Introduction: How to Know the World?
1 Professor Lough’s Big Idea
2 The University Flexes Its Muscles
3 A Shipboard Education
4 Scandal and the Press
5 America’s Classroom
6 Students of Empire
7 Other Ways of Knowing
8 Assessing the Experiment
9 Thinking with Failure
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Chasing Constantine Raises
Archival Information
Notes
Index
Tamson Pietsch is associate professor of social and
political sciences, and director of the Australian Centre for
Public History, at the University of Technology Sydney.
“With its expert writing and construction, The Floating University
is both a pleasure to read and a model of how to connect cultural
and imperial histories. Pietsch paints a lively portrait of elite
American thinking about knowledge and world affairs in the Jazz
Age.”
*Christopher Endy, author of Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in
France*
"Following a group of raucous American students around the 1920s
globe, Tamson Pietsch uncovers the deeper meanings of the
forerunner to today's Semester at Sea. Premised on the rising world
power of the United States, this experiment in experiential
education reinforced global social hierarchies even as it
challenged the institutionalization of intellectual authority.
Pietsch's masterful investigation of the 'floating university' will
prompt readers to reflect on the knowledge claims of our own era.
This is the best book of the 'America and the world' genre that I
have read in a long time."
*Jay Sexton, author of A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American
History*
"Underfunded, under-recruited and poorly run, the ‘Floating
University’ circumnavigated the world over a seven-month period,
generating appalling headlines almost everywhere it went. . .
. Wholly aware of just how farcical the Floating University
might now appear, [Pietsch] successfully demonstrates the value of
taking it seriously as a subject of study. In her hands, it becomes
a way of understanding a world in flux and a period of momentous
change for universities."
*Literary Review*
"Nevertheless, the Floating University was widely regarded as a
failure at the time, and it has been almost forgotten since. Over
and above the hostile press coverage, Pietsch argues, this is
because universities such as NYU largely won the battle to
prioritise academic over experiential knowledge. Her book offers a
highly entertaining account of a bold, ambitious, though
undoubtedly flawed educational experiment, which sheds light on
wider debates about knowledge and expertise."
*The Critic*
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