual development”—since at least the 17^th century. Surly this notion of culture is still relevant to the university’s place in society? (A return to Matthew Arnold would be useful here). I would be interested to discuss what we think “culture” means and how it relates to the contemporary concept of the university, and what we see as its role or function in society.