Lindsay Waters

Lindsay Waters Photograph by Jim Harrison Lindsay Waters is an uncommon bird. He is both the executive editor for the humanities of...

JHJ_WATERS
Lindsay Waters
Photograph by Jim Harrison

Lindsay Waters is an uncommon bird. He is both the executive editor for the humanities of Harvard University Press — perforce a generalist, seeing 10 or so "slow-cooked" books through publication each year — and a productive scholar himself. At the University of Chicago he began as a medievalist, doing his doctoral dissertation on the fifteenth-century poet Luigi Pulci. He has written extensively about the late deconstructive literary theorist Paul de Man. He is author of a book, Against Authoritarian Aesthetics: Towards a Poetics of Experience, which he wrote in English but which was translated into Putonghua and published in Beijing by Peking University Press. And he has contributed to scholarly journals feisty articles chiding certain branches of the academy for requiring tenure candidates to churn out books that often are unreadable, uninspiring, and a burden to their authors, publishers, and audiences. As a publisher, he hopes to do his part to further develop ideas in analytic philosophy (espoused at Harvard by now-emeritus professors Hilary Putnam and Stanley Cavell) and to revitalize literary studies. "The humanities are deeply in the doldrums," he says, "but there is a way out. We've lost a sense of what it is that gets people turned on by art. We need to look at affect." He believes the humanities are at a "great moment," when young scholars, bucking a trend dominant for decades, are "paying attention to content and the effect that close reading has on them overall, body and soul." Waters is married and has three children. His older son is a musician, and he himself likes a good rock concert. Boston's The Pixies and Portland, Oregon's, Sleater-Kinney are favorite groups. He wants to see such contemporary arts brought into the curriculum.

         

Most popular

Hold the Fries

Baked, boiled, and mashed potatoes are better.

The Latest In Harvard’s Fight with the Trump Administration

Back-and-forth reports on settlement talks, new accusations from the government, and a reshuffling of two federal compliance offices

How AI Energy Demand Costs Consumers

Utilities shift AI infrastructure costs onto consumers.

Explore More From Current Issue

Four 2025 Centennial Medal recipients standing outdoors in a row, smiling, with greenery and a brick building behind them.

Four alumni of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences are honored.

Illustration of a math students gathering, 1936, in Annanberg Hall, Memorial Hall

Including profundity and pretzels

A color illustration of students from a diversity of backgrounds eating and talking together at a long dining hall-type table

The Undergraduate asks if intellectualism is really on life support.