article in lingua franca

wahneema lubiano wah at acpub.duke.edu
Sun Jan 24 22:08:01 PST 1999


At 12:21 AM 1/25/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Friends,
>
>I don't think Wahneema's psot answers my question about pomo and
>stardom. And as a college teacher for 30 years I surely know what
>teachers earn.
>
>michael yates

(1) I was correcting some misinformation about the Duke English department and about the "underworked (as far as teaching goes) 'stars'" -- that department is not the "pomo" department and the "stars" were not underworked.

(2) By talking about the relation of pomo to salary ranges and academic ranks, I was suggesting that there aren't any clear connections between pomo and stardom. Because I don't know anything about you and because I was aware that I was also talking to the list--some of whom might and some of whom might not know about college teacher salaries, the relation of those salaries to other disciplines (and fields within disciplines), as well as the variety of faculty who do work that is described as pomo--I thought that it wouldn't hurt to bring into the discussion some sense that "pomo" faculty and superstardom do not have a necessary connection.

So, in response to your "any comments on any connections between pomo and the academic as superstar?" I am saying a few things. Most pomo faculty aren't superstars. Most pomo faculty are no more highly paid than other non-pomo faculty. There are cer- tainly pomo stars. Pomo stars are no more common than other kinds of stars in the academy. Those pomo faculty from the humanity who are stars have salaries that have to be considered within the range of literary studies faculty salaries as well as faculty salaries from non-humanities areas for stars and non-stars alike. My answer would be that there are no necessary connections between pomo and the academic as superstar.

And insofar as media attention to pomo is concerned (which is one of the ways that information about pomo stars circulates), both the corporate and the non-corporate press pay alot of attention to pomo. That attention seems to produce some considerable mis- understanding about the complicated reality of actually existing academics involved somehow with pomo.

Wahneema



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