Contemporary Literature
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cl-journal.bsky.social
Contemporary Literature
@cl-journal.bsky.social
Quarterly of scholarly essays on contemporary writing.

Published @UWiscPress.

--> cl.uwpress.org
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
November 26, 2025 at 6:23 PM
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
October 17, 2025 at 4:07 PM
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
August 21, 2025 at 10:59 PM
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."
June 17, 2025 at 5:28 PM
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... 🧵
June 17, 2025 at 5:27 PM
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...
June 10, 2025 at 9:51 PM
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...
May 8, 2025 at 7:08 PM
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
April 8, 2025 at 5:05 PM
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...
March 25, 2025 at 9:09 PM