Is This the End of Literary Studies? | The Nation

John Guillory’s Professing Criticism offers a sobering look at the uncertain future of criticism inside and outside the academy.

February 21, 2023 This article appears in the March 6/13, 2023 issue . Illustration by Tim Robinson. The scene: a graduate seminar in literature sometime in the eerily becalmed days of the mid-1990s, when for an aspirant to an academic job, the future seemed poised to break in one of two directions—either the long-promised wave of retirements and a deluge of open positions, or a decisive sign that the hiring trend line was never going to reverse its downward course. Imagine not quite knowing what would happen—even if that is now, in fact, very hard to do. Imagine, with even greater difficulty,

saved by

• Daniel Bashir
• Camille Nibungco
• Alex Bravo

related reading

• A Golden Age? | Vinduet.novinduet.no
• The War on Geniusrosselliotbarkan.com
• The NYT Book Review Is Everything Book Criticism Shouldn't Becurrentaffairs.org
• Where the Humanities Are Not in Crisis | Los Angeles Review of Bookslareviewofbooks.org
• graduate school is just a metaphorordinaryinstants.substack.com
• Tokens of Ruined Method| Marco Rothnplusonemag.com
• How the MFA swallowed literatureerikhoel.substack.com
• The Cultural Decline of Literary Fictionoyyy.substack.com
• Is the Internet Making Culture Worse?—Asteriskasteriskmag.com
• The End of the English Major | The New Yorkernewyorker.com
• Dispatches From the Trenches of World War Humanities | by Joshua Grasso | Mediumjoshuagrasso-58239.medium.com
• The Real Reasons Why the English Department Diedquillette.com