A couple of years ago, in an article explaining how funds for faculty positions are allocated in American universities, the
provost of the University of California at Berkeley offered some frank advice to
department chairs, whose job partly consists of lobbying for a share of the budget. "On every campus," she wrote, "there is one department whose name need only be mentioned to make people laugh; you don''t want that department to be yours."The provost, Carol Christ (who retains her faculty position as a
literature professor), does not name the offender—but everyone knows that if you want to locate the laughingstock on your local campus these days, your best bet is to stop by the English department.
The lecturer had a winning phrase—"the invaginated eyeball"—for this accomplishment. During the discussion that followed, a consensus emerged that, in light of the optical trick, standard accounts (Erwin Panofsky''s was mentioned) of perspective as a constitutive element in Western visual consciousness need to be revised.