Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University
William Clark argues that the research university—which originated in German Protestant lands and spread globally in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—developed in response to market forces and bureaucracy, producing a new kind of academic whose goal was to establish originality and achieve fame through publication. With an astonishing wealth of research, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University investigates the origins and evolving fixtures of academic life: the lecture catalogue, the library catalog, the grading system, the conduct of oral and written exams, the roles of conversation and the writing of research papers in seminars, the writing and oral defense of the doctoral dissertation, the ethos of "lecturing with applause" and "publish or perish," and the role of reviews and rumor. This is a grand, ambitious book that should be required reading for every academic.
“We are used to thinking of academic structures and pomp as ‘traditional,’ a throwback to an unspecified earlier time—maybe antiquity, maybe more recent. By contrast, William Clark gives the material and sociological bricks of the ivory tower historical specificity and by doing so takes the university apart. How do the category and comportment of the modern professor come into being? Are researchers heroes? Are they gentlemen? Are they bureaucrats? Robes and disputations, exams, and architecture: all grist for Clark’s mill. In this historical dissection of the university, Clark has created a world that is at once very erudite and immensely funny, an imaginative and beautifully researched step beyond the schematics of Bourdieu’s classic Homo Academicus. Anyone who wants to understand how universities got to be the way they are should grab this book off the shelf.”
“William Clark is an incredibly original and sensible traveler through the history of German academia. The book is a marvel in its combination of stupendous scholarship and enjoyable reading. After all, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University is like a mirror that shows us academics numerous characteristics of ourselves and our institutions, details we usually ignore.”
“This magisterial book offers a compelling new account of the origins of the research-based university. Drawing on an astonishing wealth of sources, it explores in fascinating detail the transformations of university life from the Reformation to the Romantic era. This will be required reading for historians of European culture and for all academics curious about their origins.”
1. Charisma and Rationalization
Part One - Tradition, Rationalization, Charisma
On the Dominion of the Author and the Legible
2. The Lecture Catalogue
3. The Lecture and the Disputation
4. The Examination
5. The Research Seminar
6. The Doctor of Philosophy
7. The Appointment of a Professor
8. The Library Catalogue
Part Two - Narrative, Conversation, Reputation
On the Ineluctability of the Voice and the Oral
9. Academic Babble and Ministerial Machinations
10. Ministerial Hearing and Academic Commodification
11. Academic Voices and the Ghost in the Machine
Epilogue
12. The Research University and Beyond
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4
Appendix 5
Appendix 6
Notes
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Illustration Credits
Acknowledgements
Index
You may purchase this title at these fine bookstores. Outside the USA, see our international sales information.
