What does an associate professor of English at a regional public university in Indiana have in common with an endowed chair in an Ivy League literature department? What about the adjunct teaching four introductory-level writing courses at three institutions in one city (or in several)? Or, a graduate student on their way to a PhD in literature? John Guillory’s new book, Professing Criticism, would suggest that what they share is a profession. It is an intuitive answer, as it is a disorienting one.

Focusing on the profession and its history has the potential to compress the differential and uneven experiences of the crises that beset the university, the academic humanities, and literary studies. There is renewed attention in professional discourse to how the crises at elite institutions are not the same as those at other institutions (Herlihy-Mera 2023). Some departments aren’t shedding majors; they’re gaining them (Blackwood 2023...

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