Damrosch, David 1953-

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Damrosch, David 1953-

PERSONAL:

Born April 13, 1953, in Bar Harbor, ME; married, 1974; children: three. Education: Yale University, B.A., 1975, Ph.D., 1980.

ADDRESSES:

Office—English Department, Columbia University, 2960 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6902. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Office of the Special Assistant to the President for Health, Washington, DC, speechwriter and editor; Columbia University, New York, NY, assistant professor, 1980-87, professor of English and comparative literature, 1987—.

MEMBER:

Modern Language Association, American Comparative Literature Association (president, 2001-02).

WRITINGS:

The Narrative Covenant: Transformations of Genre in the Growth of Biblical Literature, Harper & Row (San Francisco, CA), 1987.

We Scholars: Changing the Culture of the University, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1995.

(Editor) The Longman Anthology of British Literature, two volumes, Longman (New York, NY), 1999, 3rd edition, Pearson Longman (New York, NY), 2006.

(With others) Meetings of the Mind, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2000.

What Is World Literature?, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2003.

(Editor) The Longman Anthology of World Literature, Longman (New York, NY), 2004, compact edition, 2008.

(Editor) Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling, "Heart of Darkness," "The Man Who Would Be King" and Other Works on Empire, Columbia University (New York, NY), 2006.

The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2007.

(Editor, with J.H. Dettmar) Masters of British Literature, Pearson Longman (New York, NY), 2008.

SIDELIGHTS:

David Damrosch is a professor of English whose areas of interest include twentieth-century literature and criticism, comparative literature, and the literature of the bible and the ancient Near East.

With We Scholars: Changing the Culture of the University, Damrosch studies the changes that have occurred in university life, offering his opinions on how various aspects, including the emphasis on publishing, specialization, and isolation have changed the environment. Brad L. Mitchell commented in the Journal of Higher Education: "Thankfully, the author avoids polemic shenanigans and presents a solid ethical pitch for the need to replenish the soul of higher education in America. Damrosch describes the moral decline of the scholarly community with wit, wonder, and remorse."

While in the first half of the book Damrosch contemplates the paradoxes that exist within the university, in the second he offers ideas for reform of undergraduate education that include greater collaboration and openness. He notes that the demise of Latin as the common language of academia has led to fewer translated works. He also points out that the increase in the numbers of students from 1960 to 1980, from three to twelve million, contributed to greater bureaucracy and the "industrialization" of higher education.

"The argument of the book is effective in drawing the reader's attention to what goes on around us and in stimulating thoughts about what might be done about it," wrote Frederick J. Crosson in the Review of Politics. "It is gracefully written, informative and concerned in the best sense. It is also making a case, and some things could be said to mitigate the darkness of the picture that is painted of ‘we scholars’ (the phrase is Nietzsche's)."

What Is World Literature? is Damrosch's assessment of the development of global literature and its future. He told Chronicle of Higher Education interviewer Peter Monaghan that world literature played an important part in exposing the postwar generation to views more vast than the nationalist view that had previously prevailed. He felt that the escalation of the exchange of literature globally, necessitating greater numbers of translations, will prevent the obscurity of great works printed in earlier times. He added: "To take serious account of world literature, you have to have some sense of its depth as well as its breadth." As to new writing, Damrosch concluded: "Writers have a great opportunity to take advantage of globalization to reach a broader audience and promote a genuine dialogue across cultures."

The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh, is Damrosch's study of the four-thousand-year-old epic poem that, with each translation, provides new insights into the life and changing beliefs of the subject, Sumerian King Gilgamesh who, in the poem, travels to the underworld and back. Forgotten for thousands of years, this oldest of literary epics was resurrected on cuneiform fragments unearthed from the library of the ancient city of Nineveh that was destroyed six hundred years before the birth of Christ, near the city that we know as Mosul, Iraq, that were shipped to the British Museum during the 1840s and 1850s. In 1872 assistant curator George Smith decoded them and discovered, among other finds, an early version of the biblical flood. Damrosch includes an epilogue that explains how the epic influenced contemporary writers, including Philip Roth and Saddam Hussein.

Booklist reviewer Gilbert Taylor concluded: "Damrosch's account is a superb and engrossing popular presentation." A Kirkus Reviews contributor called The Buried Book "a graceful example of how rigorous scholarship and erudition can inform and animate popular history."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Directory of American Scholars, 10th edition, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 2002.

PERIODICALS

American Literary History, spring, 1998, Michael Berube, review of We Scholars: Changing the Culture of the University.

American Literature, March, 1996, review of We Scholars, p. 241.

American Scholar, winter, 1997, Robert B. Heilman, review of We Scholars, p. 148; spring, 2007, Sudip Bose, review of The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh, p. 129.

Booklist, February 15, 2007, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Buried Book, p. 24.

Change, November, 1995, review of We Scholars, p. 70.

Chronicle of Higher Education, July 11, 2003, Peter Monaghan, "Improving on the Concept of World Literature," interview.

College English, March 1, 1996, Jeff Smith, review of We Scholars, p. 357.

College Literature, fall, 2005, Bruce Krajewski, review of What Is World Literature?

Comparative Literature Studies, annual, 1994, review of The Narrative Covenant: Transformations of Genre in the Growth of Biblical Literature, p. 177; spring, 1994, Robert L. Cohn, review of The Narrative Covenant; January, 2004, Michael Wood, review of What Is World Literature?, p. 168.

Contemporary Sociology, November, 1995, Michael Lewis, review of We Scholars, p. 750.

Entertainment Weekly, March 9, 2007, Tina Jordan, review of The Buried Book, p. 113.

Journal of Higher Education, March-April, 1996, Brad L. Mitchell, review of We Scholars, p. 241.

Journal of Legal Education, June, 1996, Victor G. Rosenblum, review of We Scholars, p. 308.

Journal of Near Eastern Studies, April, 1996, Lowell K. Handy, review of The Narrative Covenant, p. 143.

Journal of Religion, April, 1990, Herbert Marks, review of The Narrative Covenant, p. 251.

Journal of the American Oriental Society, April, 1990, John Van Seters, review of The Narrative Covenant, p. 340.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2006, review of The Buried Book, p. 1160.

Library Journal, January 1, 2007, William D. Walsh, review of The Buried Book, p. 108.

Library Quarterly, January, 1996, Theodore R. Mitchell, review of We Scholars, p. 115.

Publishers Weekly, November 20, 2006, review of The Buried Book, p. 47.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2004, review of The Longman Anthology of English Literature, 2nd compact edition, Volume A, p. 235; August 1, 2004, review of The Longman Anthology of World Literature, Volume A, p. 269.

Review of Politics, winter, 1997, Frederick J. Crosson, review of We Scholars, p. 155.

Teachers College Record, spring, 1997, Steven Weiland, review of We Scholars.

Theology Today, April, 1989, Dennis T. Olson, review of The Narrative Covenant, p. 118.

Times Literary Supplement, October 27, 2000, John Sutherland, review of Meetings of the Mind, p. 22.

Virginia Quarterly Review, autumn, 1995, review of We Scholars, p. 133; winter, 2001, review of Meetings of the Mind,

Washington Post Book World, March 4, 2007, Michael Dirda, review of The Buried Book, p. 10.

World Literature Today, May, 2004, Elliott Rabin, review of What Is World Literature?, p. 95.

Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, summer, 1997, Carol Weisbrod, review of We Scholars.

Yale Review, October, 1995, review of We Scholars, p. 95.