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I love literature. I really do. And however much it might shock my colleagues, I believe that some books are better than others, too. Yet this belief of mine complicates my love: I like some books and some writers a great deal, whereas there are other books and other writers I do’t care for at all. So now that I think of it, I guess it makes about as much sense to say “I love literature” as to say “I’m fond of food.” It looks as if I’m going to have to start this preface all over again, this time from a coherent premise.

Then again, perhaps the incoherence of the premise should be my premise: how has it come to pass that in the profession of academic literary study, professors of English can publicly profess their love of “literature” (all of it, presumably) as if they were saying something meaningful? And loving literature as they do, renowned critics renounce criticism: some complain that academic criticism is too esoteric; some complain that contemporary academic criticism is too politicized; some complain that any kind of criticism inevitably positions itself as “superior” to its object, and is suspect on that basis alone. English departments throw themselves (and the very nation) into turmoil over whether to introduce a required “theory” course for graduate students—or whether to jettison the Chaucer-Milton-Shakespeare requirement for undergraduates. Conferences, colloquia, careers are devoted to asking whether literary criticism can have any productive political role in the world; conferences, colloquia, careers are devoted to asking whether literary criticism loves literature. Traditional defenses of the humanities no longer compelassent from students, trustees, or legislators (each for their own reasons more concerned with return on investment than with Remembrance of Things Past), and, accordingly, traditional defenses of the humanities are no longer attempted by junior faculty or graduate students. And year after year, thousands of new Ph.D.s in the field find that amid the myriad debates over the practices and prospects of the profession, there are no teaching jobs for them, regardless of what they think of the function of criticism at the present time.

What does the future look like for departments of English literature? Does academic literary study even have a future—or should it?

This book is about the intellectual and economic status of the profession of literary study at a time when “employment” and “English” are two of the most volatile and contested terms in the business. Some of the chapters that follow address the current employment conditions in English departments, by analyzing the professional tensions created by a substantially shrunken job market; other chapters address the social functions of literary study and interpretive theory, in English departments and in the broader culture. All of them were written in response to, and are informed by, the profession’s competing (and, in some respects, mutually defining) fiscal and intellectual imperatives—the intersection of which, I argue, both constitutes and mystifies the crisis of reproduction in the modern languages. The Employment of English is thus divided, as its structure suggests, between attention to “employment in English” and the task of “employing English” (or the knowledges produced in English) outside the academy. I do not suggest any easy or predictable connection between these two senses of “employment”: I do not argue that the job market will revive in English if every member of the MIA agrees to preface his or her book with the credo “I love literature, I really do,” nor do I argue that the survival (or demise) of literary study depends on the utility of cultural studies to the professional-managerial class. But I do think literary and cultural studies can serve useful and even politically progressive ends, and I do think their ability to serve those ends is predicated in part on the economic and intellectual health of the profession. If the essays in this book prove moderately convincing, then, I hope that they will call readers to rethink how English—and English teachers—can best be employed.

Janet Lyon is my coauthor in chapter 8, but, of course, Janet Lyon is coauthor of everything I do; this time we’re simply making it official. (Janet and I also need to thank audiences at the University of Chicago and the University of Virginia for their questions and suggestions in response to our tag-team argument in this chapter.) I owe many thanks also to Cary Nelson, Robert Dale Parker, Nina Baym, Claire Chantell, Lori Newcomb, Gerald Graff, Stephen Watt, Laura Kipnis, Jay Dobrutsky, Charles Harris, Curtis White, Michael Sprinker, Jeffrey Williams, Phyllis Franklin, Michael Vazquez, M. Mark, Eric Lott, Michael Denning, Cary Wolfe, Iris Smith, Ralph Cohen, Allen Carey-Webb, Don Hedrick, and Joe Tabbi for soliciting, reading, editing, improving, or just gainsaying various portions of this manuscript. I have relied time and again on the advice, support, and intelligence of a pair of good friends and trusted counselors, the truly cosmopolitan Amanda Anderson and Bruce Robbins. Niko Pfund and Eric Zinner have managed to exceed their reputation as terrific editors; Richard Powers and Mark Rykoff have been intercontinental pillars of strength—the one in Urbana, the other in Moscow. Thanks also to the Humanities Research Board of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for giving me the time to work on this book, and to the Cafe Kopi in downtown Champaign for being such a wonderful place to work when you’ve got a whole day to yourself. Last but first, Nicholas and James, the two most astonishing and wonderful children I know, have kept me going and buoyed my spirits in innumerable ways I can neither tally nor repay. This book is dedicated to them, and to our Boys’ Summerof ’96, with all my love.

Portions of this book have been previously published. A section of chapter 1 previously appeared as “Aesthetics and the Literal Imagination,” Clio 26.4 (1996): 439–53; chapter 2 appeared in Social Text 49 (1996): 75–95; a shorter version of chapter 3 appeared in the Centennial Review 40.2 (1996): 223–40. Chapter 4, with some modifications, appeared in the minnesota review 43–44 (1996): 131–44; a version of chapter 5, without the epilogue or introduction, appeared in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 37.3 (1996): 188–204. Chapter 7 is a revised version of an essay first published in Advocacy in the Classroom: Problems and Possibilities, ed. Patricia Meyer Spacks (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996): 186–97. Chapter 9 appeared in Transition 69 (1996): 90–98, and chapter 10 was published on-line in the second issue of ebr, the electronic book review, at http://www.altx.com/ebr (1996). I am grateful to these journals, publishers, and websites for permission to reprint, refine, improve, and redact my work here.

Champaign, Illinois

April 1997