Employment of English: theory, jobs, and the future of literary studies

Cultural studies and cultural capital -- The blessed of the earth -- Professional obligations and academic standards -- Peer pressure : political tensions in the bear market -- Straight outta normal : nonprofit fiction publishing on the margins -- English for employment -- Professional advocates : when is "advocacy" part of one's vocation? -- Free speech and discipline : the boundaries of the multiversity -- Extreme prejudice : the coarsening of American conservatism -- Cultural criticism and the politics of selling out. Works cited

What sorts of cultural criticism are teachers and scholars to produce, and how can that criticism be "employed" in the culture at large?. In recent years, debates about the role and direction of English departments have mushroomed into a broader controversy over the public legitimacy of literary criticism. At first glance this might seem odd: few taxpayers and legislators care whether the nation's English professors are doing justice to the project of identifying the beautiful and the sublime. But in the context of the legitimation crisis in American higher education, the image of English departments has in fact played a major role in determining public attitudes toward colleges and college faculty. Similarly, the changing economic conditions of universities have prompted many English professors to rethink their relations to their "clients," asking how literary study can serve the American public