The Little Professor

Inappropriate Disney Films: A Proposal in the Wake of a Certain Acquisition

As some of you may have noticed, Disney didn't just buy LucasFilm; it promised to make yet more Star Wars films.  (Not that there have been any SW films since Return of the Jedi, of course.)  Allow me to modestly propose that Disney has overlooked a back catalog of intellectual properties that could be easily adapted into animated films. 

1.  THE FILM: Bleak House.

THE PRINCESS: Esther Summerson.

HER PRINCE: Woodcourt.

MERCHANDISING OPPORTUNITY: "Little Jo" dolls, accessorized with a broom that has interchangeable bristles ("clean" bristles, "dirty" bristles).

DISNEYLAND ATTRACTION: The Skimpole Maypole (overlay of Dumbo the Flying Elephant). 

THE SCENARIO: After years of being mistreated by her Evil Guardian, young Esther is befriended by an affectionate talking bear named Jarndyce (song: "The Second Key on the Right"), who brings her to a mysterious castle known as Bleak House.  Bleak House, we soon learn, has long been under the spell of a Scary Witch named Chancery Court (song: "Grim Grinning Guineas").  Esther's warm and loving ways soon bring a new light to the castle--so much so that even the spiders decide to help her clean it (song: "Webbing While You Work").  Meanwhile, Jarndyce, in the guise of a performing bear, entices the young nobleman Woodcourt to the castle.  They all live happily ever after, except for...

DISNEY VILLAIN DEATH: ...Chancery Court, who falls backwards off the balcony after she is frightened by one of Esther's much-loved spiders.

2.  THE FILM: Wuthering Heights.

THE PRINCESS: Catherine Earnshaw (you know, the first one).

HER PRINCE: Heathcliff.

MERCHANDISING OPPORTUNITY: Stuffed bulldogs named Mo, accessorized with multiple collars (a spiked collar, a velvet bowtie, and so on).

DISNEYLAND ATTRACTION: Wuthering Heights dark ride, featuring cute creatures on the moors.  Lots of moors.  Pretty much all moors (replaces the Alice in Wonderland dark ride).

THE SCENARIO: After years of being mistreated by an Evil Orphanage Owner, young Heathcliff runs away and finds himself lost on the moors (song: "Step in Grime").  There, he is discovered by the mysterious young Catherine, who lives in a tumbledown farmhouse, Wuthering Heights, with only her pet mouse Nelly Dean for company (song: "Some Day She'll Drop a Crumb").  Heathcliff immediately falls in love with Catherine; however, he soon discovers that she is under a spell cast by the Scary Wizard Edgar Linton, who decided he wanted Catherine for himself after she was bitten by his pet bulldog Mo.  Now, Catherine can only think of Linton's money (song: "I've Got No Rings").  Luckily, Nelly Dean manages to befriend Mo, and they help Heathcliff find the anecdote to the spell.  They all live happily ever after, except for...

DISNEY VILLAIN DEATH: ...Edgar Linton, who falls backwards into a midden after being attacked by Nelly Dean.

3.  THE FILM: Dracula.

THE PRINCESS: Mina Harker.

HER PRINCE: Dracula (come on, it's trendy now, right?).

MERCHANDISING OPPORTUNITY: A line of "Sweet Blood Red" makeup products for little girls, all conveniently available at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique.

DISNEYLAND ATTRACTION: Seasonal Halloween overlay of the Haunted Mansion. 

THE SCENARIO: After years of being mistreated by an Evil Chiropterist, young Dracula escapes to England, where he has a series of comical misadventures involving his dietary habits (song: "Let It Flow, Let It Flow, Let It Flow").  Dracula finally resolves to leave his vampiric ways and become a vegetarian instead (song: "It's Not Easy Eating Green").  However, he soon attracts the attention of a Scary Lawyer, Jonathan Harker, whose beautiful wife, Mina, is under a terrible spell: she cannot eat anything except paprikash prepared by Jonathan's pet dormouse, Hubert G. Thremnodikins III.  Dracula immediately falls in love with Mina, and realizing that Jonathan was the one who cast the spell, he seeks to liberate her with the help of a friendly talking elephant, Van Hulking ("Hi Diddle Dee Dee, Who's Got a Stake for Me").  Together, Dracula and Van Hulking persuade HGT III to put garlic into the paprikash, which breaks the spell.   They all live happily ever after, except for...

DISNEY VILLAIN DEATH: Jonathan Harker, who falls backwards into the Thames after Van Hulking threatens to sit on him.

4.  THE FILM: Jude the Obscure.

THE PRINCESS: Sue Bridehead.

HER PRINCE: Jude Fawley.

MERCHANDISING OPPORTUNITY: Little Father Time wristwatches.

DISNEYLAND ATTRACTION: Stones of Venice Tower of Terror (renamed version of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror). 

THE SCENARIO: After years of being mistreated by an Evil Renovator, Jude Fawley runs away to build circus tents.  However, he soon becomes fascinated by a beautiful young woman, Sue Bridehead, who is absolutely not his cousin.  Sue makes magical paintings that predict the future (song: "Who's Been Painting My Future Sched?"), and one day sees a Scary Architect (known only as Camden Society) trap Jude in a ruined building.  Fearing for Jude's safety, Sue and her best friend, a cuddly owl named Little Father Time, seek out the Scary Architect (song: "The Flying Buttresses Song").  Together, they manage to avert Camden Society's plot and bring Jude home,  making Sue Bridehead a feminist action princess^TM.  They all live happily ever after, except for...

DISNEY VILLAIN DEATH: ...Camden Society, who falls backwards off a gargoyle after being spooked by Little Father Time.

5.  THE FILM:  Dubliners.

THE PRINCESS: N/A.

THE PRINCE: N/A.

MERCHANDISING OPPORTUNITY: "The Dead" snowglobes, featuring Mickey Mouse (as Gabriel Conroy) and Minnie Mouse (as Gretta Conroy) in cheerful Christmas costumes.

DISNEYLAND ATTRACTION: New costumes for the relevant meet-and-greet cartoon characters.

THE SCENARIO: Billed as "Fantasia for the twenty-first century," Dubliners combines classic hand-drawn Disney animation, the 3D experience, and atmospheric music by Elton John.   Beloved Disney characters like Goofy, Donald Duck, the Mad Hatter, and, of course, Mickey and Minnie romp through musical settings of James Joyce's short stories.  Notable episodes include "Eveline" (Ariel the mermaid finds a prince, escapes the sea, and lives happily ever after), "The Boarding House" (Daisy Duck's mother  introduces her to a fine young goose, and they live  happily ever after), "A Painful Case" (Scrooge McDuck meets a lonely Cinderella, discovers the meaning of friendship, and lives happily ever after), and, of course, "The Dead" (Mickey and Minnie Mouse go to a party, sing Christmas carols in the snow, and live happily ever after).

DISNEY VILLAIN DEATH: None.  There is nothing downbeat whatsoever about this film. 

Everything old etc.

This essay put me strongly in mind of Matthew Arnold's theory of an "epoch of concentration" and an "epoch of expansion"  in "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time."

Cloud Atlas

[Spoilers ahoy!]

When I saw the extended trailer for Cloud Atlas, I thought that the result was going to be either a total mess or something brilliant.  Predictions being what they are, I was wrong on both counts: this adaptation of David Mitchell's complicated novel is not that much of a mess (although I suspect some of the multiple plotlines will be unintelligble without prior acquaintance with the book), but it's not especially brilliant, either.  The film cuts rapidly between six plot layers: Adam Ewing, lawyer, and the moral effects of his encounter with an escaped slave (1840s); Robert Frobisher, composer, and his misguided attempt to latch onto the coat-tails of another composer, now aging and ill (1930s); Luisa Rey, reporter, and her investigation into the mysterious goings-on at a nuclear power plant (1970s); Timothy Cavendish, publisher, and his seriocomic adventures when a crook wants a bigger cut of his royalties (2012); Sonmi-451, a fabricant worker at Papa Song's cafe, and her discovery of both consciousness and the possibility of social change (a dystopian, post-global warming world some centuries on); and, finally, Zachry, one of the few survivors in a post-apocalyptic village, who encounters a Prescient from Earth's last remaining advanced culture (another several centuries on).  Everything happens simultaneously; we rarely rest in any one plotline for more than five minutes or so.  All of the plots are linked by themes of imprisonment (both literal and figurative), exploitation, and the relationship between individual choice and social change.  As Adam Ewing reminds his slave-trader father-in-law at the end, "what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"

The Wachowskis have done their best both to simplify the novel and to make it more upbeat.   Thus, the ambiguous relationship between fiction and reality in the novel, which persistently sabotages the supposed veracity of all of its plots, disappears entirely in the film: there's nothing to indicate that anything's wrong with Ewing's journal, the film version of The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish appears to be based on a "true story" (as is the Luisa Rey novel), the Archivist doesn't query Sonmi-451's narrative, and so on.    Frobisher's relationship with Ayrs, the decrepit composer, unravels far more crudely in the film, without many of the underlying complications involving Jocasta or Eva (absent from the adaptation).   More drastically, the Sonmi-451 plot no longer involves the revelation that the Union rebellion is, in fact, a government-managed trick; instead, the rebels are all true martyrs for their cause, and Sonmi's relationship with Hae-Joo becomes a genuine romance.  (This undermines novel-Sonmi's greater self-consciousness about her narrative work, which emerges from her awareness of "plotting" in a larger sense.)  Similarly, Timothy Cavendish gets to make things right with his own long-lost beloved.  And Meronym and Zachry wind up leaving the planet (!) and living happily ever after with lots and lots of grandkids.  (All this added romance makes the outcome of the Sixsmith/Frobisher plot much more frustrating.) In other words, the Wachowskis rewrite most of Mitchell's novel in comic mode, substituting a paean to the power of love for the novel's far more pessimistic assessment of humanity's likely future. Apparently, we're not going to completely do ourselves in. 

Despite eliminating much of the novel's metafictional character, the Wachowskis do try to emulate its rampant pastichery.  Alert viewers, for example, may notice hints of Peter Jackson's Ringwraiths hanging out alongside shots that appear directly lifted from Star Wars (check out the Neo-Seoul fighter pilots).  The Ewing and Frobisher segments look like Hollywood prestige period films, complete with loving shots of Ayrs' ancient mansion and lushly-colored nature imagery.    By contrast, the washed-out interiors of the nursing home in Cavendish's plot owe something to One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (as, obviously, does the nurse).  As much as I hate to say it, Meronym's white jumpsuit (which apparently repels dirt...) looks suspiciously like Wilma's uniform in Buck Rogers.    And the orange-brown tones of much of the Luisa Rey segment does have a seventies feel to it.  In terms of design, the post-apocalyptic Zachry plot felt the least convincing; I felt like I was looking at Planet of the Apes-style sets plunked down randomly somewhere.   But in general, the film's use of pastiche functioned more as a historical signifier than as a reflection on the nature of narrative--except, perhaps, for the Luisa Rey detective plot, with its self-aware budding mystery author.

Much has been made of the decision to have the same actors playing multiple roles, crossing both genders and races in the process.  The excuse for having white actors playing Asians (and other races), in particular, has been that the characters are reincarnated again and again across the plots.  As Mike Le pointed out when the trailer appeared, and again more recently, this excuse makes precious little sense: instead of slapping terrible yellowface makeup on Caucasian actors--and really, as MANAA argues, the Korean makeup is appallingly, distractingly bad, especially on Hugo Weaving--one could adopt any number of other approaches to the reincarnation motif.  Like, say, casting a Korean actor when one was called for.  In fact, I thought that reusing the actors badly blurred the novel's own quite limited use of reincarnation.   Strictly speaking, in the film, the only characters in each plot who overlap thematically are the leads and anybody played by Hugo Weaving, despite local differences.  One can draw a line from Ewing to Frobisher to Cavendish etc. etc. etc.  But all of the actors multitask, which makes life distinctly confusing: the ship's doctor, the hotel manager, and Hoggins are connected, but not to Tom Hanks' other roles, while none of Jim Broadbent's characters match up especially well.  (The famously chameleonic Broadbent, by the way, tends to disappear entirely into his makeup, whereas Weaving's distinctively-angled features are impossible to camouflage.)  By the same token, it's not clear why Ewing and Frobisher are  played by different actors!  I found the gimmick much more distracting than just casting different performers across the board; one could have achieved the reincarnation effect just as well using cross-cutting, more verbal echoes (as with Haskell Moore's and Boardman Mephi's dialogue), and more recurring objects (as with the button).       

 

This Week's Acquisitions

• George W. M. Reynolds, The Mysteries of London, Vol. I, intro. Louis James (Valancourt, 2012).  Reprint of the first series of Reynolds' (in)famous mega-serial.  1100+ pages, and we're nowhere near done yet! Also available on Kindle if you fear bodily trauma may result.  (Amazon)
• Terry Pratchett, Dodger (Harper, 2012).  Reworking of Oliver Twist with our friend the Artful Dodger; features such charming individuals as Sweeney Todd.  (BOMC)
• Letter of Some Recent Converts from the Church of Rome (RTS, ca. 1827).  Anti-Catholic salvo in what was known as the "second Reformation" in Ireland.  (eBay)
• The Sunday at Home: A Family Magazine for Sabbath Reading (1883).  Bound volume of this extremely popular Religious Tract Society periodical, complete with color prints.  (eBay)

The Annual Halloween Horrorama! Scary Objects Edition

In this year's roundup of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century horror, we have...fifteen spooky things.  Clothes.  Bags.  Bedsheets.  Paintings.  Books.  You might want to keep a close eye on your knicknack shelves.

(For previous installments, see 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.  Alas, all links to HorrorMasters are now duds.) 

• "The Weird Violin" (Gaslight).  As a general rule, avoid musical instruments linked to lovers' quarrels.
• E. F. Benson, "The Room in the Tower" (Gaslight).  I've linked this before, but it's always good for a scare.  Remember that when the paintings move, so should you.
• ---, "The Other Bed" (Moonlight Stories).  You may wish to make sure that that empty bed is actually empty. 
• Algernon Blackwood, "The Kit-Bag"  (Project Gutenberg).  It's probably a good idea to check the provenance of your various luggage items.
• Mme. Blavatsky,  "The Ensouled Violin" (Gaslight).  A violin gets humanized, as it were.
• Bernard Capes, "The Green Bottle" (Horror Stories).  Wine bottles have been known to contain things other than wine. 
• Hugh Conway, "The Secret of the Stradivarius" (Gaslight).  If your musical instruments could talk...
• W. W.  Jacobs, "The Monkey's Paw" (Gaslight).  Those three wishes can be tricky things.
• Henry James, "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" (The Ladder).  Ah, the dangers of jealousy...
• M. R. James, "'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'" (Gaslight).  Why you should never engage in archaeology.
• ---, "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook" (Literary Gothic).  Collecting antiquarian books is often contraindicated.
• ---, "The Haunted Doll's House" (PDF only) (Literary Gothic).  Small doll things can be as scary as big ones.
• Edith Nesbit, "The Ebony Frame" (Literary Gothic).  A new frame animates an old painting.
• ---, "The Power of Darkness" (Pseudopodium).  May cause permanent allergies to Madame Tussaud's.
• Bram Stoker, "The Judge's House" (Victorian Ghost Stories).  Bell ropes + paintings of hanging judges = well, you figure it out. 

True History of Joshua Davidson, anyone?

Are there any Victorianists out there who would like to see an edition of Eliza Lynn Linton's The True History of Joshua Davidson, Christian and Communist (1872)?  (Short version: suspiciously Christ-like guy appears in Victorian England! Guess what happens to him!) This was ELL's most successful novel by far, but aside from the facsimile "Novels of Faith and Doubt" edition, there's never been a scholarly reprint. 

Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady

We're all pretty accustomed by now to discussing neo-Victorian fiction.  Kate Summerscale, however, writes neo-Victorian nonfiction.  Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady, like The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, systematically novelizes its historical figures--with, in this instance, a considerable assist from Mrs. Robinson's contemporaries.  On the one hand, Summerscale repeatedly draws on fictional examples for historical evidence--from the Brontes, from Wilkie Collins, and, most importantly, from Gustave Flaubert, whose Madame Bovary turns out to be one of the book's dominant narrative parallels.  On the other hand, once we reach the trial which turns out to be the primary site of Mrs. Robinson's eponymous "disgrace," we find that the diary's status as fiction, fact, or faction proved to be a key factor in both the trial and its public reception.  Was Mrs. Robinson's diary, the supposed repository of her most intimate thoughts, actually the draft of a novel?

The basic facts are these.  Isabella Robinson, profoundly unhappy in her marriage to her husband, Henry, had something resembling an affair with an up-and-coming young hydropath, Edward Lane (whose other patients included luminaries like Charles Darwin).  She also developed crushes on a couple of younger men, one of which she would actually consummate many years later. When Isabella became seriously ill, Henry found her diary, read it, and, enraged, first separated from her, then eventually filed for divorce under the new Matrimonial Causes Act (1857).  And now, things become murky.  Did Isabella and Edward consummate their affair, or not? Was there an affair? Did she and her children's tutor have any sort of emotional connection?  

In Summerscale's analysis, Isabella simultaneously writes a diary that draws on narrative strategies adopted from both "sentimental" and "sensational" fiction, and can herself be described in terms of fictional plots.   That is, even as she constructs her own romantic plots, she lives out others; fictional narratives turn out to be interchangeable with lived experience.   Even Isabella's death by thumb infection can turn, by analogy, into dying, like Emma Bovary and company, "at her own hand" (loc. 3396) (!).  Summerscale reminds us that the popularity of not just journal-keeping, but journal-publication, exploded during the nineteenth century, along with a new interest in fictional diary-writing; Samuel Pepys, Fanny Burney, Wilkie Collins, and Dinah Craik all put in special guest appearance to exemplify the form's new prominence.  As a result, Isabella's self-plotting becomes part of a genre, with recognizable conventions and expectations.  Thus, "[i]n declining to describe her most intimate moments, Isabella was adhering to a well-worn literary convention" (loc. 1285), while, like Mme. Bovary, she courts her beloved with Paul and Virginie and carries on while out for a carriage drive (loc. 1849).  Moreover, "Isabella's diary conformed to a popular pornographic formula: its narrator was a woman who happily abandoned herself to sex" (loc. 2818).  Diary-writing ineluctably takes on the form of popular fiction and pornography, and everyday experience itself becomes inseparable from the literary imagination.  Isabella doesn't need to write a diary novel; she already exists in one.  For the Victorian commentator, pointing out that Isabella's diary could be assimilated to the most lurid fictional genres was a means of discrediting both it and the author (e.g., loc. 2786-2833).  Isabella herself, at the urging of George Combe, came to cast the diary as a product of "'the fairy ink of poesy'" (loc.  2534).  But once the private journal turns out to share narrative space with public fictions, what remains of self-consciousness or personal autonomy? What, that is, does the journal actually record?

These fuzzy boundaries are integral to Summerscale's historical project.  As she reminds us, Edward Lane's "indignation was genuine" when he discovered what was happening.  "Isabella's experience of their relationship probably bore little resemblance to his own," and the "rhapsodic rhetoric" may have concealed not that something did happen, but that something didn't (loc. 1996).  Romantic conventions produce a non-existent climax in more ways than one, apparently.  Edward's fury, which doesn't paint him in a particularly good light, partly reflects his resentment at being badly emplotted.  (Henry, who doesn't exactly come off well either, also doesn't get much opportunity to put his own case; Summerscale doesn't quite silence him [there may not have been much to silence], but she allows Isabella's discourse to shape his role.)  The fight between Edward, Isabella, and Henry thus involves mutually incompatible narratives about sexual desire and fulfillment, which becomes even more clear when another of Isabella's crushes, John Pringle Thom, disclaims one of Isabella's accounts as "'highly coloured and exaggerated'" (loc. 2627).  Although Summerscale casts the diary's reception in terms of mostly male readers responding to a transgressive female text, her own narrative hints strongly that Isabella may well have been fantasizing about how her attentions were being received (all of her infatuations were with men a decade or more younger). And the final judgment turns out to be an exercise in literary criticism: the judges conclude that the diary constitutes overwrought erotica, one woman's hyperactive fantasy life instead of an authentic report of adulterous goings-on.  (Incidentally, the book's title is more than a little reminiscent of the sort of thing one would expect from vintage Victorian erotica.) 

Summerscale's soft postmodernism is reminiscent of Kali Israel's Names and Stories: Emilia Dilke and Victorian Culture, which also charts its subject's biography in terms of proliferating narratives.  Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace does not attempt to resolve the question of the diary's fictionality or factuality, leaving us instead with a woman whose life became a series of competing novelistic plots, some self-generated.  In that sense, the book at times boils over into historiographic metafiction--the kind of self-reflexive narrative that characterizes postmodern historical fiction in general and, quite often, neo-Victorian fiction in particular.  There turns out to be precious little outside Mrs. Robinson's storytelling.  And since the diary itself has vanished (all that remains are published excerpts from the trial), Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace foregrounds its own narrative practices: this is a history whose own plotting depends heavily on leaping over evidentiary gaps and relying on fictional analogies that "explain" real life. 

At the risk of raining on the DOWN WITH EVALS parade

While I can get as knee-jerkingly DOWN WITH COURSE EVALUATIONS as the next professor, an article that cropped up in my Twitter feed (retweeted from the New Faculty Majority) prompted my poor knee to jerk in the opposite direction.  Tracy Vaillancourt, a professor at the University of Ottawa, ran an experiment that proved "that students who received poor grades were 10 to 19 times more likely to make negative comments about their evaluator than those who received high grades."  Ah-ha! Validation! What we cranky dragons have always known! (Certainly, most of us have already figured out that "'once a poor grade is received, the feedback is all but ignored and the focus is on the grade.'")  But wait, hang on:

To test her hypothesis that poor teaching evaluations are a form of revenge, Vaillancourt designed three related studies, each involving between 150 and 176 mostly first-year university students.

Students were given up to 20 minutes to write a short essay on an assigned topic, and were told their work would be graded by professors or teaching assistants. The essays were then randomly assigned a high or low grade and, in some cases, comments such as “No suggestions, great essay!” or “This is one of the worst essays I have ever read!” [my emphasis]

Students were then asked to provide feedback to their evaluator about his or her marking ability, fairness, helpfulness and general competence.

In the first study, participants given poor marks and negative comments were almost 10 times more likely to rate their evaluator harshly than those given high marks and positive comments.

It also found that students’ level of self-esteem influenced their ratings. Among those whose essays received low marks and negative comment, high self-esteem was associated with the lowest evaluations. Conversely, those with high self-esteem who received positive feedback from their evaluators rated them the highest.

The grades were "randomly assigned"? It's not as though students are robots, spewing out papers and then mechanically processing the grades.  Randomly grading (really, "grading") the students inflates something, all right--it inflates the likelihood that students in the survey received grades wildly off the mark of their own self-assessment, for no obvious good reason.   Sure, there will be students who respond with joyful cheers and popping champagne bottles to that unmerited A, but what about the student who received an F and knows perfectly well that s/he didn't earn one?  Students are perfectly capable of grasping the difference between tough grading and grading by chucking papers down the proverbial stairs.  Moreover, a comment like "this is one of the worst essays I've ever read" is...suboptimal, to say the least; when I deal with truly disastrous prose, I at least try to preface my comments with "I'm afraid..." As presented in the write-up, the negative comments seem designed to exacerbate the negativity and downplay the helpfulness.  In other words, the methodology seems designed to inflate outcomes at both ends of the scale: happy students (woo-hoo! awesome instructor is awesome!) and annoyed students (death by ballpoint pen!), with some (or many? we don't know) justifiably infuriated. 

This Week's Acquisitions

(The University of Chicago Press forced me to buy their books.  It was a sale! It's all their fault! Etc.)

• Vossian, Young and Fair: A Tale to While Away a Waste Hour, For Juveniles (Burns and Oates, 1884).  Catholic tale featuring abduction and pirates, as one might expect.  (eBay)
• Alexis Easley and Shannon Scott, eds., Terrifying Transformations: An Anthology of Victorian Werewolf Fiction, 1838-1896 (Valancourt, 2012).  New anthology featuring the talents of Stoker, Marryat, Reynolds, Kipling, and Doyle, amongst many others.  (Amazon)
• Brian McGreevy, Hemlock Grove: A Novel (FSG, 2012).  Neo-Gothic murder mystery featuring urban blight and supposed werewolves.  (Lift Bridge)
• Lee Siegel, City of Dreadful Night: A Tale of Horror and the Macabre  in India (Chicago, 1995).  Novel about how Siegel's interest in Indian ghost stories turns into the pursuit of a storyteller across the continent.  (Chicago)
• Pierre Birnbaum, The Anti-Semitic Moment: A Tour of France in 1898 (Chicago, 2011).  Studies attitudes to Jews in France during the Dreyfus case.  (Chicago)
• Anne L. Poulet, Jean-Antoine Houdon: Sculptor of the Enlightenment (Chicago, 2005).  Catalog of the exhibition (which I saw) devoted to the great French sculptor.  (Chicago)
• Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., Rembrandt's Late Religious Portraits (Chicago, 2005).  Catalog and study of Rembrandt's representations of Christ and other key Christian figures.  (Chicago)

Faculty get "grades" too

To what extent do faculty discuss referees' reports with their students?

Most of our students, I think, assume that once you become a professor, your writing somehow transcends evaluation.  We grade, as it were, from on high.  Oh, there are the student evaluations of our teaching, but our prose? That's a different matter.   It's the rare student who looks up reviews of her professors' books in the scholarly journals, but it's the even rarer student in the humanities (the STEM fields may be different) who hears much about responding to peer reviewers. 

I occasionally insert my own undergraduate prose into the classroom as practice for peer workshopping.  "It's a real paper," I say.  "How would you advise this student?" (As it happens, the sample paper I use got a higher grade than I would have given it myself; such is life.)  This produces some anxious tittering at the moment of the big reveal, but the underlying point is simple: look, nobody emerges from Zeus' head writing brilliant academic essays.  Even professors spend their undergraduate careers looking for a thesis in all the wrong places, neglecting to append a conclusion, or dangling their modifiers every which way. 

However, the undergraduate example still positions professor-me as "all grown up."  My theses are informative! The conclusions conclude! And the modifiers are not dangling, let  alone squinting! Yet at the grand old age of 41, I still have a hard time writing introductions (endings are easier). Speaking of which, I just fixed a dangling modifier in the forthcoming introduction to Robert Elsmere.  Moreover, peer reviewers tell me to change things, and...well...I have to change them.  (In his or her final suggestions for Book Two, the second-round peer reviewer gently pointed out that I hadn't done something s/he had requested the first time around.  Guess what I was doing this morning?)  I grumble loudly, but nevertheless, there we are.  I may not be receiving letter grades, but the comments are still there.  We, too, are subject to judgment.