by Valerie Michelman

Many students at the University of Chicago will never leave academia. We recognize that one day, we may be sitting in our TA’s chair and (if we’re lucky) standing behind our professor’s podium. However, to get there, we need to publish… and publish… and publish. The question becomes, publish what exactly?

The “major” questions have been written about extensively, but more obscure research questions have the danger of being irrelevant. So one has to choose, either follow the well beaten path and risk repetition, or go out on a limb and risk triviality. I reference mainly the humanities, but the fundamental issue applies to all academic fields. Topics which are considered important seem stale. But by avoiding those topics, they may never be resolved.

I recently encountered a perfect example of this conundrum at a Shakespeare Conference in downtown Chicago. At the beginning of April, Shakespeare scholars from around the globe gathered in our Windy City for three days of presentations, workshops, and seminars. University of Chicago Shakespearean legends, David Bevington and Richard Strier, were in attendance. And, by the good graces of the lovely ladies of the Shakespeare Association of America, I too was able to indulge my passion for the Bard, despite my lowly undergraduate status. While wandering the halls of the Hyatt, overhearing conversations in the ladies room, and watching weary PhD candidates struggle to look engaged by the speakers, I found myself intrigued by the people around me. There seemed to be a divide between the current generation of established scholars and their protégés. As the day wore on, I grew increasingly confident that such a divide existed. Finally, when I sat in on a seminar on the sonnets, an intergenerational interaction flared up and highlighted the underlying difference between the established members of the field and those who were still working to join them.

The seminar consisted of eleven academics, aspiring to advance their status in the field of Shakespeare scholarship, who responded to a simple prompt: “Shakespeare’s Sonnets in Context.” Their papers varied greatly in topic, from an examination of the notion of justice, to a discussion of how to teach sonnets in the modern high school classroom. Some papers were focused on form, such as one that examined the role of the couplet. Others took more content driven routes, including one that discussed imagery that combined imagination and physiology. Altogether, it was a whirlpool of scholarship steeping in Latinate words, and I was drowning in it.

Now, I have read all the sonnets. I have even read literary criticism on all of the sonnets. And yet, I was feeling sheepishly lost until the discussion was opened to the entire room and an elegant and assertive silver-haired lady softly posed the question: “Why did none of you choose to broach the historicity of the sonnets?”

Of course, context need not be historical context, but I wondered the same thing. Why had none of them chosen to write on the traditional questions of context? The central mystery of the sonnets revolves around the identity of the Young Man. Was he real or merely a fictional subject? Were the sonnets an honest expression of love (or at least obsession) by our favorite poet or merely another demonstration of his creative genius? When one considers the sonnets and context, historicity is the burning question.

However, not a single seminar participant chose to broach it. And a member of the older generation wanted to know why not. Did they consider the question answered? No, they did not believe the field had come to a consensus. Did they not find the question interesting? No, they denied that as well. Of course the Young Man’s identity was of interest. What was it then?

Slowly, as they responded with their gingerly phrased answers, I gathered that it came down to a desire to distinguish themselves. While they recognized that the question of historicity was important, they felt that the conversation had already happened.

They felt pressured to contribute something “new” to the field and in their eyes new meant different. It is easier to contribute something “new” if you skip over the questions that scholars have spent generations teasing out. Why bother asking the obvious?

At this, I bristled; the silver-haired lady did as well. The question of historicity and the Young Man’s identity is important. It is unavoidable in any study of the sonnet sequence. Just because the question has been asked before does not mean it should not be asked again and again until it is answered. Is that not the purpose of academia? To have each generation of scholars approach the same questions until we can approximate answers to the unanswerable?

Of course, generating new questions is important as well. But I object to the trend of carving out a piece of academic real estate so obscure that no one can challenge it. Sure, no one will contest the findings, but no one will utilize them either. Especially with a thoroughly studied topic such as Shakespeare, if no one has already asked the question, it is likely not worth asking. If no one has answered the question, the greatest contribution one can make is to attempt to answer it.

So I pose this challenge to the aspiring academics here in Hyde Park: try to answer the difficult questions, the questions which have lost their gloss, the questions which have been agonized over by minds more well-stocked and agile than yours. Don’t flee to the frontier, but pitch a tent and battle for the heartland. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”

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Tags: academia, david bevington, man, richard strier, Scholarship, shakespeare association, shakespeare conference, shakespeare scholars, University, Young

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