In The Academic Tribes, an English professor who has survived stints as a dean and a vice-chancellor "takes a gentle, satiric sideswipe at academia, its foibles, follies, and myths" (ALA Booklist). Hazard Adams' parody of anthropological analysis describes the principles and antinomies of academic politics, campus stereotypes, the various tribes divided by discipline, the agonies accompanying each stage on the way to full professorship, and, of course, the power struggle between faculties and academic administrators. This first paperback edition also includes a new preface looking back at the decade since the book's original publication and an appendix that adds three relevant essays.

Hazard Adams is professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of Washington. His many publications include Blake and Yeats: The Contrary Vision, The Interests of Criticism, and Critical Theory since Plato, as well as two novels, The Truth about Dragons: An Anti-romance and The Horses of Instruction.

Preface to the Second Edition   vii
Preface to the First Edition   ix

1   A Primer of Academic Politics   1
2   Stereotypics   31
3   Tribes: Les Purs et les Appliques   63
4   Rites de Passage: Coming of age in Academe   77
5   The Rhythm of the Year: Solar Rituals   97
6   Styles and the Decay of Style   109
7   Bureaucriticism: What's Wrong and Why It Isn't Likely to Be Fixed   121
8   Confessio Amantis   139

A Triptych of Appendixes   145
1)   A Political Primer for the Chair of English: Form and Content   147
b)   How Departments Commit Suicide   161
c)   Definition and/as Survival   179