Document Type
Introduction
Abstract
[First two paragraphs]
Editing this issue of Reconstruction has become an illustration of the very processes that we set out to discuss and document.
Calling for papers commenced a well-defined project, with all the parameters in place for producing a routine academic work. We knew the Reconstruction editorial collective was keen to do an issue on themes of class. We were also aware of two publication anniversaries in our academic field of U.S. literary radicalism: The New York Intellectuals by Alan Wald in 1987, and The Cultural Front by Michael Denning, about a decade later. Combining a 20th anniversary with a 10th anniversary – it would be what journalists call a "calendar story." (As it happened, when we brought the idea up with the illustrator of the issue's home page, he thought it academic in that more widely used sense of the word, as a synonym for "pointless." Fortunately, he came around to our way of thinking, and you probably saw the excellent results on your way to reading this editorial.) The work included here, we think, in many ways, transcends the ("merely") academic.
Repository Citation
Barnfield, Graham, Victor Cohen, and Joseph G. Ramsey. "Introducing 'Class, Culture, and Public Intellectuals': a Special Issue of Reconstruction." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 8, no. 1, 2008, pp. 1–11. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol8/iss1/1