Does Literary Studies Have a Future?

Does Literary Studies Have a Future?

Author: Eugene Goodheart

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 9780299166540

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

As we approach the end of a millennium, the battle for the fate of literary scholarship has taken on near apocalyptic overtones, with more than a few predictions of the imminent end of literary studies as we know it. Taking aim at culture warriors on the left and the right, Goodheart provides a succinct and timely assessment of the current state and future of literary studies in the US. In Goodheart's view, the opposition between tradition (the cause of the right) and innovation (the cause of the left) is essentially false : tradition is an interactive history between the given and the innovative, not an inert set of values or a stable canon of approved texts. (Midwest).


The Employment of English

The Employment of English

Author: Michael Bérubé

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0814713017

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Although few taxpayers and legislators care whether the nation's English professors are doing justice to identifying the beautiful and the sublime, conversely the image of English departments plays a major role in determining public attitudes toward colleges and college faculty. Investigating the ramifications of current debates, this book provides the clearest and most comprehensive account of this controversy to date.


Interdiscipline

Interdiscipline

Author: Petar Ramadanovic

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-29

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1000471985

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book brings together two different discussions on the value of the humanities and a broader debate on interdisciplinary scholarship in order to propose a new way beyond current threats to the humanities. Petar Ramadanovic offers nothing short of a drastic rehaul of our approaches to literary scholarship, the humanities, and university systems. Beginning with an analysis of what is often referred to as the "crises" in the humanities, the author looks at the specifics of literary studies, but also issues around working conditions for academics. From precarity and pay conditions to peer review, the book has practical as well as theoretical implications that will resonate throughout the humanities. While most books defending the humanities emphasize the uniqueness of the subject or area, Ramadanovic does the opposite, emphasizing the need for interdisciplinarity and combined knowledge. This proposal is then fully explored through literary studies, and its potential throughout the humanities and beyond, into the sciences. Interdiscipline is not just a defense of literature and the humanities; it offers a clear and inspiring pathway forwards, drawing on all disciplines to show their cultural and social significance. The book is important reading for all scholars of literary studies, and also throughout the humanities.


The Humanities "Crisis" and the Future of Literary Studies

The Humanities

Author: P. Jay

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-07-17

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1137398035

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Demonstrating that the supposed drawbacks of the humanities are in fact their source of practical value, Jay explores current debates about the role of the humanities in higher education, puts them in historical context, and offers humanists and their supporters concrete ways to explain the practical value of a contemporary humanities education.


The Future of Literary Theory

The Future of Literary Theory

Author: Ralph Cohen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-08-19

Total Pages: 685

ISBN-13: 1134980582

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this book, first published in 1989, twenty-give eminent critics and theorists write about different aspects of literary theory. These essays represent leading research in psychoanalytic criticism, new historicism, Continental theory, feminism, Afro-American studies, philosophy, cybernetics, aesthetics, and other theoretical inflections. The result is a collective statement on the course that lies ahead for criticism in the humanities, and will be of interest to students of literary theory.


The Lives of Literature

The Lives of Literature

Author: Arnold Weinstein

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2024-01-16

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0691254796

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A passionate, wry, and personal book about how the greatest works of literature illuminate our lives Why do we read literature? For Arnold Weinstein, the answer is clear: literature allows us to become someone else. Literature changes us by giving us intimate access to an astonishing variety of other lives, experiences, and places across the ages. Reflecting on a lifetime of reading, teaching, and writing, The Lives of Literature explores, with passion, humor, and whirring intellect, a professor’s life, the thrills and traps of teaching, and, most of all, the power of literature to lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves and the worlds we inhabit. As an identical twin, Weinstein experienced early the dislocation of being mistaken for another person—and of feeling that he might be someone other than he had thought. In vivid readings elucidating the classics of authors ranging from Sophocles to James Joyce and Toni Morrison, he explores what we learn by identifying with their protagonists, including those who, undone by wreckage and loss, discover that all their beliefs are illusions. Weinstein masterfully argues that literature’s knowing differs entirely from what one ends up knowing when studying mathematics or physics or even history: by entering these characters’ lives, readers acquire a unique form of knowledge—and come to understand its cost. In The Lives of Literature, a master writer and teacher shares his love of the books that he has taught and been taught by, showing us that literature matters because we never stop discovering who we are.


Literature in the Digital Age

Literature in the Digital Age

Author: Adam Hammond

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1107041902

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book guides readers through the most salient theoretical and creative possibilities opened up by the shift to digital literary forms.


English Studies Beyond the ‘Center’

English Studies Beyond the ‘Center’

Author: Myles Chilton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 1317574974

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book addresses the shape of English studies beyond the ‘center’ by analyzing how the discipline has developed, and by considering how lessons from this analysis relate to the discipline as a whole. The book aims to open a cross-disciplinary conversation about the nature of the English major in both non-Anglophone and Anglophone countries by addressing the tensions between language and literature pedagogy, the relevance of a focus on hyper-canonical Anglophone literature in a world of global Englishes, world literature, and multilingual students, and by reflecting on the necessary contingency and cross-purposes of blended literature and language classrooms. Many of the book’s points of discussion arise from the author’s experience as an English professor in Japan, where the particularities of English language and literature pedagogy raise significant challenges to Anglo-centric critical and pedagogical assumptions. English Studies Beyond the ‘Center’: Teaching Literature and the Future of Global English therefore argues that English literature must make a case for itself by understanding its place in a newly configured discipline. Issues discussed in the book include: English language and literature pedagogy in Japan The modes through which EFL and English literary studies converge and diverge Globalized English beyond the Anglo-American perspective English classroom practices, particularly in Japan


Literary Criticism

Literary Criticism

Author: Joseph North

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-05-08

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0674967739

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1. The Critical Revolution Turns Right -- 2. The Scholarly Turn -- 3. The Historicist/Contextualist Paradigm -- 4. The Critical Unconscious -- Conclusion: The Future of Criticism -- Appendix: The Critical Paradigm and T.S. Eliot -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index


Traces of the Old, Uses of the New

Traces of the Old, Uses of the New

Author: Amy E. Earhart

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2015-11-12

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 0472900684

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Digital Humanities remains a contested, umbrella term covering many types of work in numerous disciplines, including literature, history, linguistics, classics, theater, performance studies, film, media studies, computer science, and information science. In Traces of the Old, Uses of the New: The Emergence of Digital Literary Studies, Amy Earhart stakes a claim for discipline-specific history of digital study as a necessary prelude to true progress in defining Digital Humanities as a shared set of interdisciplinary practices and interests. Traces of the Old, Uses of the New focuses on twenty-five years of developments, including digital editions, digital archives, e-texts, text mining, and visualization, to situate emergent products and processes in relation to historical trends of disciplinary interest in literary study. By reexamining the roil of theoretical debates and applied practices from the last generation of work in juxtaposition with applied digital work of the same period, Earhart also seeks to expose limitations in need of alternative methods—methods that might begin to deliver on the early (but thus far unfulfilled) promise that digitizing texts allows literature scholars to ask and answer questions in new and compelling ways. In mapping the history of digital literary scholarship, Earhart also seeks to chart viable paths to its future, and in doing this work in one discipline, this book aims to inspire similar work in others.