Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T14:15:02.586Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

In the Context of Infinite Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Hua Hsu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Around the time I realized that I would be spending the better part of my twenties in graduate school, I saw an episode of the Simpsons that had an embarrassingly profound effect on me. The episode's conceit was alluringly simple: What would happen if the city of Springfield was entrusted to its smartest citizens rather than to politicians or bureaucrats? Or, in the blunt diagnosis of Julius Hibbert, a Springfield physician (and one of the city's smartest citizens), “Why do we live in a town where the smartest have no power and the stupidest run everything?” Why couldn't things be different?

Type
The Changing Profession
Information
PMLA , Volume 130 , Issue 2 , March 2015 , pp. 461 - 466
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Jacoby, Russell. The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe. New York: Basic, 1987. Print.Google Scholar
Kristof, Nicholas. “Professors, We Need You!” New York Times 15 Feb. 2014: SR11. Print.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. “The Faith of Graffiti.” Esquire May 1974: 77. Print.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard A. Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Sennett, Richard. The Fall of Public Man. New York: Knopf, 1977. Print.Google Scholar