Stephen Greenblatt imbues "The Norton Shakespeare"--the widely used annotated collection of which he is editor--with a new historicism that limits inquiry largely to questions of power as they affect race, class, and sex. Sean Benson considered teaching from the volume, but found that Greenblatt's materialist ideology does not foster an…

Higher and lower schools routinely take their cue from luminaries like NYU dean Catherine Stimpson, who famously opined that academic objectivity and intellectual rigor equal "mishmash." As a result, they feed students a diet of bland, uninspired readings. Carol Iannone is thus not surprised at the ensuing hand-wringing when the teaching…