Thursday, August 29, 2013

"Archival futzing"--Adam Gopnik's term for archival research.



“The study of English . . . isn’t a science, and so the “research” you do is, as my colleague Louis Menand has pointed out, archival futzing aside, not really research.” So says Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker blog for 27 August 2013. 

 


Now that almost no English professors are guilty of “archival futzing,” is there any reason that universities should support English departments? 

I am pleased to know that my years of transcribing and analyzing 19th century documents and trying to make a biographical narrative from them have finally been properly labeled: "ARCHIVAL FUTZING."

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