One might think that when Julie Schumacher walks into a roomful of her colleagues in the English department at the University of Minnesota, everybody goes quiet.
After all, Schumacher has had a great time poking fun at a fictional English department in her last two novels. “Dear Committee Members,” 2014, which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor, was a book entirely made out of fictional letters of recommendation written by Jason Fitger, a hapless, failed novelist turned English professor.
Her new book, “The Shakespeare Requirement,” is more of a traditionally structured novel. It revisits the travails of Fitger, now the chair of his department, as he deals with administrators who think resources should be directed away from the arts and toward more profitable departments like economics. While very funny, the book takes a sobering look at the state of higher education. Schumacher is well aware of the controversy at UW-Stevens Point over a plan to eliminate humanities majors, part of a larger struggle over the role of the arts on college campuses.