Hisland

This idiosyncratic satire of sexism on (and more often off) the tenure track pokes fun at a host of scholarly rituals. When female academic M/M (pronounced Em Slash Em) mysteriously lands in the Ac-Ac islands, her first encounter is with Professor Hoodwinkle, who whisks her to Ac-Ac University, where she becomes a visiting scholar. Using prose and verse (""the He in power enters the room./ try as i might./ i can never be bald""), Malti-Douglas, a humanities professor at Indiana University and author of several books on Arabic literature, attacks the not-so-hallowed halls of academe with justified, if not always pointed, rage, ridiculing pompous lectures by pseudo intellectual bores and a committee structure that ensures only the illusion of departmental change. Sexual politics come in for a particularly hash drubbing as the nearly all-male faculty of Ac-Ac U is endowed with bombast and arrogance. A mock analysis of M/M's notes on her experiences at AC-AC U aims at academic language and provides a witty and ribald conclusion to this inventive, if sometimes over-the-top satire. (Feb.)