Carlin Romano

Carlin Romano is a literary critic, philosopher and public intellectual best-known as the Literary Critic of The Philadelphia Inquirer (since 1984) and the Critic-at-Large of The Chronicle of Higher Education (since 2000). He teaches media theory and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and previously taught philosophy at Yale, Yeshiva University, Williams College, Bennington College, Temple University, and Saint Petersburg State University in Russia.

Leben

Romano was born in Brooklyn. N.Y., and received his B.A. in philosophy from Princeton University (where he was an assistant to the philosopher Richard Rorty during the time the latter wrote Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature). He took an M.Phil. in philosophy from Yale University and a J.D. from Columbia University, where he specialized in philosophy of law. He has won many awards, including First Prize in the John Dewey Memorial Essay Project, three "First Place" awards in Criticism from the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts award for Criticism (2003). In 2006, he was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism, cited by the Pulitzer Board for "bringing new vitality to the classic essay across a formidable array of topics."

In his academic and scholarly life, Romano is the author of the article on "Umberto Eco" in Oxford University Press's The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, and his philosophical essays appear in a number of scholarly collections, such as Danto and His Critics. (Blackwell). A major book, America the Philosophical, about the role of philosophy in American life, is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf. Romano has been a Fulbright Scholar to both Russia and Germany, a McCloy Fellow to Germany, a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard, a Gannett and NAJP Fellow at Columbia, and the first Eisenhower Fellow from the United States to Israel. He is an ongoing elected Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University, and will be a Milena Jesenska Fellow in 2009 at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna.

Career

Romano first became known for long mass-media articles on philosophers such as Foucault, Habermas, Cassirer, Rorty, and Perelman in The Village Voice Literary Supplement beginning in 1981. Younger public intellectuals, such as Scott McLemee of Inside Higher Education, have cited Romano as an inspiration in establishing the possibility of writing about serious philosophers and intellectual issues in the mass press. Romano's writing has appeared in many national and international publications, including The Nation, The New Yorker, Harper's, Times Literary Supplement, International Herald Tribune, Tikkun, The Weekly Standard, Book Forum, Salon, Slate, Lingua Franca, Columbia Journalism Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Die Welt. He served as President of The National Book Critics Circle, the U.S. organization of more than 900 book critics, reviewers, editors and scholars, in the mid-1990s.

Romano has been involved in many literary, intellectual and philosophical controversies over the years. His Philadelphia Inquirer articles in the 1980s about a major dispute between Janet Malcolm and Jeffrey Kittay made him a key participant in that contratemps. Later, his articles in The Nation about author Dan Moldea's legal actions against The New York Times, and attack in the The Chronicle of Higher Education on writer Dale Peck over the latter's savage book-reviewing, also drew national attention.

Romano's most famous controversy, however, involved what is widely considered the most controversial book review ever: his November, 1993 review, in The Nation, of Catharine MacKinnon's Only Words. It involved a complex rape hypothetical and severely criticized MacKinnon's positions on artistic representation and freedom of expression. The media storm that followed produced full-page articles in both Time and Newsweek, with photos of Romano and MacKinnon facing each other down. Lengthy coverage ensued around the world in publications from The Washington Post to Le Monde, and pulled in a host of other intellectuals who took sides, including Nat Hentoff, Jeffrey Masson, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Roger Kimball of The New Criterion.

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