The Critic as Amateur

Description

Can the criticism of literature and culture ever be completely professionalized? Does criticism retain an amateur impulse even after it evolves into a highly specialized discipline enshrined in the university? The Critic as Amateur brings leading and emerging scholars together to explore the role of amateurism in literary studies. While untrained reading has always been central to arenas beyond the academy - book clubs, libraries, used bookstores - its role in the making of professional criticism is often disavowed or dismissed. This volume, the first on the critic as amateur, restores the links between expertise, autodidactic learning and hobbyist pleasure by weaving literary criticism in and out of the university. Our contributors take criticism to the airwaves, through the culture of early cinema, the small press, the undergraduate classroom and extracurricular writing groups. Canonical critics are considered alongside feminist publishers and queer intellectuals. The Critic as Amateur is a vital book for readers invested in the disciplinary history of literary studies and the public role of the humanities. It is also a crucial resource for anyone interested in how literary criticism becomes a richly diverse yet shared discourse in the 20th and 21st centuries. Contents List of Contributors Acknowledgments Introduction: Criticism for the Whole Person • Aarthi Vadde with Saikat Majumdar Part 1: The Amateur Impulse 1 In Praise of Amateurism • Derek Attridge 2 In the Shadow of the Archive • Tom Lutz 3 “It’s All Very Suggestive, but It Isn’t Scholarship” • Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan 4 Beyond Professionalism: The Pasts and Futures of Creative Criticism • Peter D.McDonald Part 2: The Amateur in the Age of Professionalization 5 Leavis, Richards, and the Duplicators • Christopher Hilliard 6 The Critic as Rasik: Pramatha Chaudhuri, Tagore, and the New Language of Literary Writing • Rosinka Chaudhuri 7 The Sophisticated Amateur: Vernon Lee versus the Vital Liars • Mimi Winick Part 3: The Critic as Amateur in Old and New Media 8 Dorothy Richardson and Close Up: Amateur and Professional Exchanges in Film Culture • Zlatina Nikolova and Chris Townsend 9 New Judgments: Literary Criticism on Air • Emily Bloom 10 The Small Press and the Feminist Critic • Melanie Micir Epilogue: New, Interesting, and Original—the Undergraduate as Amateur • Kara Wittman Index