Professing Criticism

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Professing Criticism
AuthorJohn Guillory
LanguageEnglish
GenreNonfiction
Publication date
2022
Pages456

Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study is a widely-reviewed 2022 nonfiction book written by literary scholar John Guillory.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]

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 Guillory'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?”[22]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Professing Criticism" – via press.uchicago.edu.
  2. ^ Ferguson, Frances (2023-07-27). "What Should We Do?". Critical Inquiry.
  3. ^ Heffernan, Laura; Sagner Buurma, Rachel (2023-07-27). "Laura Heffernan and Rachel Sagner Buurma review Professing Criticism". Critical Inquiry.
  4. ^ Purdon, James (2023-07-03). "The Critic in the Classroom". Literary Review.
  5. ^ Herlihy-Mera, Jeffrey (2023-06-16). "Where the Humanities Are Not in Crisis". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2023-07-03.
  6. ^ Donovan, Thomas (May 2023). "Stop Apologizing: A Review of John Guillory's Professing Criticism". Critical Humanities. 1 (2).
  7. ^ Giles, Paul (2023-05-23). "Dodging bullets: The state of literary studies today". Australian Book Review.
  8. ^ Bérubé, Michael. "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About English Departments (But Were Too Overcommitted to Ask)". Cultural Critique Online.
  9. ^ Stern, Michael (2023-03-03). "Is Humility the Best Defense Against Ron DeSantis?". The American Prospect.
  10. ^ Dames, Nicholas (2023-02-18). "Is This the End of Literary Studies?". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378.
  11. ^ Kindley, Evan. "Departments on the Defensive". New York Review of Books. ISSN 0028-7504.
  12. ^ Bennett, Eric (2023-02-03). "Can Literary Scholars Transcend Their Training?". The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  13. ^ Robbins, Bruce (2023-02-03). "John Guillory's Nonalignment Pact". The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  14. ^ Schuessler, Jennifer (2023-02-03). "What Is Literary Criticism For?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
  15. ^ Mintz, Steven (January 29, 2023). "Can the English Major Be Saved? | Inside Higher Ed". Inside Higher Ed.
  16. ^ "The Best Books We Read This Week". The New Yorker. January 25, 2023.
  17. ^ Emre, Merve (January 16, 2023). "Has Academia Ruined Literary Criticism?". The New Yorker.
  18. ^ Gutkin, Len (December 5, 2022). "The Humanities' Professional Deformations". The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  19. ^ Collini, Stefan (December 1, 2022). "Exaggerated Ambitions". London Review of Books. Vol. 44, no. 23. ISSN 0260-9592.
  20. ^ Brouillette, Sarah (November 23, 2022). "Reading after the University". Public Books.
  21. ^ Swoboda, Jessica (May 31, 2022). "Criticism in Public: An interview with John Guillory". The Point Magazine.
  22. ^ Guillory, John (2023-02-13). "We Cannot All Be Edward Said". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2023-02-15.