Inside Higher Ed: Anonymous Power
A few years ago, Cary Nelson submitted an essay to PMLA — the flagship journal of the Modern Language Association — the dealt in part with a little-known strategy used by the Soviets in World War II: sending shells at German soldiers that contained poetry designed to encourage them to surrender.
The article explored more broadly the use of poetry in the war, but one of his outside reviewers urged rejection of the article, saying that he thought it was a spoof. While Nelson got to see the review (as part of the process of getting rejected by PMLA), he doesn’t know who wrote it and he couldn’t contact this person to show that he wasn’t writing a spoof.
Follow
