2 comments about The Invention of Jane Harrison (Revealing Antiquity).

1. Mary Beard's The Invention of Jane Harrison (2002) perfectly illustrates the frightening, hilarious, and absurd situation occurring the world over in academia today. The book's publisher is none less than Harvard University Press; Beard clearly has connections in high places.
   
   Beard has unearthed-I use 'unearthed' here in its figurative sense--a lot of 'new'--or, 'recent,' 'current'--'information'--by which I intend to suggest 'information' as a new paradigm in a process of 'evolution'---about Harrison---by which I specifically refer to not 'Jane Harrison' 'herself' but to the constellation of thoughts, theories, and 'historical' ideas which we generally assume to be 'identical' with its 'subject'-by this I am suggesting that the unconscious 'assumption' of a biographical 'subject' by both 'author' and the 'assumed' reader is a fallacy--by 'fallacy,' I suggest not its 'original' meaning of 'guile' or 'trickery' but its present-day usage of a plausible 'idea' based around-I use 'around' in the figurative sense in this case--a false inference-with which 'she,'-- by which I refer to 'Beard'-who is not 'identical' to a living person but an abstract idea we agree to refer to as 'Mary Beard'--could have made remarkable use.
   
   As 'Beard'--not the facial hair worn by men but the 'author'--is a Cambridge 'scholar'-in itself an 'elitist' formulation worth challenging-'she,'--'author Beard,' and not the conceptual formation which 'we' are using as our 'subject' and here referring to as 'Jane Harrison'--might have made better use of if 'turned over'-in the figurative sense--her 'findings'--by which I intend to suggest that elements of existence-by 'existence' I do not make use of Sartre's conception of 'such' or imply an 'existential' 'imperative'-can be 'lost' and 'recovered' though perhaps, as man--men and women inclusive--are limited to five (5) 'senses'-'senses' being an idea formation worth 'investigating'--have always been, in 'fact' present but not until 'now'-not the moment I am writing, creating, and 'thinking' this--but the moment it is conceivably 'perpetually'--that is to say, 'infinite' but not in the theological sense--being absorbed in the literal--I use 'literal' literally here--sense--not to be mistaken for 'senses' above--by its presumed 'reader'-or 'readers'--
   
   If the reader can stomach 150 very small pages of comparably loopy, backtracking, and second-guessing text, as well as Beard's inability to write a straight sentence without multiple unnecessary qualifications, then this book, which confidently assumes nothing, might find an audience, if potential readers are willing to force their way through and finish the book exhausted but none the wiser.
   
   The Invention of Jane Harrison is primarily about Mary Beard and her conformist thought processes, and presents Harrison--when it finally forgets itself and remembers to deliver her up--as a kind of stuffed partridge in an Edwardian museum display case.
   
   Pretentious, smug, and yet so well-mannered and genteel, this book rightly belongs on no one's shelf. In taking on such an eminent subject, Beard mortally underscores her vacuity as a writer and thinker. Ignore the logrolling praise this project has received. For cynical careerists only. Everyone else, run for the hills.



2. Jane Ellen Harrison, a pioneer for women in classical studies in British academic circles, has had a fluctuating reputation in and out of her profession. Her "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion" (1903) had a good reception among the scholars who dominated work in ancient Greek religion in the first half of the twentieth century, but its sequel, "Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion" (1912), had to wait decades for appreciation, by which time its use of social anthropology was more than beginning to show its age. Awareness of her work may be strongest among: (a) feminists; and (b) those interested in the myth-and-ritual "school" with which, along with Gilbert Murray and F. M. Cornford, she is generally associated. (This "Cambridge School" is a debatable grouping, since its suppposed members had different agendas, and went their own ways, but the designation is a sort of "cultural fact" in itself.) Jane Harrison also wrote a small body of personal reflections, more intriguing than revealing. The development of her public image, and its relation to reality, is the "invention" that provides this book its focus.
   
   A biography by her friend and collaborator Hope Mirrlees was announced not long after her death in 1928, but never appeared. A full treatment had to wait for Sandra J. Peacock's "Jane Ellen Harrison: The Mask and the Self," in 1988, which revealed a good deal more than earlier sketches. These tended to be laudatory, or else dismissive remarks on the obsolete views of a dead colleague. Harrison had left no students in professional posts to defend their teacher, her male proteges having been part of the generation lost to World War I. Meanwhile, some of her opponents moved into influential positions, or simply passed on their hostility to their own students.
   
   Beard attempts a re-evaluation of Harrison's life, career, and place in the history of classical studies. Parts of her presentation of academic infighting and jealousies seem to fascinate those already familiar with the players, or interested in group dynamics, and evidently bore others, but these accounts, based on ample documentation, seem more solid than her speculations about Harrison's closely-guarded inner life. Beard's reflections on the muddled evidence and the myth-making process at work in official biographies will be of interest mostly to those already acquainted with the literature.
   
   A major problem with Beard's argument is that so much of Harrison's posthumous reputation rests on people and movements outside the circle of professional classicists. E. S. Strong, her preferred rival for Harrison's position as a leading woman in the academic world of the time, was a hard-working archeologist specializing in early Italy. Besides the problem of associating with the Fascist regime during the years in which Harrison's posthumous public reputation was being promoted by her friends, Strong was not dealing with matters of great interest to a wide public. Harrison, with her analysis of Greek myth and religion in terms of basic human needs and anxieties, and her use of ancient popular culture and superstitions to re-interpret familiar classics, was surely a better candidate as a heroine whose work, while sometimes difficult to follow, was often exciting. I found Beard's work informative, and frequently very interesting, but too narrowly focussed to explain Harrison's continuing prestige.
   
   Since I originally read this volume, it has gone into a paperback edition, much more reasonably priced for its length; in this format, it may be more attractive to those interested in the history of classical scholarship, women in academic life, and several other topics with which Mary Beard deals.
   
   (Reposted from my "anonymous" review of June 14, 2003.)

No comments about Cambridge in the 1830s: The Letters of Alexander Chisholm Gooden, 1831-1841 (History of the University of Cambridge).

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No comments about The Odyssey Of A Vice Chancellor.

1 comments about Old Hopes for a New Place: The Legacy of Arend D. Lubbers at Grand Valley State University.

1. Knowledgeably compiled and edited by Stephen Rowe (Chair of the Philosophy Department, Williams James College), Old Hopes For A New Place: The Legacy Of Arend D. Lubbers At Grand Valley State University is a compilation of inspirational and engaging speeches from the famed and respected Arend "Don" Lubbers. Introducing the reader to a man who's work has tangibly effected students from times of the Vietnam and cold wars, through Reganism, Generation X and the cultural technological revolution of the computer age, Old Hopes For A New Place creates a vivid account of the changes and effects of Grand Valley State University's outstanding president upon both students and faculty. Old Hopes For A New Place is very highly recommended reading, especially for those who appreciate an intriguing biography, depicting the life and pursuit of an outstanding figure in Grand Valley State University history.

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1 comments about Holding the Center: Memoirs of a Life in Higher Education.

1. I attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from September 1964 through June 1972; I worked at the MIT Lincoln Laboratories in the summers of 1968 and 1970. I was given this book by the MIT Alumni Association, and found it to be remarkable in its truthful rendition of events that I lived through, and things that came afterwards (going to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the 1990s), and seeing that Howard Johnson guided MIT through the late 1960s and beyond and the Museum of Fine Arts into a rebirth, and made it all look so easy. I look forward to the video that should accompany this!

No comments about Brahms Studies, Volume 3 (Brahms Studies).

No comments about Standing Tall.