Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T01:00:34.952Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Afterword

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

BRUCE ROBBINS
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Why should we care about genre?

Following a hint from Wai Chee Dimock, let us perform a conceptual experiment. Imagine that literature departments were to begin hiring faculty members primarily by their expertise in particular genres instead of (as is usually the case in the larger departments) primarily by their expertise in particular historical periods. Literary study, I hope you will agree, would very soon cease to exist in its present form. This prospect exposes something about literary study in its present form that might after all prove unworthy of being mourned, which is to say of being preserved.

Type
The changing profession
Information
PMLA , Volume 122 , Issue 5: Special Topic Remapping Genre , October 2007 , pp. 1644 - 1651
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Perry, Anderson. “Union Sucrée.” London Review of Books 23 Sept. 2004. 16 June 2007 <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n18/ande01_.html>.Google Scholar
Rey, Chow. The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work. Durham: Duke UP, 2006.Google Scholar
Stefan, Collini. Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006.Google Scholar
Dimock, Wai Chee. Through Other Continents: American Literature across Deep Time. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006.Google Scholar
James, Ferguson. “Decomposing Modernity: History and Hierarchy after Development.” Postcolonial Studies and Beyond. Ed. Loomba, Ania, Kaul, Suvir, Bunzl, Matti, Burton, Antoinette, and Esty, Jed. Durham: Duke UP, 2005. 166–81.Google Scholar
John, Frow. Genre. London: Routledge, 2005.Google Scholar
Stephen, Heath. “The Politics of Genre.” Debating World Literature. Ed. Prendergast, Christopher. London: Verso, 2004. 163–74.Google Scholar
Fredric, Jameson. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Franco, Moretti. Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary Theory. London: Verso, 2005.Google Scholar