Review Editor's Introduction

Extract

The constant stream—deluge might be a better word—of new books making their way to our offices makes vivid, on a daily basis, how productive is our discipline. There is so much work being done, on such a range of topics and employing such a range of approaches. And—as we have understood ever since Thomas Kuhn—while academic fields and subfields most assuredly are organized in part to channel and “discipline” such intellectual energies, the contemporary academy is at the same time a space of extraordinary intellectual diversity. There is no overall “plan” to this outpouring of ideas, no single “method” to the madness that drives us continually and persistently to research and write, to revise and resubmit, and to enter the fray with ideas that, at their best, will prove their true worth by serving as fodder for the next generation of scholars.