Review Campus Life Revealed

Christian K. Anderson and John R. Thelin, ‘Review: Campus Life Revealed: Tracking down the Rich Resources of American Collegiate Fiction’. The American College Novel: An Annotated Bibliography by John E. Kramer. The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 80, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 2009), pp. 106-113. Source.

This cynical yet limited impression needs to be tempered with the reminder that, in fact, we also are heirs to a rich tradition of thoughtful, perceptive writing about higher education. John E. Kramer's The American College Novel (2004) itself may not be "great literature"--but it certainly is a great guide to the great and not-so-great fiction about American colleges and universities. For scholars who wish to understand the portrayal of American higher education in popular culture it is a prodigious, indispensable resource. This second edition, an update to his 1981 book, reviews 648 academic novels published through 2002, adding 223 novels to the 425 he annotated in the first edition. The book's annotations are divided almost evenly by student- and staff-centered novels (319 of the former, 329 of the latter). Kramer's purpose in compiling this annotated collection is twofold: for those who enjoy reading college novels for pleasure and for scholars who use college novels as a tool for understanding how higher education is perceived in American culture and as part of the serious, systematic analysis of higher education. This essay primarily focuses on how to utilize the book for the latter purpose.