Selling the Humanities: Essays - Paperback

by Jeffrey R. Di Leo (Author), H. Aram Veeser (Afterword by), Harold Bloom (Other)

Selling the Humanities explores the challenges facing literature, philosophy, and theory at a time when the humanities appear to some as burnt out. There is incredible pressure to demonstrate the value of the humanities within institutions dedicated to economic feasibility and job placement, not intellectual power and social commitment. This situation is further intensified by the demand that one must always be prepared to sell the humanities to others in an effort to save them. But is it even possible to commodify the humanities? And if so, might our efforts to sell the humanities also have the potential to kill them in the process?

Author Biography

Jeffrey R. Di Leo is Professor of English and Philosophy at the University of Houston-Victoria. He is editor and founder of the critical theory journal Symplokē, editor-in-chief of the American Book Review, and Executive Director of the Society for Critical Exchange and its Winter Theory Institute.