Cultivating Vocation in Literary Studies

Description

The concept of ‘vocation’ has garnered significant attention as a means of speaking about purposeful living and the multiple responsibilities of civic life, which converge with the broader goals of liberal education. This volume addresses the important role that literary studies can and should play in that conversation. With attention to the forms, voices and praxis of the discipline, and informed by the public humanities, these thirteen chapters address critical questions for cultivating vocation in students: How might the varied fields within literary studies invite students to consider meaning and purpose? How might our pedagogies and theories of interpretation inform the direction of their lives? The chapters offer readers a new language and framework for reinvigorating literary studies as a productive means to answer life’s most significant questions, while also modelling how vocational exploration can be incorporated into multiple disciplines and contexts. The volume as a whole positions literary studies as vital to the conversation about value, civic engagement, and purpose as it shapes not only the lives of students but also the future of higher education. Acknowledgements Contributor Biographies Introduction Part I: Forms 1. Disciplinary Form: Introduction to Literary Studies 2. Novels, Vocation and the Call of the Unfi nished Story 3. Poetry’s Lyric Call 4. The Drama of Vocation Part II: Voices 5. Queer Callings: LGBTQ Literature and Vocation 6. Seeing Gender: A Vocation of One’s Own 7. Anti-Racism as Vocational Practice: Reading with Alice Walker, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Edwidge Danticat 8. The Possibility of Intervention: Vocational Exploration in Non-Fiction Immigrant Narratives 9. Translating Vocation Part III: Praxis 10. Encountering the Archive 11. Narrating Our Wounds: Trauma, Literature and Vocation 12. Creative Criticism and the Vital Friction of Otherness 13. Community-Engaged Pedagogy, Literary Studies and Vocation Epilogue: The Professoriate as Vocation Index