Professing Criticism

Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study is a 2022 nonfiction collection of essays written by John Guillory.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]

Professing Criticism
AuthorJohn Guillory
LanguageEnglish
GenreNonfiction
Publication date
2022
Pages456

In response to a review by Bruce Robbins (academic), Guillory asked “how we justify what we do. Does this justification necessarily entail a claim to political efficacy? . . .” From Guilllory's perspective, “[t]he conflation of professional literary study with the criticism of society has aggravated to an insupportable degree the tendency of scholars to overestimate their social impact, and to assert the political efficacy of their work where it is perhaps least to be found. . . .  At the least, we professors might come up with a better way of talking about the profession of studying literature, and a better way to promote intelligent reading as an indispensable practice of an educated citizenry. Is the cultivation of the craft of reading not something we know how to do, if only we could acknowledge it as our vocation? Is there not a political task here to which we can point, without undue self-congratulation?”[16]

Table of Contents

Preface

Part One: The Formation and Deformation of Literary Study

Chapter 1 Institution of Professions

Chapter 2 Professing Criticism

Chapter 3 Critique of Critical Criticism


Part Two: Organizing Literature: Foundations, Antecedents, Consequences

Chapter 4 Monuments and Documents: On the Object of Study in the Humanities[17]

Chapter 5 The Postrhetorical Condition

Chapter 6 Two Failed Disciplines: Belles Lettres and Philology

Chapter 7 The Location of Literature[18]

Chapter 8 The Contradictions of Global English


Part Three: Professionalization and Its Discontents

Chapter 9 On the Permanent Crisis of Graduate Education

Chapter 10 Evaluating Scholarship in the Humanities[19]

Chapter 11 Composition and the Demand for Writing

Chapter 12 The Question of Lay Reading


Conclusion: Ratio Studiorum

References
  1. "Professing Criticism" – via press.uchicago.edu.
  2. Bérubé, Michael. "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About English Departments (But Were Too Overcommitted to Ask)". Cultural Critique Online.
  3. Stern, Michael (2023-03-03). "Is Humility the Best Defense Against Ron DeSantis?". The American Prospect.
  4. Dames, Nicholas (2023-02-18). "Is This the End of Literary Studies?". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378.
  5. Kindley, Evan. "Departments on the Defensive". New York Review of Books. ISSN 0028-7504.
  6. Bennett, Eric (2023-02-03). "Can Literary Scholars Transcend Their Training?". The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  7. Robbins, Bruce (2023-02-03). "John Guillory's Nonalignment Pact". The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  8. Schuessler, Jennifer (2023-02-03). "What Is Literary Criticism For?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
  9. Mintz, Steven (January 29, 2023). "Can the English Major Be Saved? | Inside Higher Ed". Inside Higher Ed.
  10. "The Best Books We Read This Week". The New Yorker. January 25, 2023.
  11. Emre, Merve (January 16, 2023). "Has Academia Ruined Literary Criticism?". The New Yorker.
  12. Gutkin, Len (December 5, 2022). "The Humanities' Professional Deformations". The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  13. Collini, Stefan (December 1, 2022). "Exaggerated Ambitions". London Review of Books. Vol. 44, no. 23. ISSN 0260-9592.
  14. Brouillette, Sarah (November 23, 2022). "Reading after the University". Public Books.
  15. Swoboda, Jessica (May 31, 2022). "Criticism in Public: An interview with John Guillory". The Point Magazine.
  16. Guillory, John (2023-02-13). "We Cannot All Be Edward Said". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2023-02-15.
  17. Guillory, John (Spring 2016). "Monuments and Documents: Panofsky on the Object of Study in the Humanities". History of Humanities. 1 (1): 9–30. doi:10.1086/684635. ISSN 2379-3163.
  18. Guillory, John (2018-01-30), Richter, David H. (ed.), "The Location of Literature", A Companion to Literary Theory (1 ed.), Wiley, pp. 151–164, doi:10.1002/9781118958933.ch12, ISBN 978-1-118-95867-4, retrieved 2023-02-01
  19. Guillory, John. "Evaluating Scholarship in the Humanities: Principles and Procedures". Modern Language Association. Retrieved 2023-02-01.


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