Overview
Christopher Newfield is Professor of literature and American studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Much of his research is in Critical University Studies, which links his enduring concern with humanities teaching to the study of how higher education continues to be re-shaped by industry and other economic forces. His most recent books on this subject are Unmaking the Public University: The Forty Year Assault on the Middle Class(link is external) (2008), and Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880-1980(link is external) (2003). A new book on the post-2008 struggles of public universities to rebuild their social missions, called The Great Mistake, will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press in Fall 2016. He blogs on higher education policy at Remaking the University(link is external), and writes for the Huffington Post(link is external), Inside Higher Ed, and the Chronicle of Higher Education(link is external). He teaches courses in Detective Fiction, Noir California, Contemporary U.S. Literature, Innovation Theory, and English Majoring After College