Critical Pulse

Jeffrey J. Williams is professor of English and literary and cultural studies at Carnegie Mellon University. His books include Theory and the Novel: Narrative Reflexivity in the English Tradition; PC Wars: Politics and Theory in the Academy; The Institution of Literature; and Critics at Work: Interviews. He is also a former editor of the minnesota review and coedits the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Heather Steffen is a Ph.D. candidate in literary and cultural studies at Carnegie Mellon University. She is working on a dissertation about academic labor and criticism of the university in the Progressive Era.

Both autobiography and declaration of principle, these credos are dispatches from the trenches of literary criticism. They will inspire future scholars even as they register the uncertainties of an increasingly precarious profession. -- Martin Puchner, Harvard University, author of The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy Williams and Steffen's engaging, diverting, and thought-provoking analysis spells out the predicament facing literary criticism today. These essays represent thinking, argument, knowledge, and life experience that should be preserved and kept available for its own sake. -- Brian Lennon, Pennsylvania State University, author of In Babel's Shadow: Multilingual Literatures, Monolingual States This piquant and welcome volume presents the 'credos' of 36 scholars-reflections on why criticism matters, why and how they do the work they do, and what they hope to accomplish. Publishers Weekly

• Acknowledgments Introduction: Criticism in a Difficult Time A Critic's Progress 1. The Case for Scholarly Reporting, by Andrew Ross 2. Declarations of Independence, by Amitava Kumar 3. On Critique and Inheritance, by Lisa Lowe 4. What I Believe and Why, by Vincent B. Leitch 5. Hearing Losses and Gains, by Craig Womack 6. Long Island Intellectual, by Jeffrey J. Williams Academic Labor 7. We Work, by Marc Bousquet 8. What Is Criticism on Academic Labor For?, by Katie Hogan 9. "All Things Visible and Invisible": Believing in Higher Education, by Michelle A. Masse 10. Against Heroism, by John Conley 11. Pack Consciousness, by Heather Steffen Declarations of Politics 12. Activism and Curriculum, by Paul Lauter 13. Revolutionary Consciousness, by Cary Nelson 14. Geopolitical Translators, by David B. Downing 15. Critical Credo, by Barbara Foley 16. This I Believed, by Michael Berube 17. "Hope Dies Last": Cultural Studies and Studs Terkel, by Victor Cohen Pedagogical Moments 18. Credo of a Teacher, by Gerald Graff 19. Of Credos and Credibility, by William Germano 20. Teaching Friction, by Ann Pellegrini 21. Coerced Confessions, by Bruce Robbins 22. On Race and Literature, by Kenneth Warren 23. Teaching Theory, by Diana Fuss 24. Affect Is the New Trauma, by Lauren Berlant The Defense of Literature 25. Access to the Universal: Language, Literature, and the Humanities, by Toril Moi 26. Wrestling with the Angel: A Modest Critical Credo, by Morris Dickstein 27. Everyday Aesthetics, by Rita Felski 28. Criticism Is Vital, by David R. Shumway 29. Critical Credo, by Mark Bauerlein 30. Why I'm Still Writing Women's Literary History, by Devoney Looser New Turns 31. Without Evidence, by Stephen Burt 32. All There Is to Use, by Mark Greif 33. Open, by Kathleen Fitzpatrick 34. Timing, by Mark McGurl 35. The Politics of Small Problems, by Frances Negron-Muntaner 36. The Power of Unknowing, by Judith Jack Halberstam List of Contributors