How was the future of literary criticism imagined in the past?

From the archives: two essays by Hayden White and Edward Said, included in Contemporary literature V17.N3.

Read it here: tinyurl.com/mr2r6de3

How have poets post Black Arts Movement navigated the politics of form? In issue 66.1, Lizzy LeRud explores interplays of formalism and (non)conformity in recent radical poetry. Read "A Thousand 'We Real Cools':New Forms in Recent African American Poetry" here: cl.uwpress.org/content/current

How does digital celebrity shape the self-consciousness of contemporary autofiction? Hannah A. Jorgensen answers in "Authentic Flesh, Digital Bits," featured in CL 65.4. Read it here: cl.uwpress.org/content/65/4/514

In "Rachel Cusk's Attention Ecology," Swoboda suggests that we might respond to the demands of an attention economy by modeling and attending to "attention ecologies," environments "that heighten alertness to the networks...among which humans exist, perceive, and interrelate."

We are thrilled to announce that Jessica Swoboda has been awarded the 2025 L.S. Dembo prize for her wonderful article, "Rachel Cusk's Attention Ecology."

Honorable mention also goes to @georginacolby.bsky.social and Michael Dowdy. Details to follow... 🧵

A new wave of Chinese science fiction "depict[s] waste, not ordered progress, as the substance of China’s contemporary reality and the genre’s primary concern." In issue 65.3, Martha Swift examines the underside of science fiction's high-tech futures. cl.uwpress.org/content/curr...

How does autofiction contend with technologically mediated ways of seeing and projecting the self? In our read of the week, Marek Makowski produces “A New Exercise in Looking”: Experiments in Autofiction and the Novels of Olga Tokarczuk. Read it here: cl.uwpress.org/content/curr...

How do modern managerialism, short-termism, and the information economy shape narrative resistance to work and capital?

Huw Marsh offers a salient analysis in our read of the week: "'Bullshit' Jobs and Ticklish Comedy: Humor and Sadness in the Contemporary Novel." cl.uwpress.org/content/current

Issue 65.2 highlight: Siobhan Phillips takes on culinary labor and the cookbook in Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor's "Vibration Cooking." 🍳Read it here: cl.uwpress.org/content/curr...