What is literary and cultural knowledge? Specifically, what kind of knowledge do literary critics produce? What is the nature and what are the effects of literary knowledge? Christopher Newfield will address and purpose and fortunes of literary study in our current moment.

Christopher Newfield is Director of Research at the Independent Social Research Foundation (London) and President of the Modern Language Association. He was Distinguished Professor of Literature and American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he taught for thirty years. His areas of research are critical university studies, literary criticism, quantification studies, innovation studies, the intellectual and social effects of the humanities, and U.S. cultural history before the Civil War and after World War II. He has written a trilogy of books on the university as an intellectual and social institution, concluding with The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them (2016). He has written for the Huffington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Guardian’s Higher Education Network, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His current research involves the nature and effects of literary knowledge.

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