Gregory S. Fay boldly questions the future prospects of American literary studies. Jay addresses questions and others relating to American literary studies to explain why this once arcane academic discipline has found itself so often in the news during the culture wars of the 1990s.

In this collection of essays by seven outstanding American scholars, interests as diverse as feminism, Marxism, deconstruction, and cultural poetics are brought together around a central question: how does the choice of a particular theory after the practice of reading, and how do altered practices of reading in turn call forth more theory?

White Writers, Race Matters explores the popular tradition of white-authored novels about racism in America. What explains their success, and what are their limitations? This study examines these questions through rich case studies combining biography, historical analysis, close reading, and literary theory to map the significance of this genre and its ongoing relevance.