Aesthetics in a Multicultural Age

Reviews / Votes

The contributors to this volume all make separate, and mostly compelling, cases for the revitalization of the aesthetic in textual and extra-textual cultural productions.... Valuable for detailing aesthetics' continued relevance and even necessity for contemporary cultural study. * Postmodern Culture * This collection is an important project, the topics addressed by the contributors timely and crucial. Can humanities professors maintain aesthetic values without slipping into elitism? Can they execute political critique without turning ham-fisted and illiberal? Aesthetics in a Multicultural Age is an important step in establishing a middle way, drawing the humanities out of the old Culture Wars contraries and into a more productive, less fractious mode of teaching and research. * Mark Bauerlein, Emory University * Finally! A book that gets rid of the false opposition between aesthetics and multiculturalism. We live in an exciting time when a vibrant generation of artists and critics are not only championing the aesthetic but are also challenging conventional ideas about exactly what counts as the beautiful. Aesthetics in a Multicultural Age reminds us that poetics and politics often make the coziest of bedfellows. * Cathy N. Davidson, Duke University * The contributors to this volume all make separate, and mostly compelling, cases for the revitalization of the aesthetic in textual and extra-textual cultural productions.... Valuable for detailing aesthetics' continued relevance and even necessity for contemporary cultural study. * Postmodern Culture * This collection is an important project, the topics addressed by the contributors timely and crucial. Can humanities professors maintain aesthetic values without slipping into elitism? Can they execute political critique without turning ham-fisted and illiberal? Aesthetics in a Multicultural Age is an important step in establishing a middle way, drawing the humanities out of the old Culture Wars contraries and into a more productive, less fractious mode of teaching and research. * Mark Bauerlein, Emory University *