Two and a half years ago [1990], nobody had ever heard of Camille Paglia. A 40-something academic no-hoper, sacked from preppy Bennington college after a troubled eight-year stint culminating in the assault of a student who was eyeing-up her girlfriend, she had spent five years out of work before landing a zero-prestige post at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts. Her magnum opus, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, was turned down by seven publishers before being accepted by Yale University Press. Its publication initially attracted precious little attention. -- Jane Szita in http://www.mediamatic.net/cwolk/view/3740