Glenn Hendler on "expertise"

According to the New York Times, English Department Chair Glenn Hendler is one of the foremost experts on men crying in public. How he came to be an “expert” in this subject has everything to do with how our culture interprets “expertise”—what counts and what doesn’t, how we signal it, and the scenarios in which it does or does not get questioned. Expertise goes to the heart of the cultural status of the public intellectual, and conflicting definitions of expertise help determine who we turn to when we need help thinking about a significant public event or issue.

Professor Hendler's essay "On Expertise and the Public Intellectual" is part of a series entitled "Public Intellectuals" that is being run by Avidly, a Los Angeles Review of Books Channel.