Office Hours

Cary Nelson is Jubilee Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Stephen Watt is Chair of the Department of English, Indiana University. They are coauthors of Academic Keywords, also published by Routledge.

"Straightforward, unpretentious, immensely readable, and on matters of extreme urgency to a very wide potential readership." -- Bruce Robbins, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University"Office Hours is always pointed, often poetic and amusing, and never dull. Nelson and Watt accurately diagnose the serious malady that threatens American higher education, and then suggest the cure. Do read this book-it's a tonic." -- Jane Buck, President, American Association of University Professors"Readers will find the book a refreshingly personal take on the high stakes of activism in the academy." -- Heather M. Steffen, Carnegie Mellon University

• Introduction; Part 1 Part One Where We Are and How We Got There; Chapter 1 1. Cohorts — The Diaspora of the Teachers; Chapter 2 2. Anonymity, Celebrity, and Professional Identity; Chapter 3 3. The Postdoc Paradox; Chapter 4 4. Disciplining Debt; Chapter 5 5. The Brave New World of Research Surveillance; Chapter 6 6. The Humanities and the Perils of Globalization; Part 2 Part Two Toward Alternative Futures; Chapter 7 7. Organizational Affiliation and Change; Chapter 8 8. Is It a University or Is It a Country Club?; Chapter 9 9. Collective Action, Collective Bargaining, Collective Agency; Chapter 10 10. The Economics of Textbook Reform; Chapter 11 11. Transforming Teaching and Reaching the Public on the Internet; Chapter 12 12. What Would an Ethical Graduate Program Be?;