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Gerald
Graff,Ph.D.
Professor of English
University of Illinois at Chicago
2027 University Hall
601 S. Morgan St
(MC 162)
Chicago, IL 60607-7104
(312) 413-9364 (office)
(312) 413-2511 (fax)
Email: ggraff@uic.edu
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Gerald
Graff is one of his generation's most influential commentators on
education, not only as a historian and theorist, but also through his
impact on the classroom practice of teachers. His 1987 book, Professing Literature: An Institutional History,
which is widely regarded as a definitive work, has recently been
reprinted in a Twentieth Anniversary Edition by the University of
Chicago Press. This book also helped launch Graff's argument,
subsequently developed in Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education
(1992), that schools and colleges should respond to curricular and
disciplinary conflicts by "teaching the conflicts," incorporating
debates, for example, about literature, history, and how these fields
should be studied into courses themselves. Graff's idea of teaching the
conflicts has also inspired two widely used "Critcial Controversy"
textbooks, editions of Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Shakespeare's The Tempest, both edited by Graff and James Phelan, and the popular collection, Falling Into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature, edited by David Richter with a preface by Graff.
With the publication of Clueless in Academe
in 2003, Graff's work has focused particularly on (in the book's
subtitle) "How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind," and how
schools and colleges can demystify academic intellectual culture for
all students, not just the high-achieving few. This book helped
inspire a basic writing textbook, "They Say/I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing
(2006), co-written by Graff and his wife Cathy Birkenstein, which has
set records for sales in colleges and high schools. Graff (and
now Graff and Birkenstein) has given lectures and workshops at many
schools and colleges, and Graff's work has been the topic of three
special sessions at MLA conferences. Graff's career has
culminated in his election as President of MLA in 2008. |
