Dean of the Faculty Joseph Urgo contributed a chapter to What Democracy Looks Like: A New Critical Realism for a Post-Seattle World, edited by Amy Schrager Lang and Cecelia Tichi (Rutgers University Press, 2006). Urgo's chapter is titled "'There is evil in the world an I'm going to do something about it': William Faulkner as Political Resource."
The book is described on the publisher's Web site: "The convergence of activists in Seattle during the World Trade Organization meetings captured the headlines in 1999. These demonstrations marked the first major expression on U.S. soil of worldwide opposition to inequality, privatization, and political and intellectual repression. This turning point in world politics coincided with an ongoing quandary in academia-particularly in the humanities where the so-called 'death of theory' has left the field on tenuous footing.
"In What Democracy Looks Like, the editors and 27 contributors argue that these crises-in the world and the academy-are not unrelated. The essays insist that, in the wake of "Seattle," teachers and scholars of American literature and culture are faced with the challenge of addressing new points of intersection between American studies and literary studies.
Urgo's chapter examines Faulkner's A Fable. He writes "Cocooned in the pleasures of the text, the mass-mediated thinking, the climate-controlled home, the smooth-talking automobile, we watch the heavens for some sign authorizing us to act. A Fable suggests otherwise, that authorization arises from within human beings, if they are able to think their way past the structures of thought that have them looking elsewhere…There are indications, in recent years, that a new generation of Faulkner readers will find the book and revisit Faulkner's intellectual presence. Perhaps in the wake of Seattle, we will find in Faulkner the political resource we need to overcome the fear that leaves us unable to act, but only to hope."
Urgo's research interests focus on the work of 20th-century American novelists and writers William Faulkner and Willa Cather.
