Books by Marjorie Garber

In this witty, learned, and scrupulously researched book, Marjorie Garber examines bisexuality and its many modes through a dazzling variety of critical lenses: cultural, scientific, literary, and psychological.

';Witty, shrewd, and imaginative essays on interdisciplinary topics... from Shakespeare to psychoanalysis, and the practice of higher education today.' Publishers Weekly As a break from their ordained labors, what might the Muses do on their lunch hour today? This collection of essays uses these figures of ancient legend to explore such modern-day topics as the curious return of myth and ritual in the theories of evolutionary psychologists and much more. Two themes emerge consistently. The first is that to predict the ';next big thing' in literary studies, we should look back at ideas and practices set aside by a previous generation of critics. In the past several decades we have seen the reemergence offor exampletextual editing, biography, character criticism, aesthetics, and philology as ';hot' new areas for critical intervention. The second theme expands on this observation, making the case for ';cultural forgetting' as the way the arts and humanities renew themselves, both within fields and across them. Although she is never represented in traditional paintings or poetry, a missing Musewe can call her Amnesiaturns out to be a key figure for the creation of theory and criticism in the arts.

Contains lively, witty essays, written in an accessible style, concrete and down-to-earth, sensible but often contrarian, and with a wide range of cultural references, so that almost any reader will feel that he or she is learning something.

Majorie Garber's essays are wonderful, witty, and provocative pieces of cultural criticism.

Drawing on the work of anthropologists, psychologits and sociologists, Garber examines the rites of passage and maturation patterns in Shakespeare's plays.

Beginning with the bold claim, ''There can be no culture without the transvestite,'' Marjorie Garber explores the nature and significance of cross-dressing and of the West's recurring fascination with it.

What is the role of the arts in American culture? Is art an essential element? If so, how should we support it? Today, as in the past, artists need the funding, approval, and friendship of patrons whether they are individuals, corporations, governments, or nonprofit foundations. But as Patronizing the Arts shows, these relationships can be problematic, leaving artists "e;patronized"e;--both supported with funds and personal interest, while being condescended to for vocations misperceived as play rather than serious work. In this provocative book, Marjorie Garber looks at the history of patronage, explains how patronage has elevated and damaged the arts in modern culture, and argues for the university as a serious patron of the arts. With clarity and wit, Garber supports rethinking prejudices that oppose art's role in higher education, rejects assumptions of inequality between the sciences and humanities, and points to similarities between the making of fine art and the making of good science. She examines issues of artistic and monetary value, and transactions between high and popular culture. She even asks how college sports could provide a new way of thinking about arts funding. Using vivid anecdotes and telling details, Garber calls passionately for an increased attention to the arts, not just through government and private support, but as a core aspect of higher education. Compulsively readable, Patronizing the Arts challenges all who value the survival of artistic creation both in the present and future.Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Marjorie Garber examines the authorship debate surrounding Shakespeare: the claim made repeatedly that the plays were ghostwritten.

"e;A Manifesto for Literary Studies,"e; writes Marjorie Garber, is an attempt to remind us of the specificity of what it means to ask literary questions, and the pleasure of thinking through and with literature. It is a manifesto in the sense that it invites strong declarations and big ideas, rather than impeccable small contributions to edifices long under construction. Known for her timely challenges to the preconceptions and often unquestioned boundaries that circumscribe our culture, Garbers beautifully crafted arguments situate big public questions of intellectual importance - such as human nature and historical correctness - within the practice of literary historians and critics. This manifesto revives the ancient craft whose ultimate focus is language in action. In this book, Garber passionately states that the future importance of literary studies - and, if we care about such things, its intellectual and cultural prestige both among the other disciplines and in the world - will come from taking risks, and not from playing it safe.

In this lively and provocative book, cultural critic Marjorie Garber, who has written on topics as different as Shakespeare, dogs, cross-dressing, and real estate, explores the pleasures and pitfalls of the academic life. Academic Instincts discusses three of the perennial issues that have surfaced in recent debates about the humanities: the relation between "e;amateurs"e; and "e;professionals,"e; the relation between one academic discipline and another, and the relation between "e;jargon"e; and "e;plain language."e; Rather than merely taking sides, the book explores the ways in which such debates are essential to intellectual life. Garber argues that the very things deplored or defended in discussions of the humanities cannot be either eliminated or endorsed because the discussion itself is what gives humanistic thought its vitality. Written in spirited and vivid prose, and full of telling detail drawn both from the history of scholarship and from the daily press, Academic Instincts is a book by a well-known Shakespeare scholar and prize-winning teacher who offers analysis rather than polemic to explain why today's teachers and scholars are at once breaking new ground and treading familiar paths. It opens the door to an important nationwide and worldwide conversation about the reorganization of knowledge and the categories in and through which we teach the humanities. And it does so in a spirit both generous and optimistic about the present and the future of these disciplines.