A Quarterly of Criticism and Review i^^^^^^^^fcEjfc $15

LastPagesFurther, Bourdieu's assertion that universitiesexist to reproduce social stratificationrather than to challenge received notionshas encouraged a certain self-consciousnessin the field.The founders of the universities studiedin A.B. McKillop's Matters of Mind: TheUniversity in Ontario 1791-1951 certainlyagreed with Bourdieu: all "regardless ofreligious affiliation, saw the fundamentalpurpose of their institution to be the continuedpreservation of a social order thatbecause of its British and Loyalist originswas more conservative than that of theAmerican colonies" (xviii). This massiveand fascinating book (568 pages of text, 50figures and tables, 112 pages of notes and 31of index) sensibly takes an "issues" approach,tracing such matters as university governance,the woman question, and nationalismthrough time. A complementary focuson crises such as wartime, funding cuts,enrollment spurts and various media-drivencalls for the resignation of outspokenprofessors reveals the faultlines in universityadministrations. McKillop's overalltheme is the struggle between those whosaw universities as preservers of Christianmorality and guardians of tradition andthose who saw them as agents "of social andintellectual transformation firmly rooted inthe industrial order".Heather Murray's Working in English:History, Institution, Resources (Toronto: Uof Toronto P, 1996) is divided into threesubsections, with the headings of the subtitle.The first section contains three chapters,the first of which gives a detailed account ofthe controversies swirling around theappointment of the first professor of Englishat Toronto, W.J. Alexander, appointed in1889. The second examines the MargaretEaton School of Literature and Expression,a school for women in Toronto whichflourished between 1907 and 1926, focusingon physical education, dramatic arts andliterature. The third examines, through afocus on the ideas of Charles G. D. Roberts,some of the backgrounds to literary theoryin Canada. The second section contains sixchapters: on women in English; close readingas a critical and pedagogical technique;the relations between canon and curriculum;an examination of the "psychoanalyticclassroom" as gendered; an analysis ofthose staples of literary studies pedagogy,the lecture and the seminar; and finally, thedebate as the structure as academic life.The final section contains a bibliographicessay on English studies in Canada to 1945followed by a chronological handlist ofworks on the same subject from 1945-1991,briefly annotated to indicate content whenthe title does not do so. Murray's accountsare informed by critical theory, includingthe ground-breaking work on pedagogy offeminist theorists and the most recent workon education as an institution. It is also fullof fascinating anecdotes about the historyof the university in Canada, particularly theUniversity of Toronto, and rewardingmoments of mordant wit, as where Murrayascribes the rise of the "feminist authoredEnglish department murder mystery" tothe resistance in the discipline to women inpositions other than those of transcendentmuse or submissive student. It provides aremarably variegated, stimulating and theoreticallyinformed survey of the field.David Simpson's The AcademicPostmodern and the Rule of Literature: AReport on Half Knowledge (Chicago: U ofChicago P, 1995) argues that "we risk mistakingthe internal migration of terms andpriorities among the disciplines inside theacademy for a radical redescription of theworld outside the academy." What we see asnew, he feels, is "not... the world in general,but rather the degree to which 'radical'philosophers, social scientists, historians,anthropologists, historians of science, andeven some scientists are prepared to acceptthe traditional vocabularies of literary criticismas viable for their own descriptive196