Includes bibliographical references (pages 146-151) and index.
Contents:
What is literature? -- Moving bodily sideways -- Perspectivism and Yiyun Li's The Vagrants -- From Hillsdale to the swamp -- Teaching at the end of the world -- Starting again with twentieth-century American fiction -- Something misplaced -- Shopping at Walmart (with Žižek) -- Teaching with film -- Dropped my iPhone down below -- Humanities at the airport -- Thinking space -- Against careerism, for college -- Total satisfaction -- In defense of small things -- Environmental studies, with no limits -- College : it's a mess -- Thinking critically about critical thinking -- Unsettling place -- David Foster Wallace : don't believe the hype -- Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts : a book review that is not one -- Don DeLillo's Zero K : when does the person become the body? -- Thirty observations after reading Sarah Manguso's 300 Arguments -- Liberal arts : a safe space? -- Sabbatical -- Walking it off -- Trump in the anthropocene -- Terminal democracy -- Hunting for morels, finding a mess -- Flying through nowhere -- Stuck -- Tick thinking -- Dark river balloon -- Landscape ecology -- Back in the classroom.
Summary:
What is the role of literary studies in the age of Twitter threads and viral news? If the study of literature today is not just about turning to classic texts with age-old questions, neither is it a rejection of close reading or critical inquiry. Through the lived experience of a humanities professor in a rapidly changing world, this book explores how the careful study of literature and culture may be precisely what we need to navigate our dizzying epoch of post-truth politics and ecological urgency.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.