Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members

 

August 7, 2014 – Slate

Strongest Possible Endorsement by Rebecca Schuman

“For Dear Committee Members isn’t really an academic novel, or even an academic satire (since most of its depictions of Payne University barely count as hyperbole). It’s a sincere exploration of the depths and breadths of human selfishness, and the contemporary American academy is simply the backdrop, precisely because nowhere else could Fitger’s particular sort of self-obsession be given the autonomy to both metastasize and self-immolate. So in the end, it is exactly Fitger’s selfishness that destructs, rather than his life—and although his semi-redemption may not redeem the rank carcass of academic culture that continues to fester around him, it’s more than enough to recommend this mischievous novel.”

August 13, 2014 – NPR

In A Funny New Novel, A Weary Professor Writes To ‘Dear Committee Members’ by Maureen Corrigan

 

August 17, 2014 – Macleans

An academic treatise on passive-aggression by Brian Bethune

August 19, 2014 – Inside Higher Ed

“Dear Committee Members” by Serena Golden

August 25, 2014 – Chronicle of Higher Education

An Academic Novel with a Twist by Jeffrey J. Williams

November 6, 2014 – The Independent

Carry on campus: The satirical needling deflates the high-minded ideals of the groves of academy by Benjamin Poore

“But perhaps the challenge Schumacher and other writers face is that the university now is almost beyond parody.”

The End?

2006

The End of the Campus Novel?

2011

Still the End of the Campus Novel?

2013 – The Guardian

Last rites for the campus novel by John Dugdale

“Though currently very much on-trend, the campus novel is now approaching retirement age.”

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/apr/01/last-rites-campus-novel

The (sad) life of an adjunct teacher

“Alex Kudera’s Fight for Your Long Day is likely to provoke post-traumatic stress reactions in anyone who has been a college teacher. Unlike most academic novels that feature the first-world problems of tenured professors, Kudera’s is about Cyrus Duffleman, a depressed, saggy, almost-40 adjunct who makes, he calculates, about $10 an hour teaching courses to disengaged—and sometimes mentally ill—students at universities all over Philadelphia.”

March 25, 2013 – The Chronicle of Higher Education 

Considering Adjunct Misery. An academic novel offers an Everyman for the new American economy by William Pannapacker

https://chronicle.com/article/Considering-Adjunct-Misery/138085/

More on adjuncting:

http://chronicle.com/article/Adjunct-Loving-It/145109/?cid=cc&utm_source=cc&utm_medium=en

Black Academic Fiction

I have recently stumbled upon a blog whose author wrote a dissertation titled The Over-Education of the Negro: Higher Education, Academic Novels, and the Black Intellectual. His blogging and some posts are of interest:

– On black academic fiction (bibliography)

– On academic criticism (bibliography)

– On academic films:

The University on Screen: The Top 10 Academic Films

10 More Academic Films

– On individual novels:

Academic Novel: Imperium in Imperio

Pym

Japanese by Spring

Stoner by John Williams

David Lodge on campus novels

source: http://randomhouseindia.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/david.jpg

September 24, 2010 11:34 pm, Financial Times

“The campus novel emerged as higher education expanded and novelists increasingly took day jobs in universities. Inherently comic and satirical, it is focused on the lives of academic staff rather than their students, and explores the gap between the high ideals of the institution and the human weaknesses of its members.”

The List: Five of the best campus novels

David Lodge on Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin

Other top tens, top fives etc.:

Jeffrey Moore’s top 10 campus novels:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jul/03/bestbooks.fiction

10 Classic Campus Novels:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/04/10-classic-campus-novels_n_857756.html#s274149&title=Gaudy_Night

Literature of the campus:

http://theconcordian.com/2013/09/articulate-literature-of-the-campus/

Top 5 Campus Novels Written by Women by Jane Bradley:

http://forbookssake.net/2013/07/05/top-five-campus-novels-written-by-women/