FIELD NOTES
Lust in New York/Lost in Utah/Locked out in Atlanta, and more.
BREAKTHROUGH BOOKS
Crime
INSIDE PUBLISHING
Going overboard/Cartographic criticism/Primate colors, and more.
Who’s Afraid of Elaine Showalter?
Besieged by disapproving feminists, anxious graduate students, and irate chronic fatigue sufferers, the MLA president is no stranger to controversy. But how did an established literary scholar with decades of professional service behind her come to incite such strong feelings? A feminist morality tale of pathbreaking scholarship, academic hostility, and compulsive shopping.
BY EMILY EAKIN
The Federalist Capers
In the 1980s, a small group of disgruntled conservative law students declared war on the liberal legal establishment. Today, their once-unfashionable ideas are part of mainstream thinking. Yet the movement they spawned finds itself riven by internal conflict. A behind-the-scenes look at the Federalist Society, the cabal of legal scholars and lawyers that helped launch a judicial counterrevolution.
BY JONATHAN MAHLER
The Numbers Game
How many Aztecs were living in Central Mexico before the Spanish conquest? How many Africans were transported across the Atlantic by slave traders? No one really knows. But that hasn’t stopped historians from offering what one critic calls "numbers from nowhere."
BY LAWRENCE OSBORNE
Speaking to Power
Since the publication of Gender Trouble in 1990, Judith Butler has been one of the most influential theorists on the scene. Two recent books exhibit the virtues and vices of her unsparingly difficult–and sometimes exhilarating–work.
BY MICHAEL LEVENSON
HYPOTHESES
Jim Holt on philosophers with a grudge.
