This book brings together essays that ask how one may chart more productive engagements with the methodological foundations of literary studies, a discipline that is finding itself in a moment of severe crisis.The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Textual Practice and are accompanied by a new Preface.

This book brings together essays that ask how one may chart more productive engagements with the methodological foundations of literary studies, a discipline that is finding itself in a moment of severe crisis. The temptation to reduce methodological debates to method wars constitutes one of the main obstacles for what ought to be the common goal of our discipline: to articulate the possible and indeed necessary futures of literary studies. How do we think about the future of literary studies in the funerary climate that has engendered the belief that we need to fight our internal wars for survival? How might (must?) our understanding of what literary criticism is and does change? How do we formulate possible futures for literary studies while grappling with the significant problems that our present poses? The chapters in this volume stage hopeful interventions that seek to contribute to the effort to explore the futures of literary studies by way of and conceived as a collective endeavor. Together, the authors advance a call for better, more useful, more active, more networked, and, yes, even for abandoned versions of the always multiple and joyously contradictory discipline that is called literary studies. This book will be beneficial to students and scholars of English literature, literary theory and literary studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Textual Practice and are accompanied by a new Preface.

A collection of essays exploring the future of literary studies by focusing on the relationship between literary theory, philosophy, and cultural studies. The essays aim to break the boundaries separating philosophy and literature.

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 discipline of literary studies has a long tradition of borrowing the concepts and methods of related disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences, while also itself exerting a significant influence on other disciplines. In this book, 15 literary scholars hailing from five different countries consider these processes of mutual enrichment from various critical perspectives. What is the current state of literary studies, and what does the future of this many-faceted field look like? How can the approach of, or trend within, literary studies that each of these scholars represents contribute to literary studies in general? The chapters of the book are revised versions of papers given in June 2016 at a conference entitled "The Future of Literary Studies" at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Oslo. Demonstrating that literary studies constitutes a remarkably active and strikingly diverse area of study and research, the chapters confirm that the field of literary studies is dynamic and open-minded, receiving impulses from other disciplines yet conscious of the characteristics, demands and possibilities appropriate to a discipline in its own right. The book has an introduction by the editor and an afterword by Frederik Tygstrup, University of Copenhagen

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.

Futures for English Studies brings together chapters by leading writers across the curriculum area of English to investigate how the component parts of English (literature, language, and creative writing) are located institutionally in higher education and to explore the interdisciplinary prospects of a subject which spans the humanities and social sciences. Through explorations of changing foci in a variety of contexts, the book examines the value and purpose of teaching and researching English language, literature and creative writing in the twenty-first century, both within Anglophone countries and the wider world. The contributors, all practicing educators and researchers in the field, bring a wide range of perspectives to the theme of the development of the discipline, and illustrate that the strengths of English Studies as an academic subject lie not only in its traditional breadth and depth, but also in a readiness to adapt, experiment, and engage with other subjects.

Futures examines the relevance of futures studies to literary studies. It demonstrates how the growing interest in futures thinking is opening up multidisciplinary conversations and initiatives, examining historical and contemporary forms of futures knowledge, the methodologies and technologies of futures expertise, and the role played by different institutions on legitimising, deploying, and controlling anticipatory practices. Bringing together emerging perspectives on the future from diverse disciplinary perspectives including critical theory, design, anthropology, sociology, politics, and history, this book places the provocation of power at the heart of the book through an investigation of futures as both objects of science and objects of the human imagination, creativity, and will. A multidisciplinary team of contributors challenge and debate the varied ways in which futures are conjured and constructed, exploring issues as diverse as the utopian imagination, history and philosophy, literary and political manifestos, artefacts and design fictions, and forms of technological and financial forecasting, big data, climate modelling, and scenarios. The book positions the future as a question of power, of representations and counter-representations, and forms of struggle over future imaginaries. Forms of futures-making depend on complex processes of envisioning and embodiment. Each chapter investigates the critical vocabularies, genres, and representational methods - narrative, quantitative, visual, and material - of futures-making as deeply contested fields in cultural and social life.

Studying postcolonial literatures in English can (and indeed should) make a human rights activist of the reader – there is, after all, any amount of evidence to show the injustices and inhumanity thrown up by processes of decolonization and the struggle with past legacies and present corruptions. Yet the human-rights aspect of postcolonial literary studies has been somewhat marginalized by scholars preoccupied with more fashionable questions of theory. The present collection seeks to redress this neglect, whereby the definition of human rights adopted is intentionally broad. The volume reflects the human rights situation in many countries from Mauritius to New Zealand, from the Cameroon to Canada. It includes a focus on the Malawian writer Jack Mapanje. The contributors’ concerns embrace topics as varied as denotified tribes in India, female genital mutilation in Africa, native residential schools in Canada, political violence in Northern Ireland, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the discourse of the Treaty of Waitangi. The editors hope that the very variety of responses to the invitation to reflect on questions of “Literature and Human Rights” will both stimulate further discussion and prompt action. Contributors are: Edward O. Ako, Hilarious N. Ambe, Ken Arvidson, Jogamaya Bayer, Maggie Ann Bowers, Chandra Chatterjee, Lindsey Collen, G.N. Devy, James Gibbs, J.U. Jacobs, Karen King–Aribisala, Sindiwe Magona, Lee Maracle, Stuart Marlow, Don Mattera, Wumi Raji. Lesego Rampolokeng, Dieter Riemenschneider, Ahmed Saleh, Jamie S. Scott, Mark Shackleton, Johannes A. Smit, Peter O. Stummer, Robert Sullivan, Rajiva Wijesinha, Chantal Zabus