From the inaugural issue of Culture Unbound, a special section on the use of cultural research. A lament for the humanities: Once upon a time the humanities were celebrated, the sciences largely shrugged off, writes Michael Ruse — that was unfortunate, but so is the current reversal of that situation. From Liberal Education, a special issue on the humanities; and a special issue on liberal education and the disciplines, including economics, history, religious studies, English/foreign language, the classics, and biochemistry and molecular biology. From The Minnesota Review, a special section on critical credos, including contributions by Michael Berube, Rita Felski, Diana Fuss, Andrew Ross, and more; an interview with UC-Irvine's Hillis Miller, bellwether of academic literary criticism for the past fifty years; an interview with Stephen J. Greenblatt on the new historicism; an interview with Amanda Anderson, author of The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory; and a review of Bad Modernisms. The global turn in postcolonial literary studies: A review of The Postcolonial and the Global by Revathi Krishnaswamy and John C. Hawley; Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain by Ashley Dawson; Postcolonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace by Sarah Brouillette; and Reading the Global: Troubling Perspectives on Britain's Empire in Asia by Sanjay Krishnan. From Arcade, William Egginton on linguistic relativism and grammar conservatism; Andrew Goldstone on a "positivist" style of literary scholarship and other terms of praise; and why have the revolutions that Theory enacted become an embarrassment? In praise of tough criticism: An epidemic of faint praise and anonymous reviews threatens to enervate the free flow of ideas in academe.
