It has held sway in the humanities for nearly four decades, surviving even the great culture wars. But it is being used in surprising ways. Either literary theory is dead, or it’s invincible. It all ...

One of the momentous developments in criticism in the past two decades has been the revival of the historical method as a way of studying literature, the arts, and the world of ideas. Scholars who ...

The subject was dirt, or perhaps I should say “Dirt.” It was spring 1996, and I was a newly minted comp-lit Ph.D. candidate thrilled to be taking part in my first academic conference. Okay, it was a ...

Finally, the New York Times has caught up with the next dubious trend in English literature departments: neuroscience. As Patricia Cohen writes, "Zealous enthusiasm for the politically charged and ...

Anyone who has taught a college literature course has likely heard a student say, “Can’t I just enjoy the book?” This frustration with literary theory is common. Many undergraduates feel that theory ...

For at least a half-century, scholars have been adopting literary approaches to the New Testament inspired by certain branches of literary criticism and theory. In this book, Michal Beth Dinkler uses ...

Hugh Blair was the very first English professor. His official title was the regius professor of rhetoric and belles lettres at the University of Edinburgh, and when he was appointed in 1762, almost no ...

Fredric Jameson, professor of romance studies, Knut Schmidt Nielsen distinguished professor of comparative literature and director of the Institute for Critical Theory, is remembered for his ...

In his latest book, Microsoft software developer turned literature professor Dennis Yi Tenen takes us all the way back to 17th-century apps for a deep dive into computer science and literature’s ...

This is a preview. Log in through your library . Abstract Moshe ibn Ezra, the well-known medieval philosopher, scholar, exegete, and Hebrew author, was also a prosodist and critic; as such, he wrote a ...