John Guillory (NYU English author of the pathbreaking Cultural Capital) is here to discuss his amazing new Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study (U Chicago Press, 2022)

He speaks with John and with Nick Dames, co-editor of Public Books, Professor of Humanities at Columbia and most recently author of The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton 2023). The gap between criticism and scholarship looms large, as does the utility of Panofsky's 1940 distinction between "monuments" and "documents." they ask what sorts of cultural documents achieve aesthetic memorability, for good or for ill.

Mentioned in the episode:

Listen and Read here.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language